he could not put on; but it was not out of standing, appreciating, or thoroughly masterproportion to the figure, its outlines being ing the material, tangible, physical part of napeculiarly smooth and devoid of "bumps." ture. This, again, is inconsistent with his own His upper lip was long, his mouth large and account of himself, but it will be confirmed by hard in the flesh; his chin retreating and a close, critical scrutiny of his writings. Overgentle like a woman's. His sloping shoulders, sensitive, he was exquisitely conscious of such not very wide, almost concealed the ample physical perceptions as he had. He was pas proportions of his chest; though that was of sionately fond of music, which he took to as a compass which not every pair of arms could we have seen. He was keenly impressed by span. He looked like a man cut out for painting and by colors,-which he defined action,-a soldier; but he shrank from physi- with uncertainty, unless they were, what he cal contest, telling you that his sight was liked them to be, very intense. He revelled short, and that he was "timid." We shall in the aspect of the country,-but needed liteunderstand that mistaken candor better when rary, poetic, or personal association, or habit, we have examined his character a little fur- to help the appreciation of the landscape. ther. Yet he did shrink from using his vigor- His animation, his striking appearance, his ous faculties, even in many ways. Nature manly voice, its sweetness and flexibility, the had gifted him with an intense dramatic per- exhaustless fancy to which it gave utterance, ception, an exquisite ear for music, and a his almost breathlessly tender manner in sayvoice of extraordinary compass, power, flexi- ing tender things, his eyes, deep, bright, and bility, and beauty. It extended from the C genial, with a dash of cunning, his delicate below the line to the F sharp above: there yet emphatic homage,—all made him a “danwere no "passages" that he could not exe- gerous" man among women; and he shrang cute; the quality was sweet, clear, and ring- back from the danger, the quickest to take ing: he would equally have sung the music alarm; confessing that "to err is human," as if of Don Giovanni or Sarastro, of Oroveso or he had erred in any but the most theoretica Maometto Secondo. Yet nature had not en- or imaginative sense! Remind him of his dowed him with some of the qualities needed practical virtue, and, to disprove your too favorfor the practical musician, he had no apti-able construction, he would give you a sermon tude for mechanical contrivance, but faint en- on the sins of the fancy, hallowed by quotajoyment of power for its own sake. He dabbled on the pianoforte; delighted to repeat airs pleasg or plaintive; and if he would occasionally fling himself into the audacious revels of Don Giovanni, he preferred to oe Lindoro or Don Ottavio; and still more, by the help of his falsetto, to dally with the tender treble of the Countess in Figaro, or Polly in Beggars' pera. This waiving of the potential, this preference for the lightsome and tender, ran through all his character, save when duty bade him draw upon his sterner resources; and then out came the inflexibility of the Shewell and the unyielding determination of the Hunts. But as soon as the occasion passed, the manner passed with it; and the man whose solemn, clear-voiced indignation had made the very floor and walls vibrate was seen tenderly and blandly extenuating the error of his persecutor and gayly confessing to a community of mistake.

tions from the Bible-of which he was as much master as any clergyman-and ilustrated by endless quotations from the poets in all languages, with innumerable biograparcal anecdotes of the said poets, to prove the fearful peril of the first step; and also to prove that, though men, they were not bad men;-that it is not for us to cast the first stone, and that, probably, if they had been different, their poetry would have suffered, to the grievous loss of the library and mankind.

He inculcated the study of minor pleasures with so much industry, that his writings have caused him to be taken for a minor voluptuary. His special apparatus for the luxury consisted in some old cloak to put about his shoulders when cold-which he allowed to slip off while reading or writing; in a fire"to toast his feet”—which he let out many times in the day, with as many apologies to the servant for the trouble; and in a bill of While he was yet at school, Hunt was pro- fare, which he preposterously restricted for a nounced by one of his schoolfellows a "fool fancied delicacy of stomach, and a fancied for refining "-that is, one who was a fool in poison in every thing agreeable, and which he his judgment through a hair-splitting anxiety could scarcely taste for a natural dulness of to be precise. A boy all his life, this leading palate. Unable to perceive the smell of flow foible of his boyhood attended him through-ers, he habitually strove to imagine it. The out. He has been likened to Hamlet,-only Epicurean in theory was something like a it was a Hamlet who was not a prince, but a Stoic in practice; and he would break off an hard-working man. The defect was increased" article on the pleasures of feasting to ease in Leigh Hunt, as it evidently was in the his hunger, literally, with a supper of bread; prince, by a certain imperfection in under-turning round to enjoy by proxy, on report,

mayed, except for others, when passing the roaring torrent at the broad ford,-when braving shipwreck in the British Channel, or the thunder-hurricane in the Mediterranean; he instantly confronted the rustic boors who challenged him on the Thames, or in the Apennines, and stood unmoved to face the sentence of a criminal court, though the sentence was to be the punishment he most dreaded-the prison.

Such was the character of the man who came from school to be the critic, first of the drama, then of literature and politics; an1 then to be a workman in the schools wher he had criticised. He brought to his labors great powers, often left latent, and used only in their superficial action; a defective perception of the tangible part of the subject; an imagination active, but overrating its own share in the business; an impulsive will, checked by an over-scrupulous, over-conscientious habit of "refining;" a nice taste, and an overwhelming sympathy with every form and aspect of human enjoyment, suffering, or aspiration. His public conduct, his devotion to "truth," whether in politics or art, won him admiration and illustrious friendships. In a society of many severed circles he formed one centre, around which were gathered Lamb, Ollier, Barnes, Mitchell, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Hazlitt, Blanchard, Forster, Carlyle, and many more, departed or still living; some of them centres of circles in which Leigh Hunt was a wanderer, but all of them, in one degree or other, attesting their substantial value for his character. They influenced him, he influenced them, and through them the literature and politics of the century, more large.y, perhaps, than any one of them alone. Let us see, then, what it was that he did.

Now, most excellent reader, are you in something of a condition to understand the man's account of his own failings-his "improvidence" and his "timidity." He had no grasp of things material; but exaggerating his own defects, he so hesitated at any arithmetical effort, that he could scarcely count. He has been seen unable to find 3s. 6d. in a drawer full of half-crowns and shillings, since he could not see the "sixpence." Hence his stewardship was all performed by others. He labored enormously-making fresh work out of every thing he did; for he would not mention any thing, however parenthetically, without " verifying" it. Hence it is true that he had scarcely time for stewardship, unless he had neglected his work and wages as a master-workman. He saw nothing until it had presented itself to him in a sort of literary, theoretical aspect, and hence endowed his friends, all round, with fictitious characters founded on fact. One was the thrifty housewife, another the steady man of business, a third the poetic enthusiast-and so on. And he acted on these estimates, until sometimes he found out his mistake, and confessed that he had been deceived." The discovery was sometimes as imaginary as the original estimate, and friends, whose sterling qualities he could not overrate, have seen him, for the Even in the News, of 1805, when he was discovery of his mistake in regard to some barely of age, and when he wrote with the fancied grace, avert his eye in cold "disap- dashing confidence of a youth wielding the pointment." He made the same supposititious combined ideas of Sam Johnson and Voltaire, discoveries and estimates with himself. His the "damned boy," as Kemble called him, esmother had the jaundice before he was born; tablished a repute for cultivation, consistency, he had unquestionably a tendency to bilious taste, and independence; and he originated a affections; in the Greek poet's account of style of contemporary criticism unknown to Hercules and the Serpents, the more timid, the newspaper press. In other words, he because mortal, child, who is aghast at the brought the standards of criticism which had horrid visitors sent by the relentless Juno, is before been confined to the lecture of acadecalled, as Leigh Hunt translated the oft-re-mies or the library, into the daily literature peated quotation, "the extremely bilious which aids in shaping men's judgments as Iphiclus;" and being bilious, Leigh Hunt set they rise. himself down as "timid." He had probably felt his heart beat at the approach of danger, been startled by a sudden noise, or hesitated "to snuff a candle with his fingers," which Charles the Fifth said would make any man know fear. Yet he had braved persecution in the refusal to fag at school; was an undaunted though not skilful rider; a swimmer not unacquainted with drowning risks; undis

We have seen how, under a name borrowed from the Tory party, the Examiner was established, with little premeditation, a literary ambition, and the hope of realizing a modest wage for the work done. It found literature poetry especially, sunk to the feeblest, tamest, and most artificial of graces,-the reaction upon the long-felt influence left by the debauchery of the Stuarts and the vulgarer

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press of England became generally what the
Examiner was.

coarseness of the early Georges. It found English monarchs and statesmen again forThe Reflector was a quarterly journal, getting the great lessons of the British constitution, with, the press slavishly acquiescing. based on the Examiner and its corps. Its In 1803, an Irish major had a" case" against more literary portion in its turn laid the basis the Horse Guards, of most corrupt and illicit for the Indicator, in which Leigh Hunt defavoritism: the Examiner published the case, signed, with due deference, to revive the esand sustained it. In 1809, a change of min- says of the old Spectator and Taller. The istry was announced: the Examiner hailed grand distinction was, that in lieu of mere lit"the crowd of blessings that might be in- erary recreation, like the illustrious work of volved in such a change;" adding, "Of all Addison, Steele, and Swift, it more directly monarchs, indeed, since the Revolution, the proposed to indicate the sources of pleasur successor of George the Third will have the able association and aesthetical improvement. In the Reflector, the Indicator, Tatler, and finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular." In 1812, on St. Patrick's day, a loyal band of subsequent works of the same class, Leigh guests significantly abstained from paying the Hunt was assisted by Lamb, Barnes (afterusual courtesy to the toast of the prince re- wards editor of the Times), Aikin, Mitchell gent, and coughed down Mr. Sherdian, who (Aristophanes), Keats, Shelley, Hazlitt, and tried to speak up for his royal and forgetful Egerton Webbe,-the last cut short in a cafriend. A writer in a morning paper supplied reer rendered certain by his accomplishments, the omitted homage in a poem more ludi- his music, his wit, and his extraordinary comcrous for its wretched verse than for the ful-mand of language as an instrument of thought. some strain in which it called the prince the As in Robin Hood's band, each man could "Protector of the Arts," the "Maecenas of the beat his master at some one art, or perhaps Age,” the “ Glory of the people," a "Great more; but none excelled him in telling short Prince," attended by Pleasure, Honor, Virtue, stories, with a simplicity, a pathos, and a force Truth, and other illustrious vassals. The that had their prototype less in the tales of Examiner showed up this folly by simply Steele and Addison, than in the romantic turning it into English, and in plain language poets of Italy. Few essayists have equalled, describing the position and popular estimate or approached, Leigh Hunt in the combined of the prince. For all these various acts the versatility, invention, and finish of his miscelExaminer was prosecuted, with various for-laneous prose writings; and few, indeed, have tunes; but in the last case it was fined £1,000, and its editor and the publisher, the brothers Leigh and John Hunt, were sentenced to two The Examiner was no years' imprisonment. extravagant or violent paper; its writing was pretty nearly of the standard that would be required now for style, tone, and sentiment: but what would now be a matter of course in cultivated style, elevated tone, and independent sentiment, was then supposed to be not open to writers unprotected by privilege of parliament. Not that the paper stood alone. Other writers, both in town and country, vied with it in independence; it excelled chiefly, perhaps, in the literary finish which Leigh Hunt imparted to journalism; but it was the more conspicuous for that finish. Its boldness won it high esteem. Offers came from "distinguished" quarters, on the one side, to bribe its silence for the Royal Horse Guards and its peccadilloes; on the other, to supply the proprietors with subscription, support, and retaliatory evidence. The Examiner equally declined all encroachments on its complete independence, which was carried to a pitch of exclusiveness. This conduct told. The journa. was thought dangerous to the régime—it was prosecuted, and its success was only the greater. The Court ceased to be what it had Jeen, and the political system changed: the

brought such varied sympathies to call forth the sympathies of the reader-and always to good purpose-in favor of kindness, of reflection, of natural pleasures, of culture, and of using the available resources of life. He used to boast that the Indicator laid the foundation for the "twopenny trash" which assumed a more practical and widely popular form under Charles Knight's enterprise. It has had a host of imitators, but is still special and keeps its place in the library.

Of his one novel, Sir Ralph Esher, suffice it to say, that he had desired to make it a sort of historical literary essay,―a species of unconcealed forgery, after the manner of a more cultivated and critical Pepys; and that the bookseller persuaded him to make it a nove!:-of his dramatie works,-although he had an ambition to be counted among British dramatists, and had a discerning dramatic taste,-that he combined, with the imperfect grasp of the tangible, a positive indifference to dramatic literature. The dramatic work which is reputed to be the most interesting of his compositions in this style, the Prince's Marriage, is still unacted and unpublished.

But in regard to the veritable British Parnassus, he had solid work to do, and he did it. Poetry amongst us had sunk to the lowest grade. Leigh Hunt found the mild Hay

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ley, and the mechanical Darwin, occupying naughtiness; and all the while hinting at the the field, Pope the accredited model, and he delicate subject of his tale by circumstance, revolted against the copy-book versification, rather than following it to its full inspirations. the complacent subserviency and mean mor- The greater part of the Story of Rimini is alities of the muse in possession. He had scene-painting, as if it were told by some byread earnestly and extensively in the classics, stander in the street, or some topographical ancient and English; he carried with him to visitor of the place. In the scene where the prison the Parnaso Italiano, a fine collection lovers so dangerously and fatally fall to readof Italian poetical writers, in fifty-two vol- ing "Launcelot of the Lake,"-" quel giorno umes; and he was deeply imbued with the non legemmo più avanti "-the larger porspirit which he found common to the poetical tion of the canto is devoted to a description republic of all ages. He selected the episode of the garden. Leigh Hunt does not, as of Paolo and Francesca, whom Dante places Keats did, describe the sickening passion that in the Inferno, and whose history was dili- gave the Lamia so ghastly a sense of her own gently hunted up to tell in the Story of Rim- hated form,—nor does he, as in the Lamia, ini. In it, Leigh Hunt insisted on breaking pursue the couple to the place where Love the set cadence for which Pope was the pro- Hover'd and buzz'd his wings with fearful fessed authority, as he broke through the set morals which had followed in reaction upon Above the lintel of their chamber door." the license of many reigns. He shocked the world with colloquialisms in the heroic meas- If pharisaical critics discovered objectionable ure, and with extenuations of the fault com- "tendencies" in passages - almost in the mitted by the two lovers against the law mat- omitted passages of his writings-they could rimonial. The offence, too, was perpetrated find no such impetuous and sublime argument oy a writer condemned to prison for bearding as that to which the Revolt of Islam rises in the constituted authorities. The poem and the canto where" the meteor to its far morass its fate were characteristic of the man and returned; " nor such lines as show that a fair ais position in poetical literature. The work authoress, whose book has been "the rage" was designed as a picture of Italy, and a tale at Mudie's, had been among the myriads of of the natural affections rebelling against a Shelley's readers. But although hesitating cyranny more corrupt than the license which himself to plunge into the impetuous torrent it claimed to check. But when he wrote it, of passion, like the fowl mistrustful of its own the poet had not been in Italy; and after- fitness for so stormy waters, Leigh Hunt was wards, with habitual anxiety to be "right," the friend, instigator, and encourager of that he corrected many mistakes in the scenery-rebellion of letters which in the earlier half such as "the smoke goes dancing from the of our age produced Keats and Shelley, and cottage trees," where there are no such cot-the poetical literature of the latter half of the tages as he imagined, and smoke is no feature nineteenth century. in the landscape. He also restored the true historical conclusion, and instead of a gentlemanly duel, comme il faut, made the tale end in the fierce double murder by the husband. In its original shape, the Story of Rimini touched many a heart, and created more sensation for its bolder verse and nature than others which followed it ; in its amended Leigh Hunt's miscellaneous poems extena form it gained in truth to art and fact, and in over a great variety of subjects, from the force of verse and coloring. Leigh Hunt classic legend of Hero and Leander, to the had not the sustained melody and pulpit mediæval fabliau of the Gentle Armour, and morals of the Lake School; but he gave the the satirical critique of the Feast of the Poets. example and encouragement to writers of still This last was published early in the author's greater force and beauty. He vindicated maturer career; it is "in his second manner," human right against official wrong, and suf- and he afterwards revised many of the dicta fered imprisonment, and denunciation more on contemporary writers which he placed in bitter than that poured on Shelley, whose the mouth of the chairman on that festive ocpolitical vindications burst forth with such a casion, Apollo. But it helped to loosen the torrent of eloquence and imagination in the trammels of conventionalism in verse. The Revolt of Islam. Leigh Hunt asserted the Gentle Armour, although true to a modern rebeauty of natural passion, but he did it ten- finement, is also true to the spirit of the days derly and obliquely, himself returning from of chivalry; it relates, in straightforward lanthe slightest taste of passion to "the domes-guage, how a knight who had refused the ticities," half begging pardon for his hardi- bidding of his mistress to defend a falsehood hood, and thus by implication confessing his -not her own is punished by receiving the

Others improved upon the example, no doubt, and bore away the "honores." At a late day, Lord John Russell obtained for Leigh Hunt a royal pension of £200 a year— a most welcome and gratefully acknowledged compensation of time and money torn from him in early years.

most feminine of garments as his cognizance | society; and so he ever recurred to "the staat a tournament; and how, wearing that tionary domesticities." He failed in practical alone, he takes in his own person a bloody life, because he was not guided in it by literaand reproving vengeance for the slight, in the ture. He could only apprehend so much of end winning both fight and lady. The sub-it as he found in the cyclopædia. On the ject was thought "indelicate" by some who other hand, he could render all that literature were less refined than the author-some de- could give. His memory was marvellous ; scendants, perchance, of the proverbial Peep- and to try him in history, biography, biblioging Tom. The Hero and Leander is a flow-raphy, or topography, was to draw forth an ing and vivid recital of the ancient tale. The oral "article" on the topic in question. Ask three works form good specimens of the spirit him where was the Ouse, and he would tell as well as execution of Leigh Hunt's poetical you of all the rivers so called; what were the writings. Of some of his smaller pieces it books on a given subject, and you had the may be said that they had become classic in list; "who was Colonel O'Kelly?" and you his lifetime-such as the reverential sonnet had a sketch of the colonel, of the horse "On the Lock of Milton's Hair" which he Eclipse," of Epsom, and of horse-racing in possessed; the exquisite parental tenderness general, as distinguished from the racing of of the lines "To T. L. H., in Sickness;" and the ancients or the modern riderless races of the grandly Christian exaltation of charity in Italy-where, as in Florence, may still be his Abou-ben-Adhem. seen a specimen of the biga sweeping round the meta "fervidis evitata rotis." His conversation was an exhaustless Curiosities of Literature. The delighted visitor read his host, but it was from a talking book, with cordial voice naturally pitched to every change of subject, animated gesture, sparkling_eyes, and overflowing sympathy. In society Leigh Hunt was ever the perfect gentleman, not in the fashion, but always the scholar and the noble-minded man. But his diffidence was. disguised, rather than removed, by his desire to agree with those around him, and to fall in with the humor of the hour. He was better known to his reader, either in his books, or, best of all, in his home, where familiarity tested his unfailing courtesy, daily intercourse brought forth the persevering goodness of his heart and conscience, and poverty did but fetch out the thorough-going generosity that not only "would share," but did share the last crust.

As few men brought their personality more thoroughly into their writings, so few men, out of the bookworm pale aforesaid, were more thoroughly saturated with literature. He saw every thing through books, or saw it dimly. Speaking of his return from Italy, he writes: "I seemed more at home in Engand, even with Arcadian idealisms, than I had been in the land nearer their birthplace; for it was in England I first found them in books, and with England even my Italian books were more associated than with Italy itself." And speaking of the Parnaso Italiano, he goes on: "This book aided Spenser himself in filling my English walks with visions of gods and nymphs, of enchantresses and magicians; for the reader might be surprised to know to what a literal extent such was the case." He used to "envy" the "househoid wagon that one meets with in sequestered lanes" for its wanderings, but was daunted at the bare imagination of "parish objections" and raffish

DEATH OF PROFESSOR ESPY. It is with much regret that we observe among our telegraphic intelligence the death of Professor James P. Espy, yesterday, at Cincinnati. Prof. E. was among the best known of American scientific men, and the news of his death will be received with much sorrow in this community, where many years of his life were spent. Before Prof. E. devoted himself entirely to scientific pursuits, he was, for many years, a teacher of youth in this city, and many of our most useful citizens owe a portion of their usefulness to the early training they received from his hands.

His theory of storms, however, attracted so much attention, both in this country and abroad, as to induce him to relinquish his professional avocation, and to devote the remainder of his life to the science of meteorology. He went to Europe and explained his theory in all the principal cities of the old world, and since his return has been engaged as government meteorologist. Prof. E. was a gentleman of great geniality of disposition, and had, during a long life, surrounded himself with many attached personal friends, with whom we sincerely sympathize in their bereavement. He was a widower and childless.-Philadelphia Journal, 26 Jan.