"No halo was round that old man's head;
But his locks as the rime frost hoary,
While the wind with their snowy relics play'd,
Seemed fairer than crown of glory.
"In him have I seen, what I joy to see,—
In divinest union blended,
An infant-child's simplicity,
With a sage's state attended.
"He dwells, like a sun, the world above,
Though by folly and envy shrouded,
But soon shall emerge in the light of love,
And pursue his path unclouded.
"That sun shall the mists of night disperse,
Whose fetters so long have bound it;
The centre of its own universe,
And thousands of planets round it."
But deeply versed as Dr. Bowring was in the economics of literature and commerce, it is rather as a polylinguist that he is especially to be remembered. In this regard he was more remarkable than Cardinal Mezzofanti himself, as his acquirements were not merely verbal, but made ancillary to literary purposes. He himself estimated the number of languages which he knew, at two hundred, of which he spoke one hundred. Credat Judæus. Forty he is said to have known critically, including many from different classes. He retained his marvellous powers to the last; and, dying at his residence, Mount Radford, in the vicinity of his native city, November 23rd, 1872, in the eighty-first year of his age, stood, so far as I know, at the head of the linguists of the world.
Sir John Bowring served his Government ten years in China, as Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of Trade. His salary for the discharge of the duties of this important office was £4000 per annum; and on his retirement in July, 1859, he had a pension of one-third of the amount conferred upon him, which he continued to receive till his death. This may seem a large amount for a short service; but it must be remembered that he had brought special acquirements to his duties, and had rendered important services to the state.
Dying thus, in easy retirement, and close to the place of his birth, the prophecy of Fraser was not, in his case, fulfilled:—
"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourn'd."
XVIII.—WASHINGTON IRVING.
It is well said by Fraser, as he points to the ἔιδωλον of Washington Irving,—the first, by the way, to which the pseudonymous signature, "Alfred Croquis," is appended,—that, "in his modest deportment and easy attitude, we see all the grace and dignity of an English gentleman." Here I need hardly say, in explanation, that Washington Irving was an American, having been born in New York, April 3rd, 1783, and that he had made his first appearance in London in 1818, about twelve years
