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been moved with this splendid monarch, "Every inch a king," braving the tempest, wretched, and old, and mad with faithful, anxious watching-Kent close to his side-and Tom-mad Tom-crouched up in the corner cold, "Poor Tom's a cold." Whilst looking at it, "See," said Mr. Beckford, see how his nostril is inflated, like an Arab in a thunder-storm. I solemnly declare the figure of Lear is as fine as the 'Laocoon,' and the tone is as fine as fine can be. Who could suppose that the genius who had conceived and executed this, could have painted such a wretched and paralytic daub as his picture of The Sick brought before Christ,' in the National Gallery. Oh, gracious God! he must have been inspired when he painted this there's drama, expression, drawing, every thing. Ah! ah! you like that-I see you do, and you are quite right."

I am certain the author of "Vathek" knew perfectly well what was passing in mind. He has often said to me, your "Men's faces are a sort of alphabet to me. I can read their minds as easily as I can read a book."

It was useless to say you liked a thing if you did not; for if you did he would talk at you till he made you perfectly uncomfortable. He was a great lover of truth, proud and determined. To gain his esteem, manliness and straightforwardness, with modesty, were the surest way. At the end of this room was his piano, behind which fell red drapery in large full folds; a Japanese screen stretched from this into the room, so as to exclude all draughts. Over a doorway, to the right of the piano, which led you into another apartment, was a fine specimen of Canaletti. He laughed heartily, at least for him-for there was something very uncommon in his laugh; it consisted more of a succession of pleased exclamations, something of a mental rather than physical operation-on my telling him the anecdote of our famous Etty (for whom he had the greatest admiration), that when at Venice it is reported that he fell into a canal, since which the wits of the Royal Academy say that he was baptised at Venice, and his name is now Canal Etty.

A table at the window, on which were a gold inkstand and gold candlesticks, and a circular one in the centre of the room, at which many a book has been read, and on the fly leaves of which many a bitter thing has been written, were the most conspicuous things in the room he chiefly made use of. Our conversation then returned to West. Mr. Beckford had spent much of his time in his painting-room, and was there one day when Nollekins, the sculptor, came in, after taking a post mortem cast of William Pitt's head.

"Gracious God! I shall never forget," said Mr. Beckford, "his placing it on the table, and saying, as he uncovered it, 'It is the head of a fiend, and not a man.' From my having been brought up chiefly at Lord Chatham's, and my associations with the family, it made a strong impression upon me, for Nollekens, merely spoke as a devotee in his profession, not as a political partisan."

As this was touching upon statesmen, I asked his opinion upon some of the most prominent ones then living-more especially concerning one who has since been so anomalously kept in a very prominent position.

"Oh," said Mr. Beckford, "George IV. said every thing of him that can be said. D-n him! I hate him! he is such a strip of calico."

What association of ideas touched upon "Vathek's" mind in talking of Sir Robert, George IV., and calicoes, I cannot guess; but he then asked me if I had ever seen West's picture of "Death and the Pale Horse." I answered in the negative.

"I'm sorry for that," and then trotting off, he disappeared for a minute, and came returning with some papers in his hand. He told me to sit down, and taking a chair, placed himself so as the light might fall full upon what he held. Tiny imitated the movements of its master, and betook itself to its cushion on the sofa.

"Oh, let me see-ah, ah-yes, here-here is something very fine!" Mr. Beckford had a peculiar method of agitating your curiosity. He has often made me feel so impatient to see what he has had in his hands, that it was with difficulty I could refrain from snatching it out of them.

"Look-look-here it is-ah, ah-" and he would show me the outside, with some mark or memorandum upon the cover, and then he would dart off and tell me the history of it, to whom it belonged, and how he came possessed of it, and where it was found, and how it was found, and by whom it was found, and a history of all the people's families in whose possession it had ever been; so that by the time you did see it, your interest was wound up to the highest pitch. Was all this study, or was it the impulses of a quick and rapid imagination, carried from thing to thing by the association of ideas? This is a question I have frequently asked myself.

The paper which he held in his hand, was an engraving by Mark Antonio, of the "Witch" of Michael Angelo; it was the first time I had ever seen an impression of this rare production, and Mr. Beckford took good care that I should not easily forget it, for he descanted as eloquently upon this hag riding on the skeleton of some strange infernal beast, as she is greedily licking up fire from a bowl, as he had previously poured forth his hymn of praise to the beauties of St. Catherine-showing that his soul was equally capable of strong emotions, when it was either touched by the sublime, the beautiful, or the terrible. He urged on me the necessity of carefully studying the engravings of Mark Antonio wherever I had an opportunity; "It is here," he said, "that we can find Raphael pure -for even where his pictures have been saved from the scarifying of picture cleaners-still the varnish has been laid on coat after coat, or the dirt eaten in so as to much impair the delicate little touches-and it is these which give that perfection to his works. The greater number of his pictures were commenced by his pupils, especially by Julio Romano; Raphael then came and put the finishing touches; but if pearl-ashes, vinegar, and spirits of wine are employed, Raphael is quacked to death, and Julio Romano peeps into the world half born."

Mr. Beckford was well versed in prints and etchings, and could detect at once whether it was an original, or a copy; he knew all the private marks of the artists, as well as of the great collectors. His collection of engravings is not only considerable, but consists of the very finest specimens. He gave his mind to it, and whatever he brought his mind to bear upon, it seized with a vastness rarely to be met with that mind lasted in all its vigour, and suffused itself over a long and active life. His reputation afforded him opportunities, and his wealth enabled him to purchase whatever he considered worthy his choice collection. He frequently

regretted to me the breaking up of Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection of drawings, which he considered was the most perfect in the world, and the like to which would never be collected again. He assured me, had they been offered to him, he would have bought them; "but they passed me by, and did not think me worth making the offer to."

He inquired of me what I was engaged upon at the present time, in the painting way. I told him I was making a copy of a portrait of Lady Hamilton-Lord Nelson's Lady Hamilton.

"Lord Nelson's Lady Hamilton?-oh,-or any body else's Lady Hamilton, I suppose, you mean."

"Why," I said, "I imagined her ladyship was even less particular than the Princess Borghese, who sat for Canova, for there were a great many sketches in the Fitzwilliam museum of Lady Hamilton, in a state of nudity, by Romney."

"Oh, than the Princess Borghese, eh?" was the reply; "you must ask the Duke of about the Princess Borghese, he can tell you a great deal more about her than I can; but as to poor Lady Hamilton, she was not the most virtuous of women. I was a great favourite of Lord Nelson and of Lady Hamilton. Would you like to see some of their writing?"

"Very much," I replied.

Away he went, and returned with a small letter, one part of which was written by Lord Nelson in a firm character, on the necessity of "annihilating the French fleets ;" and the other by Lady Hamilton, in making arrangements for a meeting with the author of " Vathek."

As I had been a long time with him, I was about to go, but he made me first run over the house. He took me to a small room, where there was a water-colour drawing of Fonthill Abbey.

"Ah! ah! there's the abbey," he literally exclaimed, pointing to it. I asked him by whom it was painted.

"Turner."

"Turner?" I asked; "he does not paint like that now."

One

"Oh! gracious God! no! He paints now as if his brains and imagination were mixed up on his palette with soapsuds and lather. must be born again to understand his pictures."

We went upstairs; pictures, books, valuables were on all sides. We went into his large room, and crossed the arch through the rooms in the other house, down the stairs.

"Well, you must come again. Come when you like-the oftener the better. Believe me, I am sincere-I shall always be glad to see you. Remember me to your father."

He trod upon Tiny; the dog cried, and he took it up in his arms and disappeared. A servant in waiting bowed, opened the door, and I found myself coming out exactly opposite to the door by which I had entered. To my utter amazement, I had been five hours with Mr. Beckford, the greater part of which he had been upon his legs, and had scarcely ceased talking the whole time. This, according to the age he is represented to have died at, was in his seventy-first year. This was the se cond interview.

H.

THE MINERS:

A STORY OF THE OLD COMBINATION LAWS.

BY THE MEDIcal Student.

THEBE is a certain district of England which is at once a coal and iron field. To the eye of the passing traveller it presents now, as it did many years ago, at the period of our tale, all the dreary and repulsive features such a portion of country usually exhibits. The air has a dingy and clouded smokiness, the grass and trees are of a dirty green, the fences are uncropt and broken down, and every now and then you come to fields laid partially or altogether under water. This is caused by the sinking of the earth from the decay of the props supporting the roofs of the old wrought-out mines beneath. There is nothing of the fresh, breezy, sunny joyousness of rural scenery-every thing is bleak, cold, and sooty, and the mind of one wandering over such ground, in place of experiencing the exhilaration of the country, is oppressed with feelings of vague despondency and hopelessness. He cannot help knowing that instead of a ruddy-cheeked and light-hearted peasantry, those long, straggling lines of dirty, tile-roofed cottages that stretch up from the highway, have for their inhabitants, an ignorant, stunted, half-savage race, miserable, misanthropic, and inhospitable, among whom it is dangerous for the merely curiosity-led stranger to venture. The view of the many magnificent, wood-embosomed mansion-houses of the coal and iron masters alleviates nothing of these feelings, for the sight at the same time takes in numberless hills of coal-dust, and shapeless mounds of brown iron-stone; while the road you travel on is formed of crumbling black slag, the refuse of the smelting furnaces, whose ugliness deforms the landscape as much by day as their volcanic glare upon the lowering clouds makes night hideous. And while you gaze, the impression irresistibly comes upon you, that the monstrous wealth of a few, is the result of the monstrous suffering and degradation of the many, and that the gorgeous equipages that whirl along the furred and jewelled young ladies of the proprietors are but in another form the labour-the life-sweat of the miners' daughters, who in ignorance, wretchedness, filth, and disease, drag on all-fours like brutes, the trucks of coal or iron-stone, along the stifling passages, and dripping poisonous caverns of the pits, a hundred fathoms beneath the very road their proud sisters of clay are riding

over.

At the date of our story there was no branch of manufacture or commerce, no mode of employing capital or labour more productive of profit than the mining of coal and iron ore-probably there is none even now; -but that was the era of the old combination laws, when it was felony for any number of workmen to murmur against the price the purchasers of their toil chose to give for it, or combine their energies to obtain the full or highest remuneration for their labour. From this and other causes, one of which was the facility and perfect legality of combination among the masters to keep up prices and keep down wages, the greatest fortunes were made with the most incredible rapidity, and the descend

ants of many that made them, now hold high places among our privileged ranks.

One of the wealthiest and most influential masters in the district alluded to, was Anthony Hasteleigh, Esq., of Weldon Edge. His annual income was much more than ten thousand pounds-how much we are afraid to say, lest we should throw discredit on our story, in the thoughts of those of our readers who may be unaware of the treasures which trade, manufacture, and mining, pour into the laps of our commercial aristocracy, or who may be displeased that such enormous wealth, and all the luxuries and enjoyments it can procure, should be in the power of men of no more noble or ancient origin than Adam. He was considered rather a hard master, and was a man of much talent and considerable acquirement; indeed his great fortune, having been almost all accumulated by himself, may tend to show this. He was a widower, and had one daughter, a young lady of no little beauty, though the energetic and determined expression that shone through her features, gave them somewhat of a hard and masculine turn. She, with the two persons next to be introduced, will enact the principal scenes of the following narrative tragedy.

Mark and Edmund Vaspar were the sons of one John Vaspar, a working coal-miner, of average ignorance and wretchedness, who was one day killed by an explosion of fire-damp. His wife had died about a year before, and now his two sons were left to look out for themselves in the best way they could. Now, reader, you will scarcely credit it, that upon the heads of these two miserable children had descended the inspiring spirit of genius. It is nevertheless true, however unaccountable it may seem to those who believe that rank and talent always are born together, that these young beggars received from on high as much intellect as would have made a nobleman's second son premier, and his third, lord chancellor; but as they were born of the despised caste of those that make the gold-what it made them, this tale is written to show forth.

At the time of his father's death, Mark Vaspar, a boy about fourteen years of age, was employed in the mines, partly as a truck-drawer, partly as a sort of apprentice to the mining itself. But it happened that a new shaft of much promise having been sunk, which required a Newcomen engine of great magnitude, he managed, with some intriguing, to get employment as a sort of assistant to, or attendant on, the engine-keeper. Up to this time he could not read, nor, though he regarded with much curiosity the forms of the letters painted on the waggons, &c., and wondered how they could represent sounds, moreover, though he frequently expressed this curiosity, yet he never could find any one able to satisfy it -all around were as ignorant as himself. But when he got this situation about the engine, he found the keeper-a quiet, well-informed Scotchman-both able to give him instruction, and also disposed to feel amusement in the task, and while the engine requiring them to give merely a glance at it now and then, laboured away at the pumps, they, were employed in the business of teaching and being taught a piece of chalk and one of the iron plates of the engine-frame serving as the materials.

Mark had been from his earliest years a boy of very great penetration, in addition to his talent. He had seen, almost from the day he came above ground, that whether there ought to be or not, there are, have

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