Punch (80.1881)

194 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [April 30, 1881

" THE CAMPBELLS ARE GOING,

"OH DEAR, ! OH DEAR!"

A HEAL RADICAL CAREER.

Born in a library in the Adelphi—a working literary man's
working room, surrounded by working books ; transferred to " Merry
Islington" for purer air, and lodged in an old-fashioned house in
the Upper Street (No. 215) looking _ across the pleasant fields of
Canonbury ; sent to a dame-school in Colebrooke Plow, Islington,
kept by a Miss Salmon—a Row in which Colley Cibbeb died and
Charles Lamb lived; meeting at this school young Master Rose,
who was afterwards to be his great friend and business adviser ;
sent to Walthamstow to a Unitarian minister for further educa-
tion, and coming home for the holidays to find his father dwelling
in a fine old house in Bloomsbury Square (No. fi), with a grand
square hall supported on stone columns, a broad stone staircase,
and a sitting-room with a lofty marble mantel-piece supported by
massiye_ caryatides ; apprenticed to a lawyer in the Old Jewry,
and sitting on a high stool inventing romances while supposed to be
mastering the dry details of a dry profession ; budding into a popu-
lar and mysterious author, and taking the town by storm ; becoming
the curled darling of fashion ; entering Parliament after one or two
rebuffs, and making an apparent failure in a "maiden" speech;

uttering something very like a prophecy, and trying again; becoming
a great debating if not a constructing power in the House of Com-
i mons ; finding a stupid and obstructive party without a leader of
commanding intellect, seizing that leadership, and maintaining it
for nearly a quarter of a century in spite of aristocratic sneers and
aristocratic prejudices ; rising to be the most trusted adviser of the
Crown, and the most notable and important Peer in the House of
Lords ; and dying at last, peaceably, full of years and honours,
admired and regretted by all parties, as the Right Honourable
the Earl of Beaconsetelb. This is a real Radical career—a career
that is barely possible in any other country than England, and
only partially possible in America ; a career that every low-born,
clear-headed, determined boy may have in his school-bag.

At the Prince of Wales's.

Nervous Old Lady (to Box-Office Keeper). I've come to take
places for The Colonel—(hesitates)—but I won't—unless you assure
me that there will be no firing. (The assurance is given—Old Lady
still hesitating.) I hope you 're not deceiving me. I really am
afraid, as the'name sounds so military !