The Youth of Wilberforce.

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wealthy have their gorgeous obsequies; it was his noble portion to clothe a people with spontaneous mourning, and to go down to the grave amid the benedictions of the poor." It is as the leader of the crusade against the iniquitous slave-trade, as the gentle and kindly philanthropist, that he occupies his lofty pedestal in the gallery of fame; as the man who contentedly gave up the pursuit of place and power, and devoted his time, his talents, and his wealth, in order that a monstrous injustice should be swept away. It often saddens one to find between the leader of a great reform and the reform itself a wide discrepancy: the work seems so great and massive and noble; the man seems so weak and little and contemptible. There is no such discrepancy in the case of Wilberforce. Apart altogether from the great part he played in slave-trade abolition, his life is well worth studying, as that of a man of pure, fresh, generous, unsullied nature, who always endeavored to apply his gifts to the highest uses, and who was without a taint of malice, or envy, or uncharitableness.

William Wilberforce was born at Hull, on the 24th of August, 1759-the year which witnessed the birth of his illustrious friend, William Pitt. He was the third child of his parents, but their only son. He came of an ancient and wealthy family, to which the township of Wilberfoss, eight miles from York, had given a name. His grandfather, who altered the spelling into Wilberforce, was the head of a Baltic house in Hull, of which his father, later on, became a partner. Wilberforce was a child of feeble frame, small stature, and troubled with a weakness in his eyes which more or less tormented him throughout life. His stature continued extremely small, and in his late years, by continual contortion, he had, though naturally wellshaped, brought himself nearly into the form of the letter Z.*

*For this fact we are indebted to an article in the Quarterly Review, vol. Ixii., which, from the frequent use of italics, the affectation of private and special information, the badness of its style, and its carping and ungenerous spirit, we believe we are right in attributing to the pen of John Wilson Croker.

So sickly, indeed, was he, that in after-life "it was among the many expressions of his gratitude that he was not born in less civilized times, when it would have been thought impossible to rear so delicate a child." When seven years old he was sent to the Grammar-school at Hull, of which Joseph Milner was head-master. Even then, we are told, his elocution was so remarkable, that he used to be set on a table and made to read aloud, as an example to the other boys. The main feature of Wilberforce's oratory throughout life was his preeminently sweet and musical voice.

When Wilberforce had been at this school for two years his father died, and he was sent to reside with an uncle, living by turns at Wimbledon and St. James's Place. The school he was here sent to seems to have been a very wretched one. It was, he himself said, a place where "they taught everything and nothing," and where the food with which they were supplied was so nauseous that he could not eat it. His residence with his uncle, however, was not destined to be of very long duration. His aunt, whose principles were of the kind then called "Methodistical," exercised a powerful influence over him, and turned his mind with great force in a religious direction. Rumors of the child's seriousness were received with great alarm by his friends in Hull, and it was at once determined that his mother should repair to London, and remove him from what was considered such dangerous influence. "Billy," said his grandfather to him, judiciously combining promise and threat, "shall travel with Milner as soon as he is of age; but if Billy turns Methodist he shall not have a sixpence of mine."

On his arrival at Hull, Wilberforce was introduced into a kind of society very different from that to which he had been accustomed in his uncle's house. Hull was then a very gay place; the theatre, balls, great suppers, and card-parties were the delight of the principal families in the town. The usual dinner-hour was two o'clock, and at six they met at sumptuous suppers. At first Wilberforce had little relish for this sort of life; gradually, however, he came to like it, and his voice and

Wilberforce at College.

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love of music made him an acceptable guest at every party. But even while living a life of pleasure he gave proofs of an active mind, and one remarkable anticipation of his future course deserves to be recorded. "His abomination of the slave-trade," one of his school-fellows has related, "he evinced when he was not more than fourteen years of age. He boarded in the master's house, where the boys were kept within bounds. Once he gave me a letter to put into the post-office, addressed to the editor of the York paper, which he told me was in condemnation of the odious traffic in human flesh." A promising feature of Wilberforce at this time was, that he cultivated a taste for literature, and displayed considerable aptitude for it, greatly excelling all the other boys in his compositions, though he devoted very little time to them.

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At the age of seventeen Wilberforce entered St. John's College, Cambridge. The state of the English Universities, "steeped in port and prejudice," was then very bad, and St. John's College was no exception to the general rule. "I was introduced," he says, on the very first night of my arrival to as licentious a set of men as can be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives. I lived among them for some time, though I never relished their society-often, indeed, I was horror-struck at their conduct and after the first year I shook off all connection with them." During the last two years of his University life he associated with a higher circle of pleasant, good-humored, jovial fellows, with whom he became an immense favorite. "There was always a great Yorkshire pie in his room, and all were welcome to partake of it," writes the Rev. T. Gisborne. "My rooms and his were back to back, and often, when I was raking out my fire at ten o'clock, I heard his melodious voice calling aloud to me to come and sit with him before I went to bed. It was a dangerous thing to do, for his amusing conversation was sure to keep me up so late that I was behindhand the next morning." Among Wilberforce's associates a great number were fellows of the college, of whose conduct he afterward