Canada a veteran experienced and brave, but no longer quick and active, and might, perhaps, have received in return a most eloquent and conclusive apology for being beaten, or for standing still!

After Wolfe's appointment, and on the day preceding his embarkation for America, Pitt, desirous of giving his last verbal instructions, invited him to dinner, Lord Temple being the only other guest. As the evening advanced, Wolfe, heated, perhaps, by his own aspiring thoughts, and the unwonted society of statesmen, broke forth into a strain of gasconade and bravado. He drew his sword, he rapped the table with it, he flourished it round the room, he talked of the mighty things which that sword was to achieve. The two Ministers sat aghast at an exhibition so unusual from any man of real sense and real spirit. And when at last Wolfe had taken his leave, and his carriage was heard to roll from the door, Pitt seemed for the moment shaken in the high opinion which his deliberate judgment had formed of Wolfe: he lifted up his eyes and arms, and exclaimed to Lord Temple: "Good God! that I should have intrusted the fate of the country and of the administration to such hands!" This story was told by Lord Temple himself to the Rt. Hon. Thomas Grenville, the friend of Lord Mahon, who, with the consent of the narrator, in 1844, inserted the same in his History of England, vol. iv. Lord Temple also told Mr. Grenville that on the evening in question Wolfe had partaken most sparingly of wine, so that this ebullition could not have been the effect of any excess. The incident affords a striking proof how much a fault of manner may obscure and disparage high excellence of mind. Lord Mahon adds: "It confirms Wolfe's own avowal, that he was not seen to advantage in the common occurrences of life, and shows how shyness may at intervals rush, as it were, for refuge, into the opposite extreme; but it should also lead us to view such defects of manner with indulgence, as proving that they may co-exist with the highest ability and the purest virtue."

Mr. Wood, then Under-Secretary of State, used to relate

D

the following instance of the Minister's firmness in making the arrangements for this Expedition:

"Mr. Pitt had appointed Mr. Wolfe to command at the siege of Quebec, and as he told him that he could not give. him so many forces as he wanted for that Expedition, he would make it up to him as well as he could, by giving him the appointment of all his officers. Mr. Wolfe sent in his list, included in which was a gentleman who was obnoxious to the Sovereign, then George the Second, for some advice which, as a military man, he had given to his son, the Duke of Cumberland. Lord Ligonier, then Commander-in-Chief, took in the list to the King, who (as he expected) made some objection to a particular name, and refused to sign the commission. Mr. Pitt sent him into the closet a second time with no better success. Lord Ligonier refused to go in a third time at Pitt's suggestion. He was, however, told that he should lose his place if he did not; and that on presenting the name to the Sovereign, he should tell him the peculiar situation of the state of the Expedition, and that in order to make any General completely responsible for his conduct, he should be made, as much as possible, inexcusable, if he does not succeed; and that, in consequence, whatever an officer, who was intrusted with any service of confidence and of consequence, desired, should (if possible) be complied with. Lord Ligonier went in a third time, and told his Sovereign what he was directed to tell him. The good sense of the Monarch so completely disarmed his prejudice, that he signed the particular commission, as he was desired."

Cowper has this touching reference to Pitt and Wolfe:

Time was when it was praise and boast enough
In every clime, and travel where we might,
That we were born her children: praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue,
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.
Farewell those honours, and farewell with them
The hope of such hereafter. They have fallen,
Each in his field of glory: one in arms,
And one in council.-Wolfe upon the lap

Of smiling Victory that moment won,

And Chatham, heart-sick of his country's shame!
They made us many soldiers. Chatham, still
Consulting England's happiness at home,
Secured it by an unforgiving frown

If any wrong'd her. Wolfe, where'er he fought,
Put so much of his heart into his act,

That his example had a magnet's force,

And all were swift to follow whom all loved.
Those suns are set.

-The Task, book ii.

Southey remarks, in a note: "Cowper wrote from his own recollection here. In one of his letters, he says: 'Nothing could express my rapture when Wolfe made the conquest of Quebec.""

STORIES OF A VACANT GARTER.

Towards the close of George the Second's reign, when Mr. Pitt occupied a principal place in the Cabinet, Lord Falmouth (better known as Admiral Boscawen) waited on him at his levee, and stated his wish to be recommended to His Majesty for the first vacant Garter. Mr. Pitt expressed his reluctance to lay the request before the King, and manifested some disapprobation of the demand itself. "You will be pleased, Sir, to remember," said Lord Falmouth, "that I bring in five votes, who go with the Ministry in the House of Commons; and if my application is disregarded, you must take the consequence." "Your Lordship threatens me!" replied the Minister with warmth; "you may, therefore, be assured, that so long as I hold a place in the Councils of the Crown, you shall never receive the Order of the Garter." Then, turning round, he exclaimed, addressing himself to those near him : "Optat Ephippia Bos piger." Lord Falmouth, comprehending nothing of the meaning of these words, but conceiving that the monosyllable Bos must allude to his name, requested to be informed what the Minister meant by so calling him. "The observation," replied Mr. Pitt, "is not mine, but Horace's." As little familiar with the name of the Roman poet as with his writings, Lord Falmouth, apprehending that

Horace Walpole had said something severe or disrespectful concerning him, under that second mistake, "If Horace Walpole," said he, "has taken any liberties with my name, I shall know how to resent it. His father, Sir Robert, when he was alive, and First Minister, never presumed so to treat me." Having thus expressed himself, he quitted Mr. Pitt, leaving the audience in astonishment at his double misapprehension. Yet the statesman and the hero entertained a high opinion of each other. Lord Chatham, when Prime Minister, once said to Admiral Boscawen: "When I apply to other officers respecting any Expedition I may chance to project, they always raise difficulties; you always find expedients." Of Chatham, Boscawen said: "He alone can carry on the war, and he alone should be permitted to make the peace."

In the autumn of 1759, an incident occurred which had nearly led to Mr. Pitt's resignation. Lord Temple, (First Lord of the Admiralty,) who was altogether displeasing to the King, asked for the vacant Garter, through the Duke of Newcastle, out of delicacy, as he stated, concealing the solicitation from Mr. Pitt. When the affair came to Mr. Pitt's knowledge, he, without any concert with Lord Temple, urged his suit with great earnestness, as a personal favour to be done to himself; but finding that the King was not disposed. to comply, he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle an unreasonable letter, in which he said:

"Unconscious as I am of want of fidelity and diligence, in sustaining the vast and dangerous load his Majesty has been pleased to lay upon my feeble shoulders, I will forbear now and for ever entering into a subject where I may possibly judge amiss, and wherein, above all things, I most wish not greatly to err. I shall, therefore, rest it on the judgment of others, at all times much better than mine, whether, considering Lord Temple's station and my own, the pretension in question has anything in it exorbitant, or derogatory to the King's honour, or contrary to the good of his affairs. All I mean at present to trouble your Grace with is to desire, that when next my reluctant steps shall bring me up the stairs of

Kensington, and mix me with the dust of the antechamber, I may know, once for all, whether the King continues finally inexorable and obdurate to all such united entreaties and remonstrances, as, except towards me and mine, never fail of success."

It is a strange contrast to Mr. Pitt's proud and proudly expressed contempt for "the dust of the antechamber," that the object of this indignation was no greater than a riband for Lord Temple-to which the two other candidates-Prince Ferdinand, who had just won the battle of Crevelt—and the Marquis of Rockingham, who had an old promise—had infinitely better claims; and still less justifiable is Mr. Pitt's readiness to cast off "the vast and dangerous load" of public interests which was at that moment imposed upon him, on account of this comparatively trifling offence. Lord Temple thereupon resigned, but returned to office in a few days, and in the following February was invested with the Garter; Mr. Pitt's fame and popularity having risen during the discussion to a great height, through the arrival of the news of Wolfe's victory and the capture of Quebec.

GEORGE THE SECOND AND MR. PITT.

The indiscreet and offensive language of Mr. Pitt, early in life, towards George II., had, it is believed, the effect-more injurious to the interests of the country than even to his own -of keeping him out of efficient office at a time when he might have served the State with distinction, and his own mind might have been trained to habits of practical business, which he never afterwards attained.

On the 10th of December, 1742, in the debate in parliament on the maintenance of 16,000 Hungarian troops in the pay of Great Britain, for the alleged support of the Queen of Hungary, Mr. Pitt delivered a speech remarkable, not only as an indication of personal feeling, but for the serious and important results which it produced. In this Philippic he attacked not merely the Electorate of Hanover, but even the Elector himself, with peculiar, and in those times