passing through his hands. His quiet cheerfulness and collectedness gave an impression of being a safe man in all his transactions. His healthful composure was just the same in middle life as in his youth, when Mrs. Fenwick asked her husband who he was, and called him “the bonniest lad she ever saw.” But there were times when he knew what it was to lose both his security and his composure. In one dreary season, when commercial affairs came to a dead lock, when all creditors pressed, and no money was to be had, Grainger failed. It was not for long, and he soon prospered again. But at another time, when he had at once too heavy a weight of liability upon him, and had worked too hard, and allowed himself too little sleep, his brain gave way. An interval of rest and proper treatment restored him entirely: but these misfortunes must, in all fairness, come into the account of his career.
It would take up too much space to tell of his plans for supplying water and gas, and connecting railways, or to describe the many public buildings he has given to Newcastle. In five years from his purchase of the Nunnery grounds, he had added another million to the value of the house property in the town. He bought for himself the great Elswick estate, which lies along the Tyne, paying for it 200,000l. He employed 2000 workmen at once, and held his ground when they attempted to strike. I remember the curiosity of the townsmen one day when the report flew round that Grainger’s men had struck: but next morning he had had six hundred apprentices sworn in. His work was then chiefly excavation, which could be done by them under his direction; and very serene he looked, working among them. The men came back in crowds: he picked, and chose, and rejected; and many lamented having taken advantage of the most liberal and considerate employer they had ever had. He was the friend of his workmen throughout his career. Perhaps it is a more striking fact that he was on the most amiable terms with the other architects and builders of the town.
The perplexing thing is—how he became qualified to conceive and work out his really beautiful designs. He himself said that a visit to Edinburgh, early in his life, impressed him very deeply. He afterwards saw London and Dublin: and that was about all. What he might have been with the training of an architect, or with any sort of liberal education, there is no saying. The want of it was on occasion painfully felt. The sanitary arrangements of his “new town” might, I am told, have been much better than they are: and I have myself had opportunity to observe how strange some things were to him which ought to have been familiar. When I became acquainted with him, in 1839, I had just been at Venice; and it seemed natural that he would be interested in what was to be seen there. But there was no making him comprehend or believe that there were canals instead of streets. He thought I misunderstood him, as he wanted to hear, not about the navigation, but “the approaches.” “The approaches, ma’am,” he kept saying: “there must be approaches.” I showed him Prout and Harding’s engraved representation of Venice. He said he had never heard of such a thing in his life as these water-streets: and I made him take the volume home, hoping that he would get some profit for Newcastle out of it. No doubt he must have learned a great deal from engravings: but, allowing every possible means of supplying the defects of his education, it remains perfectly wonderful that his street architecture should be what it is; and it is at once animating and mournful to think what he might have been if his education had been better than that of a charity boy. Brave Ben Jonson laid his bricks with a book open beside him. Grainger plied his tools while his head was full of his poetic dream. If he had had a fair share of Ben’s learning, it would have sent him out to see the world; and who can say what he might not have done when he had seen Italy and Greece?
Though he might thus have been something more and greater, Grainger was truly an eminent street architect: and I know not where we could find, at home or abroad, a sounder or more genial example of a self-made man.
CIVILE BELLUM.
“In this fearful struggle between North and South, there are hundreds of cases in which fathers are arrayed against sons, brothers against brothers.”—American Paper.
“Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shot
Straight at the heart of yon prowling vidette,
Ring me a ball in the glittering spot
That shines on his breast like an amulet!”
“ Ay, Captain! here goes for a fine-drawn bead,
There’s music around when my barrel’s in tune!”
Crack! went the rifle, the messenger sped,
And dead from his horse fell the ringing dragoon.
“Now, Rifleman, steal through the bushes, and snatch
From your victim some trinket to handsel first blood;
A button, a loop, or that luminous patch
That gleams in the moon like a diamond stud!”
“ O! Captain, I staggered, and sunk on my track,
When I gazed on the face of the fallen vidette,
For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back,
That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet.
“ But I snatched off the trinket—this locket of gold—
An inch from the centre my lead broke its way,
Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold,
Of a beautiful lady in bridal array.”
“Ha! Rifleman, fling me the locket!—’Tis she,
My brother’s young bride—and the fallen dragoon
Was her husband—Hush! soldier, ’twas Heaven’s decree,
We must bury him; there, by the light of the moon!
“But, hark! the far bugles their warnings unite;
War is a virtue—weakness a sin:
There’s lurking and loping around us to-night;
Load again, Rifleman, keep your hand in!”
HOW THE O’DONNELLS FIRST WENT TO SPAIN.
A CELTIC LEGEND OF MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
CHAPTER I.
“Ah! then is it really true that Marshal O’Donnell has been made a grandee of Spain?” said an old farmer to me a few days ago, whilst walking along the high-road, which runs parallel with the railway between Ross-sina and Kilmacow, in the county Kilkenny.
