Join these in Burke, and add his wisdom lack'd What most St Stephen's needs and values—tact. Still when some cause with earth's large interests fraught, Loud as a scandal on the ears of town, Already Fox is silent to our age, And pure from dross shines out the golden ore Down to oblivion sinks each rude defect, Thus is a torrent, if we stand too near, VOL. LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXII. M LORD DUNDONALD'S MEMOIRS. THE work now under our notice, although as yet fragmentary and incomplete, cannot be regarded otherwise than as a most valuable contribution to the historical literature of Britain. The noble author, now in his eighty-fifth year, yet still retaining, as is evident from the style of this volume, much of that activity, enthusiasm, and indomitable spirit which marked the earlier part of his career, won for himself, about the commencement of this century, in the naval service of his country, so high a name, that subsequent historians have not hesitated to class Lord Cochrane in the same rank as Nelson and Collingwood. Viewed from one point, we must necessarily admit that such an estimate savours of exaggeration; because, in military and naval warfare, success must always be held as the grand test of merit. A great and decisive victory, and, still more, a succession of decisive victories, will elevate the man who has achieved them to a higher place of estimation, and secure for him a more enduring fame, than can be accorded to the warrior whose reputation has been founded on a series of brilliant exploits undertaken on a smaller scale. But if we set aside the important element of opportunity, and restrict ourselves to an examination of the conduct and ability which have been displayed in the lesser as well as the greater instances if we are content to hold that the merit of a deed depends not so much upon its magnitude as upon the perfectness of its execution-we cannot venture to detract from the high meed of praise which eminent professional men have agreed to accord to Cochrane. As a captain, and in command only of a frigate (the far-famed Impérieuse), he distinguished himself beyond any other seaman of his time; but he never had command of a squadron in the British service, and his active career as an officer of our navy may be said to have terminated with the brilliant exploit in the Basque Roads, in April 1809, to the whole credit of which he is entitled. Why it so terminated, we shall presently see: in the mean time let us attend to the personal history before us. Lord Dundonald, like a true Scot, devotes an introductory chapter to an account of his pedigree, which we certainly should have passed over without notice-pedigrees being of little interest to any save those immediately connected-but for a most extraordinary blunder on the part of his Lordship. It may appear somewhat impertinent to take exception to any man's statement as to his ancestry; but in this case Lord Dundonald ought to thank us for freeing him from the discredit of being descended from one of the veriest knaves mentioned in Scottish history — to wit, Robert Cochrane, called The Mason, favourite of James III., who was hanged over the bridge at Lauder. We by no means intend to aver that the mere fact of having been hanged should operate against the memory of an ancestor; for in the old days such a catastrophe was anything but uncommon, and inferred no positive disgrace. But this Robert Cochrane was essentially a bad fellow, an insolent upstart, and a wicked counsellor of his king. The following is his character, as drawn by old Lindsay of Pitscottie, the very best historian of that period : 'Whatever was done in court or council with the king, nothing was done or concluded but by him; nor no man durst say that his proceedings were wicked or evil, or unprofitable for the commonweal, but he would have his indignation, and cause punish him for the same. He had such credence of the king, that he gave him leave to strike money of his own, as if he had been a prince. And when the people would have The Autobiography of a Seaman. By THOMAS, TENTH EARL OF DUNDONALD, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, &c. &c. Volume First. Bentley : London. refused the said money, which was called a Cochran-plack, and said to him that it would be cried down, he answered and said, That day he would be hanged that they were cried down. Which shortly thereafter fell out as he prophesied, as ye shall hear. For this Cochran had such authority in court, and credence of the king, that no man got credence or audience of the king but by his moyen. So all that would esteem him, or flatter him, or give him gear, their matters were dressed according to their own pleasure, whether it were just or unjust, or against the commonweal; all was alike unto him. For he cared not for the welfare of the realm, or the honour, so that he might have his own singular profit and estimation in court." Lord Dundonald tries to make out that this Cochrane, whom he calls his ancestor, was not only a man of good family, but a magnificent architect and a wise statesman, being, says he, "to James something like what Wolsey subsequently was to Henry VIII." That is a mere delusion. Cochrane began life in a very humble way indeed, and no historian has said otherwise. Pitscottie is minute as to this point: "He might be example to all simple mean persons not to climb so high, and intend great things in court as he did. For, at his beginning, he was but prentice to a mason; and, within few years, he became very ingynous in that craft, and bigged many stone houses with his hands in the realm of Scotland. And be cause he was cunning in craft, not long after, the king made him master-mason, and, after this, Cochran clamb so high, higher and higher, till he came to this fine, as is rehearsed." The way in which this Cochrane is brought into the Dundonald pedigree is very amusing, and may be a lesson to future Oldbucks. We may premise that the Cochranes of that Ilk, whom Lord Dundonald represents through a female, were an ancient baronial family in the shire of Renfrew, and held considerable possessions there, long before they were ennobled by Charles II. In giving their descent, Crawfurd, our most accurate peerage writer, makes men tion of a certain William de Cochrane of that Ilk, who obtained a charter from Robert II., dated 1389. "He was succeeded," says Crawfurd, "by Robert his son, who resigned his estates in favour of Allan his son, anno 1456." Then he speaks of a deed dated four years previously, in which this Allan appears as a witness," in which deed he is designed Allanus Cochran Armiger, his father being then alive, and to whom he succeeded before the 1480." Upon this hint for there is not another scrap of evidence to fortify his position-Lord Dundonald identifies Robert, the son of William de Cochrane, and father of Allan Cochrane of that Ilk, with the mason Cochrane, who was hanged at the bridge of Lauder! Now, it is nowhere alleged that Cochrane the mason was either married, or left issue, or had a patrimonial estate; but Lord Dundonald, eccentrically, and as it appears to us unaccountably desirous to have this man as an ancestor, has constructed a little romance, wishing us to believe that Robert Cochrane of that Ilk resigned his estates in 1456 to his son, "for no other purpose than to devote himself to the study and practice of architecture, in which, as an art, Scotland was, at that time, behind other nations!" We have both heard of and known instances of Scottish lairds who, in consequence of a disastrous taste for architecture, did ultimately divest themselves of their acres, the stone having, according to the common phrase, fairly eaten up the earth; but it is a new thing to us to be told of a gentleman resigning his land, in order that he might labour at a quarry! Even Cincinnatus, though he preferred the plough to the dictatorship, stuck valorously to his hereditary acre. Besides this, it never seems to have occurred to Lord Dundonald to inquire how it happened that if Cochrane, who, as he asserts, had been created Earl of Mar, had left a son called Allan, that son did not succeed to the dignity. But it is of no use insisting further upon a mere heraldic delusion, which is quite apparent from the fact that, by Lord Dundonald's own admission, on the authority of Crawfurd, Allan suc ceeded Robert before 1480, whereas Cochrane the mason was not hanged until the month of July 1482. We submit that Lord Dundonald should feel deeply indebted to us for having delivered him from such a progenitor. We might, if so minded, be a little critical upon his construction of the deeds of later Cochranes, who did not, as a sept, exhibit any remarkable adherence to hereditary principle, but changed sides as circumstances suggested, quite as freely as many other members of the Scottish aristocracy. We need not, however, go into such matters. Suffice it to say that the Cochranes were losers in the political game in which they had embarked rather largely, and that the father of the present Earl found himself in the disagreeable position of the holder of an ancient title, without the adequate means of supporting it. In that aspect he was not singular. Poor Lord Balmerino declared in the Tower that he had been driven into the Rebellion of 1745 from absolute lack of the means of subsistence; and we have heard old people say that they remembered a Lord Kirkcudbright, who, keeping a glover's shop in Edinburgh, voted regularly, with out protest, at the elections of the Peers in Holyrood, and supplied each of his brother nobles in the way of trade, before the opening of the solemn ceremony. "Of our once extensive ancestral domains," says Lord Dundonald, "I never inherited a foot. In the course of a century, and before the title descended to our branch, nearly the whole of the family estates had been alienated by losses incurred in support of one generation of the Stuarts, rebellion against another, and mortgages, or other equally destructive process-the consequence of both. A remnant may latterly have fallen into other hands from my father's negligence in not looking after it; and his unentailed estates were absorbed by extensive scientific pursuits, afterwards to be noticed; so that my outset in life was that of heir to a peerage, without other expectations than those arising from my own exertions. "My father's day was that of Cavendish, Black, Priestley, Watt, and others, now become historical as the forerunners of modern practical science. Im bued with like spirit, and in intimate communication with these distinguished men, he emulated their example with no mean success, as the philosophical records of that period testify. But whilst they prudently confined their attention to their laboratories, my father's sanfamily estates by his discoveries led him guine expectations of retrieving the to embark in a multitude of manufacturing projects. The motive was excellent; but his pecuniary means being incommensurate with the magnitude of his transactions, its object was frustrated, and our remaining patrimony melted like the flux in his crucibles; his scientific knowledge, as often happens, being unaccompanied by the self-knowledge which would have taught him that he a man of business. Many who were so was not, either by habit or inclination, knew how to profit by his inventions without the trouble of discovery, whilst their originator was occupied in developing new practical facts to be turned to their advantage, and his consequent loss." The truth is, that old Lord Dundonald was a man of much ingenuity, but of little practical sense. No man was more quick at descrying where an improvement could be made, but he was never able to turn his discoveries to profitable account. He had, to use a common but exceedingly expressive phrase, too many irons in the fire. At one and the same time, he was occupied with no fewer than six schemes of chemical manufacture, any one of which might have proved successful had he abandoned the others, but an ultra-sanguine tempersimultaneously, an undertaking utament incited him to push them on terly beyond the reach of his capital or credit. Also, though his inventive powers were of the highest order, he that faculty of calm ratiocination does not appear to have possessed which, from an accidental phenomenon, can extricate a great principle, and proceed onwards to its application. Of this the following is a remarkable instance : "One of my father's scientific achievements must not be passed over. Cavendish had some time previously ascertained the existence of hydrogen. Priestley had become acquainted with its inflammable character; but the Earl of Dundonald may fairly lay claim to the practical ap plication of its illuminating power in a carburetted form. "In prosecution of his coal-tar patent, my father went to reside at the family estate of Culross Abbey, the better to superintend the works on his own collieries, as well as others on the adjoining estates of Valleyfield and Kincardine. In addition to these works, an experimental tar-kiln was erected near the Abbey, and here the coal-gas became accidentally employed in illumination. Having noticed the inflammable nature of a vapour arising during the distillation of tar, the Earl, by way of experiment, fitted a gun-barrel to the eductionpipe leading from the condenser. On applying fire to the muzzle, a vivid light blazed forth across the waters of the Firth, becoming, as was afterwards ascer tained, distinctly visible on the opposite shore. 66 Strangely enough, though quick in appreciating a new fact, Lord Dundonald lightly passed over the only practical product which might have realised his expectations of retrieving the dilapidated fortunes of our house; considering tar and coke to constitute the legitimate objects of his experiments, and regarding the illuminating property of gas merely as a curious natural phenomenon. Like Columbus, he had the egg before him, but, unlike Columbus, he did not hit upon the right method of setting it on end." There is some humour in another anecdote of old Lord Dundonald, which we find in this portion of the work. His Lordship's experiments in the manufacture of coal-tar were made principally with the view of having that substance applied to the ontward coating of ships, as a preventive of the ravages of the worm; copper-sheathing not having been then invented, but the clumsy expedient adopted of driving in largeheaded iron nails, which made a ship's bottom appear like a gigantic hob-nailed shoe. He applied to the Admiralty of the period to have his process properly tested, and, if found efficient, adopted, but without effect; for then, as now, the peculiar constitution of that Board, which the country has thought fit to sanction and maintain, notwithstanding the thousand proofs of its incompetency, was against innovation a term which, we are sorry to think, has been held to include many wholesome improvements as well as empi rical devices-and the scheme was doubtless remitted to the judgment of the masters of the dockyards, whose interest, in the days when jobbery was undoubtedly triumphant, of the floating material. Finding did not lie in the way of preservation that the Admiralty would do nothing for him, old Lord Dundonald went down to Limehouse, and tried to induce a large private shipbuilder to use his composition, warranting it as effectual against the worm. He might as well have entreated a tailor to vend a new species of garment calculated to last for a lifetime. Lord," said the man of planks, 66 we live by repairing ships as well as by building them, and the worm is our best friend. Rather than use your preparation, I would cover ships' bottoms with honey to attract worms!" 66 'My His Lordship belonged to the despotic section of fathers, who consider themselves entitled to exercise absolute dominion over their sons, and not only to regulate their education, but to fix their future calling. Even now we not unfrequently meet with instances of such ill-advised and calamitous dictation, but during last century the doctrine of patria potestas was almost universally received and practically applied. The principle of tyranny being admitted, the exercise of it became almost intolerable. No prepossessions, tendencies, or natural inclinations were to be regarded: the destiny of the son lay in the power of the father. The lad who sighed for a pair of colours was condemned to study for the law. The studious youth who wished to cultivate the muse, was clapped into uniform and despatched to a foreign battle-field. Remonstrance was disregarded, and disobedience branded as a crime to be visited by severance from family ties in this world, and certain perdition in the next. Young Cochrane was a heaven-born sailor. He rioted in the breezes of the ocean as the war-horse scents the battle. His favourite heroes were Drake, and Blake, and grand old Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, the unconquered Admiral of Scotland, who maintained so gloriously and well the supremacy of the northern seas. His dreams were of the quarterdeck and the |