allusion is made to Addison;s heavenly ode ("The spacious firmament on High")) whose "sacred music," known and endeared from childhood, none can hear "without love and awe"—verses that shine like the stars, "out ' of a deep great calm"—"verses enriched with the holy serene rapture that fills Addison's pure heart and shines from his kind face, when his eye seeks converse with things above: for, "when he turns to heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's mind: and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayer." We have not the heart to inquire, here, whether the portrait, as a whole-length, is not too flattering in its proportions, and too bright in colouring. But doubtless the lecturer might, and many. we surmise, expected that he would, take a strangely opposite view of Pope's "Atticus."
Steele is one of Mr. Thackeray's darlings. We have an imaginary record of Corporal Dick's boyhood—his experiences at the flogging-block of Charterhouse School—his everlastingly renewed debts to the tart-woman, and I. O. U. correspondence with lollipop-vendors and piemen—his precocious passion for drinking mum and sack—and his early instinct for borrowing from all his comrades who had money to lend. In brief, "Dick Steele the schoolboy must have been one of the most generous, good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb tupto I beat, tuptomai I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain." His recklessness and good-humour to the last, are fondly dwelt on—his cordial naturalness is eagerly appreciated—his tenderness and humanity gracefully enforced. "A man is seldom more manly," we are well reminded, "than when he is what you call unmanned—the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he is nothing. He is by no means the most brilliant of wits nor the deepest of thinkers: but he is our friend: we love him, as children love their love with an A., because be is amiable. Who likes a man best because he is the cleverest or the wisest of mankind; or a woman because she is the most virtuous, or talks French, or plays the piano better than the rest of her sex? I own to liking Dick Steele the man, and Dick Steele the author, much better than much better men and much better authors." In the same manner that sad rake and spendthrift, Henry Fielding, is sure of a kind word. The great novelist is not made a hero of, but shown as he is; not robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in a heroic attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains on his tarnished laced coat—but then we are bid observe on his manly face the marks of good fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care; and admonished, that wine-stained as we see him, and, worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. Among them, an admirable natural love of truth, and keenest instinctive scorn of hypocrisy—a wonderfully wise and detective wit—a great-hearted, courageous soul, that respects female innocence and infantine tenderness—a large-handed liberality, a disdain of all disloyal arts, an unselfish diligence in the public service. And then, "what a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck!
