GALLERY OF LITERARY CHARACTERS. No. LXXI. FRANCIS PLACE, ESQUIRE. THIS hero was found, we believe, in a dust-pan, upon the steps of a house in St. James's Place, about sixty years back, by an honest Charlie, who forthwith conveyed him to the next workhouse, where (for these were unenlightened times) the little stranger was kindly taken care of. He was christened Francis, that being the surname of his wet-nurse; while, in lieu of patronymic, they gave him Place, as a memorial of the locality where he had been discovered. Such were the bulrushes out of which Westminster drew the future Moses of the Preventive Check,- a philosophical decalogue well worthy to supersede the first, which it so boldly contradicts, particularly in the absurd article about murder. The Mount Sinai of the new lawgiver is, we need hardly say, a certain tailor's shop at Charing Cross. It was there that Johnson said he delighted to contemplate" the full tide of human existence." It is there Place has erected his grand Mill-dam, for the salutary purpose of arresting this same tide, and causing it, utterly deserting the ancient and perilous water-course, to wander innocuous amidst the sands and shallows of the Palus Pseudaphrodisiaca. This is the magnum opus of the sagest of the snips; but he has also contributed, in many lesser matters, to the expansion of our intellects. Place soon learned to take a just measure of the fundamental features of the old system; and declared war, to the scissors' point, against those grievous humbugs, the Boroughs, the Peers, and the Church. Not finding it convenient to withdraw his attention wholly from the shop, he delegated the task of parliamentary warfare to various subservient journeymen in succession. Such was Burdett-such was Hobhouse -and such is Evans: we say is, for we hope there is no chance of the gallant lieut.-general having been personally dealt with after the tender mercies of Mina. We understand, however, that Place has now feathered his nest to a comfortable extent; and trust we may therefore look with confidence to see himself at no distant period within the walls of the House, not of Call, but of Commons. He is as well entitled to sit there as any philosopher of the ara-we don't except Buckingham, Wakley, Bowring, or Roebuck; all his equals in birth, his inferiors in wealth, and his superiors in impudence alone. Like him, they all are, we believe, or have been, Westminster Reviewers; but it is well known that Place's articles were always more prime than any of theirs. He had a wider range, too; being, in fact, in its palmier days, at once the Jeffrey, the Playfair, and the Sidney Smith, the critic-poetical, the critic-mathematical, and the critic-theological, of the grand organ of Benthamism. We desire to see such men in parliament-nay, in office: it is our fervent wish to see Place himself in Downing Street, where he would certainly look the thing a good deal better than Spring Rice, whom we are confident he would pronounce a disgrace to any reputable shopboard. We are weary of seeing the loaves and fishes abandoned, by those who have the real power in this land, to such miserable mendicant imbeciles, the very dregs and sweepings of the doomed and fated aristocracy, as Johnny Russell, Morpeth, Mulgrave, and Duncannon, together with such a handful of time-serving scamps, traitors to the Plebs that spawned them, as Hobhouse, Rice, Ellice, Wood, and Tallow Tomson. Away with these paltry mimes!-the time is come when the real actors ought to be bounding on the stage; while such despicable tools should shrink behind the scenes, there to perform the obscure, as well as dirty work, for which alone nature and art have qualified them. Away with these dwarf monsters! despised, far below the mark of that rather respectable sentiment called hatred, by every Tory -loathed in his secret soul by every Liberal, who does not happen either to have been begotten by "some tenth transmitter of a foolish face," or to have first fawned upon and then spurned the crawling nastiness of his native mud. Away with all such, we say. Give us men to whose proceedings we can apply some rational standard of calculation - honest, out-spoken fractions of men even; any thing but this base convention of hypocrisy and cowardice, whose God is their belly. VOL, XIII. NO. LXXVI. MEMOIRS OF A HOMICIDE. I HAVE lived forty and five years, and am already gray, broken, and worn as one that hath completed the full days of man. Twenty-four of these years have I spent without a friend or an associate, pitied by the benevolent, shunned by the careless, and feared by the timid. I scorned and hated them all. I have had no part in the world, and no sympathy with aught it holds or held. My affections, my sympathies, my natural desires, have been torn away from their native seats, and continue a part of myself only as the dead and broken boughs which hang beside the parent trunk are yet a portion of the tree. Most men, when the first fierce blast of griefwhich bent them to the earth has passed over, are permitted to rebound from beneath the blow, and to recover again their elasticity and vigour; but in me there has been no recoil. Like the tree which has been blown to the ground, and uprooted, I continue to live though prostrate; but produce no fruit that may arrive at perfection, and serve only to encumber the earth with my deformity. Five times have I written an account of my miseries, because I felt a fierce excitement, whilst thus grappling with them, that might almost be termed a pleasure, and was better far than the continual endeavour to flee from thought; but I as often burnt the narrative, lest it should become a witness against me. I am now calmer; the fire within has well-nigh consumed its fuel; the throes which for so many dreary years have without intermission convulsed me wax somewhat fainter; -I will write my history again. I shun the first twenty years of my life, they were happy years! or seem so now. I know not why, but it pains me more to dwell on what I then was than on what I am; I cannot think on that period without agony. I was twenty-one years old when quartered with part of my regiment at Carlisle. In the neighbourhood resided a country gentleman, whose son was my friendmy intimate friend.. I was glad to be quartered in a place where I might daily enjoy his society. One day we gentry, were also present. It was after dinner; we were all warmed with wine; some were more than usually loud and vehement, and I was more than usually bitter and sarcastic. With that evil habit I had been cursed from my youth up. It was not that I then hated all mankind, and was as unfeeling as I since became : I then possessed a spirit ardent, a temper generous, a heart warm with the liveliest affection for all who loved me with equal frankness, and whom I knew to be generous, and warm-hearted as myself; and my friend-my intimate friend-knew me to be such. But at times, when a cloud of ill-humour would hang over me, either from indisposition of body or from disgust at feeling myself neglected, and finding others more attended to than they deserved, I was accustomed to relieve my discontent by giving utterance to keen and biting sarcasms. On this fatal day I had sat depressed and silent, except to make some bitter allusion, or exercise unjust severity; whilst my friend was loudly declaiming on every topic that came under discussion. Whilst inveighing against the rascality of poachers, he mentioned that he had lately severely chastised a scoundrel whom he caught with a hare in his possession on his father's property. "Yes," I observed, 66 no doubt, just as you chastised the butcher's boy, at Eton, when you had run against him in your hurry, and then kicked him for being in the way. St. George! I shall never forget the speed with which he returned the compliment, and proceeded to beat you so sincerely that you roared for mercy, though you were then about eighteen years old, and thought yourself another Diomedes." There was a general laugh at my friend's expense. As for him, he turned pale with rage, and faltered with confusion: had he been in a more temperate state, he would have laughed with the rest; but as it was, after gasping for articulation, he could only find expression for the words "You lie! you lie !" I laughed at him; but looking round, I saw dismay painted on the features of the rest 1 hant their auna sulted. Rage gradually took possesion of my soul; the devil whispered that I had been mortally affronted; I glared round the table, angry with all, but fastened my eyes upon him I had unwarrantably provoked, and muttered the monosyllable "Dog!" A wineglass was instantly flung at my head— it was returned; and we were forced out of the room by different doors, with fire flashing in our eyes and fury burning in our hearts. I spent that night with a foretaste of the hell I have endured ever since. In the morning, anger had entirely flown, reason and affection returned, and I longed to go forth and embrace my friend, but dared not, for I feared he would spurn me. I was determined not to challenge him, though I knew it would be expected that I should. Whilst I remained on the rack of uncertainty, one came on the behalf of -I must not call him my friend-of Henry Hartwell, to demand personal satisfaction for the insults I had offered him. No explanation was asked for, no apology demanded; none, therefore, would be accepted. I knew not what to do, nor where to turn,- so I agreed to the meeting. But I was determined that nothing should make me fire at the man I most loved. I would solicit a reconciliation on the field - I would stand to be shot-I would even apologise, but I would not take aim at my friend. We met. Harry Hartwell," I began to say, with a faltering voice, at the same time advancing towards him, "Harry Hartwell!" but he smiled. Oh, God! why did he smile? I would have apologised, I would have entreated, I would have prayed for a reconciliation, but that smile chilled me. The seconds measured the ground -we took our stand-I scarce knew what I did. I fired above his head; he might have thought I aimed at him, but I did not. His ball passed through my hat. "Are you satisfied?" I exclaimed, leaving my place. He turned from me. "Give us the other pistols," he said to his second. "Madman!" I shouted; "will you force me to take your life? I have already given you satisfaction enough." Another pistol was in his hand; my second, a cold-blooded, systematic duellist, led me back to my place. I trembled with agitation. We find Th through the heart. The same bullet cut the ties which bound me to my species; I underwent a change almost as great as his. For some moments I was paralysed; I then tottered up to my victim he was quite dead. It was a strange tumult of thoughts that flashed through my brain as I gazed on the body. I was perfectly calm; the violent convulsion I had just undergone seemed to have cleared my intellect; a sheet of flame glanced on my mind, bringing forth a thousand thoughts from obscurity; and I saw the past, the present, and the future, displayed intensely bright in the vivid flash of that instant. I was betrothed to an angel, whom I adored, and who loved me devotedly. My first thought was of her-her horror, her distraction. I thought of my mother, bowed down with grief, and, with clasped hands and straining eyes, supplicating the Al-Ha! torture! What was I writing? I thought of my father-his gray hairs brought with sorrow to the grave. I thought of the dead; I loved him, and he had loved me. Had he deserved this at my hands? Horrible! horrible! thought of myself-an outcast--a Cain, branded with the indelible mark of a murderer to be remembered only with anguish, to be pitied only by those who shudder. I felt that I was utterly, hopelessly lost. My mind. grew dark; I lost all consciousness. -- I .... Fast, fast we travelled; but I only remember, after a long interval, seeing the trees and hedges glide past the windows of the carriage. No object made any impression on me; and I was only awakened when on board the ship by tumbling over some obstacle. Then I knew my misery. It was arranged that the person who accompanied me on board should write to me; he then left me. I could write to no one--not a word. We soon sailed. The port we had left was Glasgow, and we were hound for New York. To me it was indifferent whither we went. I did not speak; I scarcely looked up for many days; and though the captain wished to be attentive and kind, I rejected his civilities with such abrupt fierceness that he did not care to repeat them. The sailors eyed me with wonder as I stood, day after day, at the 311 them on my passage to the cabin to devour my tasteless meal. I ate little, and that little with haste, that I might return as quickly as possible to my post on the deck. My thoughts, I fancied, were easier whilst I stood or reclined in that spot than in any other; and the moments which press upon my memory most intensely are those I passed when pushed one day from my usual position by the mate and some of the crew, who had something to arrange there. Anxiously I watched the completion of their duty, and when they left the place I hurried thither again, and resumed my former attitude with something like relief. The spray and the rain were unheeded and unfelt, or, iffelt, only moved me to smile, by reminding me how far I was placed beyond the influence of such petty misfortunes. At length we came to anchor off New York. Several boats from the shore came quickly alongside, and into one I immediately stepped, without bidding adieu to any person on board the ship, and was soon rowed to land. A host of waiters, who seemed ready to pull me in pieces, eagerly directed my attention to their respective hotels; I selected the dirtiest and most ragged, and followed him to his inn, pleased with the idea of having mortified and disappointed his rivals. When we arrived there the landlady asked what I would have done with my luggage. I looked to my conductor, but, as he returned no answer, I recollected that it was still on board the vessel. I need not dwell on every particular; enough to say I remained a month at New York, in expectation of a letter from England, sometimes sitting moodily, for days together, in my little room, sometimes walking with the rapidity of a troubled spirit through the country in the neighbourhood of the city-observing nothing, heeding nothing; but filled with such thoughts as a demon would have shrunk from accepting in exchange for his own. At length the letter arrived, and as I held it in my hand unopened, and thought of those of whom it would tell--those who seemed brought nearer to me by this link, and whom such a mark of their unbroken affection (for so I would deem it) caused me to regard with proved the climax of all I was doomed to bear. It first told me that the writ of the coroner was issued against me as a murderer, and if I set foot again on my native land it must be only to take my trial as such; against this step it cautioned me. It then mentioned my parents, the wretchedness of my mother, the sorrow, the anger of my father; I was not spared,-no, I was fully made aware of all the misery I had caused. An annuity of a few hundreds was provided for me, and a London banker was directed to pay it as I should order. I hurried over this; it interested me not: I sought only the name of Susan Grey, and at last found it. She had fainted when she heard of my fate; she recovered only to become delirious: she was seized with a brain fever, and in eight days was a corpse. There was more in the letter, but I read no more; the cup of my despair 'was filled-the whirl of my brain was renewed-reason sank beneath the weight of woes,- and I roared with laughter till the room shook again! What was the world now to me? I was above it, I was beyond its malice; nothing now could reach me. torture that transfixed me I defied; I revelled in misery. But I dare not think now of what I then felt and thought. The Two years I spent in wandering through some of the most savage wilds of North America. How I subsisted I know not; but my life was charmed: I had no wish to live, but could not, dared not, die. At length I grew comparatively tranquil,-the fever of my spirits abated, and I settled into something like a sullen calm- dark and waveless as the Dead Sea. joys could cheer me, no misfortunes sadden. The blasts of the world blew over without affecting me; I had lost the common feelings of humanity. But the worm within did not die, nor was the fire quenched. Such I was, and such have I continued. If it be insanity,well! what if it be? No On my way back to New York I visited the Falls of Niagara. As I approached them, the roar of waters, louder and louder as I drew nigh, gradually filled my soul; and, for the first and only time, the tumult within my bosom was hushed. I stood on the bent down, It was not the graceful sweep of the liquid glass, as it rolled majestically over the edge of the Fall, that gave me pleasure; it was the roar, which filled my soul, and occupied my thoughts without exertion, that pleased me. There was a grandeur, too, in stooping over the precipice, and peering into the boiling mist below, that affected me. I was not quite withered. I staid here several days, until the impressson wore away, and the precipice ceased to awe, and the noise to fill. My thoughts were again active; I became again restless as before, and set forth to try the effect of new scenes. I arrived at New York, and immediately inquired for the first ship that would sail to any part of Europe save England. I was informed that one would sail for Brest in three days, and in it I secured a berth. As I wandered about the streets on the morning after my arrival, a woman rushed from a narrow entry that led to some miserable dwelling, and, standing before me with streaming eyes, exclaimed, "Oh, sir, save us!" "From what?" I said, coldly. She made no answer; but, seizing me by the arm, dragged me towards one of the houses. I entered with some hesitation; it was a miserable cabin. An old and a young man, apparently father and son, were seated on a truckle bed in one corner. Dejection was painted on the countenance of each; beside them stood three children, and in other parts of the room several men were engaged in making an inventory of the few effects. I asked my conductor what she wanted with me. She answered with the usual story, common to all parts of the world, that they were an honest, industrious, unfortunate family, whose goods were being seized for rent, and whose bodies might perhaps be incarcerated for the same object; that they were utterly ruined, and had no hope to escape from misery but by death, unless I would pay the landlord's demand of twenty dollars. I looked round-misery was strongly depicted in the faces of the whole family. I laughed aloud - ha! ha! ha! "Fools and idiots!" I said; "do you dare to tell me that this is misery? Because this paltry furniture, these trumpery articles, are about to be taken from you, do you pretend to be unhappy? What though you be all sent to prison; can iron bora 1 Have any of you committed murder? If you have, I will believe your story. Contemptible wretches! go forth and labour, and purchase new pots and kettles." I turned to go, but yet was weak enough, out of pure scorn, to fling my purse on the floor at the feet of the woman, and left the house. Another time I was amused, if the bitter feeling may be termed amusement, by witnessing the folly of mankind displayed in a different way. I saw a number of people leaving a burial-place; some stood in groups about the gate, discoursing, perhaps, of the virtues of the dead. I felt tempted to ask one of the most serious why he looked sad. "Sir," he answered, 66 we have just buried a dear friend, one who was an excellent parent to his family, and to his country a valuable citizen; it will be long ere we recover the blow." Here the good man tried to sob. I laughed aloud. "And so," I said, "selfish and ungrateful! this is the return you make for the benefits he has conferred on you. You believe that his good deeds have entitled him to a better existence, and yet you fain would have kept him here in daily misery, merely because he contributed to your comforts, and helped to feed your appetites. Miserable set! if the man lived as you tell me, go home and rejoice that your friend is happier now than he was a week ago. If he was a murderer, remain here and weep." I strode away, and left the sentimental group. Just before I left the hotel to embark, a person came to me whom I recognised to be the younger of the two men I had seen in the labourer's cottage. He talked of the eternal gratitude of himself and family, said he wanted to go into service, and entreated me to employ him. I thought there was no reason why I should not have a servant, so I engaged him. He accompanied me to Paris, where I had not been a week before he left me, taking with him my pocket-book with some money, and the whole of my wardrobe but the things I had about my person. As by this time I was acquainted with mankind, this accident did not at all surprise me; but, as it subjected me to some inconvenience, I resolved ever after to do without a s |