showing how early the superiority of Mr. Pitt's parliamentary talents was acknowledged:

Long had thy virtues mark'd thee out for fame,
Far, far superior to a cornet's name;

This, gen'rous Walpole saw, and grieved to find
So mean a post disgrac'd that noble mind.
The servile standard from thy freeborn hand
He took, and bade thee lead the patriot band.

Pitt (says Lord Mahon,) speedily showed that even in the thickest crowd there is room enough for him who can reach it over and above their heads! This pre-eminence was speedily attained by that extraordinary man, who at his outset was pitied for losing a Cornetcy of Horse, and who within twenty years had made himself the first man in England, and England the first country in the world.

PITT AND LORD COBHAM AT STOWE.

Pitt, from the time he lost his commission, seems to have been more intimately admitted to the confidence and esteem of Lord Cobham, the owner of the princely domain of Stowe, and who had been deprived by Walpole of his regiment in consequence of his parliamentary opposition. Thomson, in his Autumn, thus apostrophizes Pitt in

The fair majestic paradise of Stowe

And there, O Pitt, thy country's early boast,
There let me sit beneath the shelter'd slopes,
Or in that temple,* where, in future times,
Thou well shalt merit a distinguish'd name;
And with thy converse blest, catch the last smiles
Of Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods.
While there with thee the enchanted round I walk,
The regulated wild, gay fancy then

Will tread in thought the groves of Attic land;
Will from thy standard taste refine her own,
Correct her pencil to the purest truth

Of Nature; or, the unimpassion'd shades
Forsaking, raise it to the human mind.
Or if hereafter she, with juster hand,

Shall draw the tragic scene, instruct her, thou!
To mark the varied movements of the heart,

*The Temple of Virtue in Stowe Gardens.

What every decent character requires,

And every passion speaks:-0, through her strain
Breathe thy pathetic eloquence! that moulds
The attentive senate, charms, persuades, exalts;
Of honest zeal the indignant lightning throws
And shakes corruption on her venal throne.

James Hammond has left the following courtly lines:
To Stowe's delightful scenes I now repair,

In Cobham's smile to lose the gloom of care . . .
There Pitt, in manners soft, in friendship warm,
With mild advice my listening grief shall charm,
With sense to counsel, and with wit to please,
A Roman's virtue, with a Courtier's ease.

A visit of the Prince of Wales to Stowe gave rise to the following incident. The Prince and Mr. Pitt were walking in the gardens, apart from the general company, who followed at some distance. They were in earnest conversation, when Lord Cobham expressed his apprehension to one of his guests that Mr. Pitt would draw the Prince into some measures of which his Lordship disapproved. The guest observed that the tête-à-tête could not be of long duration. "Sir," said Lord Cobham, with eagerness, "you don't know Mr. Pitt's talent of insinuation in a very short quarter of an hour he can persuade any one of anything."

In after years, when Mr. Pitt had been created Lord Chatham, he journeyed to Stowe, with unusual pomp and needless train of servants. Burke, writing from Beaconsfield, in 1769, says: "I ought to tell you that Lord Chatham passed my door on Friday morning in a jimwhiskee drawn by two horses, one before the other; he drove himself. His train was two coaches and six, with twenty servants, male and female. He was proceeding, with his whole family, Lady Chatham, two sons, and two daughters, to Stowe."

The Temple of Ancient Virtue, to which Thomson refers, is an Ionic rotunda in the grounds at Stowe: on the exterior over each door is inscribed "Prisca Virtuti;" and in four niches within, are full-length statues of Lycurgus, Socrates, Homer, and Epaminondas, by Scheemakers, with an appropriate inscription under each figure.

Near the Palladian Bridge at Stowe is the Temple of Friendship, a large edifice of the Tuscan order, erected by Viscount Cobham to receive the busts of the political party of which he was a member. "Unfortunately," says Mr. Forster, in his notes to the Stowe Catalogue," before Lord Cobham had completed his Temple, the whole party, of which he formed so prominent a member, was broken up." The busts, however, were sculptured by Scheemakers, and others, and placed in the temple on its completion; they were removed, on the edifice being out of repair, into the Grenville Vestibule of the mansion at Stowe, and were scattered at the sale in 1848, when the bust of Lord Chatham was purchased by Sir Robert Peel, for 281. 78.

The site of the Orangery, near the above Temple, was formerly a bowling green; and here Mr. Thomas Grenville remembered, when a boy, to have played at bowls with his brothers, when Lord Chatham, Lord Temple, and George Grenville were spectators of the game.

In the collection at Stowe was a fine portrait of the Countess of Chatham, painted by Hudson, the master of Sir Joshua Reynolds. At the sale at Stowe, in 1848, Lord Mahon became the purchaser of this beautiful portrait of the mother of Pitt, in which his marked and classic features are strongly developed. In the collection, also, was a portrait of Lord Chatham, by Hoare, now in the gallery of Sir Robert Peel; and engraved in the present volume. There was likewise at Stowe a portrait of Lord Chatham in crayons.

"THE ATROCIOUS CRIME OF BEING A YOUNG MAN."

One of the most celebrated of Pitt's philippics in Parliament was his reply, March 10, 1741, to the elder Horace Walpole, who, in the course of his speech, had directed towards Pitt some illiberal and personal remarks, reflecting upon his youth, and observed that the cause of truth was but little assisted by vehement gesture and theatrical emotion. The caustic satire of the reply is not to be exceeded.

"The atrocious crime (said Mr. Pitt,) of being a young

man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

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Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not assume the province of determining: but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided. The wretch who, after having seen the consequences of a thousand errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to simplicity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults.

"Much more is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and becomes more wicked with less temptation; who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy, and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country.

"But youth is not my only crime! I have been accused of acting a theatrical part. A theatrical part may either imply some peculiarities of gesture, or a dissimulation of my real sentiments, and an adoption of the opinions and language of another man.

"In the first sense, the charge is too trifling to be computed, and deserves only to be mentioned that it may be despised; I am at liberty, like every other man, to use my own language; and though I may, perhaps, have some ambition, yet, to please this gentleman, I shall not lay myself under any restraint, nor very solicitously copy his diction, or his mien, however matured by age, or modelled by experience. If any man shall, by charging me with theatrical behaviour, imply that I utter any sentiments but my own, I shall treat him as a calumniator and a villain; nor shall any protection shelter him from the treatment which he deserves. I shall, on such an occasion, without scruple, trample upon all those forms with which

wealth and dignity entrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment; age, which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment.

"But with regard to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion, that if I had acted a borrowed part, I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them is the ardour of conviction, and that zeal for the service of my country, which neither hope nor fear shall influence me to suppress. I will not sit unconcerned while my liberty is invaded, nor look in silence upon public robbery. I will exert my endeavours, at whatever hazard, to repel the aggressor, and drag the thief to justice, whoever may protect them in their villainy, and whoever may partake of their plunder. And if the honourable gentleman

Mr. Pitt was here interrupted by Mr. Winnington, who called him to order with much bitterness of language, and was himself proceeding in a more violent strain than that which he affected to condemn, when Mr. Pitt is said to have retorted upon him his own accusation in these spirited words:

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If this be to preserve order, there is no danger of indecency from the most licentious tongue; for what calumny can be more atrocious, or what reproach more severe, than that of speaking without any regard to truth? Order may

sometimes be broken by passion or inadvertency, but will hardly be re-established by a monitor like this, who cannot govern his own passion whilst he is restraining the impetuosity of others.

"Happy would it be for mankind, if every one knew his own province we should not then see the same man at once a criminal and a judge; nor would this gentleman assume the right of dictating to others what he has not learned. himself.

"That I may return, in some degree, the favour which he intends me, I will advise him never hereafter to exert himself on the subject of order; but whenever he finds himself inclined to speak on such occasions, to remember how he has