questions have been asked about General James
Oglethorpe, since the appearance of Mr. Robert
Wright's Memoir* has made his name familiar!
A man, whom Pope celebrated, and Johnson
honoured, who preceded Howard in prison
reformation, and who founded a state which
has since become one of the most famous of
the American Union—a man who held the
place of a leader in his lifetime, and who
did the noble work of reformation and creation,
has passed out of men's memories altogether.
He has not been crystallised, so to speak, by
poem, picture, or household allusion, and his
name has, therefore, run into sand; from which,
however, it has now been dug out.
* A Memoir of General James Oglethorpe.  By
Robert Wright.

James Oglethorpe was the son of the Sir
Theophilus and Lady Oglethorpe who figure
in the Warming-pan story concerning the birth
of James the Second's Prince of Wales.  But,
though the story has long since been discarded
as an invention of the enemy, there are a few
discrepancies about dates and registers, which
Mr. Wright cannot quite explain away, that
seem to point to a substitution of sons in
the Oglethorpe family.  Whether true or false,
they have nothing to do with the story on hand,
and it does not, in the least degree, signify to
us whether this James who founded Georgia,
was the real and original James as is assumed,
or only a younger son translated to the name
and position of the elder boy after the Warmingpan
plot had got cold and its embers had
died away.  Neither does it affect us, at
this distance of time, to know that the
Oglethorpe family was good and the Oglethorpe
blood blue.  Our interest lies in knowing
what the man himself was, and not what his
forefathers were; in learning what he did to
set the crooked world somewhat straighter,
and not what was done by a generation of
roaring old savages, some hundreds of years
ago, to get more beeves and land to their
own share than their neighbours had, and by
what means of craft, bullying, or manslaughter
these were obtained, as was most convenient to
the matter on hand.  However, worthless as it
may be to know, we are told that the General
was of a good old family—that he was an
"Oxonian," like his brothers before him—that,
like them, he soon left Alma Mater for the
rougher life of a soldier, and served under
Prince Eugene, who made him, first, his secretary,
and then his aide-de-camp—that he was
at the battle of Peterwaraden and at the siege
of Belgrade.  " 'Pray, General,' said Doctor
Johnson, 'give us an account of the siege of
Belgrade.'  Upon which the old warrior poured
a little wine on the table, and with a wet finger
described every position, saying, 'Here we were,
and here were the Turks,' and so on, while the
Doctor listened with the closest attention."

When peace was concluded between the
Austrian Emperor and the Sultan (1718), Oglethorpe
was left without active employment.  Knowing
nothing better to do, he returned to England;
and, on the death of his elder brother, succeeded
to the family mansion and estate, Westbrook,
near Godalming.  It may as well be told, here,
that after his death Westbrook was bought by
Godbold, the famous proprietor of the Vegetable
Balsam, "when that popular quack doctor placed
a figure of Fame upon the parapet of the house,
of which he published an engraving, with doggrel
lines, eulogistic of himself and his nostrum."
There is a tradition, too, that the Pretender was
once secreted at Westbrook; and a vault is shown
wherein he could be concealed in a case of
emergency.  He used to walk in the avenues early in
the morning and late in the evening, wrapped in
a large cloak like Edgar Ravenswood; whereby
he passed for a ghost with such of the
intelligent rustics as chanced to see him.  Lady
Oglethorpe warmly encouraged this ghost theory.  It
was convenient, and kept intruders, who might
make themselves unpleasant, off the grounds.

In 1722, James Oglethorpe began his parliamentary
career as the member for Haslemere,
which seems to have been a family seat
for the Westbrook people.  He began at a
critical moment, just at the time when the
Jacobins, encouraged by the popular discontent
occasioned by the bursting of the South
Sea bubble, began to think of making a new
attempt to restore the Stuarts; when George
the First was informed by the Regent of France
that a conspiracy was on foot against his government;
and when the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl
of Orrery, Doctor Atterbury, and others, were
haled off to the Tower.  But James Oglethorpe
was a wise man and a prudent, and, though by
family tradition and association a Jacobite at
heart—or, let us say, "a sympathiser with the
Stuarts "—yet he saw clearly that the bonny
Prince Charlie game was played out in England,
and that the only thing to do was to accept the
inevitable Guelph, and make the best of him.
Consequently he was loyal to the reigning
house, an independent member, and a strong
Tory—in all that he undertook, carrying good
sense, energy, and practicability, and never
letting a theory run away with his judgment.

In those days lived a certain Mr. Robert
Castell, called in the fashion of the times "an
ingenious gentleman;" an architect by taste and
knowledge though not by profession, who ran
through all his money, as many ingenious
gentlemen have done before him, and will again.
He was arrested and carried to a sponging-
house attached to the Fleet Prison, and
kept by one Corbett, an underling of the
warden.  On giving security, by virtue of
"presents," as they were called, to the latter,
whose name was Thomas Bambridge, he
obtained the liberty of the rules; but at length
becoming no longer able to gratify the warden's
appetite for refreshers, that insatiate officer
ordered him to be re-committed to Corbett's,
where the small-pox then raged.  Poor Castell,
having informed Bambridge that he had never
had that disease, and was in great dread of it,
earnestly implored to be sent to some other