The Woman Question [pp. 376-377]

APPLEAPSTO S' JO U]RNAL OF POPULAR
is always in his seat at church on Sundays, and still finds pleas ure in society and social amusements.
Captain Frederick L- was born in Lambeth Parish, Lon doen, March 9, 1766, and for the last quarter of a century has
been a resident of this city. His step is firm, and his figure
erect, with unimpaired mind and a cheery manner. As a com missioned officer in the British army eighty years ago, and as
a traveller and explorer in Asia, Africa, and Australia, he
has probably had more varied and marvellous experiences of
life than any man now living. Although born before Napo leon, or his great adversary Wellington, our old friend is still
strong in body and mind, as Labruy6re says of one of his char acters, " years with him have not twelve months, nor add to
his age."
The grandfather of Captain L was a native of France,
and attained the rank of major in the French army; he was
driven from his native land, being a Huguenot, by Louis XIV.'s
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October 22, 1685; and, in
company with some of his comrades, fled to Prussia, where
the Huguenot industry and skill aided in no small degree to lay
the basis of the present powerful kingdom, whose helm is held
in the firm grasp of Bismarck. The venerable captain's fa ther was attached to the Prussian legation in London, where
he married an English lady, the mother of the subject of
this sketch. He was educated at the military academy at
Croydon; entered the English army with an ensign's commis sion in October, 1789; fought with the Sixtieth British Rifles
in Holland under the Duke of York, in 1793; served in Den mark with the troops cooperating with the navy under Lord
Nelson, at the capture of Copenhagen; accompanied Lord Cas tlereagh as a military member of his staff to the famous Vienna
Congress; witnessed the celebrated interview between Napoleon
and Alexander on the river Niemen, in 1807; fought under
Wellington in the Anglo-Hispano army in the Peninsular cam paign, where he volunteered to lead a forlorn hope in an
attack upon a French redoubt, which was carried with a loss
of fifty-nine killed and wounded, out of a command of less than
one hundred men. It was in this desperate assault, and in the
moment of victory, that he was struck down by a blow on the
head from a sabre, and was for some time insensible and supposed to be dead. For this daring deed he was promoted by
Wellington and decorated with a medal which he wears on certain occasions when en grand tenue. Captain L captured
an American vessel off the coast of Africa, during the second
war with Great Britain, he being at the time in command of
an army transport; and in 1816 he assisted for three months
in guarding Napoleon at St. Helena, and held frequent conversation with the Great Captain, whom he considers was most
shamefully treated by the brutal Sir Hudson Lowe. He sold
his commission in the British army in 1818, and, after varied
experiences in almost every quarter of the globe, took up his
residence in New York. His widowed daughter and grandson, who accompanied him to the United States, have since
died, leaving him childless and alone in the world, but not
without troops of friends. Left for dead on the battle-field
of Busaco, there is no token of what he suffered but a deep
scar, showing where he was struck by the French sabreur, and
a valued medal; taken up for a drowned man on the shores of
Algoa Bay near the Cape of Good Hope, after suffering shipwreck, the only permanent consequence he has experienced has
been the loss of his fortune, which went down with his wife,
in the vessel. When the Prince of Wales visited the United
States ten years ago, he invited the captain to return to England, promising to place him on the retired army list, on halfpay, but the old hero was too deeply attached to his adopted
home to leave it. During the riots of 1863 he confronted a
mob and saved a life at the imminent peril of his own. On the
occasion of the reception given by Admiral Farragut on his
noble flag-ship, the Franklin, before his departure for Europe,
in June, 1867, Captain L-, then more than a century old, was
present, and, after being on his feet for several hours, appeared
to be less fatigued than some others who were twoscore years
his juniors.
His habits of life are entirely different from those of his
fellow-men. He rises at three, breakfasts before daylight, dines
at noon, takes his tea about five, and before fashionable Go thamites sit down to dinner the captain is comfortably ensconced
in his bed. He does not retire with the birds, but before them,
his hour being six o'clock. He remarked to the writer, with
whom he rode home from the reception referred to above,
at half-past seven, that he had not sat up so late in twenty
years. For forty years his life was maintained by a daily
dose of seventy-five grains of opium, having on two different
occasions been compelled to increase the dose to one hundred
and fifty grains. Within a few years he reduced his daily
dose to forty grains, when, finding his health failing, he was
entirely restored by a single dose of one hundred grains.
Perhaps there is not on record another similar case of benefit
being derived from the use of opium, of which for many years
the veteran soldier consumed twenty-five pounds per annum.
When Captain L was a young man of eighteen, he often
saw Dr. Johnson in the streets of London, going to or from his
famous house in Bolt Court. The latter had known Alexander
Pope, who knew "honest John Dryden "-who had associated
with the immortal Milton-who is said to have been patted
on the head by William Shakespeare. How small the number
of links in the chain which connect us with the Elizabethan
era! How few are the rungs of the ladder of time on which
we return to the glorious days of "good Queen Bess," and the
literary gayety of which the "immortal Williams" was the
bright particular star. The captain, Johnson, Pope, Dryden,
Milton-only five men in direct line from the time of Spenser
and Sir Walter Raleigh. Take the ascent only a single degree
farther, and we have Elizabeth, who talked with Shakespeare,
Sidney, and Spenser; and whose father was born in 1491,
less than half a century from the time when John Guttenberg
invented cut-metal type, and commenced working the first
edition of the Bible.
In contemplating the lengthened career of the venerable
captain, the mind naturally recurs to the immense changes
which have taken place during its continuance. When he was
born there was not a single settlement in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
or Kentucky. It was not till 1769 that the adventurous Boone
left his home in North Carolina to penetrate the Western wilderness. The population of the United States was less than
two millions, and was perhaps the most loyal part of the British empire. There were only four newspapers, whose combined circulation did not exceed two thousand copies, and
cylinder presses, steam-engines, railroads, steamboats, and telegraphs, had not been imagined.
THE WOMAN QUESTION.
W E publish this week, from advance-sheets, an abstract of
the opening argument of Mr. J. S. Mill's new book on
the "Subjection of Woman," which the publishers of this journal will shortly issue by arrangement with the author. It has
been looked for with great interest, and will be carefully and
widely read, while it cannot fail to be influential in shaping
opinion upon the question. Mr. Mill's high position, both as a
thinker and as a representative of advanced ideas, together with
the fact that this subject is one which has long and deeply interested his feelings, will give influence and authority to his
views, such as no other living man could exert.
Into the discussion of the general question it will be time
enough to enter when we have completely before us the exposition of its grounds and claims by the acknowledged intellectual leader of the new movement; but there is one consideration to which it is proper to draw attention now. Mr. Mill's
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