Moore was of small stature. “He is a little, very little man,” says Sir Walter Scott, speaking of him in 1825. Hunt said of him in 1820: “His forehead is long and full of character, with bumps of wit large and radiant enough to transport a phrenologist: his eyes are as dark and fine as you would wish to see under a set of vine-leaves.” The poet’s face was, in fact, very plain, and only redeemed by the brightness of his eyes. Irish festivity and enjoyment formed the prevailing expression of his aspect, in his better days when he was the delight and pride of every society he appeared in—the gayest, happiest, most appreciated wit of his time. Poor Tom Moore! He was always called Tom Moore; except in cotemporary criticisms of his poems or polemics, nobody thought of calling him Mr. Moore. We cannot fancy him a man of seventy-two! There is an incongruity in the idea which we cannot get over. Old and insane. Alas for the brightest vaunt of human intellect and glory! But Tom Moore will be ever freshly remembered with the undying melodies of his native land.
A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.
———
BY G. P. R. JAMES.
———
[Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1852, by George Payne Rainsford James, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts.]
(Continued from page 494.)
LONDON, FIFTY YEARS AGO.
There was a night coach to London, and I was very anxious to arrive in the great city; but Father Bonneville was now feeling strongly the effects of age, and I would not expose him to the fatigue of a long night journey. We set off therefore on the following morning, and I can hardly express the effect produced upon my mind by the first sight of the vehicle which was to convey us. It was the stage-coach in its utmost perfection, light, small, and compact, beautifully painted, newly washed, with leather harness, and four bay horses, which seemed, to my eyes, fitted for the race-course. It was so unlike any thing I had ever seen in Germany, in France, or in America, so light, so neat, so jaunty, so rapid, so perfect in all its parts and appointments, that it stood out at once from every thing else in my mind, as a pure and unadulterated bit of England—an exponent, as it were, of the habits of the country and the mind of the people. When we came to get in, indeed, and take our seats, we found ourselves a little cramped for room. The back, too, was stiff and rigid, and our legs had but little space to stretch themselves out, intertwined with those of our fellow passengers.