the reader must stop to listen to a thesis upon the utilitarian philosophy, and to a legal biography illustrating the successful pursuit of fortune under difficulties of every kind. When Mr. Hardy strikes out of the common road he always leaves the scent behind him, tires us with his hedges and ditches, but gives us no sport. And yet had he been willing or able to write Lord Langdale's life plainly and simply, comprehending the subject in 150 pages instead of 900, how interesting a tale he might have told, and how greatly he would have rendered society his debtor. It is we think, the author of "The Vanity and Glory of Literature" who warns us that it is only the quintessence of things written that will reach that posterity upon whose approval authors build, and for whose unwitnessed smiles they are content in life heroically to suffer. A solitary thought shall occupy men's minds when whole libraries will plead in vain for consideration. If authors are sagacious they will give posterity as little trouble as need be. Their jewels may be transmitted without the encumbrance of setting, and their needles will not be the less welcome without the accompaniment of a bottle of hay. A duodecimo, we know, does not fetch as much money in the market as two volumes quarto, but it may possibly float down the river of time, while the bulkier voyagers are quietly sinking to the bottom. The life of Lord Langdale, as written by Mr. Hardy, is doomed to speedy oblivion. The life of the same man, narrated by a spirited pen like that which in a few pages told the tale of our gallant Nelson, might have proved a fine and wholesome lesson for generations to come. For what, in fact, is that life truly narrated but an admirable history of patience, perseverance, self-denial, and unflinching industry, crowned finally with the most perfect success-such a history as all men read with delight, since none can read it without faith in human capability, without hope of personal triumph. The life of Lord Langdale is the life of a man who never threw a legitimate opportunity away, and never condescended to avail himself of one that was unlawful. What he had to do at any period of his career was done with his whole heart and soul-was done well, conscientiously, and therefore to his own satisfaction, as well as to that of the lookers-on. If failure should result from his labours, self-reproach could not afflict him, for he had tried his best. If he should find reward, the same exertions which had won the prize were still ready to be put forward in order to retain and prove deserving of it. The memoirs of men who "have thrown their chances away" would constitute a painful but a memorable volume for the world's instruction. The story of a man who made the utmost of his resources is equally interesting and far more valuable. Henry Bickersteth was born at Kirkby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland, on the 18th of June, 1783, and was the third son of Mr. Henry Bickersteth, a surgeon practising in that town. At the age of fourteen the boy was removed from a local school and sent to London that he might learn his father's business in the surgery of an uncle. In 1801 he proceeded to Edinburgh to complete his professional education, and there he worked with the steadiness and self-command which characterized his pursuits ever afterwards. In 1802 he returned to Kirkby Lonsdale, and took an active part in his father's practice; but he soon grew discontented with the obscurity of a country town, and he had already conceived a great dislike to the details of the medical profession. At this period he proposed to Dr. Henderson, a physician of his own age, whose friendship he had acquired in Edinburgh, an interchange of letters upon scientific topics, and he himself commenced the correspondence by forwarding an essay upon "The Vital Principle." Henry Bickersteth was but nineteen years old when he devoted himself to these exercises, with the laudable object of improving his mind, and although the letters contain many crudities and unsatisfactory hypotheses, which in later years would have been digested and rejected, it is impossible not to be struck with the vigorous understanding, the amount of actual thought, and the singular power of analysis which were brought to bear upon abstruse and metaphysical points by a boy not yet out of his teens. One or two specimens of these compositions would have been sufficient to establish the intellectual acumen of the young medical student. But, as we have hinted, Mr. Hardy is no culler of sweets, and in his hands the youthful philosopher becomes a bore. In 1802 Henry Bickersteth persuaded his father to send him to Cambridge; and it would appear that the permission involved sacrifices at home. The lad had been offered a lion's share of the practice at Kirkby Lonsdale, but contemplation and study had made him ambitious; and, since he must needs pursue medicine, he set his heart upon taking a medical degree at the university, with a view to practising in the metropolis. As was his wont, the undergraduate took to his new work in earnest. Mathematics was the essential study of the place, and "he thought it right to make use of it." Close confinement to work at Cambridge, however, led to serious illness in the course of a few months; and the ardent scholar was compelled to retire from the field. Upon his recovery, deeming it imprudent to return immediately to the conflict, he accepted an appointment as travelling physician to Lord Oxford, and, in March, 1803, set out for Italy to join his patient, then residing at Florence. We are informed that in the course of a few weeks he mastered the Italian language, and quickly grew into a passionate admirer of Italian literature. Lord Oxford, in consequence of the declaration of war, returned to England in 1804, and with him came the young physician, by this time thoroughly disgusted with medicine, and resolved to attach himself to the practice of it no longer. Reluctant to go back to Cambridge, Bickersteth implored his father to let him enter the army, but, receiving no encouragement in this direction, he re-entered the university in his 22nd year, determined as ever to work steadily on, although considerably behind the men with whom he must contend for academical distinction. In 1808 he took his degree; that he had laboured diligently may be inferred from the fact that he was senior wrangler of his year. had not lost an hour at Cambridge when he was intent upon the studies of the university; his devotion was as marked as a student of the law. His letters at this period indicate how little the prospect of future success had to do with the duty, ever present to his mind, of constant perseverance. He knows that it is incumbent on all men to work, but the sure hope of ultimate reward never bribes him to labour. "I really miss a day," he writes to his father, "going to Mr. Bell, who is very communicative when I catch him alone and disengaged, which is not often, for he has much more business than he can possibly get through. .. Everybody says to me, 'you are certain of success in the end-only persevere;' and, though I don't well understand how this is to happen, I try to believe it as much as I can, and I shall not fail to do everything in my power." In 1811 Bickersteth was called to the bar. He was twenty-eight years of age, and every step in life had yet to be made. His means were straitened, and he depended for his subsistence upon the contributions of his friends. He still works on. "My whole time," he writes to his parents at this juncture, "will be passed either in chambers or court, and if being always in the way and always attentive to my business will give success, I shall be successful." He offers at the same time apologies for causing his father expense on his account, and sends home the unnecessary assurance that "in clothes and living" he has been "as economical as he could, consistently with keeping up a decent appearance." A year or two elapse, and business does not flow in. But the student is more indefatigable than ever, struggles, endures privaton, denies himself every recreation that can at all interfere with the severe rule he has laid down for his self-government, and waits calmly for the issue. Temptations, sublimely overcome, are not confined to the priestly cell. In every epistle homeward the steadfast man "confesses that he hardly knows how he shall be able to struggle on till His thoughts now turned to the bar, he has had fair time and opportunity and in April, 1808, he entered himself to establish himself;" but he still as student of the Inner Temple. He strives, and as fixedly and resolutely had wrought diligently in Edinburgh pursues his way, as though he saw the when his father had intended him for reward of all his pains awaiting him the surgery at Kirkby Lonsdale; heat the goal. In 1814, and when Henry Bickersteth had reached his thirtyfirst year, the worker was still under the dark cloud, and success had yet to be achieved. In that year the barrister writes home that "it distresses him more than he can express to ask again for assistance," and that he is content, if his father so wills it, "to give the matter up without delay and return to Cambridge, where he is sure of support and some profit." He will do anything but fall back on the profession that he abhors. "After the discipline I have undergone," he says, "it will be a very slight mortification to me to give up my professional expectations for the smallest certainty which will enable me to live, and in time repay you the large money debt I have contracted. If, therefore, you think that I cannot, or ought not, to continue my trial here for a few years longer, I will cheerfully abandon it and return to Cambridge, where I certainly shall be no expense to you." The answer from home was a remittance of £30, and an intimation to go on. A few months afterwards business had slowly advanced; so much so that the student was "almost content to be shut up among his books for ever." A year or two more, and the cloud is burst-the struggler is emancipated-sunshine is before himfortune is secured. Can the life of Henry Bickersteth, if it tell no more than this, be written in vain? . . . Great caution and singular prudence seem to have entered largely into the moral nature of Lord Langdale; and it is somewhat surprising to find him at the turning point of life, when after years of laborious patience, the tardy harvest was growing ripe for gathering, deprived for a moment of weapons so very serviceable in all worldly warfare. In 1818 Mr. Bickersteth took an active part in Sir Francis Burdett's election, identifying himself with the extreme opinions of the then Radical baronet. The effect of his support was a sensible loss of professional business, and Mr. Bickersteth took care never to commit the fault again. The liberal agents and others who made Mr. Bickersteth's acquaintance in Sir Francis Burdett's committeeroom could not understand the timidity with which that gentleman ever afterwards shrunk from contact with political agitation. Mr. Bickersteth was offered a seat in parliament in 1819, which he refused on account of his inadequate means. In 1834 the Liberal party, remembering his antecedents, undertook to return him for Marylebone; and then he declined in a long letter, which ended without furnishing any reason at all for the refusal. When Lord Melbourne appointed him Master of the Rolls, and conferred upon him a peerage, the dainty lord would accept the honour, great as it was, only upon the condition that the Liberal minister should require no political allegiance from the judge. Lord Melbourne's serious respect for such fastidiousness may readily be conceived; not so easily the indignation and disgust of Lord Melbourne's thick and thin adherents, who could hardly discern the particular advantage of making a man a judge either for his own comfort, or for the benefit of the community at large. In one branch of reform Mr. Bickersteth proved himself no lukewarm labourer or timid advocate. To his exertions in favour of the reform of the Court of Chancery is the country indebted for much of the progress that has been made since his time in this direction, as it is certain that Mr. Bickersteth himself owed his reputation and elevation to the bench to the same unflinching and most serviceable zeal. In 1824 he was examined by the commission appointed to inquire into the whole subject of chancery; and the report published by the commission, based for the most part upon his lucid evidence, rendered it incumbent upon the government of the time to suggest a remedy for glaring abuses not yet wholly removed. In 1827 Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst recommended Mr. Bickersteth to the king for a silk gown, and the favour was received with a better grace than attended subsequent offers of promotion proceeding from Lord Chancellor Brougham. Liberal as he was, Mr. Bickersteth had little or no sympathy with the Whig lord chancellor, while on more than one occasion, according to his biographer, he was ostentatious in doing honour to his Tory rival. Lord Brougham offered Mr. Bickersteth a barony of the Exchequer in 1834, but the dignity was haughtily declined. The same chancellor, a few months later, placed the solicitor-gene ralship within his reach, but the rejection was still more decided. Lord Melbourne condescended to entreat Mr. Bickersteth's acceptance of the last-named honour, but the man was immoveable. His own account of his last interview with Lord Melbourne on the subject is sufficiently explicit:"The first thing I said to him was, that I had come only to show my respect for him, and wished it to be understood at once that I had declined the office of solicitor-general, but without any feeling of disrespect to him, or any dislike to the general policy of his administration; that, on the contrary, I thought he ought to be supported, and that if I knew a way in which I could properly render him service, I should be glad. He expressed his regret at my determination, and rather in manner, than in words, showed a wish to know my reasons. I said that I really hardly thought myself qualified for the office, and that I had a dislike to it, and probably could not have been induced to accept it under any circumstances, but that certainly the offer had not been made to me by the proper person." We have already stated that the offer came from Lord Brougham. In 1835, being fifty-two years old, Mr. Bickersteth married Lady Jane Harley, the daughter of that Lord Oxford with whom he had travelled as physician, thirty-two years before; and three months afterwards, Lord Melbourne, who was bent upon chancery reform, and whose unaffected, simple, but admirably expressed and business-like letters, be it said, by the way, form not the least interesting portion of these volumes, expressed to Mr. Bickersteth his great desire to name him to the king as the successor of Sir C. Pepys at the Rolls. The offer this time, "made by the proper person," was accepted, under the stipulations already spoken of. Unlike his successor, the present Master of the Rolls, for whom political excitement has charms beyond the calmer enjoyments of the bench, Mr. Bickesteth was of opinion that the Master of the Rolls should not be a member of the House of Commons, and he consented to take a seat in the Lords upon the express understanding that the judicial office should in no way be sullied by political partisanship, even in that less feverish and heated arena. "There is nothing more hateful or more mischievous," he said to Lord Melbourne, "than a political judge, influenced by party feeling," and Lord Melbourne, agreeing in the propriety of the sentiment, consented that Mr. Bickersteth, raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Langdale, should take his seat in the House of Lords, to aid the cause of law reform, dear to the heart of both, wholly free from any political and party tie. Lord Cottenham resigned the Chancellorship in 1850, and Lord John Russell, with the Queen's sanction, made Lord Langdale the offer of the vacant office. Lord Langdale has left behind him six written reasons for his refusal of that last and choicest prize of the ambitious lawyer. Two certainly influenced him in his decision. He had "no reason to think that the extensive reform which he thought necessary would meet with any support;" and, secondly, his health was visibly declining. Lord Truro will probably leave behind him as many valid reasons for clutching at the good fortune which the more abstemious Master of the Rolls suffered to pass by him. Be this as it may, Lord Langdale continued at his old post until he resigned on account of ill health, and retired upon a pension in March, 1851. The indefatigable and painstaking man had not withdrawn too soon. On the 18th of the following month he died-not a very old man, but literally worn out by the incessant toil of years. Lord Langdale was not a genius. He was not a great lawyer; but his was an accomplished mind, and both at the bar and on the bench he had remarkable skill in lucidly stating complicated facts. His general character partook of the nature of his intellect. There was nothing brilliant or startling in his career, but much that was noble, manly, and worthy of all imitation. What he once said in the House of Lords with reference to his office, viz., "that long habit had attached even his affections to the discharge of his duties in the place in which he now was," might be said with truth of his whole life. "The discharge of his duties was at all times a labour of love to him. It was the result of his self-government and the cause of his success. It is stated that Shakspeare and the Italian poets were the constant companions of his hours of relaxation, but imagination and sensibility did certainly not enter largely into his composition. His mind was essentially calm, cold, analytical, and judicial. In boyhood he wrote to his dearest friends often with the formality of a stranger, and discussed topics with a fellow student in the tone and spirit of a pedant. Mr. Hardy dwells frequently upon the "true dignity " of his departed master. No doubt dignity was there; but it did not always fit its owner gracefully, like a garment that yields to the natural movements of the wearer. Occasionally the folds were stiff, unbending, and looked angular to the observer's eye. The same remark applies to a Spartan virtue, which the biographer very properly extols, but which may, nevertheless, be, and certainly was, in Lord Langdale's case, carried to a vicious extent. Excessive nepotism is a fault, but we have yet to learn that a studied neglect of the claims of kindred and dependants is to be held up as a virtue. A gentleman, Mr. Hardy tells us, was once pressed upon Lord Langdale for an appointment, by two of the ViceChancellors; his qualifications were admitted, "but his chance was small," proudly adds the writer, "for he was a connexion of Lord Langdale by marriage." It is a fact, that Lord Langdale only assented to this appointment at last because no fitter person could be thought of. A more unpardonable instance was that of his Lordship's secretary, for whom, upon his own retirement, Lord Langdale refused to ask for a place, although a single word from his lips would have secured it, and notwithstanding it was well known to Lord Langdale that the secretary had some time before given up everything, in order that he might devote himself entirely to the interests of his over sensitive master. In truth, if we dare hazard the expression, Lord Langdale was too scrupulously good, and a dash of human infirmity would have given interest to his proceedingswould have constituted, in fact, "the river and cascade on the cultivated plain," which, in one part of the present work, Mr. Hardy himself confesses were wanting to give force to a character too level to be thoroughly heroic. But heroism is of various kinds, and we must hesitate before we assert that it was not present in the man who fought so bravely, and suffered so meekly, before he won his way to eminence-who, when eminent, was remarkable for his fine sense of honour, his love of truth, his assertion of right and justice, and who laboured with every faculty he could command and that not unsuccessfully—to reform the Court of Chancery, and to preserve to the nation its valuable and long-neglected records. TORQUATO TASSO. TAsso's story is the poetry of a poet's life. All he imagined of romance; all that his lyrics breathe of love, was fulfilled in the vicissitudes of his own career. From his cradle at Sorrento to his tomb in Rome, a golden stream runs sparkling through the sober monotony of common men's experience. A noble sorrow exiled him from the delights which his fancy could so vividly conceive; but it gave more than a simulated passion to his song for that was often a " melodious tear indeed. Italy smiled with Petrarca, and serenaded his Laura for ages, but with Tasso it wept, and dedicated penitential elegies to the memory of Leonora, the hapless bride of his heart. While he lived and multiplied works of perpetual beauty, he was long mocked in his own country, pursued with oppression in every other, galled by the ferocity of princes, and little rewarded by the people. When he died, his laureate-bier was bedewed by the lamentation of the whole race that spoke his language, and cities contended for the glory of having been the place of his, as of Homer's, birth. Yet with patriots and poets, the renown belongs not to those who saw them first, but to those who honoured them most. We do not ask where was Tasso born, but what nation made glory for itself by decreeing him his earliest myrtle crown. Still, as we trace rivers to their source, we search for the spot where genius had its horizon. Torquato, then, belongs to Sorrento. His father, Bernardo, had married there, and formed one of a powerful and proud family. Though sharing their talents for letters as well as war, |