If the Coventry people were asked whether their chief manufacture was in a flourishing state, the most opposite answers would probably be given by different parties equally concerned. Some exult, and some complain, at this present time. As far as we can make out, the state of things is this. From the low price of provisions, multitudes have something more to spare from their weekly wages than formerly, for the purchase of finery: and the demand for cheap ribbons has increased wonderfully. As always happens when any manufacture is prosperous, the operatives engage their whole families in it. We may see the father weaving; his wife, on the verge of her confinement, winding in another room, or, perhaps, standing behind a loom, piecing the whole day long. The little girls fill the spools; the boys are weaving somewhere else. The consequences of this devotion of whole households to one business, are as bad here as among the Nottingham lace-makers, or the Leicester hosiers. Not only is there the misery before them of the whole family being adrift at once, when bad times come, but they are doing their utmost to bring on those bad times. Great as is the demand, the production has, thus far, much exceeded it. The soundest capitalists may be heard complaining that theirs is a losing trade. Less substantial capitalists have been obliged to get rid of some of their stock at any price they could obtain: and those ribbons, sold at a loss, intercept the sales of the fair-dealing manufacturer. This cannot go on. Prosperous as the working-classes of Coventry have been, for a considerable time, a season of adversity must be within ken, if the capitalists find the trade a bad one for them. We find the case strongly stated, and supported by facts, in a tract, on the Census of Coventry, which has lately been published there. It might save a repetition of the misery which the Coventry people brought upon themselves formerly—by their tenacity about protective duties, and their opposition to steam power—if they would, before it is too late, ponder the facts of their case, and strive, every man in his way, to yield respect to the natural demand for the great commodity of his city; and to take care that the men of Coventry shall be fit for something else than weaving ribbons.
From the Examiner.
BARTHOLD NIEBUHR, THE HISTORIAN.[20]
Niebuhr was born pre-eminently gifted, was trained by intellectual and tender parents, and his whole career is one story of the progress made by a mind which united extraordinary powers with untiring industry. But Niebuhr was not only born to achieve greatness. He achieved love and friendship in every relation of his life, he was a high-minded and in the purest sense of the word an earnest man. In intellect he was a giant among us; but in him the intellect was not a statue raised above the moral life, on which it trod as on a pedestal, a block of mere stone-mason's work; his heart had not been used up in the making of his brains, or his soul cleared out a sacrifice to make room for a new stock of understanding. We may yield our minds up to admire Niebuhr unreservedly, and it is pleasant therefore to get a Life of him in English, so full as this is of the actual man, as he poured out portions thereof to his bosom friends, and wherein the large lumps of true Niebuhr gold are contained in a biographic deposit which itself is a long way removed from dross. The quiet, unaffected way in which this work has been done by the English writer of the book before us, her elegant simplicity of style, her thorough mastery of the subject, enable us to pass from Life to Letters, and from Letters back to Life, without any sense but of a perfect harmony between both. The two volumes are of a kind that can be read through from the beginning to the end with unremitting pleasure. We strongly suspect that Niebuhr, at the age of twelve, would have bewildered with his knowledge some few of our university professors. Here is part of a sketch, representing him when he was not very far removed from long clothes:
How keenly alive he was to poetical impressions appears from a letter of Boje's written in 1783: "This reminds me of little Niebuhr. His docility, his industry, and his devoted love for me procure me many a pleasant hour. A short time back I was reading 'Macbeth' aloud to his parents without taking any notice of him, till I saw what an impression it made upon him. Then I tried to render it all intelligible to him, and even explained to him how the witches were only poetical beings. When I was gone, he sat down (he is not yet seven years old), and wrote it all out on seven sheets of paper without omitting one important point, and certainly without any expectation of receiving praise for it; for, when his father asked to see what he had written, and showed it to me, he cried for fear he had not done it well. Since then he writes down every thing of importance that he hears from his father or me. We seldom praise him, but just quietly tell him where he has made any mistake, and he avoids the fault for the future.
"The child's character early exhibited a rare union of the faculty of poetical insight with that of accurate practical observation. The amusements he contrived for himself afford an illustration of this. During the periods of his confinement to the house, before he was old enough to have any paper given him, he covered with his writings and drawings the margins of the leaves of several copies of Forskaal's works, which were used in the house as waste paper. Then he made copy books for himself, in which he wrote essays, mostly on political subjects. He had an imaginary empire called Low-England, of which he drew maps, and he promulgated laws, waged wars, and made treaties of peace there. His father was pleased that he should occupy himself with amusements of this kind, and his sister took an active part in them. There still exist among his papers many of his childish productions; among others, translations and interpretations of passages of the New Testament, poetical paraphrases from the classics, sketches of little poems, a translation of Poncet's Travels in Ethiopia, an historical and geographical description of Africa, written in 1787 (the two last were undertaken as presents to his father on his birth-day), and many other things mostly written during these years."
Here is Niebuhr, at the age of thirty-four, Professor in Berlin, after he had retired from official trusts which had imposed as many toils upon him as would have made an enormously active life for one of the most ancient tenants of our English pension list to look back upon:
"Niebuhr's relinquishment of office, in 1810, forms an important epoch in his life. He was now thirty-four years of age, and since his twentieth year (with the exception of the sixteen months passed in England and Scotland), had been actively engaged in the public service. During this period he had indeed never lost sight of his philological researches, but he had only been able to devote to them his few hours of leisure; now, it was to be seen whether he could find satisfaction in the life of a student, after years passed in the midst of the great world, and surrounded by exciting circumstances. How far he had, however, turned these leisure hours to account, may be judged by the following memorandum, found, with many others of a similar kind, among his papers, and written most probably in Copenhagen about 1803: