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One of the first places to which a stranger
is taken in Liverpool, is the Athenæum. It is
established on a liberal and judicious plan;
contains a good library, and spacious reading
room, and is the great literary resort of the
place. Go there at what hour you may, you
are sure to find it filled with grave looking personages,
deeply absorbed in the study of newspapers.

As I was once visiting this haunt of the
learned, my attention was attracted to a person
just entering the room. He was advanced in

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life, tall, and of a form that might once have
been commanding, but it was a little bowed
by time—perhaps by care. He had a noble
Roman style of countenance; a head that
would have pleased a painter; and though
some slight furrows on his brow showed that
wasting thought had been busy there, yet his
eye still beamed with the fire of a poetic soul.
There was something in his whole appearance
that indicated a being of a different order from
the bustling race around him.

I inquired his name, and was informed that
it was Roscoe. I drew back with an involuntary
feeling of veneration. This, then, was an
author of celebrity; this was one of those
men, whose voices have gone forth to the ends
of the earth; with whose minds I have communed
even in the solitudes of America. Accustomed,
as we are in our country, to know
European writers only by their works, we cannot
conceive of them, as of other men, engrossed
by trivial or sordid pursuits, and jostling
with the crowd of common minds in the dusty

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paths of life. They pass before our imaginations
like superior beings, radiant with the emanations
of their own genius, and surrounded by
a halo of literary glory.

To find the elegant historian of the Medici,
therefore, mingling among the busy sons of
traffick, at first shocked my poetical ideas; but
it is from the very circumstances and situation
in which he has been placed, that Mr. Roscoe
derives his highest claims to admiration. It is
interesting to notice how some minds seem almost
to create themselves; springing up under
every disadvantage, and working their solitary,
but irresistible, way through a thousand obstacles.
Nature seems to delight in disappointing
the cherishing assiduities of art, with which it
would rear legitimate dulness to maturity; and
to glory in the vigour and luxuriance of her
chance productions. She scatters the seeds of
genius to the winds, and though some may perish
among the stony places of the world, and
some be choked by the thorns and brambles of
early adversity, yet others will now and then

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strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle
bravely up into sunshine, and spread over
their steril birth-place all the beauties of vegetation.

Such has been the case with Mr. Roscoe.
Born in a place apparently ungenial to the
growth of literary talent; in the very market
place of trade; without fortune, family connections,
or patronage; self prompted, self sustained,
and almost self taught, he has conquered
every obstacle, achieved his way to eminence,
and, having become one of the ornaments
of the nation, has turned the whole
force of his talents and influence to advance
and embellish his native town.

Indeed, it is this last trait in his character
which has given him the greatest interest in my
eyes, and induced me particularly to point him
out to my countrymen. Eminent as are his
literary merits, he is but one among the many
distinguished authors of this intellectual nation.
They, however, live but in general for their
own fame, or their own pleasures. Their

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private history presents no lesson to the world, or,
perhaps, a humiliating one of human frailty
and inconsistency. At best, they are prone to
steal away from the bustle and commonplace
of busy existence; to indulge in the selfishness
of lettered ease; and revel in scenes of mental,
but exclusive, enjoyment.

Mr. Roscoe, on the contrary, has claimed
none of the accorded privileges of talent. He
has shut himself up in no garden of thought,
or elysium of fancy; but has gone forth into
the highways and thoroughfares of life; he has
planted bowers by the way side, for the refreshment
of the pilgrim and the sojourner, and has
established pure fountains where the labouring
man may turn aside from the dust and heat of
the day, and drink of the living streams of
knowledge. There is a “daily beauty in his
life,” on which mankind may meditate and
grow better. It exhibits no lofty and almost
useless, because inimitable, example of excellence;
but presents a picture of active, yet simple
and imitable virtues, which are within every

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man's reach, but which few men exercise, or
this world would be a paradise.

But his private life is peculiarly worthy the
attention of the citizens of our young and busy
country, where literature and the elegant arts
must grow up side by side with the coarser
plants of daily necessity; and must depend for
their culture, not on the exclusive devotion of
time and wealth, or the quickening rays of
titled patronage, but on hours and seasons
snatched from the pursuit of worldly interests,
by intelligent and public spirited individuals.

He has shown how much may be done, in
hours of leisure, by one master spirit, for a
place, and how completely it can give its own
impress to surrounding objects. Like his own
Lorenzo De Medici, on whom he seems to have
fixed his eye, as on a pure model of antiquity,
he has woven the history of his life with the
history of his native town, and made the foundations
of its fame the monuments of his virtues.
Wherever you go, in Liverpool, you per

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ceive traces of his footsteps in all that is elegant
and liberal. He found the tide of wealth
flowing merely in the channels of traffick; he
has diverted from it invigorating rills to refresh
the gardens of literature. By his own example
and constant exertions, he has brought into effect
that union of commerce and the intellectual
pursuits, so eloquently recommended in one of
his latest writings;[1] and has practically proved
how beautifully they may be brought to harmonize,
and to benefit each other. The noble institutions
for literary and scientific purposes,
which reflect such credit on Liverpool, and are
giving such an impulse to the public mind, have
mostly been originated, and all effectively promoted,
by Mr. Roscoe: and when we consider
the rapidly increasing opulence and magnitude
of that town, which promises to vie in commercial
importance with the metropolis; it will be
perceived that in awakening an ambition of
mental improvement among its inhabitants, he

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has effected a great benefit to the cause of British
literature.

In America we only know Mr. Roscoe as
the author—in Liverpool he is spoken of as the
banker; and I was told of his having been unfortunate
in business. I could not pity him, as
I heard some rich men do. I considered him
far above the reach of my pity. Those who
live only for the world, and in the world, may
be cast down by the frowns of adversity; but a
man like Roscoe is not to be overcome by the
mutations of fortune. They do but drive him
in upon the resources of his own mind, to the
superior society of his own thoughts, which the
best of men are apt sometimes to neglect, and
to roam abroad in search of less worthy associates.
He is independent of the world around
him. He lives with antiquity and with posterity:
with antiquity, in the sweet communion of
studious retirement; and with posterity, in the
generous aspirings after future renown. The
solitude of such a mind, is its state of highest
enjoyment. It is then visited by those elevated

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meditations which are the proper aliment of noble
souls, and are like manna, sent from heaven,
in the wilderness of this world.

While my feelings were yet alive on the subject,
it was my fortune to light on farther traces
of Mr. Roscoe. I was riding out with a gentleman,
to view the environs of Liverpool, when
he turned off, through a gate, into some ornamented
grounds. After riding a short distance,
we came to a spacious mansion of freestone,
built in the Grecian style. It was not in the
purest taste, yet it had an air of elegance, and
the situation was delightful. A fine lawn sloped
away from it, studded with clumps of trees,
so disposed as to break a soft fertile country
into a variety of landscapes. The Mersey was
seen winding a broad quiet sheet of water
through an expanse of green meadow land,
while the Welsh mountains, blending with
clouds, and melting into distance, bordered the
horizon.

This was Roscoe's favourite residence during
the days of his prosperity. It had been the seat

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of elegant hospitality and literary retirement.
The house was now silent and deserted. I saw
the windows of the study, which looked out
upon the soft scenery I have mentioned. The
windows were closed—the library was gone.
Two or three ill-favoured beings were loitering
about the place, whom my fancy pictured into
retainers of the law. It was like visiting some
classic fountain, that had once welled its pure
waters in a sacred shade, but now dry and
dusty, with the lizard and the toad brooding
over the shattered marbles.

I inquired after the fate of Mr. Roscoe's library,
which had consisted of scarce and foreign
books, from many of which he had
drawn the materials for his Italian histories.
It had passed under the hammer of the auctioneer,
and was dispersed about the country.
The good people of the vicinity thronged like
wreckers to get some part of the noble wreck
that had been driven on shore. Did such
a scene admit of ludicrous associations, we
might imagine something whimsical in this

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strange irruption into the regions of learning.
Pigmies rummaging the armoury of a giant,
and contending for the possession of weapons
which they could not wield. To notice
some knot of speculators, debating with calculating
brow over the quaint binding and illuminated
margin of an obsolete author; or the air
of intense, but baffled, sagacity with which
some successful purchaser attempted to dive
into the black-letter bargain he had secured.

It is a beautiful incident in the story of Mr.
Roscoe's misfortunes, and one that will be appreciated
by the studious mind, that the parting
with his books seems to have touched upon his
tenderest feelings, and to have been the only
circumstance that could provoke the notice of
his muse. The scholar only knows how dear
these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure
thoughts and innocent hours, become in the
time of adversity. When all that is worldly,
turns to dross around us, these only retain their
steady value. When friends grow cold, and the
converse of intimates languishes into vapid

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civility and common-place, these only continue
the unaltered countenance of happier days, and
cheer us with that true friendship that never deceived
hope, nor deserted sorrow.

I do not wish to censure; but, surely, if the
people of Liverpool had been properly sensible
of what was due to Mr. Roscoe and to themselves,
his library would never have been sold.
Good worldly reasons may, doubtless, be given
for the circumstance, which it would be difficult
to combat with others that might seem merely
fanciful; but it certainly appears to me such an
opportunity as seldom occurs, of cheering a noble
mind struggling under misfortunes, by one
of the most delicate, but expressive, tokens of
public sympathy. It is difficult, however, to estimate
a man of genius properly, who is daily
before our eyes. He becomes mingled and
confounded with other men. His great qualities
lose their novelty, and we become too familiar
with the common materials that form
the basis even of the loftiest character. Some
of Mr. Roscoe's townsmen may regard him

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merely as a man of business; others, as a politician;
all find him engaged, like themselves,
in ordinary occupations, and surpassed, perhaps,
by themselves, on some points of worldly wisdom.
Even the amiable and unostentatious
simplicity of his character, which gives the
nameless grace to real excellence, may cause
him to be undervalued by some coarse minds,
who do not know that true worth is always
void of glare and pretension. But the man of
letters who speaks of Liverpool, speaks of it as
the residence of Roscoe.—The intelligent traveller
who visits it, inquires where Roscoe is to
be seen.—He is the literary land-mark of the
place, indicating its existence to the distant
scholar.—He is like Pompey's column at Alexandria,
towering alone in classic dignity.

The following sonnet, addressed by Mr. Roscoe
to his books, on parting with them, is alluded
to in the preceding article. If any thing

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can add effect to the pure feeling and elevated
thought here displayed, it is the conviction, that
the whole is no effusion of fancy, but a faithful
transcript from the writer's heart:

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