JOHN BROWN'S GENUINE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.* IT is idle to suppose that

adventures alone constitute the adven- turer. Character makes the man, not condition or circumstances.

• Sixty Years' Gleanings from Life's Harrest. A Genuine Autobiography. By John Brown, Proprietor of the University Billiard-rooms. Published by Palmer, Cambridge, and Willis and Sotheran, London, Tenterden emerged from a humbler state of life, and sprang from a family inferior in an heraldic sense to Canning ; but the Chief Justice never could be termed an adventurer in any part of his career, while the politician remained one pretty, well to the last. Even when men live the same sort of life, and go through the same kind of adventures, the mass will remain sluggish, uncon- scious, obscure ; it is only your "ram avis, nigroque simillima oygno" that rises to the dignity of an adventurer. For example, hundreds, nay thousands, have lived lives very like our friend John Brown. He intimates, that as a boy he had "a headstrong determined will" of his own, and mischievous to boot ; but all that is surely no peculiar distinction. When he was about ten years old, his father, a respectable butcher of Cambridge, died; his uncle neglected and mismanaged the business, which soon failed ; and John Brown was compelled to become a drover's boy. In this occupation he had troubles enough from weather, work, long vigils, and long fasts ; but such things belong to the voca- tion. Subsequently apprenticed to a knight of St. Crispin, John quarrelled with his master and his master's better half, insulted the lady, assaulted the snob, when the latter was about to admi- nister strap oil, was committed in consequence to durance vile, and finally had his indentures cancelled, his "hypocritical tyrant" being compelled to return the premium. Once free, John Brown, like many others, determined to start for London, and. seek his fortune. His skill as a craftsman was not much, as may be supposed, and he had difficulties to struggle with ; but, boy as he was, he was advancing in his trade, when a " strike " came and marred his prospects. The evils flowing from strikes have often been described, and by no one with more graphic vigour than by Miss Martineau in one of her tales illustrative of political economy. Still our author's description of the growing privations and gradual parting with everything that attended the compelled cessation of work, is not without power. Here is the last day of it, so far as he was concerned.

"The tenth week of this siege had terminated, and we appeared no nearer our end ; the wretchedness by which I was surrounded became intolerable ; r resolved to pack up my all and go elsewhere. I felt reckless ; all my little store was exhausted but a couple of shirts ; so putting my tools to- gether and wrapping them in my apron, I took leave of my old friend with a sorrowful heart. I walked moodily along, without thinking or caring which way I went, The amount of my worldly riches was tenpence-half- penny. In a state of almost stupor, I wandered as far as Oxford Street, and there stood gazing at the shops and carriages, and the well-dressed people as they passed by. Then again, without any definite purpose, I strolled along till I had got clear of London, and found myself on the open road. As it mattered not whither I bent my steps, I now walked on as far as Brentford. Here I put down my bundle on a seat outside a public-house, called for a pint of porter, and, with a two-penny twist from the nearest baker's shop, and made a modest dinner. When I had finished, I requested the landlady to allow me to leave my bundle while I went round the town to seek work. After trying such few shops as there were to no purpose, I returned for my bundle and retraced my steps to London. "I was by this time tired, so went into the park, stretched myself under some trees, and fell asleep. When I awoke the sun was fast declining ; my senses reeled as I again commenced creeping along pressed by hunger, and with only sixpence in my pocket. I found myself at last in Saint Giles's, where entering a low-looking tavern, I asked for three-pennyworth of bread and cheese and a pint of porter : with which I was served, receiving one halfpenny in change. My last sixpence was now gone, and I felt bankrupt both in purse and mind.

"Whilst I sat thinking over my forlorn and destitute position, a smart looking sergeant entered, who soon began to talk about the war ; and, amongst other fine things, said= what a chance there was just then in the army for young men with a little education, as they were sure of promotion.' He talked on in this strain until my weak imagination was wrought up to the proper pitch."

The sequel may be divined. Like many thousands every year John Brown enlisted, and like some every year he shortly deserted. And now the buoyant spirits, the readiness of resource, the promptness which turns hand or tongue to instant use, and the resolution to push a way in spite of obstacles, that distinguish the adventurer, appear in our hero and divide him from the mass. On his road he fell in with a company of strollers, got into con- versation, and readily enlisted in the company, performing throughout the season with unbounded applause. When the circuit, and the manager's supper which closed it, was over, John Brown having nowhere in particular to go to, went with a theatrical friend on board the tender, and volunteered for the na- val service. His career as a seaman is about the worst part of the book. Although in time of war, his martial experience proceeded no further than chasing an Ameriean privateer which got away ; of daily life on ship-board we have had many descriptions within the last thirty years, and most of them better than Mr. Brown's ; his main topic is the severe flogging practised in the navy nearly hall a century ago, an evil long since checked in practice, and pretty well exhausted as a theme before the public mind was stimulated enough to insist on improvement. The reasoning, how- ever, is not the worst part. The stories by which Mr. Brown at- tempts to illustrate his arguments, may be substantially true ; but they have a mawkish tone and a romantic air which raises a doubt in the mind, not as to the mere facts of flogging, but to the halo thrown over the persons flogged.

However, all things come to an end ; and our hero's career as a mariner amongst them. When paid off he had. upwards of twenty pounds in his pocket. A portion of this money he devoted to im- provement in his craft "determined to be the first workman in the world." He succeeded so far as to be certain of employment, when it was to be had ; married ; after various struggles set up in business at his native place, Cambridge ; first as a shoemaker, then as a publican, and finally as a billiard-room keeper, some knowledge of which game he had picked up in the course of his knocking about the world. Hazlitt held that the wine of a player's biography was durng the period he had none to drink. As soon as he succeeded on the " London boards" and became respectable, nothing was left but lees to the reader of his life. The same may be said of most biographies. It is only struggles, either with the world or internally that excite a reader ; as soon as the hero settles down to the comfort- able, he ceases to be heroic. Such is the case with Sixty Years' Gleanings from Life's Harvest—Mr. Brown was born in 1796. There is something titillating in the genial self-estimation of the man ; in the bona-fide persuasion for instance that his advancing prosperity in the billiard-marking line, his travelling "first class " from Cambridge to Manchester to visit the exhibition, and the nature of his accommodation in the town of smoke, are of conse- quence to the world. But such interest as the book possesses is with the difficulties of his earlier life and the distinct if prosaic glimpses we get of the characters and modes of living of the pro- fessors of St Crispin varying from men who want nothing it would seem but better fortune to render them conspicuous as well as useful members of society, down to the most drunken sots ima- ginable. These artisan sketches bring out another feature, in the mechanical skill required in humble trades, the presence of which all consumers pass over, though they would soon discover its absence. All this however, has scarcely the readable attraction

of hardship and struggle; such as this picture of a young drover's life in the Cambridge flats half a century ago, when the fens were not so well drained.

"The duties connected with this our new occupation were very laborious and fatiguing. The stock-market being held at St. Ives, a distance of thir- teen miles from Cambridge, we had to rise at three o'clock on Monday

morning to be there, ready to mark the sheep purchased by the butchers, some with red-ochre and others with tar ; as each person had a peculiar

mark by which his sheep were known. After having done this, we took them from the pens and drove them to a paddock outside the town, lot after lot, until we had collected the entire drove. Occasionally, when the waters were out, we had to take them a considerable distance in boats ; which was attended with great risk and trouble, as the sheep would sometimes jump into the water, although it is a thing they are not very fond of. When this happened, we had to follow and lead them through, till we arrived on the high road. After completing this part of the business, which took up our time till twelve o'clock, we started with the drove, amounting to three or four hundred, more or less ; for I cannot now remember the average num- ber. Saturated with water above the waist I have often toiled along the dreary road at the rate of less than two miles an hour; not a house was to be met with on many parts of the journey ; and frequently we did not reach our destination till nine o'clock at night, perfectly benumbed with cold. Then, after securing our charge in a spacious place boarded round for the purpose, we had to walk nearly two miles to our own home, weary and jaded almost beyond nature's bearing ; having been eighteen hours em- ployed in the most miserable and sickening work that either boy or man was ever engaged in. Our usual supper was a mess of boiled milk ; this was soon despatched ; then, after having our feet washed in warm water, we retired to rest, requiring neither rocking nor opiates to win soft sleep to our spent frames. Although on these occasions we were allowed to sleep till nine the next morning, that morn always arrived too soon. "The next day our first business was to draw of the sheep belonging to the different butchers in the town, and to sendthem in separate lots to their destinations ; then to drive small lots to different villages two or three miles round, and on Wednesday or Thursday to Saffron Walden, a distance of fifteen miles. This was another crawling or tedious day's work. But if this was miserable drudgery in the winter, it was ten times worse in the hot summer months, when we toiled beneath a burning sun, choked with dust, and not a drop of water on the road for ten miles ; the poor sheep lying down in agony, panting for their lives. Such as were unable to tra- vel we were compelled to leave by the roadside, to be taken up by the butchers in their carts as they returned from market ; others of a lighter breed would run into the young wheats, causing us and our dogs incessant

trouble. Of all the vexatious things I ever met with, this was the very worst. Those racer-bred southdowns would leap over our heads like deer,

and sometimes hit us on the face and lay us sprawling on our backs. If one bolts the rest are sure to follow, jumping one after the other like boys play- ing at leap-frog. How often I have cried over this heart-breaking task !

What added to our misery was the unfeelingness of the farmers, who fre- quently beat us for not keeping the sheep of the corn ; which was an im- possibility, as at this time the land lay open, the Inclosure Act not having yet come into operation."

It is, or was a theatrical maxim, that a man who had " once rubbed his back against a scene" was bitten for life. In some sense this was true of John Brown. Fortune did not always favour him ; but he appears to have lost no opportunity to "strut and fret his hour upon the stage." At Cambridge he belonged to the Garrick club, and frequently appeared with amateurs, sometimes with the "professionals." Of their doings he has preserved some "good stories" of which this of a "hand to mouth" man named Tempany is the best.

" favorite role was Pangloss' in the Heir-al-Law; and on a cer-

tain occasion when dressing for this part, (an operation which he had, as usual, deferred until the last moment,) the indispensable black silk stock- ings of the LL.D. and &SAL' were nowhere to be found. 'No time to lose,' quoth Andrew, too late to send anywhere ; must paint these! Here you sir, fetch that bucket here—take up the brush, and lay on!' But the black paint would not take kindly to the white cotton continuations.' The case was obviously hopeless ; Pangloss ' would never have been fit to ap- pear that night, but for the intervention of a master-stroke. Andrew's

genius was however equal to the emergency. Take 'em off altogether,' was his decision, and paint me ." Painted he was accordingly, from the

knees downward ; and, as his legs were ever and anon touched up during the evening, I am not aware that this cool expedient ever became patent to the public."

Our extracts will give an idea of the better matters of this book ; and of the more trivial or common parts it may be said that the author's amusing self-confidence renders them readable. At the same time an autobiography of this kind is only "very well once in a way." We should be sorry if Mr. Brown were to be come a literary exemplar.