In 1839 the Anti-Corn Law League took shape. I distinctly recollect the scene presented at a great bazaar in Covent Garden Theatre, in aid of Free Trade, when there was a wonderful gathering of notabilities and other folks. Stalls, articles, and ornaments, were varied and imposing; and as that exhibition appeared before the present age of bazaars was fully inaugurated, it had a more dazzling and bewildering effect than efforts of the kind can have now that they have become so common.
Dissenters’ grievances, too, were exciting subjects in those days. Certain disabilities had an irritating effect on those who felt them, and legislation was sought for their removal. No doubt, in the heat of the conflict things were said on both sides which, on calm review, cannot be justified; and I am in my old age more than ever convinced that union of the _suaviter in modo_ with the _fortiter in re_, is the best method of conducting controversy.
My holidays, whilst I was a Windsor pastor, were spent in preaching; but there were two exceptions, when I broke ground as a tourist. Travelling in Nottinghamshire and the neighbouring counties, I visited Newstead Abbey with a fresh remembrance of Washington Irving’s description of the place. I had a gossip with an old domestic, who told me stories of Lord Byron, whom she knew as a boy, and used to carry on her back on account of his lameness. He pricked and otherwise tormented the patient creature, so as, on one occasion, to provoke her so much, that she boldly ventured on a rather amusing act of retaliation. Leaning over her shoulders to look into an old chest full of feathers, she, to use her own words, “copped him over, and he came out for all the world just like a young owlet.” What I then heard of his early days gave me an unfavourable idea of that child of genius, so caressed and tormented, so flattered and persecuted, so early thrown into unfortunate circumstances, and altogether so badly brought up. What a contrast between two poets, whose memories came vividly before me during this tour!—Byron and Scott, both of them lame for life; one a stranger to the other’s purity. Years afterwards I heard Dean Stanley preach a sermon to children, in which, with his characteristic felicity of thought, he spoke of the contrasted influences of physical deformity in these two instances—how the club foot of the first was an occasion of mortified pride and ill-nature, and the club foot of the second was borne with patience and contentment. The story of Byron’s club foot is now treated by some I hear as a popular delusion; but, at all events, he had something the matter with his foot which irritated his temper and made him disagreeable. Therefore the Dean’s moral lesson remains untouched. In connection with good humour and kindness, a physical defect may be only a foil to set off moral excellence.
