PART I.


"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
SHAKSPEARE


Why I give the world a sketch of my career through it, is not among the
discoveries which I intend to make. I have been a public man; let those
who know public life imagine what interest may be felt in reviewing the
scenes and struggles of which such a life is full. May there not be a
pleasure in conceiving once again the shapes and circumstances of
things, as one sitting by his fireside sees castles and cottages, men,
women, and children in the embers, and shapes them the better for the
silence and the solitude round him? Let the reader take what reason he
will. I have seen the world, and fought my way through it; have
stumbled, like greater men, have risen, like lesser; have been flung
into the most rapid current of the most hurried, wild, and vivid time
that the world has ever seen--I have _lived_ through the last fifty
years. In all the vigour of my life, I have mingled in some of the
greatest transactions, and been mingled with some of the greatest men,
of my time. Like one who has tumbled down Niagara, and survived the
fall, though I have reached still water, the roar of the cataract is yet
in my ears; and I can even survey it with a fuller gaze, and stronger