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the heart, and of which artificial po- | out scruple, the most immoral and the liteness is only a faint and cold imita- most unconstitutional manners; as a tion. Such a disposition is the richest man perfectly fitted, by all his opinions inheritance that ever was entailed on and feelings, for the work of managing any family. the Parliament by means of secretBut training and situation greatly service-money, and of keeping down modified the fine qualities which na- the people with the bayonet. Many of ture lavished with such profusion on his contemporaries had a morality three generations of the house of Fox. quite as lax as his: but very few among The first Lord Holland was a needy them had his talents, and none had political adventurer. He entered pub- his hardihood and energy. He could lic life at a time when the standard of not, like Sandys and Doddington, find integrity among statesmen was low. safety in contempt. He therefore beHe started as the adherent of a mi- came an object of such general avernister who had indeed many titles to sion as no statesman since the fall of respect, who possessed eminent talents Strafford has incurred, of such general both for administration and for debate. aversion as was probably never in any who understood the public interest country incurred by a man of so kind well, and who meant fairly by the and cordial a disposition. A weak country, but who had seen so much mind would have sunk under such a perfidy and meanness that he had be-load of unpopularity. But that resocome sceptical as to the existence of lute spirit seemed to derive new firmprobity. Weary of the cant of pa-ness from the public hatred. The only triotism, Walpole had learned to talk effect which reproaches appeared to a cant of a different kind. Disgusted produce on him, was to sour, in some by that sort of hypocrisy which is at degree, his naturally sweet temper. least a homage to virtue, he was too The last acts of his public life were much in the habit of practising the marked, not only by that audacity less respectable hypocrisy which os- which he had derived from nature, not tentatiously displays, and sometimes only by that immorality which he had even simulates vice. To Walpole Fox learned in the school of Walpole, but attached himself, politically and per- by a harshness which almost amounted sonally, with the ardour which be- to cruelty, and which had never been longed to his temperament. And it supposed to belong to his character. is not to be denied that in the school His severity increased the unpopularity of Walpole he contracted faults which from which it had sprung. The welldestroyed the value of his many great known lampoon of Gray may serve as endowments. He raised himself, in- a specimen of the feeling of the coundeed, to the first consideration in the try. All the images are taken from House of Commons; he became a con- shipwrecks, quicksands, and cormosummate master of the art of debate; rants. Lord Holland is represented as he attained honours and immense complaining, that the cowardice of his wealth; but the public esteem and accomplices had prevented him from confidence were withheld from him. putting down the free spirit of the His private friends, indeed, justly ex-city of London by sword and fire, and tolled his generosity and good nature. as pining for the time when birds of They maintained that in those parts prey should make their nests in Westof his conduct which they could least minster Abbey, and unclean beasts defend there was nothing sordid, and burrow in St. Paul's. that, if he was misled, he was misled Within a few months after the death by amiable feelings, by a desire to of this remarkable man, his second serve his friends, and by anxious ten-son Charles appeared at the head of derness for his children. But by the the party opposed to the American nation he was regarded as a man of War. Charles had inherited the boinsatiable rapacity and desperate am- dily and mental constitution of his bition; as a man ready to adopt, with-father, and had been much, far too

much, under his father's influence. It worse than theirs. He had one great was indeed impossible that a son of so advantage over them. He received affectionate and noble a nature should a good political education. The first not have been warmly attached to a lord was educated by Sir Robert Walparent who possessed many fine qua- pole. Mr. Fox was educated by his lities, and who carried his indulgence father. The late lord was educated by and liberality towards his children even Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early to a culpable extent. Charles saw that imbibed by the first Lord Holland, the person to whom he was bound by made his great talents useless, and the strongest ties was, in the highest worse than useless, to the state. The degree, odious to the nation; and the pernicious maxims early imbibed by effect was what might have been ex- Mr. Fox, led him, at the commencepected from the strong passions and ment of his public life, into great faults constitutional boldness of so high- which, though afterwards nobly exspirited a youth. He cast in his lot piated, were never forgotten. To the with his father, and took, while still a very end of his career, small men, when boy, a deep part in the most unjustifi- they had nothing else to say in defence able and unpopular measures that had of their own tyranny, bigotry, and imbeen adopted since the reign of James becility, could always raise a cheer by the Second. In the debates on the some paltry taunt about the election Middlesex Election, he distinguished of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment himself, not only by his precocious of the lord mayor, and other measures powers of eloquence, but by the vehe- in which the great Whig leader had ment and scornful manner in which he borne a part at the age of one or two bade defiance to public opinion. He and twenty. On Lord Holland no was at that time regarded as a man such slur could be thrown. likely to be the most formidable cham- who most dissent from his opinions pion of arbitrary government that must acknowledge that a public life had appeared since the Revolution, to more consistent is not to be found in be a Bute with far greater powers, a our annals. Every part of it is in perMansfield with far greater courage. fect harmony with every other part; Happily his father's death liberated and the whole is in perfect harmony him early from the pernicious influence with the great principles of toleration by which he had been misled. His and civil freedom. This rare felicity mind expanded. His range of obser- is in a great measure to be attributed vation became wider. His genius to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord broke through early prejudices. His Holland, as was natural in a person of natural benevolence and magnanimity his talents and expectations, began at had fair play. In a very short time a very early age to take the keenest he appeared in a situation worthy of interest in politics; and Mr. Fox found his understanding and of his heart. the greatest pleasure in forming the From a family whose name was asso- mind of so hopeful a pupil. They corciated in the public mind with tyranny responded largely on political subjects and corruption, from a party of which the theory and the practice were equally servile, from the midst of the Luttrells, the Dysons, the Barringtons, came forth the greatest parliamentary defender of civil and religious liberty.

The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural dispositions of his House. But his situation was very different from that of the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some important respects it was better, in some it was

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when the young lord was only sixteen; and their friendship and mutual confidence continued to the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick. Under such training such a man as Lord Holland was in no danger of falling into those faults which threw a dark shade over the whole career of his grandfather, and from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free.

On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his grandfather and his uncle, laboured under one

equal among persons similarly situated, we must go back eighty years to Earl Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brougham, Plunkett, and other eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate, carried

great disadvantage. They were mem- distinguished in debate than any pcer bers of the House of Commons. He of his time who had not sat in the became a Peer while still an infant. House of Commons. Nay, to find his When he entered public life, the House of Lords was a very small and a very decorous assembly. The minority to which he belonged was scarcely able to muster five or six votes on the most important nights, when eighty or ninety lords were present. Debate had accordingly become a mere form, to the Upper House an eloquence as it was in the Irish House of Feers formed and matured in the Lower. before the Union. This was a great The opinion of the most discerning misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. judges was that Lord Holland's oratorIt was not by occasionally addressing ical performances, though sometimes fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly most successful, afforded no fair meaauditors, that his grandfather and his sure of his oratorical powers, and that, uncle attained their unrivalled parlia- in an assembly of which the debates mentary skill. The former had learned were frequent and animated, he would his art in "the great Walpolean bat- have attained a very high order of extlcs," on nights when Onslow was in cellence. It was, indeed, impossible to the chair seventeen hours without in- listen to his conversation without seeing termission, when the thick ranks on that he was born a debater. To him, both sides kept unbroken order till long as to his uncle, the exercise of the after the winter sun had risen upon mind in discussion was a positive pleathem, when the blind were led out by sure. With the greatest good nature the hand into the lobby and the para- and good breeding, he was the very lytic laid down in their bed-clothes on opposite to an assenter. The word the benches. The powers of Charles disputatious" is generally used as a Fox were, from the first, exercised in word of reproach; but we can express conflicts not less exciting. The great our meaning only by saying that Lord talents of the late Lord Holland had Holland was most courteously and no such advantage. This was the more pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his unfortunate, because the peculiar species quickness in discovering and appreof eloquence which belonged to him in hending distinctions and analogies was common with his family required much such as a veteran judge might envy. practice to develope it. With strong The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster sense, and the greatest readiness of wit, were astonished to find in an unprofesa certain tendency to hesitation was sional man so strong a relish for the hereditary in the line of Fox. This esoteric parts of their science, and comhesitation arose, not from the poverty, plained that as soon as they had split but from the wealth of their vocabu-a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to lary. They paused, not from the difficulty of finding one expression, but from the difficulty of choosing between several. It was only by slow degrees and constant exercise that the first Lord Holland and his son overcame the defect. Indeed neither of them overcame it completely.

In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for the unsound parts of an argument, and a great felicity in exposing them. He was decidedly more

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split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might have been a risk that this turn for subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own ingenuity. He put his logic to its proper use; and in him the dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman.

His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps, as Q Q

we have already intimated, his opinions | on two or three great questions of foreign policy were open to just objection. Yet even his errors, if he erred, were amiable and respectable. We are not sure that we do not love and admire him the more because he was now and then seduced from what we regard as a wise policy by sympathy with the oppressed, by generosity towards the fallen, by a philanthropy so enlarged that it took in all nations, by love of peace, a love which in him was second only to the love of freedom, and by the magnanimous credulity of a mind which was as incapable of suspecting as of devising mischief.

To his views on questions of domestic policy the voice of his countrymen does ample justice. They revere the memory of the man who was, during forty years, the constant protector of all oppressed races and persecuted sects, of the man whom neither the prejudices nor the interests belonging to his station could seduce from the path of right, of the noble, who in every great crisis cast in his lot with the commons, of the planter, who made manful war on the slave trade, of the landowner, whose whole heart was in the struggle against the

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Yet a few years, and the shades and structures may follow their illustrious The wonderful city which, ancient and gigantic as it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young town of logwood by a water-privilege in Michigan, may soon displace those turwith so much that is interesting and rets and gardens which are associated noble, with the courtly magnificence of Rich, with the loves of Ormond, with the counsels of Cromwell, with the death of Addison. The time is coming when, perhaps, a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets, and squares, and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties, of corn-laws. painters and poets, of scholars, philoWe have hitherto touched almost ex-sophers, and statesmen. They will then clusively on those parts of Lord Holland's character which were open to the observation of millions. How shall we express the feelings with which his memory is cherished by those who were honoured with his friendship? Or in what language shall we speak of that house, once celebrated for its rare attractions to the furthest ends of the civilized world, and now silent and desolate as the grave? To that house, a hundred and twenty years ago, a poet addressed those tender and graceful lines, which have now acquired a new meaning not less sad than that which they originally bore.

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remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them, the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many ages, and those portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many men who have guided the politics of Europe, who have moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence, who have put life into bronze and canvass, or who have left to posterity things so written as it shall not

WARREN HASTINGS.

(ОСТОВЕР, 1841.)

Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal. Com piled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. GLEIG, M.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1841.

willingly let them die, were there mixed | thing unworthy of men who were diswith all that was loveliest and gayest tinguished by the friendship of Lord in the society of the most splendid of Holland. capitals. They will remember the peculiar character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Sir Joshua's Baretti; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while WE are inclined to think that we shall Talleyrand related his conversations best meet the wishes of our readers, if, with Barras at the Luxembourg, or instead of minutely examining this his ride with Lannes over the field of book, we attempt to give, in a way neAusterlitz. They will remember, above cessarily hasty and imperfect, our own all, the grace, and the kindness, far more view of the life and character of Mr. admirable than grace, with which the Hastings. Our feeling towards him is princely hospitality of that ancient not exactly that of the House of Commansion was dispensed. They will re-mons which impeached him in 1787; member the venerable and benignant neither is it that of the House of Comcountenance and the cordial voice of mons which uncovered and stood up to him who bade them welcome. They receive him in 1813. He had great will remember that temper which years qualities, and he rendered great services of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of con- to the state. But to represent him as a finement, seemed only to make sweeter man of stainless virtue is to make him and sweeter, and that frank politeness, ridiculous; and from regard for his which at once relieved all the embar-memory, if from no other feeling, his rassment of the youngest and most friends would have done well to lend timid writer or artist, who found him- no countenance to such adulation. We self for the first time among Ambassa- believe that, if he were now living, he dors and Earls. They will remember that constant flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so various, so rich with observation and anecdote; that wit which never gave a wound; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of degrading; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look and accent, and gave additional value to every talent and acquirement. They will remember, too, that he whose name they hold in reverence was not less distinguished by the inflexible uprightness of his political conduct than by his loving disposition and his winning manners. They will remember that, in the last lines which he traced, he ex-great Protector showed both his good pressed his joy that he had done nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey; and they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse themselves of having done any

would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that the splendour of his fame would bear many spots. He would have wished posterity to have a likeness of him, though an unfavourable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor any body else. "Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to young Lely. "If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling." Even in such a trifle, the

sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish all that was characteristic in his countenance to be lost, in the vain attempt to give him the regular features and smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James the First

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