Quite a while back, I bought a number of pieces as a job lot. I was not actually sure what I might find when I had the time to look thoroughly at the individual pieces. This chapter is about one piece from 1824-25 and I will begin with the verso or less interesting side. On the verso are a number of snippets of poetry or verse which all are sourced back to a publication called The Literary Magnet of the Belles Lettres, Science, and the Fine Arts published in 1824 – edited and compiled by #TobiasMerton. Please excuse the corners where the previous owner glued a backing page to aid in reading the recto. The pieces are are all hand written with no obvious link since they come from various parts of the publication other than the ‘Red sank’ and Sly Cupid’ which are verses 2 and 3 of a poem called Frederick and Maria.

But let us continue to the more interesting side. Here we find a list of names and a persons evaluation of those people. All of these people sat in parliament in the year of 1824-25. ‘Tabular estimate of some leading members of the House of Commons’ is the overall heading the categories are broken down as follows

Intellectual Capacity – resources, judgement,logic, self-possession

External Appearance- voice,language,style,manner, expression

Effect – power,impression

Predominating Character

Of all the names on the list, possibly the best known would be that of #WilberWilberforce who was considered a radical member of parliament. A voice for the abolition of slavery. The struggle for abolition cost him much in his personal life and health. Wilberforce comes off very well in this evaluation as do a number of others. Some of the comments are not complimentary, some even biting but I would think that the compiler of this chart is being honest in his observations. These members of the #HouseofCommons come from the #WhigandTory parties as well as a couple of radical members. These were some of the men who lead this country through a very difficult cultural and political part of our history. It is very interesting to see what a peer (possibly) thought of them in the various categories.

Have a look. There are some very interesting people on this list.