Robert Hall

“ A discourse, “The Value of a Man,” was published on his death by the Rev. Edward B. Hall (Providence, 1848) . — His son, Robert, author, b. in New York city, 5 Oct., 1826; d. in Providence, R. I., 9 Oct., 1851, spent his early life in Copenhagen and Paris, but left his school in the latter city in 1841 to devote himself to engineering, which he abandoned in 1843, and attended lectures at the Sorbonne and the College de France. In 1847 he came to this country with his father, entered the Harvard law-school, and was admitted to the bar in 1851. ”

“ Hopes of obtaining men of the general standing of Thomas Chalmers, Robert Hall, or Sir J. Mackintosh for morals, and of Whately for logic, were disappointed, The actual candidates, when the chairs were first advertised in the spring of 1827, were men of no mark. ”

“ I never heard of his being even suspected of dishonesty."
"He is the only man who has been in the hall to-night. No one could have come in from the front while we were at dinner."
"No one without our knowledge. The door has a queer sort of latch or lock. Sometimes in high winds it would let go and blow open, but some servant who had lived here before we came put Robert up to a way of catching it that proved very effective. No; nobody was in the hall except McLean, and of course that is out of the question. ”

“ Robinson, successor to Robert Hall, at Cambridge, a biography which Wordsworth pronounced to be the best in the language.
At least on two occasions the celebrated Robert Hall, then a Baptist minister at Cambridge, attended the Club and took a leading part in the debates. From one of the old minute books of the Club [for a perusual of this book I am indebted to Miss Pickering, whose father's shop in John Street was the depôt of the Club till recent years] for the years 1786-90, I find that on two occasions the question for debate stands in the name of Mr. ”

“ After a few moments Sir Robert said:
'Can't you send him away? Why does he come so soon? O God! O God! let him leave me for an hour; a little time. I can't see him now; try to get him away. You see I can't go down now; I have not strength. O God! O God! let him come back in an hour; it is not long to wait. He cannot lose anything by it; nothing, nothing, nothing. Tell him that; say anything to him.'
The servant went down. In his own words, he did not feel the stairs under him till he got to the hall. ”

“ His mind went back to the day after the garden party at Glencairn Hall, when he had sent for Robert to honor them with his presence at Gordon House, and how the poet had taken offense at some thoughtless remark of his, given in kindly spirit; how with haughty pride, and wounded dignity, [341] he had gotten up from the table and after thanking them for their hospitality, declared he had not come to be insultingly patronized and pitied, and refusing to listen to reason, or explanation, he had left in bitter resentment and blind misunderstanding. ”

“ Trust my case to Sir Willmott Burrell!" growled Dalton, as he sat opposite the enfeebled baronet: his hands clenched, his brows knit, and his heart swelling in his bosom with contending feelings. "Trust my case to Sir Willmott Burrell!" he repeated. "And so, Sir Robert Cecil, you have sold your soul to the devil for a mess of pottage, a mess of poisoned pottage! You have not, you say, the poor power of obtaining the most trifling favour for yourself. ”

“ And he whistled on his way, though not "for want of thought;" his feelings and affections were divided between Barbara Iverk and Walter De Guerre.
We must now proceed with Hugh Dalton a second time to Cecil Place. His interview with the baronet was of a nature [201] very different from that with which our narrative commenced. Sir Robert seemed as if the weight of a hundred years had been pressed upon his brow; indeed, Time could not have so altered any man. ”

“ Are you writing? are you ciphering? are you studying? Why do you not answer me?" He was evidently in a frolic.
"Go to your play, Frank, and do not bother us," returned Robert, impatiently; "we are thinking."
"I know you are; for father said we are thinking all the time we are awake, and sometimes while we are asleep. But I want to know what you are thinking about so hard."
"Don't you know," Harold answered, mildly, "that we are going to Riley's Island tomorrow, and that Robert and I have to make out a list of what we are to carry? We are making our lists." ”

“ His grandfather, William Hamilton, principal of Edinburgh University, had been a professor of divinity. Having completed his education at the university of Edinburgh, where he was distinguished in mathematics, Robert was induced to enter a banking-house in order to acquire a practical knowledge of business, but his ambition was really academic. In 1769 he gave up business pursuits and accepted the rectorship of Perth academy. In 1779 he was presented to the chair of natural philosophy at Aberdeen University. ”

“ For I am nervous, and my hand trembles. If he breaks through the door, fire."
Ben Haley would have been up before this, but it occurred to him to explore other parts of the cellar, that he might carry away as much booty as possible. He had rendered himself amenable to the law already, and he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, so he argued. He was so busily occupied that he did not hear the noise of Robert's entrance into the room above, or he would at once have gone upstairs. In consequence of the delay his uncle and Robert had time to concert measures for opposing him. ”

“ Robert sighed and went near the window. He was ready to meet his fate. A confessed vulgarian, he foresaw the verdict of justice in the shape of that still, whiteclad form. He knew the rigid lines that a Van Der Pool would draw. He was a peasant gambolling indecorously in the valley, and the pure, cold, white, unthawed summit of the Matterhorn could not but frown on him. He had been unmasked by his own actions. All the polish, the poise, the form that the city had given him had fallen from him like an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a country breeze. ”

“ He outruns them all; he outbellows them all. Of course he does. He is a man. He is one of those splendid, wonderful, mysterious creatures to whom, subject only to Rosalie’s father, the entire world belongs. Look at him, bounding, bawling! Wonderful, wonderful Harold!
But Robert is wonderful too. If it had been Anna or Flora or Hilda gone off with the pump, she would have been easily caught. Not Robert. Wonderful and mysterious Robert, wonderfully and mysteriously pedalling at incredible speed, is not caught. ”

“ He has long been dean of the faculty of law in Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, from which college also he holds his doctor’s degree. All his life, Mr. Hall has been a leader of the public enterprises of his native province, his name being regarded as a tower of strength to any organization with which he becomes identified. He not only has the character of a man of spotless honor, but his public spirit, his great business ability, and his capacity for hard work, are guarantees of the success of anything to which he puts his hand. ”

“ His father, George R. Edeson, who died while comedian and stage manager of the Philadelphia Girard Avenue stock company, in 1899, was so convinced that the actor's calling brought principally heart-sickness and disappointment that he used every means to dissuade his son from taking up with it.
As a sort of compromise, when young Robert finished school (he was born in New Orleans, and the family now lived in Brooklyn) he went into the front of the house and obtained a position with Colonel Sinn as guardian of the box-office at the Park Theater. ”

“ Having finished our coffee, we rose from the table and had a stroll through the suite of rooms in which Sir Robert dwells in solitary grandeur. There was a striking absence of the curios which one would have expected to find in the quarters of a man who had passed so many years in the Far East. Beyond his work Sir Robert had evidently but few hobbies. In one corner of the drawing-room was a large table covered with the Christmas cards which my host received last year from his many friends all over the world, whilst on the walls were a few very ordinary pictures. ”

“ Years rolled quietly away, and nothing very novel occurred in the arrangements of Castle Ardagh, excepting that Sir Robert parted with his odd companion, but as nobody could tell whence he came, so nobody could say whither he had gone. Sir Robert’s habits, however, underwent no consequent change; he continued regularly to frequent the race meetings, without mixing at all in the convivialities of the gentry, and immediately afterwards to relapse into the secluded monotony of his ordinary life. ”

“ His elder brother, Lord Cranborne, being still alive, no one ever thought of his succeeding his father, while his constituency was one of the last of the pocket boroughs, so that he enjoyed every condition of irresponsibility and independence. Another element emphasised his detachment. The tendency of politics is to absorb the politician completely, and to shut out other interests and other questions. To Lord Robert politics was an occupation, while what old-fashioned people used to call philosophy—abstract thought on theology and science—was his abiding interest. ”

“ As a poet, he was inferior to Wordsworth and Tennyson, yet superior to Pye or Austin. He was a native of Bristol, where his father was an unsuccessful linen-draper in Wine Street. Heredity had little or nothing to do with the evolution of Robert's genius, except so far as from his mother's alertness of intellect and happy temperament he received a foundation upon which he was enabled to build his literary future. ”

“ The rental-book, wi' its black cover and brass clasps, was lying beside him; and a book of sculduddry sangs was put betwixt the leaves, to keep it open at the place where it bore evidence against the Goodman of Primrose-Knowe, as behind the hand with his mails and duties. Sir Robert gave my gudesire a look, as if he would have withered his heart in his bosom. Ye maun ken he had a way of bending his brows, that men saw the visible mark of a horse-shoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been stamped there. ”

“ Frank begged hard to be allowed to go too, his confidence in Robert's woodsmanship having been greatly increased by the recent success; but Harold decided against him. He said that in turkey shooting the fewer persons there were present the better; that Robert himself must keep still as a mouse, and that well trained as Mum was, it would be better even for him to be left behind. Robert therefore departed alone, putting into his pocket a small volume of Shakespeare, to aid in whiling away the slow hours of his solitary watch. ”

“ But scarcely had they reached the oak, before Harold, pointing to the earth, softened by a rain two nights before, cried out:
"Look here, Robert! The tracks of two persons wearing shoes!"
Robert's unpractised eye would never have detected the signs which Harold's Indian tuition enabled him so readily to discover; he could scarcely distinguish, after the closest scrutiny, more than the deep indentation of a boot-heel. But that was enough; a boot-heel proved the presence of a boot, and a boot proved the presence of a white man. ”

“ Standing, pale and lanky, amid his electrodes and his retorts, there was still something majestic about this man, who, amid all his stupendous good fortune, could still keep his moral sense undazzled by the glitter of his gold. Robert's weak nature had never before realised the strength which lay in those thin, firm lips and earnest eyes. ”

“ To be sure he could still be seen at intervals directing his plow, a labor in which he excelled, but it was not at Ellisland that he was now in general to be found. Mounted on horseback, our hero was pursuing the defaulters of the revenue among the hills and vales of Nithdale, his roving eye wandering over the charms of nature, and muttering his wayward fancies as he moved along. Though by nature of an athletic form, Robert had in his constitution the peculiarities and delicacies that belong to the temperament of genius. ”

“ Beyond the house, and on the edge of the prairie, was a close growth of wild plums.
"This place," said Harold, musing, "must have belonged to some old chief. The common people do not live so comfortably. It is likely that he continued here after all others of his tribe had gone; and when he died, his children buried him, and they also went away. Poor fellow! here he lies. He owned a beautiful island, and we are his heirs."
"Peace to his ashes!" ejaculated Robert. ”

“ Near a low truckle-bed, upon which Sir Robert sometimes slept, for he was a whimsical man, in a large armchair, sat, or rather lounged, the form of the valet Jacque, his arms folded, and his heels stretched forward on the floor, so as fully to exhibit his misshapen legs, his head thrown back, and his eyes fixed upon his master with a look of indescribable defiance and derision, while, as if to add to the strange insolence of his attitude and expression, he had placed upon his head the black cloth cap which it was his habit to wear. ”

“ What could draw any man forth upon such a night?
Hurriedly Robert struck a match and lit his lamp. His father's room was opposite his own, and the door was ajar. He pushed it open and looked about him. It was empty. The bed had not even been lain upon. The single chair stood by the window, and there the old man must have sat since he left them. There was no book, no paper, no means by which he could have amused himself, nothing but a razor-strop lying on the window-sill.
A feeling of impending misfortune struck cold to Robert's heart. ”