MR. CARTER HALL'S REMINISCENCES.*

• Retroveet of a Long Life, from 1815 to 1883. By B. 0. Hall, FAL 2 vole. London : Bentley and Eon.

TUE uses to which books may be applied are manifold. They may be serviceable from their folly, as well as from their wisdom. They may be instructive in a way that is by no means creditable to the writers. Mr. Hall has spent a large part of a long life in writing books, and should understand

the somewhat common-place art of book-making; yet the two thick volumes which comprise the retrospect of his life must, on the whole, be pronounced a failure. The writer is upwards of fourscore, and much allowance is due to the weak- nesses of old age. But beyond a few slips of memory, there is no sign here of intellectual decay. Feebleness of judgment there is,

and a maundering utterance of pious twaddle, but we do not know that these defects have grown with years ; and when Mr. Hall touches on a subject with which, like that of Ireland, he

is really familiar, or when he describes a man he dislikes, there is no lack of such power as he possessed twenty or thirty years ago. It is, therefore, incumbent on us to treat the work as we

should treat the productions of a younger man, although it is impossible to forget that the writer served his apprenticeship as a journalist more than half a century ago.

The first thing likely to strike a reader's eye is the loose way in which the different portions of the book are strung together. There is no literary form, and no sense apparently that the exercise of art is necessary. Then as we look further, we find, in the first place, a considerable amount of matter that is nearly, if not quite, irrelevant ; and in the next, a great deal the insertion of which exhibits neither charity nor taste. Finally, and the observation goes to the good side of Mr. Hall's account, this accumulation of facts and opinions, written " almost entirely from memory," contains much that will amuse the idler, as well as interest the student of our social life.

Let us illustrate the favourable side of the volumes first. Mr. Hall can tell a story well ; he is quick to perceive the points of contrast between the England of his early manhood and that of his old age. The author has seen a man flogged at the cart's tail, has seen a wife sold at Smithfield, and has been present at the cross-road burial of a suicide. He has often seen malefactors hanging in chains, was once present at a fatal duel, and relates that at one time a club existed in Galway to which no person was admitted who had not shot his man. " At Castlebar," he adds, "I was shown a pistol marked with seven notches,—each notch indicated that it had sent a ballet into an adversary !" Irish Judges were in the habit of fighting duels, and an officer in the Army seldom escaped from the ordeal. Of imprisonment for debt, and of the filthy condition of the prisons, dismal stories are told ; and worse still, in the early years of the century, was the melancholy condition of lunatics :—

" In 1820," says Mr. Hall, "I was intimate with the superintendent of the Public Insane Asylum at Cork, and was frequently his visitor, and a witness of deeds that often made me shudder. Pass through any of the corridors, you were sure to hear the moans, sometimes the shrieks, and always the clanking chains, of the miserable prisoners who were kept in darkness and solitude as a remedy for their mental affliction, and whose appeal for mercy were heard only

by the stone wall of a cell ten feet by eight. A keeper, armed with a heavy whip, kept order among the miserable wretches, who in general retained just enough reason to be sensible of fear. As to consideration, sympathy, or mercy, they received none. Yet, as a rale, there was no deliberate or intentional cruelty. The brutal part of the treatment was only part of a system universally believed in."

There were grievances of another order in those days which justified the dogged exertions of men like Joseph Hume. Children of ten were sometimes officers, and in receipt of the King's pay; and a lady was once a cornet of dragoons, her com- mission having been dated before she was born. Mr. Hall says

" My brother, killed at Albuera in 1811, was an officer in my father's regiment, wore regimentals, and received pay when he was eight years old. There was no discredit attached to such appointments. It was one of the colonel's ' perquisites.' The abominable practice was pat a stop to by the Duke of York."

The writer does not, however, think that change has been always on the side of progress, and asks if aught has been gained by exchanging Vauxhall for those "places redolent of drink and debauchery," the London music-halls P At no period of its existence, he writes, " was the place subjected to any charge of impropriety, far less of vice. The respectable citizen took his wife and daughters to Vauxhall, without scruple or dread." We are afraid this agreeable picture of Vauxhall was

not altogether a true one, even in Mr. Hall's younger days. To

-what uses the Gardens were sometimes turned in the last cen- tury may be seen in the Citizen of the World and in Evelina. He is right in saying that the coarse swearing once common to men of all ranks is now unheard in decent society, and under this heading the author relates a good anecdote, which he had from the late Chief Justice Doherty. It is worth quoting, although, like several stories told in these volumes, it may be already familiar to some readers :—

"I remember an anecdote of a Bishop of Cork, who, voyaging across the Channel in one of the sailing packets, was much shocked by the oaths of the captain, and from reasoning and entreaty came to somewhat angry protest. Ye see, my lord,' said the captain, ' unless I swear, my men won't obey me Try them,' urged the bishop; 'try them !' So the skipper at last agreed to do so ; but, unknown to his lordship, he arranged a little comedy with the crew.

Very soon it came on to blow fresh. Tom,' cried the captain, - coil that rope.' Tom never moved, but stood chewing his quid. 'Jack, Bill, Harry,' said the skipper, just oblige me by taking in the top-sail.' Not a man stirred. The wind howled more and more loudly; the vessel plunged heavily through the waves. Then the skipper turned to the pale-faced bishop, who was watching the result of the experiment. 'My lord, my lord !' said be, in a terrified under- tone, what am I to do P If my men won't obey me, we must all go to the bottom.'—' Well,' said the bishop, slowly and reluctantly, under the circumstances I—I think you may—swear—a little.' No sooner said than done ; a volley of oaths sent Jack, Bill, and Harry aloft and about as quick as lightning; sails were furled, ropes coiled, and no more warnings against the sin of profanity were heard during that voyage at least."

In order to tell another anecdote, we may turn to a passage upon "Faction Fights in Ireland," now also among the evils of the past. The tale does not illustrate the heading, but it shows how an Irishman will sometimes use his stick from sheer love of the exercise :—

" I was visiting a magistrate in Kerry County, when a stalwart fellow was brought in a prisoner, charged with nearly killing an old, bald-headed man, whose head was a bloody mass. Being asked to swear information against tho accused who had wounded him, the injured man was silent, and on being pressed absolutely refused. What was it this fellow did to yea P' asked the magistrate.—' Nothing,' was the answer. The magistrate turned to the culprit—' Are you not ashamed,' he said, to have half killed this old man, who will not even give information against you ? Had you any ill-will to him ?'

- Oh ! none at all, your honour ; I never saw him before to-day.'

- Then what made you do it ?'—' Well, I'll tell yer honour God's truth. Ye see, I came late into the fair ; luck was agin me, for all the fighting was over ; so, as I was strutting about, looking for some boy to cross a stick wid, I saw this poor man's bald head poked out of a slit of the tent that he might cool it ; and it looked so in- viting that, for the sowl o' me, I couldn't help hitting the blow.' " Ireland, we may observe, is so blent with Mr. Hall's earliest recollections, that when on Irish ground or describing Irish men, he has generally something to say that is worthy of note. If he has a humorous incident to tell, it is generally of Irish origin. Here is what Mr. Hall describes as a new story illus- trative of the ready wit of the Irish :—

" Two boys were sleeping together ; one was Catholic, the other Protestant. When they woke in the morning, the latter thought to get a rise of the former. ' Oh ! ' said the one, 'I had a horrid drama last night.'—' Well, tell it to us,' said the other.—' Well, I will,' said the Protestant boy. Ye see, I dramed that I saw Pargathory opened, and all the Papists fell down into hell.'—' Och, murder!' exclaimed the Catholic boy, 'the poor Protestants,—won't they be crushed ! ' " Mr. Hall's weak side is seen in his comments on the character or intellectual ability of the men whom he has known inti- mately or slightly. He can sometimes praise extravagantly, as in his allusion to the "glorious memory" of Jane and Anna Maria Porter, and in his estimate of Thomas Moore as " one of the best and most upright of all the men that God ennobled by the gift of genius." He can blame, too, with uncalled-for severity, as in his cruel remarks upon Landor. Mr. Hall has, of course, a right to his opinions. His criticisms, if wrong, may be honest, but he is not justified, no writer can be, in attempting to estimate a man's inner life, or pronouncing on his future state. For an illustration of this vice, the reader may turn to page 125 in the second volume of the Retrospect.

Gossip about well-known people, whether kindly or the reverse, will always allure readers, and the author's re- collections are likely to secure attention. Miss Edgeworth receives nothing but praise, and deserves it. In figure she must have been as tiny as Scott's Fenella. " Travelling in a mail-coach, there was a little boy also a passenger, who, wanting to take something from the seat, asked her if she would be so kind as to stand up. Why, I am standing up,' she answered. The lad looked at her with astonishment, and then, realising the verity of her declaration, broke out with, • IN ell, you are the very littlest lady 1 ever did see !' " A

generous, kindly word also is given to Miss Landon, once a popular authoress, and now, unless it be for her sad fate, utterly forgotten. The Rev. Robert Montgomery, "not the poet, but the author of Satan and Woman," is said to have a place "among British poets of the century." Mr. Ainsworth, who, by the way, received a pension from the Government, is stated to have effected an enormous amount of evil, which Mr. Hall hopes was repented of before the novelist died. Then we read of Douglas Jerrold, that no one ever accused him of generosity or sympathy; of Croly, against whom there seems to be a personal feeling, that he hated his opponents with a hatred at once irrational and un- Christian ; of Lady Morgan, who was " vain, gay, and charming to the last," that one evening Mrs. Hall said to her, " Why, Lady Morgan, you are really looking very well !" "No such thing, my dear," she answered, "it's the rouge, it's the rouge !" of Lady Blessington, that " God intended her to be good " ; of Rogers, that his heart was shrivelled and his soul contracted,— a most unjust accusation ; of Miss Martineau, that her nature was without geniality, indulgence, or mercy ; of Longfellow, that his place among the poets of the century is, perhaps, next to Wordsworth; and of Coleridge, that he was among the first of talkers, and among the least of doers, a judgment which considering Coleridge's work as a poet and as a thinker, we beg leave to question. His poetry is surely immortal in its loveliness, and no man of the century has scattered more lavishly the seeds of thought. Here we must close a desultory notice of a rambling, but entertaining book. It would be easy to point out errors of quotation and slips of memory, but these are venial faults, in an. author who commenced his life with the century.