the purpose. He was a black-nay, the black-and that was enough to kindle in our bosoms the enthusiasm aforesaid. But softly. Let us attend to our chronology.

Richmond is the founder of the Sable or Lily-white School of Pugilism -and though he is now hard upon sixty, we would not advise Mr Hobhouse, Mr Whitbread, or any other rough young commoner, to take a turn up with him. Bill is a man of good education, and has seen the world. He was born in the sixtythree, at a place called Cuckold's Point, otherwise Richmond, near New York, America, from which he took his name. Mr Egan tells us, that he was born under the auspices of a reverend divine of the name of Charlton," an ambiguous expression, which leaves us in our simplicity, doubtful whether Dr Charlton acted on the occasion as father, clergyman, or accoucheur. The ambiguity is increased by the unfortunate juxta-position of the word "Cuckold's Point." A question arises-was Dr Charlton, if really the father, a black-or is Richmond a Lily-white by the mother's side. Endeavouring to forget this perplexing passage, we go on to state, that Richmond became valet to Colonel Percy, (the late Duke of Northumberland) and on his arrival in England was put to school, where he made good progress in his studies, and learnt to write a very fair hand for a black man, as several letters to us, now in our possession, and which may probably see the light some day, can testify. He served his apprenticeship to a cabinet-maker in Yorkand distinguished himself in several battles in that neighbourhood, with men heavier than himself by several stone. Docky Moore, the champion of the 19th regiment-two crack-men of the Inniskillins-a fighting blacksmith-Frank Meyers, a bagnio-bully -and several others, fell beneath his arm. Mr Egan does not tell us what took him to London-but we remember that he was in the service of Lord Camelford, when he had his first turn-up in town with George Maddox.

Bill was intimidated by the yelling of the mob on that occasion more especially by the addresses of the ladies, married and unmarried and on receiving a flush hit on the eye in the 4th round, bolted

and called for his clothes. This did not prognosticate great things of the Lily-white-but Richmond has often told us, that he fought merely to try what he could do with a good Londoner, (and Maddox was a good one) and that as it was a mere trial-battle, he gave in as soon as he knew he had the best of it. This was at least ingenious in Bill; and his subsequent battle with George, in which he slaughtered him, inclines us to think that he, in some measure, spoke the truth. His first public set-to in London was with one Green a whipmaker, whom he did under the tem minutes. Bill was now talked of as a formidable right-handed hitter-and was matched on the 21st of May 1805, with Youssop, a dangerous and heavy Jew. Bill fought entirely at the face, and in six rounds his opponent looked so queer, that his seconds did not think him produceable-and our hero had the purse-ten guineas. Fletcher Reid now took Richmond by the hand, and backed him against Jack Holmes the coachman, a boxer who at that time had the whip-hand of all the Jehus in town. It was a lively and severe battle-but coachie had no chance after the sixth round-and was dreadfully punished. Richmond was now near the top of the treeand thought proper to fight Tom Crib. We have heard that fight described as a burlesque. Bill danced about the ring for upwards of an hour, so that Tom could not make a single hit tell. At last he touched Lily-white on the mouth, and on the mark, and Dr Charlton's son immediately gave in. It was in all respects a bad battle-and was discreditable to both combatants. But as we have a sincere respect for both Mr Richmond and Mr Crib, we shall say no more about the matter. Bill next fought one Carter, a countryman of great strength and weight, and who had tried a taste of milling from Gulley and Jem Belcher, not without credit. In the fourth round, Richmond was levelled, in such good style, that it was thought he could not come again, and the odds rose to twenty to one on Carter. But our friend recovered himself and in twenty-five minutes cut Carter to pieces. soon afterwards kneaded the dough of a seventeen stone baker; and took the conceit out of Atkinson the Banbury Bargeman. It was now no easy mat

He

ter to find a customer for Richmond. At length, Isaac Wood the waterman, entered the lists with Bill for a purse of thirty guineas. We were present. It was a good and bloody battle. It was pleasant to see the cruel punishment the waterman received for the last ten rounds. His wife could not have known him. Bill was slightly pinked on the left side of his nob, but his beauty was not at all spoiled-and he kept laughing during the whole fight. At the close of one round, when Bill had got his adversary on the ropes, he went over him in a summerset, in a way that we do not remember to have seen practised either before or since. It caused much merriment.Bill next fought his old conqueror Maddox-and as we have said, beat him, after a severe combat of fifty-two minutes. His next set-to was with that promising boxer Jack Power, who afterwards vanquished Carter, lately the soi-disant champion. The fight was in a room by candle-light-and in a quarter of an hour Jack Power was defeated; at least, he was not ready in time, and the thing was decided against him. It was a pity that Jack Power died not long afterwards, for we still think that he and Richmond would have made an excellent fight. Richmond's next battle was with Davies, a young man of great strength and activity, and considerable science. The odds were in the Bargeman's favour at setting to; and he fought well and heroically; but losing temper, he rushed on Bill's murderous right hand, and was sacrificed within the half hour. It was now understood that Richmond had left the ring, being considerably upwards of fiftybut he and Shelton, one of the most formidable men on the list, having had a private quarrel, a match was made, and Richmond was again victorious. We were present. Shelton seemed to be winning it easy to an unpractised eye and a Cockney, lolling on the grass beside us, offered us odds on Shelton, which we took. Bill's right hand, we saw, was at its work; and the navigator kept following him, great ass as he was, over the ring, till he fell like a log, at the end of every round, and was carried away speechless, while Ebony scarcely looked as if he had been a contributor-quite calm and unruffled.

From this slight sketch of Rich

mond's performances, it is evident, that at Oxford he would have been a first class man; and at Cambridge, probably senior wrangler. We scarcely see on what principle he could well be beat. His activity is miraculous. His bounds are without bounds, boundless. His right arm is like a horse's leg; that is, it's blow like a kick of that quadruped. So what boxer, pray, seeing it is impossible to hit him, and impossible to avoid being hit by him, could, with any safety, be matched against the Lily-white?

Next to Richmond, the greatest glory of the Sable School, unquestionably was Molineaux. He never was so scientific fighter as his masterbut his prodigious power put him at once at the top of the tree. He was indeed what Milton or Egan would call " a grim feature" in pugilism. He was descended, we are told, "from a warlike hero, who had been the conquering pugilist in America," and after slaughtering, with ease and affluence, a prime Bristol lad, and Tom Tough, who had fought Crib an hour, he was matched to fight the Champion. In that great battle, which, as all the world knows, was fought on the 18th December 1810, at Copthorn, Sussex,

Crib was victorious. It is our intention, on an early occasion, to enter at large into the merits of this contest

and in spite of that odium which we well know we shall incur from some quarters of the highest respectability, we shall not fear to speak the truth.

"Fiat justitia ruat cœlum." Of the second battle, at Thisseltongap, there never was but one opinion. The Black had no chance. But in the first for the present, however, we refrain from entering into particulars. When we do speak out, let some people look to it. Verbum sapientibus.No good could arise to any one from tracing the decline and fall of Molineaux, from the most formidable boxer that ever threw up his castor, down to a mere apology for a fighting man, whom any tight stripling could have licked. When he fought Carter, he was useless altogether-and two such knavish poltroons never disgraced a British ring. His fight with George Cooper, in Scotland, was somewhat better-but his strength had left him -his wind was thick as butter-his side as soft as wheat-sheaves-and

his temper and courage destroyed altogether. Cooper, who, beautiful fighter as he is, could not have stood before him many rounds in the days of his power, cut him up in seventeen minutes! Molineaux died a few years ago in Ireland-miserably reduced. "So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies,

All that the ring is proud of."

We beg leave just to ask, where is the twelve-stone man who could have fought Richmond ten or twelve years ago? He himself used to say, that he was willing to fight any twelve-stone man in England, except Jem Belcher. Jem, indeed, would have tickled his toby for him in a brief space-but he was a match, in good truth, for any other pugilist of or about that weight in England. As for Molineaux-without entering upon a subject which we have pledged ourselves to discuss most fully before long-who, it may be well asked, could have fought him, had he been regularly bred to boxing in Europe had he taken to training kindly, which in the captain's hands he would have done-had he met with universal encouragement before and during the battle, and had he led a regular life? We answer, nobody. We suspect that our opinion coincides with that of Mr Egan.

Since Richmond and Molineaux left the ring, Sutton is the best black we have; and some good judges prefer him, but absurdly, to both those heroes. He is a fierce, boney, overshadowing fighter, of six foot three, and his arms are tremendous. In his first battle with Painter, he thrashed that gentlemanly pugilist to his heart's content. In his second conflict he was defeated. Painter had fed too well on the Norfolk fowls. His condition was so high, that it might be called unfair condition. Sutton is none the worse for wear. Painter, we suspect, is. And if they ever fight again, we back the sable warrior for a leg of mutton and trimmings.

These are what Dr Parr would call the Tria Lumina Nigrorum; and we have little to say of the other pugilists of the Sable School. Sam Robinson is not to be sneezed at, and indeed an ugly customer, both literally and figuratively. When last in Edinburgh, a Scotch mason fancied him, and a few of us made up a small purse for them to contend for. Sam had it all his own way, and in fifteen minutes "accomplished his object." If the mason was indeed a crack Edinburgh boxer, Scotland is behind the rest of the world several centuries in pugilism. Sam floored him perpetually, and beat his face to a jelly, without getting a scratch. Of the fight between Sam and Cooper, of which such a flaming account is given in Boxiana, we beg leave just to say, that it was no fight at all, but a manifest cross, and that Cooper ought not to have lent himself to such a match, being able to fight half a dozen such fellows as Sam, any morning before breakfast. No such battle as that recorded in Boxiana, between Sam and one Fangil, ever took place, but we are sorry to say that we, and not Mr Egan, are to blame for its insertion, as we sent the account of the fight to a provincial newspaper-by way of a bam. Stephenson, the black, is a bad one. Young Massa, whom we saw lick Caleb Baldwin in spite of his heart, has gone the way of all flesh we suppose. Of the new American black who lately fought Fred. Strong, the Hampshire blacksmith, we know nothing. And there are, we know, a number of other members of the Sable School, who thump their way respectably through the kingdom, dangerous to Johnny Raws, and not to be meddled with rashly by young gentlemen amateurs; ugly customers enough in a country ball-room, and tamers of turnpike men; but who, nevertheless, could not stand half a dozen rounds before a good London fighter.

these are matters concerning which, I am pretty well satisfied, the world will not be inclined to pin its faith on the sleeve of any Edinburgh Reviewer far less of such an Edinburgh Re

viewer as you appear to be. Moreover, had the Review of my Jacobite Relics been itself composed in such a style as could have given me any sus picions that I had been engaging the attention of my old friend, Mr Jeffrey himself, or indeed of any of the original supporters of his work, I should have found means of a different sort, to offer my explanation, and express my opinion. But as it is, I see plainly that the agreeable and friendly conductor has been permitting one of his asses to have a kick at me, and therefore I must be on no ceremony with him. What is worse, I see that he has permitted my veracity to be called in question, and my sincerity to be impeached and, therefore, have at you!

Before I proceed, however, I must do myself the justice to say, that what ever I may utter, I have no intention to hurt the feelings of Mr Jeffrey, a gentleman for whose honourable character I have always entertained, and do still entertain, a real respect, and for whose person I shall, in spite of every thing, feel a sincere affection as long as my name is James Hogg. No, sir, I am sensible that the strenuous support I have all along avowedly given to Blackwood's Magazine, must without doubt have placed my excellent and valued old acquaintance in rather a queer sort of situation in regard to me, and any thing I write. Before the thing was actually put to the proof, it is indeed true, I had a different opinion of my good friend's understanding (gumption is the word that would spontaneously have come to the point of my pen, but then you would say it is so vulgar);-I must confess, at that period of time, had any body asked me, in a convivial meeting, to give the health of “ one that can give and take a joke with equal good humour," there was no name I would more readily have pro pounded than that of my friend FRANCIS JEFFREY. The occasional pleasant and merry meetings I had with him, who is always so agreeable, would have put me up to propose such a bumper with the most fearless resolution. But now, I am concerned to admit, the case stands indeed very differently. The proof of the pudding is the eating thereof, as we say; and the fact is, that the world is satisfied Mr Jeffrey cannot take a joke, however good-humoured; on

the contrary, that he is one of the most thin-skinned individuals extant. The rage he was imprudent enough to discover in all companies, when he first felt himself grappled with by Wastle, Tickler, and some of the rest of us, was, of itself, sufficient to establish this fact; and, as to the animosity he expressed towards the Baron Lauerwinkel, for his letter to Mr Playfair-that was quite extraordinary, and beyond all bounds of previous credibility.

In the very last number of the Re view, Mr Jeffrey himself says of the Abbe de Pradt, that "a ci-devant archbishop of the church of Rome impeaches his past or his present sincerity when he laughs at processions," (p. 23.) and nothing can be more just than the apophthegm-Yet what did the letter to Laugner say, except in substance, the very same thing? The very same individual position formed the principal substratum of its reasoning. "A ci-devant clergyman of the Church of Scotland impeaches his past or his present sincerity when he derides miracles." No index-maker could analyse the essence of that capital paper more accurately; and yet this was the very thing that discomposed, never to be re-established, the philosophic equanimity of Mr Jeffrey, and made him utter nonsense, the recollection of which will cause him to blush in private every time the circumstance recurs to his recollection, (and these times, I take it, will not be few nor far asunder.)

When Mr Jeffrey had allowed himself to be so entirely taken off his feet in relation to others-how could I be so vain as to expect that he would continue to regard me alone with an unaltered eye of benignity. No, no, I was not such a fool, whatever ye may take me for.From the moment THE CHALDEE was published I perceived plainly that war was openly proclaimed-and all the world perceived as plainly that I had taken my side. I had taken my side

and I rejoiced in avowing it. Nothing on earth could have persuaded me to take the opposite side-if any thing could, it would certainly have been my regard for Jeffrey; but then there were feelings of that order arranged in the opposite region also; and, to make Jeffrey's beam kick Olympus, there I had PRINCIPLE and established SENSE OF RIGHT engaged to attract 7