MR. SOLLY'S REMINISCENCES.* IF Mr. Solly had borne in mind

the saying of the Greek poet, about the half being more than the whole, he would have cut down his two volumes to one, and thereby doubled their value. Most of the first volume is really interesting ; very much of the second is not. And the interest of the earlier part lies chiefly in the pictures which it gives of life in a wealthy Dis- senting family during the first half of the century, both in London and in the country ; of private schools sixty or seventy

years ago ; and, later on, of the author's early struggles as a Unitarian minister in various parts of the country, mixed up

before long with the Chartist movement. All this bears that clear-cut impress of vivid recollection which belongs to our youth and abides with us yet in old age. It is often difficult in the latter part of the work, although the year is mentioned at the beginning of each chapter, to know the real date which belongs to the narrative. Inaccuracies are not unfrequent, and probably not many readers will follow as conscientiously as the author the vicissitudes of the various societies and bodies—most of them short-lived—with which he was con- nected. Mr. Solly, indeed, laughingly bids those who may deem his recollections to be " narrated at an inordinate• length reflect upon the reply made by a dear little girl,. who, when scolded for some childish fault, pleaded amidst her tears, Oh I mother, you do not know how much naughtier I could have been." Thus, when the reader has gone through over a thousand pages of fairly close print, he is invited to "rest and be thankful" that there are no more.

Mr. Solly is descended from a race of Kentish yeomen, who farmed their own land "during some four or five hundred

years." In the early part of last century, one Isaac Solly migrated to London, and laid the foundation of a large business in the Baltic timber trade, afterwards developed and enlarged by his son and grandson, the latter Mr. Solly's father. He can just, he says, recollect his grandmother— "As a stately and rather severe old lady, attired in a magnifi- cent yellow silk brocade, as she appeared at Layton House on the Christmas Day when I was five years old, and was led up to her- to receive the golden guinea which she gave all her numerous grandchildren every Christmas Day till her death. Unfor- tunately for me, being the youngest of my father's family, she died before another Christmas Day came round."

Mr. Solly's father, who succeeded his grandfather as managing partner in the firm, seems to have been an energetic and open-minded man On one occasion, during the Continental War, he sent orders "to buy up the whole of the oak plank to be found in Russia or Poland." He accepted the chair- manship of the London and Birmingham Railway Company (developed by amalgamation into the present London and

North-Western), at a time when "none of the principal London carriers would have anything to do " with the rail- way except Pickford and Co. He became also the chairman

of the first Transatlantic Steam Navigation Company, and as acting-chairman of the Royal Exchange Assurance Com- pany was mainly instrumental in forming the London Fire Brigade. He lived in more than comfort at Upton House, Walthamstow, and his style of travel would now be considered almost lordly, driving his wife and daughters in his own landau, with two female servants, the upper man-servant and a child following in a post-chaise, whilst the coachman and

under-footman rode on in front to secure accommodation for the party. At home, little Henry Solly seems to have lived a very happy life, riding his own Shetland pony, even in the first instance, to and from school. At his first school, Mr. Cogan's at Higham Hill, we obtain a glimpse at second-

hand of the future novelist, Radical M.P., Conservative leader, Premier, Peer, Benjamin Disraeli: " He slept in the same room with my brothers, and I have heard them describe how he would sometimes keep all its occu- • These Eighty Years; or, the Story of an Unfinished Life. By Henry Say. 2 vols. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 1823.

pants listening to the marvellous stories he would tell them, long after the one candle was put out. But, of course, with sue h an imagination as he possessed, he was given to romancing, some- times in an inconvenient fashion, and my brothers complained that they could not believe his word. They also said that he was too fond of ` setting the boys together by the ears.' " The teaching of the school was severely classical, but virtually nothing else. There was, however, among the boys (who, by the way, appear to have been singularly combative) a remarkably high tone as regarded all that was considered dishonourable, such as lying, stealing, " cribbing " lessons, tale-bearing, &c. At thirteen, Mr. Cogan giving up school, young Solly was transferred, with several other Higham Hill boys, to Dr. Morell's at Hove, near Brighton, whose pupils " were rather an effeminate, spoony lot, and we came down upon them like the Goths on the luxurious and depraved subjects of the Roman Empire." A peculiarity of this school was an entirely unfenced playground below the cliff, which the boys had consequently to defend against all co mers.

In course of time young Solly was sent to what was then known as the London University, of which his father was a proprietor (the capital had been raised by shares), and became especially intimate with a younger brother of John Stuart Mill and with W. Dongal Christie, afterwards M.P. and diplomatist. Through his intimacy with young Mill he was invited to James Mill's house. Of the eldest son, John, he says :—

" I remember one evening receiving from him my first notions of geology, for finding me densely ignorant on the subject, but eager for information, he fetched a number of books, laid them flat a-top of one another, and showed me that if the strata of the crust of the earth had always remained in that position, we should never have been acquainted with any but the one upper layer. Then by tilting them up at one end so that the edges of each layer came successively to the surface, he made me see how we got to each in turn, as we travel in various directions. John Stuart Mill always seemed to me a great favourite with his family. He was evidently very fond of his mother and his sisters, and they of him ; and he frequently manifested a sunny brightness and gaiety of heart and behaviour which were singu- larly fascinating."

Young Solly's University career was, however, cut short, to his great disappointment, after a couple of sessions, his father insisting on his going into a ship-broker's office, which, however, he left after four years, proving entirely unfitted for mercantile life. He wrote a tragedy, and it was not accepted; he dabbled in chemistry, and, according to his own account, missed a fortune by compounding a new ultra- marine, the secret of which was stolen and carried to Ger- many ; spent some time as temporary secretary on some silver-lead mines in Wales ; took employment in a count- ing-house to learn book-keeping ; worked in a branch of the London and County Bank at Chelmsford and after- wards at Hertford, but, alas ! was " continually making mis- takes," and finally resigned (his father having come to ruin meanwhile) in order to enter the Unitarian ministry, to which denomination the Sonya belonged as English Presby- terians. Without going through any strict theological train- ing he obtained the pastorate of a small congregation at Yeovil, at a salary of £65 a year. The bulk of his congre- gation here were working men, and his intercourse with them was a turning-point in his career. For the first twenty-five years of his life he had looked upon the working classes as a sort of inferior race,—almost as the coloured people are re- garded in the United States. At Yeovil, with the exception of the widow of a former minister, the one family in the con- gregation which could have given him any social intercourse were not sociable, and "outside the congregation neither gentlemen nor tradesmen, Churchmen nor Dissenters " desired his company. He found himself, in short, " regarded as a sort of theological leper." Among the Yeovil working men, on the other hand, " there was a simplicity and self-respect, combined with a habitual rugged courtesy, and a deep-set earnestness of thought and life, a self-restraint, and a com- parative purity of heart and of habitual conduct," which, contrasted with the " prevailing frivolity, quasi-selfishness,

heartlessness, and among young men the habitual licentiousness of both conversation and conduct" of the generality of his old acquaintances, made him " almost fancy " that he "had come to a different planet" One of their most striking characteristics seemed to him " their transparent sincerity and simplicity, the utter absence of anything approaching to hypocrisy or shams of any kind." Through them he became convinced " that Christianity was to be applied to politics, to all kinds of social reforms ; " and with the ardour of a neophyte rushed headlong into "moral force Chartism," at the cost, before long, of his Yeovil pastorate. It would be of no interest to the reader to recount here the story of his successive ministerial migrations, but one incident of his career at Shepton-Mallet, which opened his eyes " to the fatal fallacy involved in W. L. Garrison's doctrine of non- resistance" (to which Mr. Solly had become converted some years before), must be told in his own words. Walking home, he tells us, one summer evening with a young lady from a Sunday-school treat,-

" We met two rough hobedehoys [sic], one of whom thrust the other rudely against my companion. All aflame with wrath, I struck out fiercely with a thick stick in my hand, and by that blow not only showed the kind of treatment such conduct deserved, but convinced myself that whatever Christianity may demand with regard to suffering patiently ill-treatment inflicted on ourselves, it does not require or sanction that we should stand passively by while it is inflicted on others. The blow, however, in this case, I must admit, unfortunately fell, not on the fellow who did the wrong, but on his companion, who nevertheless would thereby be taught to be careful what company he kept" Perhaps Mr. Garrison might have said that the very opposite conclusion should have been drawn from the adventure ; at any rate, it may be doubted whether any one before Mr. Solly was ever converted to a sense of the lawfulness of physical

force by hitting the wrong man.

Mr. Solly's experiences as a lecturer or a writer, and in the various institutions for social purposes which he founded, promoted, or directed—the Working Men's Club and Insti- tute Union, the Society for Promoting Working Men's Clubs and Institutes, the Charity Organisation Society, the Artisans' Institute, the Trades Guild of Learning, the Social and Political Education League, &c.—need not here be dwelt on. One original figure, however, which detaches itself on the somewhat neutral-tinted background of Mr. Solly's second volume is that of the late Lord Lyttelton. Accustomed to Lord Lyttelton's "rather brusque, grave, determined manner," Mr.

Sony could hardly believe his eyes on finding upon his desk a remonstrance in rhyme over his omission to send the writer a list of books on social economy for working men, which proved to be only the first of a long series of such effusions. Not one member of the Council, it appeared afterwards, had even remotely suspected the writer of having the least sense of humour. The best specimen of Lord Lyttelton's verse is perhaps a piece, too long to quote at length, which purports to depict Mr. Solly's obsession with the idea of a grand Central Hall and Club, and begins thus :-

"When I wake, when I sleep, when I stand, when I fall, I can think about nothing but that Central Hall. In my cups, on my back, on my knees, in my tub, My thoughts still keep running on that Central Club. While eating, while drinking, thro' teas and thro' coffees, I'm all in a bubble for that Central Office."

Not less humorous is the concluding passage of a speech by Lord Lyttelton, at the inauguration of the Artisans' Institute (October 14th, 1874) :- "In conclusion, I want to give you a few words of warning. Mr. Solly is rather a peculiar man, and one of his peculiarities is that he believes that the whole human race are born to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for him in the promotion of objects of public utility. I warn you all, that unless you are prepared to sell yourselves, body and soul, to Mr. Solly, you will have a very bad time of it. For thirteen years I have been trying to defend myself from him, and have not succeeded. Every morning I expect to receive a letter, marked immediate,' and telling me that I must do something he wants me to do at once, and in the precise way that he wants me, or else that the whole universe will be instantly handed over to the Devil and his angels. Indeed, Mr. Solly is like the gentleman in Rejected Addresses, who comes on to the stage and says :

'I am a blessed Glendoveer, 'Tis mine to speak and yours to hear.

And he means all the world to be like that other gentleman of whom it is said:—

' Obedient Yamen Answered Amen, And did As he was bid.'

Depend upon it, that will be the fate of all who work with Mr. Solly. Not that he makes us work for his own private purposes. I don't believe he has any,—or indeed any home, or anything he cares about, except working men. But then certainly the work is good, and Mr. Solly is earnest and sincere."