TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ALDERMAN WOOD AND HIS TIMES.
TliE death of the late Alderman Woon awakens a host of recol- lections; in none of nhich, it is true, the worthy gentleman occu- pies a distinguished position, and with some of which be does not mingle at all. MATHEW Woon was one of those, not rare charac- ters in popular governments, who owe their tenure if not their ac- quirement of a prominent position quite as much to their common- place as to their distinguishing qualities. Some accident of posi- tion recommends them at first to popularity ; and as there is nothing about them to make this popularity very intensely personal, so there is nothing to produce reaction when people find out that they have other qualities besides that which recommended them to esteem. Latterly, it is true, Sir MATHEW had rather declined in public favour; but the feelings that closer acquaintance had awak- ened were too languid to stir up active hostility. He died the wearer of a somewhat faded relic of popularity, which still retained =Gogh of its original cut and colour to show what it bad been. And he was entitled to wear it to the last. A high politi- cian—an impassioned patriot—he certainly was not. A bustling, eaergetic, small trader, who had fought his way into a great business, he became ambitious of being something more. But Lis mind was not expanded enough to sink the shopkeeper ie the publicist : he dealt with public affairs in the same spirit that he chaffered about beer-drugs. In the honest sincerity of his zeal for Queen CAROLINE we are inclined to believe ; though, without any lack of charity, it may be permitted to hint, that the enthusiasm was not diminished by the reflex dignity the associa- tion with Royalty cast on the ex-Mayor of London. It is a mis- take to imagine that huxtering, peddling minds are incapable of sentiment: the feeblest of them have one latent spark which may be kindled to enthusiasm—if we could find it out. There was probably nothing of a speculation in the Alderman's open- ing his house and purse to the unfortunate Queen ; though per- haps it is the only transaction in his political career in which the " I winos deny that it is highly advantageous to Baillie Nicol Jerrie" did not largely mingle. It is the misfortune of men like Sir MATHEW Woon, that they are ultimately tried by the standard of the class of minds up among which they manage to struggle, in- stead of by the standard of the minds out of which they contrive to emerge. The true estimate of such a man is not that he is not equal to a WHITBREAD, OT even to a WAITHMAN ; but that he is etsperior to the herd who having acquired equal wealth are con- tatted to count their stores and guttle on at corporation-feasts, nameless to their graves. But, however little of interest may attach to the personality of Sir MATHEW, the mention of his death recalls the stirring scenes in which he played a subordinate part, and the ambitious and energetic characters who filled it. Leaving out of view our con- nexion with the great European struggle—or even the silent, soarcely noted progress which Liberal opinions have been making since 1809—it is curious to reckon up the number of ephemeral popularities, more in keeping with the somewhat vulgar texture of the deceased Baronet's public character, which have succeeded or struggled with each other during that time. There was BURDETT, reading Magna Charta to his son before being carried to the Tower, and emerging from a back postern of that citadel in a dingy, noteless hackney-chaise ; there was the eame BURDETT repeating sentiments pumped into him by BENT- HAM, in St. Stephen's or on the hustings at Westminster ; and there was the most thinking mob of London, roaring in his wake. There were COBBETT with his chaw-bacons and HUNT with his starving weavers: CORBETT' abusing Scotchmen and Scot- land at the outset, and ending in a laudatory lecturing expedition little short of a triumphal procession; Iles r, alternately the martyr of Ilchester Gaol and the vender of Hunt's patent blacking and roasted ceru. There was Queen CAROLINE, entering London in grand procession, royally drunk, to beard her Sybarite husband in his don; and there were the maimed and mangled funeral obsequies of that outraged if somewhat coarse woman, with soldiers to keep the public from taking part in them, and Sir ROBERT WILSON magnanimously losing his commission for being present.* There was GEORGE the Fourth, received in Ireland with a cordial uproari- ous Donnybrook-fair welcome, and in Scotland with a harlequinade of tartan trews and kilts got up under the special superintendence of Sir WALTER SCOTT. There was GEORGE CANNING, by his own iutellectual power trampling down the banded aristocracy attempt- ing to bar his way to the office of Premier. There were the Ca- tholic Association and the Clare election. There were the Bir- mingham Political Union and the universal Reform Bill paroxysm. And, almost dividing the attention even of the unreflecting public, there were the literary triumphs of SCOTT and Braosi.
Each of these in its turn engrossed for a little the whole mind of the public—was regarded as the one thing needful, the business on which the existence of society seemed to be staked. Each of these ia its turn has ceased to possess any other than the calm tranquil interest which attaches to history, and some of them have ceased to possess even that. The present is an interval of comparative calm—of breathing from engrossing political passion. It cannot
'• Like some other martyrs, Sir ROBERT WILSON has made a good thing of Lis lows. First, if Our memory errs not, a subscription was raised to compensate hfm for Ins commission; then the commission was teetered; and lastly, he was appointed to the distinguished and lucrative Governonhip of Gibraltar.
last : already the clink and fall of " armourers accomplishing the knights" is heard in the still twilight. The Repealers of Ireland, the toll-destroyers of Wales, the peripatetic Corn-law philosophers of England, are heralds of a new day of battle. It could be wished that as many as possible should take the lesson which the eloquent facts alluded to are so well calculated to teach—that even the most engrossing political struggles have but a transitory inter- est—that more passionate energy is wasted on the best of them than it is worth. This reflection might at times give men pause in the heat of controversy, and sober them into a determination to master their own and others' enthusiasm instead of being mastered by it. Men capable of this might make more of the next awaken- ing of a languid and objectless public into life and vitality, than the carrying of a Reform Bill, which has as yet done little but engender absurdly exaggerated hopes, and subsequently disappointment and disgust equally beyond what reason warrants.
In turning from this retrospect, the eye rests with something of complacency on the few sturdy plants which have weathered all these storms of passion. They are so few, one may almost count them on one's fingers. There is WELLINGTON, alternately lining his window-blinds with sheet-iron and incommoded by the enthu- siastic cheers of the populace, but ever rigid, unchanging in himself, from first to last. There is BROUGHAM, whose daring, restless, and irregular energy has excited the alternate idolatry and persecution which have been his lot. There is the burly O'Core- NELL, with much of the genial versatility of the one and much of the dogged pertinacity of the other, incarnated in a frame where bluff Harry the Eighth's contour contrasts equally with the penknife- edge rigour of WELLINGTON, and the lithe, lank, eel-like suppleness of BROUGHAM. There is WORDSWORTH, secure in the admiration of his "fit audience, though few," and still more secure in his own, looking back upon the sneers of the Anteacobin and of the .Edin- burgh Review which he has lived down, from under the calm shadow of the laurel. And, to descend to minor notorieties, we have PALMERSTON of the hundred Cabinets, Hume of the hundred Committees, PLACE with his finger in every pie. These are your long-lived fellows, who form "an age" by sheer dint of living on, while the contemporaries of their youth are dropping around them, and the contemporaries of their age rising to push them from their stools.
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