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Representatives as irresistible as the House of Commons. In all civilized countries and governments there is a ceaseless struggle going on between the forces of what is, which may be called conservative forces, and those of what ought to be, which may be called progressive, and those of what ought not to be, which may be either revolutionary or reactionary. To the first of these political elements in the United States have been given the Executive veto, which may be overcome if the majority in Congress is sufficiently great, and the Senate's veto, which may be overcome in time, if the majority is sufficiently persistent. To the second and third has been given every other weapon in the arsenal of politics. It is necessary for the advocates of the change we are considering to show that it would be conducive to the public weal to deprive the minority of the safeguards and barriers mentioned above; for the nearer we come to the realization of responsible government, the more completely do we put in the hands of the majority the means of executing their decrees without hindrance or delay.

A third and weighty objection is found in the practical or mechanical difficulty of ingrafting this system upon one so totally different as that which the Constitution of the United States provides. In the first place, the President is, nowadays, always elected by a party. The two elections of Washington, and the second election of Monroe, are the only exceptions to this rule found in our history. The party which elects the President expects, and will always insist, that the Cabinet shall be composed of its own members, representing and enforcing its policy regardless of the political complexion of Congress. At the present time we have a Republican President with a Democratic Congress. In the latter part of Pierce's Administration there was a Democratic President and Senate with a Republican or Opposition House. The indispensable condition of parliamentary government is that the Cabinet shall be agreeable to the majority of the Legislature; and there is no way to bring about this condition of things in America. This difficulty does not exist in the French republic, the President being elected by the Legislature-elected for a fixed period indeed, but having the grace to resign when he finds himself absolutely unable to yield his convictions to those of the Chamber. Such a government must exist very much upon good understanding. President MacMahon gave it a heavy wrench, and might have wrecked it entirely if he had had the purpose in his heart to do so. An amendment of the Constitution of the United States to bring about this sine qua non of parliamentary government is not to be looked for. The nearest possible approach to it at presVOL. VII.-35

ent would be a change of practice, whereby the President should keep himself, or be kept, always in harmony with the majority of his own party in Congress; and it remains to be proved that even this would be salutary upon the largest view.

In a word, the Constitution of the United States is made up of checks and balances. Harmony of the different branches of government was not contemplated by its framers. It does not presume upon good understanding. While providing that the majority shall prevail in the long run, it provides also for the freest play of passions and interests within defined limits. It is based upon the philosophy of Hobbes and the religion of Calvin. It assumes that the natural state of mankind is a state of war, and that the carnal mind is at enmity with God. It takes into consideration, also, a vast diversity of interests growing out of an extended territory and widely separated population. It has to deal with the fact that nearly everybody is a statesman and a political economist, or capable of becoming such at the shortest notice. There is no country where so little respect is paid to acquirements, preparation, and training in the arts of legislation and government. Lawyers are generally preferred for such offices, it is true; but this is not because they are learned in the law, but because their vocation has given them readiness of speech. Moreover, the doctrine of rotation in office is too widely prevalent, and it not unfrequently happens that an excellent Senator or Representative is turned out merely because he has held office for the customary period, and another elected because he has never held office at all. The claims of locality are so highly regarded, that not a single instance can be found of a Representative elected by any other district than that of his domicile; and there is a tacit agreement among politicians to divide all the offices, including the Cabinet, as nearly as possible among geographical divisions. If Mr. Sherman and Mr. Schurz, for instance—the ablest members of Mr. Hayes's Administration-happened both to reside in the same State, it would be practically impossible for both to be Cabinet officers at the same time, although the President might legally choose his entire Cabinet from one State or one town. The claims of fitness for public employment are thus subordinated to a variety of other considerations, from which it must not be inferred that Congressmen are generally of an inferior grade of intellectual endowment; but only that they might be of a higher range and type if the rules and practice of the constituencies were different.

The Constitution takes this heterogeneous governing force, and authorizes it to do its best or its worst. It undertakes to minimize the evils

which the rule of the majority can bring forth, while still maintaining the rule of the majority. This it accomplishes by a written instrument and an irremovable court of last resort. The late Mr. Mill, in his speculations on Theism, imagined, among other possibilities, that the Deity might not have been able to create a world with

out sin in it, on account of the obduracy of the material in his hands. Considering all the toughness of material that the Constitution of the United States has to deal with, and its success in dealing with it thus far, it is, perhaps, the part of wisdom for us to let well enough alone.

HORACE WHITE (Fortnightly Review).

T

CHARLES JAMES MATHEWS.*

many other hopeful signs afforded by the last few years of an increasing interest in the well-being of the stage in England may be added the welcome that has been accorded to memorials and biographies of divers leading members of that profession. Within ten years, for example, have appeared a memoir of Charles Mayne Young, by his son; the autobiography and journals of Macready; biographies of Edmund Kean and the principal members of the Kemble family, including the most interesting journals of Mrs. Butler; to which may be added -though the contribution to the stock is slighter in point of bulk—a charming essay in the "Quarterly Review" on Garrick, which we violate no confidence in attributing to the genial hand of Mr. Theodore Martin. And now we have to acknowledge a further addition to the number in the life of the late Charles Mathews, which Mr. Charles Dickens has put together, by consent of the family, from materials collected by the late comedian with a view to publication. The editor has done his work of arrangement with great judgment, and has been only too modest in the part he has allotted to himself. His remarks and criticisms, so far as they go, are so judicious that it makes us the more regret that he had not allowed himself greater scope on this head, and had not attempted a more formal estimate of the place filled in the past forty years' history of the stage by the distinguished subject of his memoir. The charm of the memoir, however-as we are sure Mr. Dickens would be the first to admit -belongs to a feature in which the editor makes no appearance at all. The greater part of the memoir consists of Mathews's autobiography and letters, and these have been very properly published as they were left by the writer, though it is probable that had the writer lived to edit

*The Life of C. J. Mathews, chiefly Autobiographi

cal; with Selections from his Correspondence and SpeechEdited by Charles Dickens. In 2 vols. Macmillan

es.

& Co.

them himself they might have undergone some change in passing through the press. For a distinct change of style is visible as the writer becomes used to a form of composition doubtless at the outset unfamiliar to him. In the opening pages of the autobiography there is too much of the conventional and rather forced humor of the comic author and the after-dinner speech-maker. But as the writer settles down to his work, and becomes really interested in it, the merely comic vein subsides, and he comes to evince narrative power of considerable mark. And certainly, as the following rapid abstract of the book may serve to show, Charles Mathews had no lack of incident and adventure in his life on which to employ his skill.

CHARLES MATHEWS was born as long ago as 1803, and those who saw him the year before last in "My Awful Dad," or some other piece of his older répertoire, might well doubt whether the still unflagging spirit was that of a man in his seventy-fifth year. The unflagging spirit began early, and the first reminiscences that the writer has to record are those of the scrapes he got into at school through a too early development of animal spirits. His father had sent him to Merchant Taylors' with a view to a scholarship, the university to follow, and the Church as a profession, but he made little or no progress in his school studies. "The fact is, I was a dunce; there is no disguising the truth"; and a dunce he might have remained but for, literally, a happy accident.

For some offense against school-discipline, involving a broken head, an angry correspondence arose between Mathews's parents and the authorities of the school, which ended in the removal of the boy. This led to his being placed at a private school at Clapham, kept by the welltells us, "in the company of many boys I knew known lexicographer, Dr. Richardson, where, he -especially the sons of Charles Kemble, Charles Young, Liston, and Terry-I found a more con

genial soil." The change was in all respects a happy one for the boy. Dr. Richardson proved "more like an affectionate friend than a rigid schoolmaster," and under this fostering care young Mathews seems to have developed that taste for literature which the rougher discipline of Merchant Taylors' had failed to bring out. His new master encouraged him to appreciate the worth of Horace and Homer for their own sakes, and not merely as tasks to be gone through; and furthermore, being then at work upon his English dictionary, he made use of his more intelligent pupils in the work of citing from the old English authors, to which Mathews refers with gratitude as having sown the first seed of a taste for English literature which remained with him for life. "I was one so distinguished," he writes, "and was thus delightfully introduced to the study of Chaucer, Gower, Spenser, and all the early poets and historians, the honor of whose acquaintance I had previously been denied, and I imbibed a taste for that style of reading which I have never lost; and often among the worries of life, when people have thought I was closeted with my difficulties, engaged, as perhaps I ought to have been, with the battle of figures, I have taken down the tall folio of Gower, or the huge quarto of 'Piers Ploughman's Vision,' and let the world go on without me." The liberal character of the education thus received at Dr. Richardson's was unquestionably the turning-point in Mathews's life. The associations of his home made all matters connected with the theatre near and dear to him, and the taste for these was in no degree weakened by the cultivation of other tastes by their side. An interest in architecture was silently growing up-Mathews himself hardly understood how or why-and while the pursuit of this art was to afford him occupation till he was over thirty years of age, he never lost that fondness for the actor's art which led him ultimately to choose the profession by which his bread must be made. In his very early youth he was fond of being taken behind the scenes, and an exquisitely droll letter written by him to Fawcett the actor, after having served as amateur prompter on one occasion, is too funny not to be quoted:

KING'S ROAD, July 1, 1813.

HONORED SIR: Last night I went behind the scenes with my papa, to see Mr. Liston in the character of Moll Flaggon, and held the book while Mr. Glasinton was away, and I found you guilty of several mistakes, and I mentioned them to my papa and mamma, and they said I had better tell you of them, and I thought so too, because next time somebody in the front of the theatre might have a book too, and find you out, as I did, and then they will hiss you off, which I should be sorry for. You said, "No, no, no," when you ought to have said nothing; and you

said, "I suppose," at the beginning of a sentence, where you ought to have said, "Ah"; and you said, "I believe," where there was nothing to say. I only write these few lines that you may remember another

time.

I remain, sir, your respectful servant,

C. J. MATHEWS.

After four years spent under the roof of Dr. Richardson, architecture was chosen as the future calling of young Mathews, and through the introduction of Nash, an old friend of the elder Mathews, the boy was articled to the famous Augustus Pugin. "I now set to work," writes Mathews, "to begin life in earnest. Every day increased my love for the profession I had adopted. I actually doted on the delightful science of architecture, and pursued the acquirement of it with positive passion." Pugin was delightful instructor," making himself the intimate friend and companion of his pupils; and Mathews certainly began his new work under the happiest auspices. But even these fascinations were not to retain an uninterrupted sway over the young man. Pugin was called by professional duties to Paris, and his pupils all accompanied him, and there Mathews was introduced to all the glories of the French theatre: Talma and Mademoiselle Mars at the Français; Perlet, Potier, and a host of other artists of first-rate mark at the Variétés and the Gymnase. Here was another turning-point in the young man's life. It did not weaken the affection for his newly-adopted profession, but it unquestionably fired him with the desire to distinguish himself—as an amateur-in the actor's art. On his return to London, an opportunity soon presented itself, or was made. A performance was got up at the English OperaHouse in the Strand, and a programme of curious interest was constructed for the occasion. In a spirit of ingenious bravado two of the pieces were chosen on the very ground that they had been unsuccessful elsewhere. One of them was no less classical a work than Charles Lamb's farce of “Mr. H—." "N. B.-This piece was damned at Drury Lane Theatre," was the cynical announcement in the play-bill of the evening. Lamb's hero-originally played by the great Elliston-was on this occasion acted by Captain Hill, an amateur of some celebrity, who afterward adopted the stage as a profession with some sucThe farce, under these new circumstances, proved more fortunate than on its original performance, and went off, Mathews relates, “with roars." Probably, as he also remarks with reference to his own performance on the same evening of a part in a burlesque on the "Sorrows of Werther," the fact of its being played by amateur actors before their personal friends had something to do with the result. "Amateur

cess.

acting," says Mathews, "is always over-praised," and it is not likely that Lamb's unfortunate play will ever be resuscitated on the strength of this one reversal of its original doom.

On the expiration of his articles with Pugin, Mathews was on the point of devoting himself to the practical part of his profession, under Nash, the famous architect, the creator of Regent Street and the Regent's Park, when Lord Blessington, an old friend of the Mathews family, having it in contemplation to build a castle upon his Irish estate, offered the work to the young architect, the son of his old friend. The proposed scheme came to nothing, but it led to an intimate friendship between the younger Mathews and the Blessingtons, which was to have important influences on the career of the former. The Blessingtons were on the eve of a tour in Italy, and the first incident of the new friendship was an invitation to the young man to accompany his friends thither, and mature his architectural designs under the actual eye of his employer.

A considerable part of the first volume is occupied with an account of this Italian tour, with the correspondence maintained with Mathews's parents and other friends in England. Count d'Orsay was also of the party, and an account of a quarrel between that accomplished aristocrat and Mathews, the termination of which was at least creditable to both parties, plays a rather too important part in Mathews's reminiscences. It arose out of a criticism of D'Orsay's upon a certain diminution which had appeared in his young friend's architectural zeal. Young Mathews carried his sketching materials with him, but did not sketch, and it may well be understood that the luxury and brilliancy of his new surroundings were not calculated to help a young beginner in the first stages of an arduous profession. Indeed, the acquaintance with the Blessingtons, though it afforded Mathews advantages of many kinds for the profession he was ultimately to adopt, was perhaps in some degree answerable also for the less successful portions of his subsequent career. His parents were at this time in flourishing circumstances, and did not grudge him the outlay necessary for associating with companions who moved in a very different sphere; but it seems likely that some of the tastes thus acquired remained with him through life, and fettered his movements. It is clear that Mathews, hard as he worked, and manfully as he

fought against difficulties to the very end of his career, never possessed a talent for finance, and probably a harder discipline at the outset might have been of good service to him.

Certainly, however, he never showed a disposition to avoid hard work when it stared him in the face, and on the conclusion of the Italian

tour he set to work in earnest at his profession. Some one offered him the post of architect to the "Welsh Iron and Coal Mining Company," at Coed Talwn, in North Wales, which he promptly accepted, and a very amusing chapter of the first volume is occupied with his Welsh experiences. The company in question was one of the many creations of a certain John Wilks, who seems to have been the George Hudson of that day, and, though it proved sounder and longerlived than many of its companions, Mathews found it impossible to maintain friendly relations with its promoter, and resigned the post after not many months of trial. Workmen's cottages and village alehouses," he says, "were not congenial to a mind filled with Italian images, and panting with desire to execute works of Palladian grandeur." It is clear that besides his natural dislike for the necessary drudgery of the work, he had never yet mastered the more prosaic details of his profession. His fancies were still dallying, moreover, with other arts, and the most notable episode of his Welsh sojourn was his authorship of a song destined to enjoy a wide and long popularity.

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During my sojourn at Plas Teg we made a brilliant equestrian expedition to Llangollen. Dean Roper and his daughter, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Roper, myself, and the respective grooms, formed an imposing cavalcade. After a charming ramble up to Castle Dinas Bran we had a jolly dinner at the hotel, and during the repast were entertained by a venerable white-bearded Druid, one of the most splendid specimens of his craft I ever encountered. The old fellow was a noted artist, and had a fine collection of all the most popular melodies, and among them one I had never heard before. He said it was It was called "Cader Idris"; and I made him play some twenty years since he had first met with it. it over to me till I had learned it correctly.

Elated with my discovery, for such it really seemed to be-none of my friends having heard it before any more than myself—I lost no time in putting words to it, and the result was a great success.

At the picturesque farmhouse at Pontblyddyn, in which I lived, was a pretty little Welsh dairy-maid, named Jenny Jones, and a simple plowman, called David Morgan. The ballad I then composed to my newly-discovered national air, bearing the young lady's name, has since made the interesting couple familiar to London ears. They would perhaps be astonished to know their history publicly recorded, and blush to find it fame.

This, of course, was years before I had any idea of going upon the stage, and I only mention it in connection with the mortifying disenchantment that awaited me.

I had been singing my new ballad one evening at the house of some friends in London to a tolerably large party, when an old gentleman in a voluminous white choker and a shiny suit of black, looking

very like a Methodist parson, came up to me with a very serious face to remonstrate with me, I feared, for the levity I had been guilty of, and, to my surprise, said:

"My dear sir, allow me to express to you the great gratification the perfect little ballad you have just sung has afforded me, and to assure you that I appreciate the honor you have done me in selecting for its illustration an air of my humble composing." With a look of ineffable pity, I answered the poor maniac: "I am sorry, dear sir, to rob you of so pleasant a delusion, but, unfortunately, the air is one I picked up myself years ago among the Welsh mountains, and is, I flatter myself, quite original, and hitherto unknown."

"Pardon me, in my turn, dear sir," said the old gentleman, smiling, "if I inform you that the air in question was composed by me for the Eisteddfod in 1804, obtaining the prize at that festival. I named it 'Cader Idris,' and I shall have great pleasure in sending you the music, published at the time, with my name attached to it."

Patatras! down went my great antiquarian dis

covery, and I was left desolate.

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The old gentleman was John Parry, the Welsh composer, and father of the illustrious John, whose genius has delighted thousands; and when, long afterward, I introduced the ballad of "Jenny Jones' in my piece of " He would be an Actor," and it got to be whistled about the streets, he presented me with a handsome silver cup, with a complimentary inscription in most elegant Welsh, in commemoration of the event.

The year 1827 found Mathews again in London, working in earnest, and seeing plenty of it, in the office of Nash. He retained his own office in Parliament Street, and undertook what work was sent him, but was all the while working under Mr. Nash, in the humble capacity of a clerk. Nash seems to have taken small personal interest in his pupils, and, in the mean time, very little work of any profit came to Mathews's own office. Theatrical matters still claimed his attention, and were possibly the most real and deep-seated of his affections. His days were spent in much work that was clearly distasteful; his evenings in writing "entertainments" for his father, articles for the magazines, and comedies and burlesques for the theatres. It is not surprising that this state of things was not satisfactory to any party concerned, and, tired of this enforced idleness as regarded the money-getting part of his profession, Mathews sought and obtained his father's permission to make a second tour in the south of Europe, and acquire (as he said) "that knowledge which is only to be acquired by the investigation of the buildings of Italy and Greece." On this tour he set out with a young friend and former fellow pupil under Pugin, James d'Egville. The remainder of the

first volume of these memorials is occupied with the journals and letters written by Mathews during the tour for the benefit of his parents, to whom he was always a considerate and devoted

son.

Mathews returned from the trip, by which no special advantage seems to have been gained, in 1830, and for the next few years was in a state of enforced suspense as to his future calling. "During the next few years," writes Mr. Dickens, "he led a somewhat desultory life. Architecture, painting, writing for the stage, traveling, and amateur acting, all in turn occupied his time and attention; but there can be no doubt that very soon after his return from Italy, the slow progress he was making toward a position was gradually drawing him more and more from the profession he had at first so enthusiastically embraced." It is evident, in short, that the charming manners and social qualifications of the young architect were terrible disqualifications for the need of "roughing it," which belongs to the outset of any and all professions. We read of him next as the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, in Scotland, and the life and the soul of the party, as he had been in old days with the Blessingtons. It was not a hopeful period of probation for the next post he accepted—that of district surveyor. This step was taken on the advice of his friend, Samuel Angell, who thought, wisely or not, that the tonic of a more prosaic experience of his calling would be of service to the young man. "You must study the act of Parliament, superintend the erection of all the dwellings in the district, regulate all the party walls and flues, and show yourself master of the practical part of the science as well as the ornamental. Bow and Bethnal Green are both vacant. Start at once." "Here was a bathos," adds Mathews, in his autobiography. "From Rome and Venice to Bow and Bethnal Green. However, it was to be done, and at it I went." He went at it boldly, offered himself as candidate for the surveyorship of Bow, and was elected. The salary was as modest as the duties were unattractive, forty pounds a year, payable by "fees," which had to be collected by the unhappy surveyor in person. "At one house I knocked humbly after considerable hesitation. The door was opened cautiously, with the chain up, and a stout, suspicious-looking dame, in a pair of nankeen stays, asked me if I came arter the taxes or summat? 'No, madam,' I said, deferentially; I am the district surveyor from Cut-throat Lane' (Mathews's actual official address at Bow), and I have called for—””

Oh, bother!" said the lady; "summons me if you like. I'm not going to be humbugged by you."

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