but was reëlected in 1841. In a subsequent contest at Bath he was successfully opposed by Lord Ashley, the present Earl of Shaftesbury. On this occasion he exhibited even more than his usual bad temper and bad taste. He declined to accept Lord Ashley's proffered hand; and in the chagrin and vexation occasioned by unexpected defeat he uttered a rabid invective against the Non-Conformist ministers of the place, to whose influence he rightly attributed his rival's success. Lord Ashley was a well-known philanthropist, and his consistent support and patronage of many religious and charitable societies had naturally given him popularity among the Protestant clergy of all denominations, - a popularity heightened in the case of the Evangelical and Calvinistic ministers by his Lordship's strict Sabbatarianism and his belief in cold dinners on Sunday. On the other hand, Mr. Roebuck was openly accused of private professions of skepticism in matters of religion; and this report, so dangerous to the repute of any public man in England, (where theology and politics so frequently cross each other,) considerably damaged his chance of Lord Ashley, however, was in no way responsible for the rumor; and the difference between the conduct of the two during the contest was this, that Lord Ashley behaved like a gentleman and Mr. Roebuck did not.

success.

During his retirement into private life, after this defeat in 1847, he wrote his work entitled "The History of the Whig Ministry of 1830,"— a book in the preparation of which he is said to have received considerable and valuable assistance from no less a person than Lord Brougham. Despite the aid that he received, it is amusing to find in his preface a characteristic vaunting of his entire difference with Lord Brougham about the character of King William IV. "Lord Brougham," he writes, "is accustomed to describe William IV. as frank, just, and straightforward. We believe him to have been very weak and very false, a finished dissembler, and always bitterly hostile to the Whig Ministry and their great

over.

measure of Reform." This is Roebuck all He would infinitely rather argue that white was black than quietly coincide in any generally received opinion.

While on the subject of his writings, we will mention the book in which he vouchsafed to praise those whom he now so elaborately vilifies. In 1849 he published an octavo volume of two hundred and forty-eight pages on "The Colonies of England." Speaking (page 84) of the vast and rapid progress made by this country, he says:

"We are led to inquire by what machinery, by what favoring circumstances, such a result has been brought about. The people, be it remarked, are the same as ourselves, the original Thirteen States were the work of Englishmen. English heads, English hearts, English hands brought those new communities into existence. No longer connected by government with us, they nevertheless retained the characteristics of the race from which they sprang, and proceeding in the great work to which they were destined, they strode across the continent, the fairest portion of which they could now call their own. In planting new settlements they were aided by our own people, the very elements out of which we endeavor to frame colonies, and with which we do produce sickly, miserable communities that can only be said to exist, and to linger on in a sort of half-life, without the spirit of a young, or the amenities and polish of an old community, and, above all, without any spirit of independence.”

Again, speaking of colonization in this country as opposed to Canada and other English colonies, he writes (page 88):

"Certain adventurous persons, the 'pioneers' of civilization, wishing to make new settlements beyond the boundaries of Pennsylvania and Virginia, upon wild lands belonging to the United States, made formal application to the Government of the United States at Washington, who, being bound to afford all possible facility, thereupon take steps to have the land surveyed and laid out

into counties, townships, parishes. The roads are also indicated, and at once the law exists; and security, guarantied by the authority of the United States, immediately follows, both for person and property; and all the machinery known to the Common Law, and needed for the maintenance of this security, and the enforcement of the law's decrees, is at once adopted. A municipal authority comes into existence; a court-house, a jail, a school-room, arise in the wilderness; and although these buildings be humble, and the men who exercise authority in them may appear to be in some degree rude, yet is the law there in all its useful majesty. To it a reverent obedience is rendered; and the plain magistrate, who, in a hunter's frock, may, in the name of the United States, pronounce the law's decree, commands an obedience as complete and sincere as that which is paid to the Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court at Washington, or to the ermined judge who presides in the courts of our Lady the Queen in Westminster Hall."

This in 1849; but what a very different tone has he thought fit to adopt now! Was any agency then expected which has not been forthcoming? Or, having degenerated from being a supporter of liberal opinions in his youth to being the fond and fatuous admirer of autocrats in his old age, does he think that it is absolutely necessary that the firm friend of Austrian despotism should be the malignant assailant of the Government and people of the United States? The man is consistent in nothing but his spiteful vindictiveness and love of mischief. He is now the general object of deserved ridicule and contempt for his flunkyistic attendance at the Tuileries. At the time of Louis Napoleon's visit to London, Roebuck raved and ranted about his "perjured lips having kissed the Queen of England."

He has, on some occasions, put himself prominently forward, and in such a way as to make himself an influential member of Parliament. He moved the vote of confidence in the Whig Government in

1850, when the great debate ensued in which the late Sir Robert Peel made his last speech, and they were kept in office by a poetical majority of nine. But the speech with which Roebuck introduced the motion was entirely eclipsed by the magnificent declamation of Sir Alexander Cockburn, the present Lord-Chief-Justice of England. On another great occasion, in January, 1855, he brought forward in the House of Commons a motion for inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean War. Lord Aberdeen's Government was defeated by an immense majority, and, of course, resigned. Mr. Roebuck was chairman of the Committee of Inquiry; but the cabinet that came in discreetly declined to give him any official post in their ranks. They knew too well the terrible uncertainty and inconsistency of the man's conduct. They could place no reliance either on his temper or his discretion. In 1855 he was one of the numerous candidates for the chairmanship of the Metropolitan Board of Works, but failed to inspire the electors with any confidence in his capacity for the post. In the following year he became the chairman of the Administrative Reform Association, and although the league had at first been highly successful, and aided much in awaking public attention to the miscarriages and mismanagement in the Crimea, yet, under this fatal presidency, it became speedily and ingloriously defunct. This was his last great failure, before abdicating all his early liberal principles. He has of late years endeavored to solace himself for the now irretrievable blunders of his career by an exaggerated indulgence in his idiosyncratic waywardness, paradox, and eccentricity. He is proud of being considered the acquaintance of the Emperor of Austria, and rather pleased than otherwise at being assailed on this account. He affects the society and friendship of conservative members of the House of Commons. He has become tolerant of lords. He may be seen sitting next to Lord Robert Cecil, indulging in ill-natured jocosities, from which his Lordship probably borrows when

he indites ill-natured articles for the misguided "Saturday Review." He hates the Manchester school of politicians, because their liberality and their sympathy with the cause of freedom and civilization in this country remind Roebuck of his own deflection from the right path.

His private undertakings have not been more fortunate than his public acts. He was chairman of a bank, which was unsuccessful, to say the least of it. He has been connected with other enterprises, which soon courted and obtained fail

ure.

What he has recently said and done in reference to this country is too fresh in our memories to require that we should recite or recapitulate it here. His past career, as we have reviewed it, may account for the now intolerable acerbity of temper and the ludicrous vanity which disgrace him. Never was a Nemesis more just than that which has for the present consigned him to a melancholy obscurity. The political extinguisher has certainly dropped upon his head, and this burning and shining light has gone out with an unpleasant odor into utter darkness.

In summing up his character, it is evident that excessive vanity is his besetting sin. He is not too clever or too honest to act in union with other people, but he is too vain. He is by no means too good for the rest of the world; but he is too conceited and self-opinionated to condescend to cooperate with them. As, at some of the minor theatres, a single actor may play an army, so, in the House of Commons, Roebuck is a host in himself, is his own party, and leads it. His occasional popularity in his own country is due to the fact, that, in his own character, he, to a certain extent, repre

This journal is now owned by Mr. Alexander James Beresford Beresford - Hope, (we dare not omit any portion of this august name,) who has ample means to enlist, the talents of reckless, "smart" young men in search of employment for any work he may require, no matter how unprincipled the job in hand.

sents and crystallizes a few of the good and many of the bad qualities of Englishmen. He has their courage and audacity, their independence and pride, their generally defiant front to the rest of the world; but he is also vain, obstinate, bigoted, prejudiced, narrow in his views, and boastful in his language. His vulgar swagger, for instance, about the navy sweeping the seas, would have been condemned here, if it had been addressed by the most violent of demagogues to the most ignorant of Irish mobs.

We have heard him speak in the House of Commons in his palmier days, before he was as decrepit in mind as he is in body. He had great fluency, some power of invective, and a vast stock of assurance. We listened to him upon one occasion, when, without the slightest provocation, he used the most undignified personalities to the late Sir Robert Peel, to which Sir Robert, very wisely, never replied.

We cannot say that we feel any profound interest as to his future. He has compared himself to a dog, but, on behalf of that faithful and valued companion of man, we protest against the similitude. He has the kind of pugnacity which prompts a cur or a puppy to attack a Newfoundland or a mastiff. He has not the fidelity and many other good qualities of the canine race. At any rate, he has become a mischievous dog, — and a dull dog, and will soon be a "sad dog."

--

We would venture to suggest, that he should at once be raised to the peerage, under the title of Baron Tear-'em. He might then aid the good cause of the slave-mongers of the South, and act in unison with that just, generous, moral, and virtuous nobleman, the Marquis of Clanricarde.

We ought to apologize to our readers for so lengthy an account of so undeserving a person, but, at any rate, they ought by this time to know "Who is Roebuck?"

Six Months in the Federal States. By EDWARD DICEY. In Two Volumes. London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co.

THIS is a very gentlemanly book. Whatever excellence of commendation belongs to the adjective we have Italicized must be awarded to Mr. Dicey. And it is illadapted to the manufactures of most British tourists who have preceded him. For, to make no mention of the vulgar buffooneries of Bunn or Grattan, we hold that neither the exalted and irrepressible prosiness of Dr. Charles Mackay, nor the cleverish magic-lantern pictures of that goodnatured book-maker, Mr. Anthony Trol lope, would be perfectly fitted with this polite addition. It is no mean praise to say that the word gentlemanly naturally applies itself to a traveller's work. And it is necessary to allow that the majority of Americans who have printed their impressions of a scamper over Europe have fallen as hopelessly below it as a few have risen far above it. Some word of deeper meaning must characterize the sterling sentences of "English Traits"; some epithet of more rare and subtile significance is suggested by those exquisitely painted scenes of foreign life with which Hawthorne is even now adorning the pages of the "Atlantic." But after the manner in which such a well-informed, modest, humane man as we would emphatically credit as an American gentleman might speak of six months in England, so has Mr. Dicey spoken of his six months in the Federal States.

And, at this present time, far better than all curious delineations or “stereographic" descriptions are the sober testimonies concerning us which Mr. Dicey offers to his countrymen. To such loyal Americans as these volumes may reach they will give a heart not to be found in Dr. Russell's pictorial neutrality, in the dashing effects of popular Mr. Trollope, nor even — -making all allowance for the sanative influence of counter-irritation in the weekly malignity of that ex-Moral Minstrel whom the London "Times" has sent to the aid of our insurgent slave-masters. For, instead of gloating over objections and picking out what petty enigmas may not be

readily soluble, Mr. Dicey has a manly, English way of accepting the preponderant evidence concerning the crisis he came to study. He seldom gets entangled in trivial events, but knows how to use them as illustrations of great events. It is really refreshing to meet with a British traveller who is so happily delivered from the haunting consciousness of a personal identity. The reader is not called upon to bemoan the tribulations of temperance-taverns, the hardships of indiscriminate railroad-carriages, nor the rapacity of NewYork hackmen. There is scarcely an of fence against good taste or good feeling in Mr. Dicey's volumes; and whatever American homes may have been opened to him would doubtless reopen far more readily than to most publishing tourists from the mother-land.

Mr. Dicey clearly exhibits the bearing of the Rebellion upon the fate of the servile population of the South, and confesses that his deep sympathy with the Federal cause came from the conviction that the supremacy or overthrow of Slavery was intimately connected with the success or failure of Secession. In acknowledging the necessity that was upon loyal Americans of defending the fundamental law of their society, he is not disposed to adopt the lamentation of some of our foreign wellwishers who are troubled by the fear of a military despotism in the Free States. He has the sagacity to perceive that the genius and development of the graduates of Northern school-houses are totally opposed to a military rule. Mr. Dicey cordially recognizes the democratic idea which sanctifies our convulsion, and displays a careful observation in noting "the selfrestraint, the moderation, and the patience of the American people in the conduct of the people's war." He is not over-disturbed because this same people loved law and order more than freedom itself, and with few murmurs committed high principles to the championship of whatever petty men happened to represent them. Indeed, one of the best sayings he reports is that of an old Polish exile, who congratulates himself that there will be no saviours of society, no fathers of their coun

try, to be provided for when the war is

over.

Throughout these two volumes British readers may discern something more than the barren facts of our struggle: they may catch glimpses of its energy and movement; they may see it as reflected from the most generous American minds. For it seems to have been Mr. Dicey's good fortune in this country to have gained admission to the society of men and women of high intelligence, in whom the religious sentiment was living and powerful; and he appears to estimate the full weight of testimony such persons offered in sending their loved ones to Virginia to fall beneath the rifle of some Southern boor. It is this silent public opinion of the North which our foreign critics have generally failed to comprehend. They have been so long accustomed to parody the rhetorical elation of our third-rate political speakers, and to represent this as a universal American characteristic, that they signally failed to estimate the genuine emotion with which it is never connected. When the cherished barbarism of slaveholders arose and threatened our Western civilization, those who most felt and have best wrought for their country were cautious in their speech. They knew that the principle underlying the struggle must submit itself to the checks and counter-checks of constitutional law. While the fire of liberty burned at the heart of citizens of abiding loyalty, it seemed best, that, like the Psalmist, they should hold their peace even from good words. Many thought it an act of necessary self-restraint to dwell only upon the Union as a symbol of that universal freedom which they felt the Union must finally represent. The dread of overleaping the restraints of law, which, perchance, has prolonged the conflict, has been most creditable to the genuine democracy we have represented. We are proud to remember many intelligent soldiers who used no language of passionate denunciation towards the guilty institution which called them to the field, yet who knew the end when they gave their lives to a cause utterly antagonistic to its despotic claims.

By the representations of Secessionists encountered in the Free States, as well as from disloyal newspapers which the "Lincoln despotism" never sought to suppress, Mr. Dicey was convinced that the sole

purpose of the Rebellion was to get possession of the vast regions which lie west of the Mississippi, wherein to establish Slave States and Territories. "The North," he declares, "is fighting against, the South is fighting for, the power of extending slavery across the American continent; and if this was all that could be said, it is clear on which side must be the sympathies of any one who really and honestly believes that slavery is an evil and a sin." But it is not here that Mr. Dicey rests the case of the North as appealing to the Christian sentiment of the world. He shows that the inexorable logic of facts must work the overthrow of slavery where it now exists. The suppression of the slave-trade, the recognition of Hayti, abolition in the District of Columbia, and finally the Proclamation of January have one tendency and can have but one result. We state these views as one more confirmation of the fact, that, whether agreeable to us or not, the sympathies of liberal men in Europe are to be had on the sole ground that ours is an anti-slavery war.

Mr. Dicey's predilections lead him to make a generous, although discriminating, estimate of those men who, in time past, have endeavored to serve their country by leaving the level commonplaces of respectable citizenship. It is no slight praise to say that his chapter upon the New-England Abolitionists is clear and just. Their points of disagreement with the Republican party are stated with no common accuracy. Careful sentences give the precise position of Garrison and his adherents the intrinsic essence of the movement of these reformers is divested of the subordinate and trivial facts so often put forward to misrepresent it. Although Mr. Dicey endeavors not to commit himself upon the vital differences in the agitation of anti-slavery sentiments by the Abolitionists and by the Republican party, it is very evident that he inclines to the belief that the former, in their advocacy of disunion, acted not from a perverse and fanatical philosophy, but from the logical compulsions of a critical understanding, stimulated by an intense conviction of the national sin.

We have dwelt thus upon Mr. Dicey's views of the war, and of the great moral question with which it is connected, because these portions of his volumes are