consisted of the wife of a clergyman, and eleven (female) members of the Society of Friends. They professed their willingness to suspend every other engagement and avocation, and to devote them selves to Newgate; and in truth, they have performed their promise. With no interval of relaxa tion, and with but few intermissions from the call of other and more imperious duties, they have since lived amongst the prisoners." the wretched mothers thanked her with tears of gratitude for her benevolent intentions! while several of the younger women flocked about her, and entreated, with the most pathetic eagerness, to be admitted to her intended school. She now applied to the Governor, and had an interview with the two Sheriffs and the Ordinary, who received her with the most cordial approbation; but fairly Even this astonishing progress could not intimated to her "their persuasion that her correct the incredulity of men of benevolence efforts would be utterly fruitless." After some and knowledge of the world. The Reverend investigation, it was officially reported, that Ordinary, though filled with admiration for there was no vacant spot in which the school the exertions of this intrepid and devoted could be established; and an ordinary philan- band, fairly told Mrs. F. that her designs, like thropist would probably have retired disheart- many others for the improvement of that ened from the undertaking. Mrs. Fry, how-wretched mansion, "would inevitably fail." ever, mildly requested to be admitted once The Governor encouraged her to go on-but more alone among the women, that she might conduct the search for herself. Difficulties always disappear before the energy of real zeal and benevolence: an empty cell was immediately discovered, and the school was to be opened the very day after. confessed to his friends, that "he could not see even the possibility of her success." But the wisdom of this world is foolishness, and its fears but snares to entangle our feet in the career of our duty. Mrs. F. saw with other eyes, and felt with another heart. She went "The next day she commenced the school, in again to the Sheriffs and the Governor;—near company with a young lady, who then visited a one hundred of the women were brought beprison for the first time, and who since gave me a fore them, and, with much solemnity and earvery interesting description of her feelings upon that necasion. The railing was crowded with half naked nestness, engaged to give the strictest obediwomen, struggling together for the front situa-ence to all the regulations of their heroic benetions with the most boisterous violence, and begging factress. A set of rules was accordingly with the utmost vociferation. She felt as if she was promulgated, which we have not room here to going into a den of wild beasts; and she well recol- transcribe; but they imported the sacrifice of lects quite shuddering when the door closed upon all their darling and much cherished vices;her, and she was locked in, with such a herd of novel and desperate companions. This day, how. drinking, gaming, card-playing, novel reading, ever, the school surpassed their utmost expectations: were entirely prohibited-and regular applitheir only pain arose from the numerous and press- cation to work engaged for in every quarter. ing applications made by young women, who longed For the space of one month these benevoler: to be taught and employed. The narrowness of the women laboured in private in the midst of their unhappy flock; at the end of that short time they invited the Corporation of London to satisfy themselves, by inspection, of the effect of their pious exertions. room rendered it then impossible to yield to these requests: But they tempted these ladies to project a school for the employment of the tried women, for teaching them to read and to work." When this intention was mentioned to the friends of these ladies, it appeared at first so visionary and unpromising, that it met with very slender "In compliance with this appointment, the Lord encouragement: they were told that the certain Mayor, the Sheriffs, and several of the Aldermen, consequence of introducing work would be, that it attended. The prisoners were assembled together; would be stolen; that though such an experiment and it being requested that no alteration in their might be reasonable enough, if made in the country, usual practice might take place, one of the ladies among women who had been accustomed to hard read a chapter in the Bible, and then the females labour, it was quite hopeless, when tried upon those proceeded to their various avocations. Their attenwho had been so long habituated to vice and idle-tion during the time of reading, their orderly and ness. In short, it was predicted, and by many too, whose wisdom and benevolence added weight to their opinions, that those who had set at defiance the law of the land, with all its terrors, would very speedily revolt from an authority which had nothing to enforce it; and nothing more to recommend than its simplicity and gentleness. But the noble Many of these knew Newgate; had visited it zeal of these unassuming women was not to be so a few months before, and had not forgotten the repressed; and feeling that their design was in-painful impressions made by a scene, exhibiting, tended for the good and the happiness of others, perhaps, the very utmost limits of misery and guilt. they trusted that it would receive the guidance and-They now saw, what, without exaggeration, may protection of Him who often is pleased to accomplish the highest purposes by the most feeble instru ments. it "With these impressions, they had the boldness to declare, that if a committee could be found who would share the labour, and a matron who would engage never to leave the prison, day or night, they would undertake to try the experiment, that is, they would themselves find employment for the women, procure the necessary money, till the city could be induced to relieve them, and be answeralle for the safety of the property committed into the hands of the prisoners. The committee immediately presented itself; it sober deportment, their decent dress, the absence of every thing like tumult, noise, or contention, the obedience, and the respect shown by them, and the cheerfulness visible in their countenances and man. ners, conspired to excite the astonishment and admiration of their visitors. be called a transformation. Riot, licentiousness, and filth, exchanged for order, sobriety, and comparative neatness in the chamber, the apparel, and the persons of the prisoners. They saw no more an assemblage of abandoned and shameless crea tures, half-naked and half-drunk, rather demanding, than requesting charity. The prison no more resounded with obscenity, and imprecations, and li centious songs; and to use the coarse, but the just, expression of one who knew the prison well, this hell upon earth,' already exhibited the appearance of an industrious manufactory, or a well regulated family. 66 The magistrates, to evince their sense of the We can add nothing to this touching and elevating statement. The story of a glorious victory gives us a less powerful or proud emotion-and thanks and benedictions appear to us never to have been so richly deserved. "A year, says Mr. Buxton, has now elapsed since the operations in Newgate began; and those most competent to judge, the late Lord Mayor and the present, the late Sheriffs and the present, the late Governor and the present, various Grand Juries, the Chairman of the Police Committee, the Ordinary, and the officers of the prison, have all declared their satisfaction, mixed with astonishment, at the alteration which has taken place in the conduct of the females. "It is true, and the Ladies' Committee are anx: the rules have been occasionally broken. Spirits, they fear, have more than once been introduced; and it was discovered at one period, when many of the ladies were absent, that card-playing had been resumed. But, though truth compels them to acknowledge these deviations, they have been of a very limited extent. I could find but one lady who heard an oath, and there had not been above half a dozen instances of intoxication; and the ladies feel justified in stating, that the rules have generally been observed. The ladies themselves have been treated with uniform respect and gratitude." ious that it should not be concealed, that some of a Bible in her life, which was received with so much interest and satisfaction, or one, which she think, more likely to do good. It is remarkable, that this girl, from her conduct in her preceding prison, and in court, came to Newgate with the worst of characters."-p. 134. The change, indeed, pervaded every de partment of the female division. Those who were marched off for transportation, instead of breaking the windows and furniture, and going off, according to immemorial usage, with drunken songs and intolerable disorder, took a serious and tender leave of their companions, and expressed the utmost gratitude to their benefactors, from whom they parted with tears. Stealing has also been entirely suppressed; and, while upwards of twenty thousand articles of dress have been manu factured, not one has been lost or purloined within the precincts of the prison! We have nothing more to say; and would not willingly weaken the effect of this impressive statement by any observations of ours. Let us hear no more of the difficulty of regulating provincial prisons, when the prostitute felons of London have been thus easily reformed and converted. Let us never again be told of the impossibility of repressing drunkenness and profligacy, or introducing habits of industry in small establishments. when this great crater of vice and corruption has been thus stilled and purified. And, above all, let there be an end of the pitiful apology of the want of funds, or means, or agents, to At the close of a Session, many of the re-effect those easier improvements, when we formed prisoners were dismissed, and many men from the middle ranks of life-when new ones were received—and, under their quiet unassuming matrons, unaccustomed to auspices, card-playing was again introduced. business, or to any but domestic exertions. One of the ladies, however, went among them have, without funds, without agents, without alone, and earnestly and affectionately ex- aid or encouragement of any description. plained to them the pernicious consequences trusted themselves within the very centre of of this practice; and represented to them infection and despair; and, by opening their how much she would be gratified, if, even hearts only, and not their purses, have effect from regard to her, they would agree to re-ed, by the mere force of kindness, gentleness. nounce it. pp. 132, 133. and compassion, a labour, the like to which has smoothed the way and insured success does not remain to be performed, and which to all similar labours. We cannot Enry the happiness which Mrs. Fry must enjoy from the consciousness of her own great achieve ments;-but there is no happiness or honour of which we should be so proud to be partakers: And we seem to relieve our own hearts of their share of national gratitude, in thus placing on her simple and modest brow. that truly Civic Crown, which far outshines the laurels of conquest, or the coronals of power-and can only be outshone itself, by those wreaths of imperishable glory which "Soon after she retired to the ladies' room, one of the prisoners came to her, and expressed, in a manner which indicated real feeling, her sorrow for having broken the rules of so kind a friend, and gave her a pack of cards: four others did the same. Having burnt the cards in their presence, she felt bound to remunerate them for their value, and to mark her sense of their ready obedience by some mall present. A few days afterwards, she called the first to her, and telling her intention, produced a neat muslin handkerchief. To her surprise, the girl looked disappointed; and, on being asked the reason, confessed she had hoped that Mrs. would have given her a Bible with her own name written in it! which she should value beyond any thing else, and always keep and read. Such a request, made in such a manner, could not be re-await the champions of Faith and Charity in fused; and the lady assures me that she never gave a higher ɛtate of existence. (April, 1806.) Alemoirs of Richard Cumberland: written by himself. Containing an A count of his Life and Writings, interspersed with Anecdotes and Characters of the most dis inguished Persons of his Time with whom he had Intercourse or Connection. 4to. pp. 533. London: 1806.* WE certainly have no wish for the death however, to let authors tell their own story, of Mr. Cumberland; on the contrary, we hope as an apology for telling that of all their ac he will live long enough to make a large sup-quaintances; and can easily forgive them for plement to these memoirs: But he has em- grouping and assorting their anecdotes of their barrassed us a little by publishing this volume contemporaries, according to the chronology, in his lifetime. We are extremely unwilling and incidents of their own lives. This is but to say any thing that may hurt the feelings indulging the painter of a great gallery of of a man of distinguished talents, who is draw- worthies with a panel for his own portrait; ing to the end of his career, and imagines that and though it will probably be the least like he has hitherto been ill used by the world: of the whole collection, it would be hard to but he has shown, in this publication, such an grudge him this little gratification. appetite for praise, and such a jealousy of Life has often been compared to a journey; censure, that we are afraid we cannot do our and the simile seems to hold better in nothing duty conscientiously, without giving him of than in the identity of the rules by which fence. The truth is, that the book has rather those who write their travels, and those who disappointed us. We expected it to be ex-write their lives, should be governed. When tremely amusing; and it is not. There is too a man returns from visiting any celebrated much of the first part of the title in it, and too region, we expect to hear much more of the little of the last. Of the life and writings of remarkable things and persons he has seen, Richard Cumberland, we hear more than than of his own personal transactions; and enough; but of the distinguished persons with are naturally disappointed if, after saying that whom he lived, we have many fewer charac- he lived much with illustrious statesmen or ⚫ers and anecdotes than we could have wish- heroes, he chooses rather to tell us of his own d. We are the more inclined to regret this, travelling equipage, or of his cookery and serboth because the general style of Mr. Cum- vants, than to give us any account of the berland's compositions has convinced us, that character and conversation of those distinno one could have exhibited characters and guished persons. In the same manner, when anecdotes in a more engaging manner, and at the close of a long life, spent in circles of because, from what he has put into this book, literary and political celebrity, an author sits we actually see that he had excellent oppor- down to give the world an account of his retunities for collecting, and still better talents trospections, it is reasonable to stipulate that for relating them. The anecdotes and charac- he should talk less of himself than of his asters which we have, are given in a very pleas-sociates; and natural to complain, if he tells ing and animated manner, and form the chief merit of the publication: But they do not occupy one tenth part of it; and the rest is filled with details that do not often interest, and observations that do not always amuse. Authors, we think, should not, generally, be encouraged to write their own lives. The genius of Rousseau, his enthusiasm, and the novelty of his plan, have rendered the Confessions, in some respects, the most interesting of books. But a writer, who is in full possession of his senses, who has lived in the world like the men and women who compose it, and whose vanity aims only at the praise of great talents and accomplishments, must not hope to write a book like the Confessions: and is scarcely to be trusted with the delineation of his own character or the narrative of his own adventures. We have no objection, I reprint part of this paper-for the sake chiefly of the anecdotes of Bentley, Bubb Dodington, Soame Jenyns, and a few others, which I think remarkable and very much, also, for the lively and graphic account of the impression of Garrick's new style of acting, as compared with that of Quin and the old schools-which is as good and as cu rious as Colley Cibber's admirable sketches of Betterton and Booth. long stories of his schoolmasters and grandmothers, while he passes over some of the most illustrious of his companions with a bare mention of their names. Mr. Cumberland has offended a little in this way. He has also composed these memoirs, we think, in too diffuse, rambling, and careless a style. There is evidently no selection or method in his narrative; and unweighed remarks, and fatiguing apologies and protes tations, are tediously interwoven with it, in the genuine style of good-natured but irrepres sible loquacity. The whole composition, indeed, has not only too much the air of conversation: It has sometimes an unfortunate resemblance to the conversation of a professed talker; and we meet with many passages in which the author appears to work himself up to an artificial vivacity, and to give a certain air of smartness to his expression, by the in troduction of cant phrases, odd metaphors, and a sort of practised and theatrical originality. The work, however, is well worth looking over, and contains many more amusing pas sages than we can afford to extract on the present occasion. Mr. Cumberland was born in 1732; and he bas a very natural pride in 1 'ating that his paternal great-grandfather was the learned and most exemplary Bishop Cumberland, author of the treatise De Legibus Nature; and that his maternal grandfather was the celeorated Dr. Richard Bentley. Of the last of these distinguished persons he has given, from he distinct recollection of his childhood, a much more amiable and engaging representation than has hitherto been made public. nstead of the haughty and morose critic and controversialist, we here learn, with pleasure, that he was as remarkable for mildness and kind affections in private life, as for profound erudition and sagacity as an author. Mr. Cumberland has collected a number of little anecdotes that seem to be quite conclusive upon this head; but we rather insert the following general testimony :— amptonshire at the birth of his son. He went to school, first at Bury St. Edmunds, and af et wards at Westminster. But the most valuable part of his early education was that for which he was indebted to the taste and intelligence of his mother. We insert with pleasure the following amiable paragraph:— "It was in these intervals from school that my mother began to form both my taste and my est for poetry, by employing me every evening to read to her, of which art she was a very able mistress. Our readings were, with very few exceptions, conshe both admired and understood in the true spirit fined to the chosen plays of Shakespeare, whom and sense of the author. With all her father's critical acumen, she could trace, and teach me to unravel, all the meanders of his metaphor, and point out where it illuminated, or where it only loaded and obscured the meaning. These were happy hours and interesting lectures to me; whist my beloved father, ever placid and complacent, sate beside us, and took part in our amusement; his voice was never heard but in the tone of appro bation; his countenance never marked but with the natural traces of his indelible and hereditary benevolence." The effect of these readings was, that the young author, at twelve years of age, produced a sort of drama, called "Shakespeare in the Shades," composed almost entirely of passages from that great writer, strung to "I had a sister somewhat older than myself. Had there been any of that sternness in my grandfather, which is so falsely imputed to him, it may well be supposed we should have been awed into silence in his presence, to which we were admitted every day. Nothing can be further from the truth; he was the unwearied patron and promoter of all our childish sports and sallies; at all times ready to detach himself from any topic of conversation to take an interest and bear his part in our amusements. The eager curiosity natural to our age, and the questions it gave birth to, so teasing to many parents, he, on the contrary, attended to and encouraged, as the claims of infant reason, never together and assorted with no despicable inbe evaded or abused; strongly recommending, that to all such inquiries answers should be given according to the strictest truth, and information dealt to us in the clearest terms, as a sacred duty never to be departed from. I have broken in upon him many a time in his hours of study, when he would put his book aside, ring his hand-bell for his servant, and be led to his shelves to take down a picture-book for my amusement! I do not say that his good-nature always gained its object, as the pictures which his books generally supplied me with were anatomical drawings of dissected bodies, very little calculated to communicate delight; but he had nothing better to produce; and surely such an effort on his part, however unsuccessful, was no feature of a cynic; a cynic should be made of sterner stuff.' Once, and only once, I recollect his giving me a gentle rebuke for making a most outrageous noise in the room over his library, and disturbing him in his studies: I had no apprehension of anger from him, and confidently answered that I could not help it, as I had been at battledore and shuttlecock with Master Gooch, the Bishop of Ely's son. And I have been at this sport with his father,' he replied; But thine has been the more amusing game; so here's no harm done.'"' He also mentions, that when his adversary Collins had fallen into poverty in his latter days, Bentley, apprehending that he was in some measure responsible for his loss of repution, contrived to administer to his necessities in a way not less creditable to his delicacy than to his liberality. The youngest daughter of this illustrious scholar, the Phœbe of Byron's pastoral, and herself a woman of extraordinary accomplishments, was the mother of Mr. Cumberland. His father, who appears also to have been a man of the most blameless and amiable dispositions, and to have united, in a very exemplary way, the characters of a clergyman and a gentlemen, was Rector of Stanwick in North genuity. But it is more to the purpose to observe that, at this early period of his life, be first saw Garrick, in the character of Lothario; and has left this animated account of the impression which the scene made upon his mind: fore my eyes. Quin presented himself, upon the broidered down the seams, an enormous full-bet then struggling to emancipate his audience from the slavery they were resigned to; and though at times he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of new. born light upon them, yet in general they seemed to love darkness better than light; and in the dialogue of altercation between Horatio and Lothario, bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the master of the old school than upon the founder of the new. I thank my stars, my feelings in those moments led me right; they were those of nature, and therefore could not err." Some years after this, Mr. Cumberland's father exchanged his living of Stanwick for that of Fulham, in order that his son might have the benefit of his society, while obliged to reside in the vicinity of the metropolis. The celebrated Bubb Ďodington resided at this time in the neighbouring parish of Hammersmith; and Mr. Cumberland, who soon became a frequent guest at his table, has presented his readers with the following spirited full length portrait of that very remarkable and preposterous personage. son of the wearer, that I remember when he made his first speech in the House of Peers as Lord Melcombe, all the flashes of his wit, all the studied phrases and well-turned periods of his rhetoric lost their effect, sin.ply because the orator had laid aside his magisterial tie, and put on a mo. dern bag-wig, which was as much out of costume upon the broad expanse of his shoulders, as a cue would have been upon the robes of the Lord Chief. Justice." sions of his hero's absurdity, rather surpassed The following, with all our former impres our expectations, "Of pictures he seemed to take his estimate only by their cost; in fact, he was not possessed of any. But I recollect his saying to me one day in his great saloon at Eastbury, that if he had half a score picdecorate his walls with them; in place of which I tures of a thousand pounds a-piece, he would gladly am sorry to say he had stuck up immense patches of gilt leather, shaped into bugle horns, upon hangings of rich crimson velvet! and round his state bed he displayed a carpeting of gold and silver embroidery. which too glaringly betrayed its derivation from coat, waistcoat, and breeches, by the testimony of pockets, buttonholes, and loops, with other equally incontrovertible witnesses, subpoenaed from the tailor's shopboard! When he paid his court at St. James' to the present queen upon her nuptials, he approached to kiss her hand, decked in an embroidered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat, and breeches, the latter of which, in the act of kneeling down, forgot their duty and broke loose from their moorings in a very indecorous and uncourtly manner.' During my stay at Eastbury, we were visited by the late Mr. Henry Fox and Mr. Alderman Beckford; the solid good sense of the former, and the dashing loquacity of the latter, formed a striking contrast between the characters of these gentlemen. To Mr. Fox our host paid all that courtly homage, which he so well knew how to time, and where to apply; to Beckford he did not observe the same attentions, but in the happiest flow of his raillery and wit combated this intrepid talker with admirable effect. It was an interlude truly comic and amusing.-Beckford loud, voluble, self-sufficient, and galled by hits which he could not parry, and probably did not expect, laid himself more and more open in the vehemence of his argument; Dodington lolling in his chair in perfect apathy and self-command, dozing, and even snoring at intervals, in his lethargic way, broke out every now and then into such gleams and flashes of wit and irony, as by the contrast of his phlegm with the other's impetuosity, made his humour irresistible, and set the table in a roar. He was here upon his very strong. est ground." "Our splendid host was excelled by no man in doing the honours of his house and table; to the ladies he had all the courtly and profound devotion of a Spaniard, with the ease and gaiety of a Frenchman towards the men. His mansion was magnificent; massy, and stretching out to a great extent of front, with an enormous portico of Doric columns, ascended by a stately flight of steps. There were turrets, and wings too, that went I know not whiher, though now levelled with the ground, or gone to more ignoble uses: Vanbrugh, who constructed this superb edifice, seemed to have had the plan of Blenheim in his thoughts, and the interior was as proud and splendid as the exterior was bold and imposing. All this was exactly in unison with the taste of its magnificent owner; who had gilt and furnished the apartments with a profusion of finery, that kept no terms with simplicity, and not always with elegance or harmony of style. Whatever Mr. Dodington's revenue then was, he had the happy art of managing it with such economy, that I believe he made more display at less cost than any man in the kingdom but himself could have done. His town-house in Pall-Mall, and this villa at Hammersmith, were such establishments as few nobles in the nation were possessed of. In either of these he was not to be approached but through a suit of apartments, and rarely seated but under painted ceilings and gilt entablatures. In his villa you were conducted through two rows of antique marble statues, ranged in a gallery floored with the rarest marbles, and enriched with columns of granite and lapis lazuli; his saloon was hung with the finest Gobelin tapestry, and he slept in a bed encanopied with peacock's feathers in the style of Mrs. Mon- He wrote small poems with great pains, and tague. When he passed from Pall-Mall to La elaborate letters with much terseness of style, and Trappe it was always in a coach, which I could not some quaintness of expression: I have seen him but suspect had been his ambassadorial equipage at refer to a volume of his own verses in manuscript, Madrid, drawn by six fat unwieldy black horses, but he was very shy, and I never had the perusal short-docked, and of colossal dignity. Neither was of it. I was rather better acquainted with his Diary, he less characteristic in apparel than in equipage; which since his death has been published; and I he had a wardrobe loaded with rich and flaring suits, well remember the temporary disgust he seemed each in itself a load to the wearer, and of these I to take, when upon his asking what I would do have no doubt but many were coeval with his em- with it should he bequeath it to my discretion, I bassy above mentioned, and every birth-day had instantly replied, that I would destroy it. There added to the stock. In doing this he so contrived was a third, which I more coveted a sight of than as never to put his old dresses out of countenance, of either of the above, as it contained a miscellaby any variations in the fashion of the new; in the neous collection of anecdotes, repartees, good say. mean time, his bulk and corpulency gave full dis-ings, and humorous incidents, of which he was part play to a vast expanse and profusion of brocade and author and part compiler, and out of which he was embroidery, and this, when set off with an enor- in the habit of refreshing his memory, when he mous tie-periwig and deep-laced ruffles, gave the prepared himself to expect certain men of wit and picture of an ancient courtier in his gala habit, or pleasantry, either at his own house or elsewhere. Quin in his stage dress. Nevertheless, it must be Upon this practice, which he did not affect to conconfessed this style, though out of date, was not out ceal, he observed to me one day, that it was a com ad character, but harmonised so well with the per-pliment he paid to society, when he submitted to |