F ever the trite but beautiful saying, "Death loves a shining mark," was verified by the doings of the great destroyer on our earth, it has surely been the twelvemonth now past. During all this period how many and fatal have been his shafts and how noble the objects against which many of them were levelled! The long list of distinguished persons who have fallen within a year has rarely been equalled in the same length of time. Shock after shock has followed, as every week some new announcement proclaimed the sad tidings that another light had been quenched, another star had left our sky. The world is impoverished and bereaved by the departure of men and women whose names are too numerous to be written here, but whose goodness and greatness were a safeguard and a blessing to it. In our own country, we have many times bowed our heads as the blow fell now on one, now on another whom we loved and honored, while we asked ourselves with startled emphasis, who was the next on whom the sign

was set.

The great man whose name heads this article, and who within the last few months, at a ripe old age, left the earth, was in a peculiar sense a cosmopolitan. Though born in England he was in spirit of no narrow country, but wherever man lives and has needs, there he was at home. A bold, pronounced character, few men have been more largely endowed than he with all that is most great and generous in human nature. It was difficult, nay impossible, for narrow intellects and strictly conventional souls to understand him. He confined himself to no measured grooves such as society delights in marking out. Yet no one could ever accuse him of walking in crooked paths, and he never rusted in ease. He put his infinitely varied abilities to such independent uses; in his true and powerful originality, so sundered the conventional bonds of class; and in his breadth of views was so grand, as often to scandalize men of weaker natures;-men who believe in nothing and who respect nothing that rises above that mediocrity, which

VOL. L

is so comfortable, and which is the conventional stamp of respectability. It is unnecessary to say that Sir John Bowring did not make one of this large class. His was, on the contrary, in an eminent degree, one of those vigorous, fertile, independent minds, which are quick to perceive, strong to judge, and bold to act,-three qualities which fitted him for the often troubled times and scenes in which much of his life was spent.

As a Christian, Mr. Bowring was preeminent; rough-hewn, a little, perhaps, at times, as men whose paths are entangled and difficult will often be, but in heart and in conduct a true Christian gentleman. Yet there were not wanting many who would willingly have excluded him from the pale of the Christain church, and who denied him the Christian name. It was not alone that he was Unitarian and Universalist in his sentiments that this feeling prevailed; for there were among the English Unitarians themselves, many who were sometimes shocked and disgusted at the extreme liberality of his religious views, which went to the extent of earnestly eulogizing and holding up as examples to Christians the morality and religious tone he had found even among Mohammedans and Pagans; declaring that goodness was goodness under whatever guise of heathenism it might be found. It cannot, however, be doubted that his leaning to Unitarianism was the head and front of his offending. For how any one at all familiar with his beautiful hymns which are found in the hymn-books and which are sung in the churches of all denominations wherever the English language is the medium of utterance, and which breathe the truest, purest spirit of Christian devotion-how any one can doubt that their author was thoroughly imbued with a very earnest and living faith, it is hard to understand. He never left himself without witness that he was so, either in his capacity of layman, politician, or man of letters. Whatever he did, or in whatever field his work lay, his beautiful Christian spirit looked out. Though not a clergyman, he often ascended the pulpit,

especially in his later years, and always preached to the great edification of his hearers.

In politics, as might be expected from a man of his extreme views in religious matters, Sir John was a radical, a fact which long stood in the way of his advancement, and which united to his dangerous dogmas of Unitarian-Universalism, only causes us to wonder how he ever succeeded at all, in winning his way to any degree of eminence as a public man, in England, where the church is really the head of the State. There was something very curious in relation to this matter. While the English cabinet did not scruple in the least to make use of Mr. Bowring's vast abilities as an ambassador, they declined to pay him for his services as they paid others serving their country in similar capacities but with less ability, and less satisfactory results. It was during the ministry of the Duke of Wellington that Mr. Bowring was sent on his first mission as ambassador, acquitting himself in that as he did in everything, most admirably, and giving entire satisfaction. But the great man who held the reins of government, refused to pay him more than his mere expenses, for the frankly expressed reason that he was too liberal in his opinions. How easily Mr. Bowring might have changed all this and received a noble salary, had he only chosen to smother his liberal opinions, and unite himself with the national church, as many another one had done before him! But the nobility of his nature could not permit him to stoop to this; he preferred to work for nothing and work honestly, rather than to belie his conscience and deny the convictions of his heart. He could not accept a premium on hypocrisy, however willingly it might have been tendered him. It is hard to believe that even at this day, the whole course of that church in England-I say nothing of our own country-is indirectly a repetition of this act towards Bowring, yet facts seem to justify this belief. Witness the agitation at present prevailing in that church, mainly from the difficulty of settling what its faith really is-so heterogeneous are the opinions existing in its bosom.

Meanwhile this man whose salary was

refused him on account of his liberality in religious opinions, recently died, clothed with a title of nobility and literally covered with orders and ribbons. He fought his way to dignities and honors, without ever having once dishonored himself by abjuring his convictions. Liberal in politics as in religion, he never ceased always and on every occasion to be the advocate of the people; the defender of the oppressed and the uplifter of the lowly.

It is a common saying in the world that nothing can be wider than the contrast between mercantile men and men of science and letters. However real the foundation for this remark may be, it had no existence so far as Bowring was concerned. Commencing his career as a simple merchant's clerk, never was a man more industrious in his calling than he; entering with the most indefatigable zeal into the minutest details of the business of the house in which he was engaged, and into the interests of English commerce in general.

While thus engaged in the perplexities and labors of mercantile life, he was not otherwise idle, never "rusting in ease." He entered zealously into the study of languages, in which he ultimately attained a proficiency perhaps never before realized, and which has been reached by no scholar among his contemporaries, however learned, or however facile a linguist he might be. In an obituary notice of Sir John Bowring published in the London Athenæum, it is stated of him that he exceeded the famous Cardinal Mezzofanti, long supposed to be the greatest linguist in the world, and whom Byron in a Lurst of enthusiastic astonishment called a "monster of languages, a Briareus of parts of speech, and a walking polyglot." Bowring is stated to have exceeded this learned Cardinal, not only by double the number of idioms with which he was acquainted, but also in the numerous applications, literary, philanthropic, and commercial,-which he knew how to make of his vast erudition. In this lay his immense superiority over the generality of great scholars. "No one," remarks another writer, "could ever say of him that he was a living dictionary of words which were without practical value to him

self or others." The writer of the article in the Athenæum states that he had studied two hundred different languages; that he spoke sixty with more or less fluency; and forty others with an accuracy and facility altogether extraordinary, and in a manner which rendered him master of the situation wherever he had occasion to use them. Among these last mentioned languages there were vast differences both in their origin and the countries to which they belonged.

In philosophy and in political economy he was a disciple and continuator of Jeremy Bentham, whose life and writings he edited and published in twenty-three volumes octavo. But while his master was the leader of a school which is justly and par excellence named utilitarian, Bowring carried his principles still farther; manifesting always until the end of his life a philanthropy as zealous as it was indefatigable and untiring; teaching and propagating with all the powers of his great mind, notions which matter-of-fact men love to treat as social chimeras and humanitarian illusions.

The essential facts of Mr. Bowring's astonishingly varied and brilliant career are the following. Born in Exeter, England, he received originally only a very common, even limited, education; but this deficiency seemed only to urge him forward with greater energy and determination, in the path he seems vaguely even in his early youth to have marked out for himself. Availing himself of every possible opportunity, he neglected nothing which presented itself that could help him in the acquisition of facts, sciences or languages. His prodigious facility and tenacious memory grasped everything which came to hand, storing it away systematically for present or future use. He began by utilizing to his own instruction, the commercial voyages which he made for his employers, opening his eyes and ears to everything he saw and heard, often causing himself to be remarked with a vague sort of wonder at his outreaching and absorbing intellect, so unusual in young men in his position. It began to attract attention in his own country and in high quarters as well, and it was not long before he was induced to turn his

labors in the direction of politics, which thenceforward claimed a large share of his service, his activity, and his knowledge, and soon brought him under the observation of the ministry.

In 1822 he left England for Portugal as bearer of despatches announcing to that. government the war which the Bourbons were about to declare against Spain. At Calais he was arrested and thrown into prison, the papers having been found upon him. Canning, then prime minister, demanded his release, and was on the point of obtaining it when Bowring was accused of engaging in a plot to rescue from the scaffold four sergeants of Rochelle who had been convicted of some crime. He was, however, released without trial, but with the order never to put foot in France again. It is unnecessary to say that this interdiction fell of itself with the fall of the Bourbons. At the news of the revolution attending this event, an address to the French people by the inhabitants of London was determined on in Guildhall; it was written by Bowring, who at the head of a deputation was commissioned to bear the document to Paris; an official dinner was there given him at the Hotel-de-ville, and he was honored as the first Englishman who welcomed the new king.

Returning to England he was for several years engaged in the publication of the Westminster Review. He also translated and gave to the public in rapid succession, anthologies, or selections from the best and most popular poetry, especially lyric, of Russia, [1821-23]; of Holland and of Spain [1824]; of Poland and Servia, [1827]; of the Magyars, [1830]; of the Tchechs [1832]; as well as numerous translations from the Danish and the German; from the Frieslandish and the Platte Dutch; from the Esthonian and the Icelandic; from the Portuguese and from the Basque; from the Romaic and Finnish, from the Chinese, from the Sanscrit, from the Cingalese, and many other Oriental languages. In one great enterprise he failed. He had undertaken a history and a collection of the popular poetry of all the nations on the globe, and had actually engaged assistants to aid him in the work in a great many different

countries. This enormous project, as we have said, failed; and he published scarcely a fiftieth part of the immensely varied volumes of the poetry, and the multitude of articles on their history, which had been prepared. These appeared in the various Journals and Reviews. At Madrid he wrote a work in the Spanish language against the maintenance of slavery in Cuba. He also translated into French Thomas Clarkson's work on the " Opinions of the early Christians in regard to War." Meanwhile his services began to be more and more in demand by the government. Great as the service he was doing it in a literary way the ministry felt that there were other fields in which he could do it more efficient service. One after another a great number of foreign missions were confided to him; some bearing upon commerce, some relating to statistics and political economy. While he was in the Netherlands acquitting himself of a task of this kind, the University of Groeningin conferred upon him the honorary title of LL. D., and from that period he was, according to Anglo-Saxon usage, known as Doctor Bowring. His commercial reports upon France, [1831], upon Egypt, and Syria, upon Italy at two very different epochs in the history of that country, upon Switzerland and the Zollverein, were all distinguished for their great ability and exhaustive thoroughness; and are still regarded as models in that field of labor.

In 1838 he wrote upon the "Oriental Plague and Quarantines," demanding the suppression of the latter, as not only useless but a serious obstruction and injury to commerce. In this decision, it would seem from the light which our own late experience in that direction throws upon the subject, that his judgment was not infallible. He undoubtedly, however, looked at it from the standpoint of the forty days quarantine to which vessels, sometimes with clean bills of health, were subjected, when coming from ports where infectious diseases prevailed. A quarantine of this length under the burning sun of the tropics would be far more liable to engender disease among the unfortunate seamen suffering it,

than to prevent contagion from being communicated to others.

Among the many appointments which he received from Parliament was one making him secretary of a commission to examine into and reform the abuses of England in regard to public affairs; and soon after he was made president of a commission to ameliorate colonial abuses. The reforms which he proposed in reference to the latter have been in a great measure adopted.

From 1835 to 1837, and from '41 to '49, Dr. Bowring was in Parliament, and on several other occasions he received a majority of votes, but was rejected in consequence of his radicalism, and more especially on account of his denial of the authority of the church, and his connection with the Unitarians; a law perhaps in England, but one certainly not speaking much in favor of English liberality. And to reject a man on that score, like Bowring whose services were so invaluable, hardly speaks much for its good sense.

It is impossible to cite the half of his published literary works, so full of vigor and persuasive eloquence. He wrote, as he did everything else, ably in favor of Free Trade, against War, in advocacy of the decimal system of currency; as to the latter object, so strongly was he sustained by Prince Albert, that he succeeded in obtaining from the House of Commons an emission of a new coin, the florin, which was a first step towards the adoption by England of the decimal system. How soon a second step in that direction will be taken in that country, is doubtful. The empire of prejudice and of precedent is strong and difficult of subversion. This reform will therefore probably wait, important as it is.

In January, 1849, Bowring entered upon a new and most important career—that of England's representative in the extreme Orient. He was at first Consul at Canton; and in 1853 Superintendent of Commerce, and Minister Plenipotentiary in China, with the numerous and sounding titles of Commander-in-Chief, Vice-Admiral of the fleet, Governor of Hong Kong, Ambassador to the Courts of Japan, of Siam, of Cochin