It is sufficiently obvious that it requires neither fame nor greatness to excite public curiosity.  A notorious criminal or an unusually eccentric lunatic frequently gives rise to a larger share of newspaper-comment and general discussion than the wisest and most virtuous of mankind.  It must be well remembered by those who have read Tom Taylor’s Life of Haydon that a dwarf was attracting thousands to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, while the historical painter, stung to madness by the neglect of the frivolous crowd, committed the hideous and ghastly suicide which threw a tragic darkness over the close of his strange and troubled existence.  The desperate and dangerous frequently succeed in placing themselves on a bad eminence, from which they are conspicuous enough; and if to be talked of and pointed at be the sole object of their ambition, they can, of course, be congratulated on their success.  Virtue may sit in humble and obscure usefulness at a thousand quiet firesides, while the work of the incendiary may be seen to spread widely, and the tumult of his mischief be heard from afar.  And so any public man or politician, whose taste is so morbidly depraved and whose aim in life is so debased as to prefer notoriety to honest, useful service, may revel in the questionable enjoyment of being the especial theme of public debate and private conversation.  Hence it happens that so many of our fellow-countrymen are at this moment asking the question with which we head these pages,—­“Who is Roebuck?”

An unhappy culprit, who combined with an innocent taste for green peas a thievish method of acquiring their usual savory accompaniment, is reported to have been addressed by an English judge in the following felicitous terms:—­“Prisoner at the bar, Providence has endowed you with health and strength, instead of which you go about the country stealing ducks.”  Providence has endowed John Arthur Roebuck, member of the Parliament of Great Britain, with fair talents and some power of speech, instead of which (to use the accurate judicial ellipsis) he goes about using violent and vulgar words of menace against those who have never offended him, and scattering firebrands as if there were no gun-powder anywhere to ignite and explode.  This would be a mean and mischievous occupation for the dullest man; but for one who has proved by his very failures that he is not devoid of intellect or energy, it is a monstrous perversion of mental gifts, even if they are small.

A portion of the fiery heat of his nature may be traced, perhaps, to the fact that he was born at Madras; but as on the mother’s side he is descended from the poet Tickell, the friend of Addison, it would not be altogether unreasonable to have expected in him some few of the amenities of the literae humaniores.  He soon, however, exchanged the torrid scenes of Oriental life for the snows of Canada, where he received his education; and when we remember what the bizarre oddities of his subsequent career have been, it might be interesting, if we had the materials for the purpose, to inquire what that education was.  The British Provinces, however, were not deemed a sufficiently ample theatre of action for the energy of the capacious soul that dwelt in that not over-capacious body; and so, at the age of twenty-three, he repaired to England and commenced his studies for the profession of the law.