Chapter 3

"His virtues fade, his vices bloom,"

should he be so inclined: no other considerations but those of conscience operate then to influence his pen. But the case is quite different when he is writing about a king scarcely yet cold in the grave, when a species of popular infatuation commands that grave to be strewn with flowers, when it is necessary, as itwere, to sail with the stream or sink; and when the brother of the deceased monarch has just ascended the throne, and, for the sake of appearances, may deem himself called upon to consider every thing said concerning his predecessor as touching himself. How many motives combine here to warp the judgment and the conscience, and convert sober history into funeral panegyric! Thus, if Mr. Croly had undertaken the task of delineating the moral features of Richard the III., or of James the II.—we adduce James the II., because our author seems to regard Catholicity as so monstrous a crime that this prince would, we are sure, not be drawn by him in the most flattering colours—he would have found, to use his own words, that there are no faults which generate a more vindictive spirit of virtue, than those of princes in the grave; but in depicting George the IVth., he has proved the reverse of this to be the fact. It is amusing, although at the same time melancholy, to contrast the virtuous indignation with which he pours out his anathemas against those who committed the tremendous crime of advocating and effecting the emancipation of the Catholics, with the gentle terms in which he comments upon the wanderings of the Prince of Wales from the proper path, and the glosses with which he softens their obliquity. One might be induced to suppose that his creed holds religious liberality as the crime of deadly dye, and dissipation of the lowest kind as a vice merely venial in its character.

"Without justice," he continues "history is but a more solemn libel, and no justice can be done to the memory of any public personage, without considering the peculiar circumstances of his time." This remark is true with regard to those public personages whom he has so severely taken to task for their conduct respecting the Catholic question; had not his mind's eye been covered with a film, he would have perceived that the "peculiar circumstances of the time" fully warranted that change in the course pursued by Mr. Peel, the Duke of Wellington, and others, with reference to that important question, which has drawn from him such expressions of horror; but it is far from being equally admissible where he has applied it. That less tenderness should be extended towards the vices of princes than to those of subjects is, we think, undeniable, when the weightier (secular) reasons they have for keeping a strict control over their passions, are considered,—reasons which should completely counterbalance any greater temptations they may be obliged to undergo.

"A sovereign's great example forms a people;The public breast is noble or is vile,As he inspires it.""The man whom Heaven appointsTo govern others, should himself first learnTo bend his passions to the sway of reason."

"A sovereign's great example forms a people;The public breast is noble or is vile,As he inspires it."

"The man whom Heaven appointsTo govern others, should himself first learnTo bend his passions to the sway of reason."

Surely these two considerations—the potent effect of his example, and the almost impossibility of governing others when not able to govern himself—without referring to that paramount one which operates for all men alike, ought to have been sufficient to counteract the tendency of "the peculiar circumstances of his time," to inflame the "propensities" of the Prince; or, at least, should be enough to prevent an extenuation on that ground, of his unrestrained indulgence of them, by the historian of his life. What those circumstances were, we will let Mr. Croly relate.

"The peace of 1782 threw open the continent; and it was scarcely proclaimed, when France was crowded with the English nobility. Versailles was the centre of all that was sumptuous in Europe. The graces of the young queen, then in the pride of youth and beauty; the pomp of the royal family and the noblesse; and the costliness of the fêtes and celebrations, for which France has been always famous, rendered the court the dictator of manners, morals, and politics, to all the higher ranks of the civilized world. But the Revolution was now hastening with the strides of a giant upon France: the torch was already waving over the chambers of this morbid and guilty luxury. The corrective was terrible: history has no more stinging retrospect than the contrast of that brilliant time with the days of shame and agony that followed—the untimely fate of beauty, birth, and heroism,—the more than serpent-brood that started up in the path which France once emulously covered with flowers for the step of her rulers,—the hideous suspense of the dungeon,—the heart-broken farewell to life and royalty upon the scaffold. But France was the grand corruptor; and its supremacy must in a few years have spread incurable disease through the moral frame of Europe."The English men of rank brought back with them its dissipation and its infidelity. The immediate circle of the English court was clear. The grave virtue of the king held the courtiers in awe; and the queen, with a pious wisdom, for which her name should long be held in honour, indignantly repulsed every attempt of female levity to approach her presence. But beyond this sacred circle, the influence of foreign association was felt through every class of society. The great body of the writers of England, the men of whom the indiscretions of the higher ranks stand most in awe, had become less the guardians than the seducers of the public mind. The 'Encyclopédie,' the code of rebellion and irreligion still more than of science, had enlisted the majority in open scorn of all that the heart should practise or the head revere; and the Parisian atheists scarcely exceeded the truth, when they boasted of erecting a temple that was to be frequented by worshippers of every tongue. A cosmopolite, infidel republic of letters was already lifting its front above the old sovereignties, gathering under its banners a race of mankind new to public struggle,—the whole secluded, yet jealous and vexed race of labourers in the intellectual field, and summoning them to devote their most unexhausted vigour and masculine ambition to the service of a sovereign, at whose right and left, like the urns of Homer's Jove, stood the golden founts of glory. London was becoming Paris in all but the name. There never was a period when the tone of our society was more polished, more animated, or more corrupt. Gaming, horse-racing, and still deeper deviations from the right rule of life, were looked upon as the natural embellishments of rank and fortune. Private theatricals, one of the most dexterous and assured expedients to extinguish, first the delicacy of woman, and then her virtue, were the favourite indulgence; and, by an outrage to English decorum, which completed the likeness to France, women were beginning to mingle in public life, try their influence in party, and entangle their feebleness in the absurdities and abominations of political intrigue. In the midst of this luxurious period the Prince of Wales commenced his public career. His rank alone would have secured him flatterers; but he had higher titles to homage. He was, then,— one of the handsomest men in Europe: his countenance open and manly; his figure tall, and strikingly proportioned; his address remarkable for easy elegance, and his whole air singularly noble. His contemporaries still describe him as the model of a man of fashion, and amusingly lament over the degeneracy of an age which no longer produces such men."But he possessed qualities which might have atoned for a less attractive exterior. He spoke the principal modern languages with sufficient skill; he was a tasteful musician; his acquaintance with English literature was, in early life, unusually accurate and extensive; Markham's discipline, and Jackson's scholarship, had given him a large portion of classical knowledge; and nature had given him the more important public talent of speaking with fluency, dignity, and vigour."Admiration was the right of such qualities, and we can feel no surprise if it were lavishly offered by both sexes. But it has been strongly asserted, that the temptations of flattery and pleasure were thrown in his way for other objects than those of the hour; that his wanderings were watched by the eyes of politicians; and that every step which plunged him deeper into pecuniary embarrassment was triumphed in, as separating him more widely from his natural connexions, and compelling him in his helplessness to throw himself into the arms of factions alike hostile to his character and his throne."

"The peace of 1782 threw open the continent; and it was scarcely proclaimed, when France was crowded with the English nobility. Versailles was the centre of all that was sumptuous in Europe. The graces of the young queen, then in the pride of youth and beauty; the pomp of the royal family and the noblesse; and the costliness of the fêtes and celebrations, for which France has been always famous, rendered the court the dictator of manners, morals, and politics, to all the higher ranks of the civilized world. But the Revolution was now hastening with the strides of a giant upon France: the torch was already waving over the chambers of this morbid and guilty luxury. The corrective was terrible: history has no more stinging retrospect than the contrast of that brilliant time with the days of shame and agony that followed—the untimely fate of beauty, birth, and heroism,—the more than serpent-brood that started up in the path which France once emulously covered with flowers for the step of her rulers,—the hideous suspense of the dungeon,—the heart-broken farewell to life and royalty upon the scaffold. But France was the grand corruptor; and its supremacy must in a few years have spread incurable disease through the moral frame of Europe.

"The English men of rank brought back with them its dissipation and its infidelity. The immediate circle of the English court was clear. The grave virtue of the king held the courtiers in awe; and the queen, with a pious wisdom, for which her name should long be held in honour, indignantly repulsed every attempt of female levity to approach her presence. But beyond this sacred circle, the influence of foreign association was felt through every class of society. The great body of the writers of England, the men of whom the indiscretions of the higher ranks stand most in awe, had become less the guardians than the seducers of the public mind. The 'Encyclopédie,' the code of rebellion and irreligion still more than of science, had enlisted the majority in open scorn of all that the heart should practise or the head revere; and the Parisian atheists scarcely exceeded the truth, when they boasted of erecting a temple that was to be frequented by worshippers of every tongue. A cosmopolite, infidel republic of letters was already lifting its front above the old sovereignties, gathering under its banners a race of mankind new to public struggle,—the whole secluded, yet jealous and vexed race of labourers in the intellectual field, and summoning them to devote their most unexhausted vigour and masculine ambition to the service of a sovereign, at whose right and left, like the urns of Homer's Jove, stood the golden founts of glory. London was becoming Paris in all but the name. There never was a period when the tone of our society was more polished, more animated, or more corrupt. Gaming, horse-racing, and still deeper deviations from the right rule of life, were looked upon as the natural embellishments of rank and fortune. Private theatricals, one of the most dexterous and assured expedients to extinguish, first the delicacy of woman, and then her virtue, were the favourite indulgence; and, by an outrage to English decorum, which completed the likeness to France, women were beginning to mingle in public life, try their influence in party, and entangle their feebleness in the absurdities and abominations of political intrigue. In the midst of this luxurious period the Prince of Wales commenced his public career. His rank alone would have secured him flatterers; but he had higher titles to homage. He was, then,— one of the handsomest men in Europe: his countenance open and manly; his figure tall, and strikingly proportioned; his address remarkable for easy elegance, and his whole air singularly noble. His contemporaries still describe him as the model of a man of fashion, and amusingly lament over the degeneracy of an age which no longer produces such men.

"But he possessed qualities which might have atoned for a less attractive exterior. He spoke the principal modern languages with sufficient skill; he was a tasteful musician; his acquaintance with English literature was, in early life, unusually accurate and extensive; Markham's discipline, and Jackson's scholarship, had given him a large portion of classical knowledge; and nature had given him the more important public talent of speaking with fluency, dignity, and vigour.

"Admiration was the right of such qualities, and we can feel no surprise if it were lavishly offered by both sexes. But it has been strongly asserted, that the temptations of flattery and pleasure were thrown in his way for other objects than those of the hour; that his wanderings were watched by the eyes of politicians; and that every step which plunged him deeper into pecuniary embarrassment was triumphed in, as separating him more widely from his natural connexions, and compelling him in his helplessness to throw himself into the arms of factions alike hostile to his character and his throne."

Our readers may compare the above portrait of his royal highness, with that which Mr. Jefferson draws of him in one of his letters.

In 1787, the Prince had involved himself in debt to such an amount, that it was found necessary to solicit Parliament, not only for a sum sufficient to liquidate his obligations, but also for an increase of his income, the salary first granted having proved quite inadequate for his royal propensities. The following account of his debts and expenditure was laid before the House of Commons, and furnishes a teeming commentary on the blessings of hereditary government. In considering this matter, one might be tempted to regard Parliament as a species of eleemosynary institution, for the relief of insolvent royalty.

Debts.

Bonds and debts,£13,000Purchase of houses,4,000Expenses of Carlton House,53,000Tradesmen's bills,90,804£160,804Expenditure from July 1783, to July 1786.Household, &c.,£29,277Privy purse,16,050Payments made by Col. Hotham, particulars delivered in to his majesty,37,203Other extraordinaries,11,406£93,936Salaries,54,734Stables,37,919Mr. Robinson's,7,059£193,648

Expenditure from July 1783, to July 1786.

The debate upon the grant was of a highly animated character, and in the course of it the Prince was not spared. He was befriended by the opposition, with Fox at its head, having thrown himself into the arms of that party, who were endeavouring in every way to drive Pitt from his ministerial seat. But in this instance, as in most others, the latter succeeded in carrying his point; in consequence of which, £161,000 were issued out of the civil list to pay the Prince's debts, and £20,000 for the completion of Carlton House, but no augmentation of his income was allowed. "Hopeless of future appeal, stung by public rebuke, and committed before the empire in hostility to the court and the minister, the Prince was now thrown completely into Fox's hands."

Perhaps the two most interesting chapters in Mr. Croly's book, are those entitled "the Prince's friends," in which he has brought into review most of the principal characters of that period of intellectual giants, whose renown continues to shed increasing lustre around the political and literary horizon of England. The world is never tired of reading whatever has reference to those personages, and a book that professes to speak respecting them, may be said to possess a sure passport to public favour at the present day. Well may the old man now living in England, the prime of whose life was passed in that time, be allowed to be a "laudator temporis acti," without having it imputed to the fond weakness of senility. We shall make copious extracts from this portion of our author's work.

"England had never before seen such a phalanx armed against a minister. A crowd of men of the highest natural talents, of the most practised ability, and of the first public weight in birth, fortune, and popularity, were nightly arrayed against the administration, sustained by the solitary eloquence of the young Chancellor of the Exchequer."Yet Pitt was not careless of followers. He was more than once even charged with sedulously gathering round him a host of subaltern politicians, whom he might throw forward as skirmishers,—or sacrifices, which they generally were. Powis, describing the 'forces led by the right honourable gentleman on the treasury bench,' said, 'the first detachment may be called his body-guard, who shoot their little arrows against those who refuse allegiance to their chief.' This light infantry were of course, soon scattered when the main battle joined. But Pitt, a son of the aristocracy, was an aristocrat in all his nature, and he loved to see young men of family around him; others were chosen for their activity, if not for their force, and some, probably, from personal liking. In the later period of his career, his train was swelled by a more influential and promising race of political worshippers, among whom were Lord Mornington, since Marquess Wellesley; Ryder, since Lord Harrowby; and Wilberforce, still undignified by title, but possessing an influence, which, perhaps, he values more. The minister's chief agents in the house of commons, were Mr. Grenville (since Lord Grenville) and Dundas."Yet, among those men of birth or business, what rival could be found to the popular leaders on the opposite side of the house,—to Burke, Sheridan, Grey, Windham, or to Fox, that"'Prince and chief of many throned powers,Who led the embattled seraphim to war.'"Without adopting the bitter remark of the Duke de Montausier to Louis the Fourteenth, in speaking of Versailles:—'Vous avez beau faire, sire, vous n'en ferez jamais qu'un favori sans mérite,' it was impossible to deny their inferiority on all the great points of public impression. A debate in that day was one of the highest intellectual treats: there was always some new and vigorous feature in the display on both sides; some striking effort of imagination or masterly reasoning, or of that fine sophistry, in which, as was said of the vices of the French noblesse, half the evil was atoned by the elegance. The ministerialists sarcastically pronounced that, in every debate, Burke said something which no one else ever said; Sheridan said something that no one else ought to say, and Fox something that no one else would dare to say. But the world, fairer in its decision, did justice to their extraordinary powers; and found in the Asiatic amplitude and splendour of Burke; in Sheridan's alternate subtlety and strength, reminding it at one time of Attic dexterity, and another of the uncalculating boldness of barbarism; and in Fox's matchless English self-possession, unaffected vigour, and overflowing sensibility, a perpetual source of admiration."But it was in the intercourses of social life that the superiority of Opposition was most incontestable. Pitt's life was in the senate; his true place of existence was on the benches of that ministry, which he conducted with such unparalleled ability and success: he was, in the fullest sense of the phrase, a public man; and his indulgences in the few hours which he could spare from the business of office, were more like the necessary restoratives of a frame already shattered, than the easy gratifications of a man of society: and on this principle we can safely account for the common charge of Pitt's propensity to wine. He found it essential, to relieve a mind and body exhausted by the perpetual pressure of affairs: wine was his medicine: and it was drunk in total solitude, or with a few friends from whom the minister had no concealment. Over his wine the speeches for the night were often concerted; and when the dinner was done, the table council broke up only to finish the night in the house."But with Fox, all was the bright side of the picture. His extraordinary powers defied dissipation. No public man of England ever mingled so much personal pursuit of every thing in the form of indulgence with so much parliamentary activity. From the dinner he went to the debate, from the debate to the gaming-table, and returned to his bed by day-light, freighted with parliamentary applause, plundered of his last disposable guinea, and fevered with sleeplessness and agitation; to go through the same round within the next twenty-four hours. He kept no house; but he had the houses of all his party at his disposal, and that party were the most opulent and sumptuous of the nobility. Cato and Antony were not more unlike, than the public severity of Pitt, and the native and splendid dissoluteness of Fox."They were unlike in all things. Even in such slight peculiarities as their manner of walking into the house of commons, the contrast was visible. From the door Pitt's countenance was that of a man who felt that he was coming into his high place of business. 'He advanced up the floor with a quick firm step, with the head erect, and thrown back, looking to neither the right nor the left, nor favouring with a glance or a nod any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many of the highest would have been gratified by such a mark of recognition.' Fox's entrance was lounging or stately, as it might happen, but always good-humoured; he had some pleasantry to exchange with every body, and until the moment when he rose to speak, continued gaily talking with his friends."*    *    *     *    *"Of all the great speakers of a day fertile in oratory, Sheridan had the most conspicuous natural gifts. His figure, at his first introduction into the house, was manly and striking; his countenance singularly expressive, when excited by debate; his eye large, black, and intellectual; and his voice one of the richest, most flexible, and most sonorous, that ever came from human lips. Pitt's was powerful, but monotonous; and its measured tone often wearied the ear. Fox's was all confusion in the commencement of his speech; and it required some tension of ear throughout to catch his words. Burke's was loudand bold, but unmusical; and his contempt for order in his sentences, and the abruptness of his grand and swelling conceptions, that seemed to roll through his mind like billows before a gale, often made the defects of his delivery more striking. But Sheridan, in manner, gesture, and voice, had every quality that could give effect to eloquence."Pitt and Fox were listened to with profound respect, and in silence, broken only by occasional cheers; but from the moment of Sheridan's rising, there was an expectation of pleasure, which to his last days was seldom disappointed. A low murmur of eagerness ran round the house; every word was watched for, and his first pleasantry set the whole assemblage in a roar. Sheridan was aware of this; and has been heard to say, 'that if a jester would never be an orator, yet no speaker could expect to be popular in afull house, without a jest; and that he always made the experiment, good or bad; as a laugh gave him the country gentlemen to a man.'"In the house he was always formidable; and though Pitt's moral or physical courage never shrank from man, yet Sheridan was the antagonist with whom he evidently least desired to come into collision, and with whom the collision, when it did occur, was of the most fretful nature. Pitt's sarcasm on him as a theatrical manager, and Sheridan's severe, yet fully justified retort, are too well known to be now repeated; but there were a thousand instances of that 'keen encounter of their wits,' in which person was more involved than party."*    *    *     *    *"Burke was created for parliament. His mind was born with a determination to things of grandeur and difficulty."'Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votisOptat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem.'"Nothing in the ordinary professions, nothing in the trials or triumphs of private life, could have satisfied the noble hunger and thirst of his spirit of exertion. This quality was so predominant, that to it a large proportion of his original failures, and of his unfitness for general public business, which chiefly belongs to detail, is to be traced through life. No Hercules could wear the irresistible weapons and the lion's skin with more natural supremacy; but none could make more miserable work with the distaff. Burke's magnitude of grasp, and towering conception, were so much a part of his nature, that he could never forego their exercise, however unsuited to the occasion. Let the object be as trivial as it might, his first instinct was to turn it into all shapes of lofty speculation, and try how far it could be moulded and magnified into the semblance of greatness. If he had no large national interest to summon him, he winged his tempest against a turnpike bill; or flung away upon the petty quarrels and obscure peculations of the underlings of office, colours and forms that might have emblazoned the fall of a dynasty."*    *    *     *    *"Erskine, like many other characters of peculiar liveliness, had a morbid sensibility to the circumstances of the moment, which sometimes strangely enfeebled his presence of mind; any appearance of neglect in his audience, a cough, a yawn, or a whisper, even among the mixed multitude of the courts, and strong as he was there, has been known to dishearten him visibly. This trait was so notorious, that a solicitor, whose only merit was a remarkably vacant face, was said to be often planted opposite to Erskine by the adverse party, to yawn when the advocate began."The cause of his first failure in the house, was not unlike this curious mode of disconcerting an orator. He had been brought forward to support the falling fortunes of Fox, then struggling under the weight of the 'coalition.' The 'India Bill' had heaped the king's almost open hostility on the accumulation of public wrath and grievance which the ministers had with such luckless industry been employed during the year in raising for their own ruin. Fox looked abroad for help; and Gordon, the member for Portsmouth, was displaced from his borough, and Erskine was brought into the house, with no slight triumph of his party, and perhaps some degree of anxiety on the opposite side. On the nightof his first speech, Pitt, evidently intending to reply, sat with pen and paper in his hand, prepared to catch the arguments of this formidable adversary. He wrote a word or two; Erskine proceeded; but with every additional sentence Pitt's attention to the paper relaxed; his look became more careless; and he obviously began to think the orator less and less worthy of his attention. At length, while every eye in the house was fixed upon him, he, with a contemptuous smile, dashed the pen through the paper, and flung them on the floor. Erskine never recovered from this expression of disdain; his voice faltered, he struggled through the remainder of his speech, and sank into his seat dispirited and shorn of his fame."But a mind of the saliency and variety of Erskine's, must have distinguished itself wherever it was determined on distinction; and it is impossible to believe, that the master of the grave, deeply-reasoned, and glowing eloquence of this great pleader, should not have been able to bring his gifts with him from Westminster-hall to the higher altar of parliament. There were times when his efforts in the house reminded it of his finest effusions at the bar. But those were rare. He obviously felt that his place was not in the legislature; that no man can wisely hope for more than one kind of eminence; and except upon some party emergency, he seldom spoke, and probably never with much expectation of public effect. His later years lowered his name; by his retirement from active life, he lost the habits forced upon him by professional and public rank; and wandered through society, to the close of his days, a pleasant idler; still the gentleman and the man of easy wit, but leaving society to wonder what had become of the great orator, in what corner of the brain of this perpetual punster and story-teller, this man of careless conduct and rambling conversation, had shrunk the glorious faculty, that in better days flashed with such force and brightness; what cloud had absorbed the lightnings that had once alike penetrated and illumined the heart of the British nation."

"England had never before seen such a phalanx armed against a minister. A crowd of men of the highest natural talents, of the most practised ability, and of the first public weight in birth, fortune, and popularity, were nightly arrayed against the administration, sustained by the solitary eloquence of the young Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"Yet Pitt was not careless of followers. He was more than once even charged with sedulously gathering round him a host of subaltern politicians, whom he might throw forward as skirmishers,—or sacrifices, which they generally were. Powis, describing the 'forces led by the right honourable gentleman on the treasury bench,' said, 'the first detachment may be called his body-guard, who shoot their little arrows against those who refuse allegiance to their chief.' This light infantry were of course, soon scattered when the main battle joined. But Pitt, a son of the aristocracy, was an aristocrat in all his nature, and he loved to see young men of family around him; others were chosen for their activity, if not for their force, and some, probably, from personal liking. In the later period of his career, his train was swelled by a more influential and promising race of political worshippers, among whom were Lord Mornington, since Marquess Wellesley; Ryder, since Lord Harrowby; and Wilberforce, still undignified by title, but possessing an influence, which, perhaps, he values more. The minister's chief agents in the house of commons, were Mr. Grenville (since Lord Grenville) and Dundas.

"Yet, among those men of birth or business, what rival could be found to the popular leaders on the opposite side of the house,—to Burke, Sheridan, Grey, Windham, or to Fox, that

"'Prince and chief of many throned powers,Who led the embattled seraphim to war.'"

Without adopting the bitter remark of the Duke de Montausier to Louis the Fourteenth, in speaking of Versailles:—'Vous avez beau faire, sire, vous n'en ferez jamais qu'un favori sans mérite,' it was impossible to deny their inferiority on all the great points of public impression. A debate in that day was one of the highest intellectual treats: there was always some new and vigorous feature in the display on both sides; some striking effort of imagination or masterly reasoning, or of that fine sophistry, in which, as was said of the vices of the French noblesse, half the evil was atoned by the elegance. The ministerialists sarcastically pronounced that, in every debate, Burke said something which no one else ever said; Sheridan said something that no one else ought to say, and Fox something that no one else would dare to say. But the world, fairer in its decision, did justice to their extraordinary powers; and found in the Asiatic amplitude and splendour of Burke; in Sheridan's alternate subtlety and strength, reminding it at one time of Attic dexterity, and another of the uncalculating boldness of barbarism; and in Fox's matchless English self-possession, unaffected vigour, and overflowing sensibility, a perpetual source of admiration.

"But it was in the intercourses of social life that the superiority of Opposition was most incontestable. Pitt's life was in the senate; his true place of existence was on the benches of that ministry, which he conducted with such unparalleled ability and success: he was, in the fullest sense of the phrase, a public man; and his indulgences in the few hours which he could spare from the business of office, were more like the necessary restoratives of a frame already shattered, than the easy gratifications of a man of society: and on this principle we can safely account for the common charge of Pitt's propensity to wine. He found it essential, to relieve a mind and body exhausted by the perpetual pressure of affairs: wine was his medicine: and it was drunk in total solitude, or with a few friends from whom the minister had no concealment. Over his wine the speeches for the night were often concerted; and when the dinner was done, the table council broke up only to finish the night in the house.

"But with Fox, all was the bright side of the picture. His extraordinary powers defied dissipation. No public man of England ever mingled so much personal pursuit of every thing in the form of indulgence with so much parliamentary activity. From the dinner he went to the debate, from the debate to the gaming-table, and returned to his bed by day-light, freighted with parliamentary applause, plundered of his last disposable guinea, and fevered with sleeplessness and agitation; to go through the same round within the next twenty-four hours. He kept no house; but he had the houses of all his party at his disposal, and that party were the most opulent and sumptuous of the nobility. Cato and Antony were not more unlike, than the public severity of Pitt, and the native and splendid dissoluteness of Fox.

"They were unlike in all things. Even in such slight peculiarities as their manner of walking into the house of commons, the contrast was visible. From the door Pitt's countenance was that of a man who felt that he was coming into his high place of business. 'He advanced up the floor with a quick firm step, with the head erect, and thrown back, looking to neither the right nor the left, nor favouring with a glance or a nod any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many of the highest would have been gratified by such a mark of recognition.' Fox's entrance was lounging or stately, as it might happen, but always good-humoured; he had some pleasantry to exchange with every body, and until the moment when he rose to speak, continued gaily talking with his friends."

*    *    *     *    *

"Of all the great speakers of a day fertile in oratory, Sheridan had the most conspicuous natural gifts. His figure, at his first introduction into the house, was manly and striking; his countenance singularly expressive, when excited by debate; his eye large, black, and intellectual; and his voice one of the richest, most flexible, and most sonorous, that ever came from human lips. Pitt's was powerful, but monotonous; and its measured tone often wearied the ear. Fox's was all confusion in the commencement of his speech; and it required some tension of ear throughout to catch his words. Burke's was loudand bold, but unmusical; and his contempt for order in his sentences, and the abruptness of his grand and swelling conceptions, that seemed to roll through his mind like billows before a gale, often made the defects of his delivery more striking. But Sheridan, in manner, gesture, and voice, had every quality that could give effect to eloquence.

"Pitt and Fox were listened to with profound respect, and in silence, broken only by occasional cheers; but from the moment of Sheridan's rising, there was an expectation of pleasure, which to his last days was seldom disappointed. A low murmur of eagerness ran round the house; every word was watched for, and his first pleasantry set the whole assemblage in a roar. Sheridan was aware of this; and has been heard to say, 'that if a jester would never be an orator, yet no speaker could expect to be popular in afull house, without a jest; and that he always made the experiment, good or bad; as a laugh gave him the country gentlemen to a man.'

"In the house he was always formidable; and though Pitt's moral or physical courage never shrank from man, yet Sheridan was the antagonist with whom he evidently least desired to come into collision, and with whom the collision, when it did occur, was of the most fretful nature. Pitt's sarcasm on him as a theatrical manager, and Sheridan's severe, yet fully justified retort, are too well known to be now repeated; but there were a thousand instances of that 'keen encounter of their wits,' in which person was more involved than party."

*    *    *     *    *

"Burke was created for parliament. His mind was born with a determination to things of grandeur and difficulty.

"'Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votisOptat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem.'"

Nothing in the ordinary professions, nothing in the trials or triumphs of private life, could have satisfied the noble hunger and thirst of his spirit of exertion. This quality was so predominant, that to it a large proportion of his original failures, and of his unfitness for general public business, which chiefly belongs to detail, is to be traced through life. No Hercules could wear the irresistible weapons and the lion's skin with more natural supremacy; but none could make more miserable work with the distaff. Burke's magnitude of grasp, and towering conception, were so much a part of his nature, that he could never forego their exercise, however unsuited to the occasion. Let the object be as trivial as it might, his first instinct was to turn it into all shapes of lofty speculation, and try how far it could be moulded and magnified into the semblance of greatness. If he had no large national interest to summon him, he winged his tempest against a turnpike bill; or flung away upon the petty quarrels and obscure peculations of the underlings of office, colours and forms that might have emblazoned the fall of a dynasty."

*    *    *     *    *

"Erskine, like many other characters of peculiar liveliness, had a morbid sensibility to the circumstances of the moment, which sometimes strangely enfeebled his presence of mind; any appearance of neglect in his audience, a cough, a yawn, or a whisper, even among the mixed multitude of the courts, and strong as he was there, has been known to dishearten him visibly. This trait was so notorious, that a solicitor, whose only merit was a remarkably vacant face, was said to be often planted opposite to Erskine by the adverse party, to yawn when the advocate began.

"The cause of his first failure in the house, was not unlike this curious mode of disconcerting an orator. He had been brought forward to support the falling fortunes of Fox, then struggling under the weight of the 'coalition.' The 'India Bill' had heaped the king's almost open hostility on the accumulation of public wrath and grievance which the ministers had with such luckless industry been employed during the year in raising for their own ruin. Fox looked abroad for help; and Gordon, the member for Portsmouth, was displaced from his borough, and Erskine was brought into the house, with no slight triumph of his party, and perhaps some degree of anxiety on the opposite side. On the nightof his first speech, Pitt, evidently intending to reply, sat with pen and paper in his hand, prepared to catch the arguments of this formidable adversary. He wrote a word or two; Erskine proceeded; but with every additional sentence Pitt's attention to the paper relaxed; his look became more careless; and he obviously began to think the orator less and less worthy of his attention. At length, while every eye in the house was fixed upon him, he, with a contemptuous smile, dashed the pen through the paper, and flung them on the floor. Erskine never recovered from this expression of disdain; his voice faltered, he struggled through the remainder of his speech, and sank into his seat dispirited and shorn of his fame.

"But a mind of the saliency and variety of Erskine's, must have distinguished itself wherever it was determined on distinction; and it is impossible to believe, that the master of the grave, deeply-reasoned, and glowing eloquence of this great pleader, should not have been able to bring his gifts with him from Westminster-hall to the higher altar of parliament. There were times when his efforts in the house reminded it of his finest effusions at the bar. But those were rare. He obviously felt that his place was not in the legislature; that no man can wisely hope for more than one kind of eminence; and except upon some party emergency, he seldom spoke, and probably never with much expectation of public effect. His later years lowered his name; by his retirement from active life, he lost the habits forced upon him by professional and public rank; and wandered through society, to the close of his days, a pleasant idler; still the gentleman and the man of easy wit, but leaving society to wonder what had become of the great orator, in what corner of the brain of this perpetual punster and story-teller, this man of careless conduct and rambling conversation, had shrunk the glorious faculty, that in better days flashed with such force and brightness; what cloud had absorbed the lightnings that had once alike penetrated and illumined the heart of the British nation."

The following investigation of the authorship of Junius will be read with interest.

"The trial of Hastings had brought Sir Philip Francis into public notice, and his strong Foxite principles introduced him to the prince's friends. His rise is still unexplained. From a clerk in the War-office, he had been suddenly exalted into a commissioner for regulating the affairs of India, and sent to Bengal with an appointment, estimated at ten thousand pounds a-year. On his return to England he joined Opposition, declared violent hostilities against Hastings, and gave his most zealous assistance to the prosecution; though the house of commons would not suffer him to be on the committee of impeachment. Francis was an able and effective speaker; with an occasional wildness of manner and eccentricity of expression, which, if they sometimes provoked a smile, often increased the interest of his statements."But the usual lot of those who have identified themselves with any one public subject, rapidly overtook him. His temperament, his talents, and his knowledge, were all Indian. With the impeachment he was politically born, with it he lived, and when it withered away, his adventitious and local celebrity perished along with it. He clung to Fox for a few years after; but while the great leader of opposition found all his skill necessary to retain his party in existence, he was not likely to solicit a partisan at once so difficult to keep in order and to employ. The close of his ambitious and disappointed life was spent in ranging along the skirts of both parties, joining neither, and speaking his mind with easy, and perhaps sincere, scorn of both; reprobating the Whigs, during their brief reign, for their neglect of fancied promises; and equally reprobating the ministry, for their blindness to fancied pretensions."But he was still to have a momentary respite for fame. While he was going down into that oblivion which rewards the labours of so many politicians; a pamphlet, ascribing Junius's letters to Sir Phillip, arrested his descent. Its arguments were plausible; and, for a while, opinion appeared to be in favour of the conjecture, notwithstanding a denial from the presumed Junius; which, however, had much the air of his feeling no strong dislike to being suspected of thisnew title to celebrity. But further examination extinguished the title; and left the secret, which had perplexed so many unravellers of literary webs, to perplex the grave idlers of generations to come."Yet the true wonder is not the concealment; for a multitude of causes might have produced the continued necessity even after the death of the writer; but the feasibility with which the chief features of Junius may be fastened on almost every writer, of the crowd for whom claims have been laid to this dubious honour: while, in every instance, some discrepancy finally starts upon the eye, which excludes the claim."Burke had more than the vigour, the information, and the command of language; but he was incapable of the virulence and the disloyalty. Horne Tooke had the virulence and the disloyalty in superabundance; but he wanted the cool sarcasm and the polished elegance, even if he could have been fairly supposed to be at once the assailant and the defender. Wilkes had the information and the wit; but his style was incorrigibly vulgar, and all its metaphors were for and from the mob: in addition, he would have rejoiced to declare himself the writer: his well-known answer to an inquiry on the subject was, 'Would to Heaven I had!'Utinam scripsissem!Lord George Germaine has been lately brought forward as a candidate; and the evidence fully proves that he possessed the dexterity of style, the powerful and pungent remark, and even the individual causes of bitterness and partisanship, which might be supposed to stimulate Junius: but, in the private correspondence of Junius with his printer, Woodfall, there are contemptuous allusions to Lord George's conduct in the field, which at once put an end to the question of authorship."Dunning possessed the style, the satire, and the partisanship; but Junius makes blunders in his law, of which Dunning must have been incapable. Gerard Hamilton (Single-speech) might have written the letters, but he never possessed the moral courage; and was, besides, so consummate a coxcomb, that his vanity must have, however involuntarily, let out the secret. The argument, that he was Junius; from his notoriously using the same peculiarities of phrase at the time when all the world was in full chase of the author, ought of itself to be decisive against him; for nothing can be clearer, than that the actual writer was determined on concealment, and that he would never have toyed with his dangerous secret so much in the manner of a school-girl, anxious to develop her accomplishments."It is with no wish to add to the number of the controversialists on this bluestocking subject, that a conjecture is hazarded; that Junius will be found, if ever found, among some of the humbler names of the list. If he had been a political leader, or, in any sense of the word, an independent man, it is next to impossible that he should not have left some indication of his authorship. But it is perfectly easy to conceive the case of a private secretary, or dependent of a political leader, writing, by his command, and for his temporary purpose, a series of attacks on a ministry; which, when the object was gained, it was of the highest importance to bury, so far as the connexion was concerned, in total oblivion. Junius, writing on his own behalf, would have, in all probability, retained evidence sufficient to substantiate his title, when the peril of the discovery should have passed away, which it did within a few years; for who would have thought, in 1780, of punishing even the libels on the king in 1770? Or when, if the peril remained, the writer would have felt himself borne on a tide of popular applause high above the inflictions of law."But, writing for another; the most natural result was, that he should have beenpledgedto extinguish all proof of the transaction; to give up every fragment that could lead to the discovery at any future period; and to surrender the whole mystery into the hands of the superior, for whose purposes it had been constructed, and who, while he had no fame to acquire by its being made public, might be undone by its betrayal."The marks ofprivate secretaryshipare so strong, that all the probable conjectures have pointed to writers under that relation; Lloyd, the private secretary of George Grenville; Greatrakes, Lord Shelburne's private secretary; Rosenhagen, who was so much concerned in the business of Shelburne house, that hemay be considered as a second secretary; and Macauley Boyd, who was perpetually about some public man, and who was at length fixed by his friends on Lord Macartney's establishment, and went with him to take office in India."But, mortifying as it may be to the disputants on the subject, the discovery is now beyond rational hope; for Junius intimates his having been a spectator of parliamentary proceedings even further back than the year 1743; which, supposing him to have been twenty years old at the time, would give more than a century for his experience. In the long interval since 1772, when the letters ceased: not the slightest clue has been discovered; though doubtless the keenest inquiry was set on foot by the parties assailed. Sir William Draper died with but one wish, though a sufficiently uncharitable one, that he could have found out his castigator, before he took leave of the world. Lord North often avowed his total ignorance of the writer. The king's reported observation to Gen. Desaguiliers, in 1772, 'We know who Junius is, and he will write no more,' is unsubstantiated; and if ever made, was probably prefaced with a supposition; for no publicity ever followed; and what neither the minister of the day, nor his successors ever knew, could scarcely have come to the king's knowledge but by inspiration, nor remained locked up there but by a reserve not far short of a political error."But the question is not worth the trouble of discovery; for, since the personal resentment is past, its interest can arise only from pulling the mask off the visage of some individual of political eminence, and giving us the amusing contrast of his real and his assumed physiognomy; or from unearthing some great unknown genius. But the leaders have been already excluded; and the composition of the letters demanded no extraordinary powers. Their secret information has been vaunted; but Junius gives us no more than what would now be called the 'chat of the clubs;' the currency of conversation, which any man mixing in general life might collect in his half-hour's walk down St. James's Street: he gives us no insight into thepurposesof government; of thecounselsof thecabinethe knows nothing. The style was undeniably excellent for the purpose, and its writer must have been a man of ability. If it had been original, he might have been a man of genius; but it was notoriously formed on Col. Titus's letter, which from its strong peculiarities, is of easy imitation. The crime and the blunder together of Junius was, that he attacked the king, a man so publicly honest and so personally virtuous, that his assailant inevitably pronounced himself a libeller. But if he had restricted his lash to the contending politicians of the day, justice would have rejoiced in his vigorous severity. Who could have regretted the keenest application of the scourge to the Duke of Grafton, the most incapable of ministers, and the most openly and offensively profligate of men; to the indomitable selfishness of Mansfield; to the avarice of Bedford, the suspicious negotiator of the scandalous treaty of 1763; or to the slippered and drivelling ambition of North, sacrificing an empire to his covetousness of power?"

"The trial of Hastings had brought Sir Philip Francis into public notice, and his strong Foxite principles introduced him to the prince's friends. His rise is still unexplained. From a clerk in the War-office, he had been suddenly exalted into a commissioner for regulating the affairs of India, and sent to Bengal with an appointment, estimated at ten thousand pounds a-year. On his return to England he joined Opposition, declared violent hostilities against Hastings, and gave his most zealous assistance to the prosecution; though the house of commons would not suffer him to be on the committee of impeachment. Francis was an able and effective speaker; with an occasional wildness of manner and eccentricity of expression, which, if they sometimes provoked a smile, often increased the interest of his statements.

"But the usual lot of those who have identified themselves with any one public subject, rapidly overtook him. His temperament, his talents, and his knowledge, were all Indian. With the impeachment he was politically born, with it he lived, and when it withered away, his adventitious and local celebrity perished along with it. He clung to Fox for a few years after; but while the great leader of opposition found all his skill necessary to retain his party in existence, he was not likely to solicit a partisan at once so difficult to keep in order and to employ. The close of his ambitious and disappointed life was spent in ranging along the skirts of both parties, joining neither, and speaking his mind with easy, and perhaps sincere, scorn of both; reprobating the Whigs, during their brief reign, for their neglect of fancied promises; and equally reprobating the ministry, for their blindness to fancied pretensions.

"But he was still to have a momentary respite for fame. While he was going down into that oblivion which rewards the labours of so many politicians; a pamphlet, ascribing Junius's letters to Sir Phillip, arrested his descent. Its arguments were plausible; and, for a while, opinion appeared to be in favour of the conjecture, notwithstanding a denial from the presumed Junius; which, however, had much the air of his feeling no strong dislike to being suspected of thisnew title to celebrity. But further examination extinguished the title; and left the secret, which had perplexed so many unravellers of literary webs, to perplex the grave idlers of generations to come.

"Yet the true wonder is not the concealment; for a multitude of causes might have produced the continued necessity even after the death of the writer; but the feasibility with which the chief features of Junius may be fastened on almost every writer, of the crowd for whom claims have been laid to this dubious honour: while, in every instance, some discrepancy finally starts upon the eye, which excludes the claim.

"Burke had more than the vigour, the information, and the command of language; but he was incapable of the virulence and the disloyalty. Horne Tooke had the virulence and the disloyalty in superabundance; but he wanted the cool sarcasm and the polished elegance, even if he could have been fairly supposed to be at once the assailant and the defender. Wilkes had the information and the wit; but his style was incorrigibly vulgar, and all its metaphors were for and from the mob: in addition, he would have rejoiced to declare himself the writer: his well-known answer to an inquiry on the subject was, 'Would to Heaven I had!'Utinam scripsissem!Lord George Germaine has been lately brought forward as a candidate; and the evidence fully proves that he possessed the dexterity of style, the powerful and pungent remark, and even the individual causes of bitterness and partisanship, which might be supposed to stimulate Junius: but, in the private correspondence of Junius with his printer, Woodfall, there are contemptuous allusions to Lord George's conduct in the field, which at once put an end to the question of authorship.

"Dunning possessed the style, the satire, and the partisanship; but Junius makes blunders in his law, of which Dunning must have been incapable. Gerard Hamilton (Single-speech) might have written the letters, but he never possessed the moral courage; and was, besides, so consummate a coxcomb, that his vanity must have, however involuntarily, let out the secret. The argument, that he was Junius; from his notoriously using the same peculiarities of phrase at the time when all the world was in full chase of the author, ought of itself to be decisive against him; for nothing can be clearer, than that the actual writer was determined on concealment, and that he would never have toyed with his dangerous secret so much in the manner of a school-girl, anxious to develop her accomplishments.

"It is with no wish to add to the number of the controversialists on this bluestocking subject, that a conjecture is hazarded; that Junius will be found, if ever found, among some of the humbler names of the list. If he had been a political leader, or, in any sense of the word, an independent man, it is next to impossible that he should not have left some indication of his authorship. But it is perfectly easy to conceive the case of a private secretary, or dependent of a political leader, writing, by his command, and for his temporary purpose, a series of attacks on a ministry; which, when the object was gained, it was of the highest importance to bury, so far as the connexion was concerned, in total oblivion. Junius, writing on his own behalf, would have, in all probability, retained evidence sufficient to substantiate his title, when the peril of the discovery should have passed away, which it did within a few years; for who would have thought, in 1780, of punishing even the libels on the king in 1770? Or when, if the peril remained, the writer would have felt himself borne on a tide of popular applause high above the inflictions of law.

"But, writing for another; the most natural result was, that he should have beenpledgedto extinguish all proof of the transaction; to give up every fragment that could lead to the discovery at any future period; and to surrender the whole mystery into the hands of the superior, for whose purposes it had been constructed, and who, while he had no fame to acquire by its being made public, might be undone by its betrayal.

"The marks ofprivate secretaryshipare so strong, that all the probable conjectures have pointed to writers under that relation; Lloyd, the private secretary of George Grenville; Greatrakes, Lord Shelburne's private secretary; Rosenhagen, who was so much concerned in the business of Shelburne house, that hemay be considered as a second secretary; and Macauley Boyd, who was perpetually about some public man, and who was at length fixed by his friends on Lord Macartney's establishment, and went with him to take office in India.

"But, mortifying as it may be to the disputants on the subject, the discovery is now beyond rational hope; for Junius intimates his having been a spectator of parliamentary proceedings even further back than the year 1743; which, supposing him to have been twenty years old at the time, would give more than a century for his experience. In the long interval since 1772, when the letters ceased: not the slightest clue has been discovered; though doubtless the keenest inquiry was set on foot by the parties assailed. Sir William Draper died with but one wish, though a sufficiently uncharitable one, that he could have found out his castigator, before he took leave of the world. Lord North often avowed his total ignorance of the writer. The king's reported observation to Gen. Desaguiliers, in 1772, 'We know who Junius is, and he will write no more,' is unsubstantiated; and if ever made, was probably prefaced with a supposition; for no publicity ever followed; and what neither the minister of the day, nor his successors ever knew, could scarcely have come to the king's knowledge but by inspiration, nor remained locked up there but by a reserve not far short of a political error.

"But the question is not worth the trouble of discovery; for, since the personal resentment is past, its interest can arise only from pulling the mask off the visage of some individual of political eminence, and giving us the amusing contrast of his real and his assumed physiognomy; or from unearthing some great unknown genius. But the leaders have been already excluded; and the composition of the letters demanded no extraordinary powers. Their secret information has been vaunted; but Junius gives us no more than what would now be called the 'chat of the clubs;' the currency of conversation, which any man mixing in general life might collect in his half-hour's walk down St. James's Street: he gives us no insight into thepurposesof government; of thecounselsof thecabinethe knows nothing. The style was undeniably excellent for the purpose, and its writer must have been a man of ability. If it had been original, he might have been a man of genius; but it was notoriously formed on Col. Titus's letter, which from its strong peculiarities, is of easy imitation. The crime and the blunder together of Junius was, that he attacked the king, a man so publicly honest and so personally virtuous, that his assailant inevitably pronounced himself a libeller. But if he had restricted his lash to the contending politicians of the day, justice would have rejoiced in his vigorous severity. Who could have regretted the keenest application of the scourge to the Duke of Grafton, the most incapable of ministers, and the most openly and offensively profligate of men; to the indomitable selfishness of Mansfield; to the avarice of Bedford, the suspicious negotiator of the scandalous treaty of 1763; or to the slippered and drivelling ambition of North, sacrificing an empire to his covetousness of power?"

Mr. Croly has recorded a quantity of the "good things" that were said by the wits of the day at the table of the Prince, who used the facilities which his rank afforded him, of collecting around him all that was most distinguished in intellect, with praiseworthy zeal. Had his companions been chosen only from among that highest class, we might have quoted with regard to him, the sentence of Cicero—"facillime et in optimam partem, cognoscuntur adolescentes, qui se ad claros et sapientes viros, bene consulentes rei publicæ, contulerunt: quibuscum si frequentes sunt, opinionem afferunt populo, eorum fore se similes quos sibi ipsi delegerint ad imitandum"—but unfortunately his intimacy was habitually shared by far less worthy associates—persons whom it was contamination to approach. Many of thesejeux d'espritare of respectable antiquity; we transcribe a few which are attributed to the Prince himself, as specimens of royal humour.

"The conversation turning on some new eccentricity of Lord George Gordon; his unfitness for a mob leader was instanced in his suffering the rioters of 1780 to break open the gin-shops, and, in particular, to intoxicate themselves by the plunder of Langdale's great distillery, in Holborn. 'But why did not Langdale defend his property?' was the question. 'He had not the means,' was the answer. 'Not the means of defence?' said the prince; 'ask Angelo: he, a brewer, a fellow all his life long atcarteandtierce.'""Sheridan was detailing the failure of Fox's match with Miss Pulteney. 'I never thought that any thing would result from it,' said the prince. 'Then,' replied Sheridan, 'it was not for want of sighs: he sat beside her cooing like a turtle-dove.'"'He never cared about it,' said the prince; 'he saw long ago that it was acoup manqué.'""Fox disliked Dr. Parr; who, however, whether from personal admiration, or from the habit which through life humiliated his real titles to respect—that of fastening on the public favourites of the time, persecuted him with praise. The prince saw a newspaper panegyric on Fox, evidently from the Dr.'s pen; and on being asked what he thought of it, observed, that 'it reminded him of the famous epitaph on Machiavel's tomb,'—"'Tanto nomini nullumParelogium.'""If English punning," says Mr. Croly, "be a proscribed species of wit; though it bears, in fact, much more the character of the 'chartered libertine,' every where reprobated, and every where received; yet classical puns take rank in all lands and languages. Burke's pun on 'the divine right of kings and toastmasters,'—thejure de-vino—perhaps stands at the head of its class. But in an argument with Jackson, the prince, jestingly, contended that trial by jury was as old as the time of Julius Cæsar; and even that Cæsar died by it. He quoted Suetonius: 'Jurecæsus videtur.'"

"The conversation turning on some new eccentricity of Lord George Gordon; his unfitness for a mob leader was instanced in his suffering the rioters of 1780 to break open the gin-shops, and, in particular, to intoxicate themselves by the plunder of Langdale's great distillery, in Holborn. 'But why did not Langdale defend his property?' was the question. 'He had not the means,' was the answer. 'Not the means of defence?' said the prince; 'ask Angelo: he, a brewer, a fellow all his life long atcarteandtierce.'"

"Sheridan was detailing the failure of Fox's match with Miss Pulteney. 'I never thought that any thing would result from it,' said the prince. 'Then,' replied Sheridan, 'it was not for want of sighs: he sat beside her cooing like a turtle-dove.'

"'He never cared about it,' said the prince; 'he saw long ago that it was acoup manqué.'"

"Fox disliked Dr. Parr; who, however, whether from personal admiration, or from the habit which through life humiliated his real titles to respect—that of fastening on the public favourites of the time, persecuted him with praise. The prince saw a newspaper panegyric on Fox, evidently from the Dr.'s pen; and on being asked what he thought of it, observed, that 'it reminded him of the famous epitaph on Machiavel's tomb,'—

"'Tanto nomini nullumParelogium.'"

"If English punning," says Mr. Croly, "be a proscribed species of wit; though it bears, in fact, much more the character of the 'chartered libertine,' every where reprobated, and every where received; yet classical puns take rank in all lands and languages. Burke's pun on 'the divine right of kings and toastmasters,'—thejure de-vino—perhaps stands at the head of its class. But in an argument with Jackson, the prince, jestingly, contended that trial by jury was as old as the time of Julius Cæsar; and even that Cæsar died by it. He quoted Suetonius: 'Jurecæsus videtur.'"

In October, 1788, George the III. was afflicted with a mental disease, which totally incapacitated him for the duties of government. We do not wish to be unjustly harsh, but when we consider the irritability which, as may be inferred from the anecdote we have related of the King's intention to retire from England, must have formed a prominent trait in his character, and the displeasure he could not help manifesting in his communications to Parliament respecting the Prince's debts, it is impossible to reject the idea that the conduct of the latter was a main cause of his affliction.

He recovered, however, before the preliminary arrangements for the entrance of the Prince upon the regency had been completed. From this period up tothemoment when the King became again a victim of the same dreadful malady, from whose grasp he never afterwards was freed, the Prince mixed no more with politics, but "abandoned himself," in the words of our author, "to pursuits still more obnoxious than those of public ambition." The course of his life was only varied by his disastrous marriage with the unfortunate Caroline, Princess of Brunswick. One of Mr. Croly's chapters is headed "the Prince's Marriage," the next, "the Royal Separation." We need notoccupy much space with a subject which must be familiar to all of our readers, and of which the details are as disgusting as they are pitiful. Of all the foul stains upon the character of the royal profligate, it has stamped the foulest. Every principle of honour, of virtue, of humanity, was violated in the grossest manner.

That the Prince of Wales was morally guilty of the crime of bigamy in marrying the Princess Caroline, we have no hesitation in asserting. No one can doubt that Mrs. Fitzherbert had the claims of a wife upon him previously to his entering into this second engagement, however it may be attempted, as has been done by Mr. Croly, to deny such claims, upon the ground that the connexion was void by the laws of the land, although the ordinances of religion may have been complied with. If it can be supposed, that the Prince was determined, whilst binding himself at the altar of God by the most sacred vows, to take advantage of the laws of the land to cast aside the solemn obligations he thus assumed, as soon as it suited his convenience, in what a despicable situation is he placed! Deceit, perjury, sacrilege, would be terms too weak for the act. But Mr. Croly's own words are sufficient to prove that the lady was, and is, considered to have been connected with him by other ties than those of a mistress. He says, "she still enjoys at least the gains of the connexion, and up to the hoary age of seventy-five, calmly draws her salary of ten thousand pounds a year!" Would that salary be continued to a mistress? It is evident from the English papers that Mrs. Fitzherbert is treated with the greatest consideration by the present king and royal family, and that she is received by them on the most intimate footing; her name is recorded amongst those of the constant guests at the royal table and social assemblages of every kind. On what other ground can this circumstance be accounted for, than that she is regarded as a sister-in-law by the sovereign, and as a reputable relative by his family?

It is singular enough that Mr. Croly seems to consider a violation of the laws of God less reprehensible than a violation of the laws of man. Such at least is the unavoidable inference to be drawn from his remarks on this matter. He is quite indignant at the idea of his Royal Highness having married a woman of inferior rank, and a Roman Catholic (there is the horrid part of the affair,) by which he would have been guilty of a sin against the state, and evinces great anxiety to prove that the crime was one of a much lighter dye—merely an adulterous connexion, by which he transgressed one of the Divine Commandments. This Mr. Fox also attempted to do in Parliament, when it was hinted by a member that theliaisonwas not of the character which usually subsists between individuals in the relative rank of the Prince and the lady, and the attempt was disgracefulenough even in astatesman—but in a minister of religion!—we leave it however to speak for itself.

In 1811, George the III. was a second time a lunatic, and the Prince ascended his throne, though only with the title of Regent, which he did not change for that of King until 1820, when the nominal monarch died, having survived his reason for nearly ten years. Ten years longer did the Fourth George sway the sceptre of the noblest empire in the world; and then he too mingled with the same dust as the meanest of his subjects. "C'est ainsi," in the words of Bossuet, "que la puissance divine, justement irritée centre notre orgueil, le pousse jusqu' au néant, et que, pour égaler á jamais les conditions, elle ne fait de nous tous qu' une même cendre."

During the last years of his life, George the IVth was the prey of various maladies, with which a remarkably strong constitution enabled him to struggle until the spring of 1830. His corporeal sufferings may have been one cause of his almost entire seclusion at Windsor Castle, where he was like the Grand Lama of Thibet, unseeing and unseen, except by a chosen few, but it cannot be doubted that the knowledge of the unpopularity under which he certainly laboured, had some effect in producing the slight communication which took place between him and his subjects. So notorious was his aversion to making an appearance in London, that when he was first announced, last April, to be seriously indisposed, it was rumoured for a time that the sickness was fictitious—a mere pretence to avoid holding a levee which had been fixed for a certain day in that month, and which was in consequence deferred. But before the period had arrived to which it was postponed, there was no longer a doubt that the angel of death was brandishing his dart, and that there was little chance of averting the threatened stroke. The bulletins which the royal physicians daily promulgated, though couched in equivocal and unsatisfactory terms, shadowed out impending dissolution. The reason of their ambiguity was currently believed to be the circumstance, that the King insisted upon reading the newspapers in which they were published; whilst the medical attendants were anxious to withhold from him a knowledge of his true situation.

Besides being in the public prints, these bulletins appeared, in manuscript copies, in the windows of almost every shop, and were likewise shown every day at the Palace of St. James, by a lord and groom in waiting, richly dressed, to all of the loving subjects who preferred repairing thither for the satisfaction of their affectionate solicitude. It was rather amusing to watch the manner in which this satisfaction was obtained. The bulletins were thrust into the faces of all as they entered into the great hall where the exhibitors were stationed, with laudable earnestnessand zeal, and most of the visiters looked with great interest—upon the paintings with which the apartment was adorned. The multitudes of persons, however, of both sexes, and often of high distinction, who filled the rooms that were thrown open, during the fashionable hours of the day, rendered it an entertaining scene. The most anxious faces were those of the owners of dry-good shops, by whom the recovery of the monarch was indeed an object devoutly desired, as they had already laid in their varieties of spring fashions, which the universal mourning that was to follow the demise of the crown, would convert almost into positive lumber.

At length, on the 26th of June, intelligence was received that the monarch of Great Britain had been conquered by a still more powerful king. What mourning without grief! what weeping without a tear! The papers immediately commenced a chorus of lamentation and eulogy, in which but one discordant voice was heard. This was the voice of the "Times"—the only leading journal which had independence and spirit enough to vindicate its character as a guardian of the public morals, by disdaining to prostitute its columns to the purposes of falsehood. One paper affirmed, among other fulsome and mendacious remarks, that the royal defunct must have taken his departure from this world with a clear conscience, as he had never injured an individual! After such an assertion

"Quis neget arduisPronos relabi posse rivosMontibus, Tiberimque riverti?"

Did the shades of an injured wife and an injured father never rise before the imagination of the dying man? did the injury inflicted by a life of evil example never appal the recollection of the dying King? Yes, a life of evil example; we repeat the phrase. Look at his whole career, from the moment when it first became free from control, to its close. Does it not afford an almost uninterrupted series of the most scandalous violations of the rules which a king especially should hold sacred—the rules of religion, of morals? When young, he countenanced by his deportment the extravagance and profligacy of all the youth of the kingdom—when old, contemplate the avowed, the flagrant concubinage he sanctioned—see one adulteress openly succeeding another in his favour, and say whether his declining years furnished a more exemplary model for imitation than those of his boyhood. Worse than all, behold by whom, amongst others, his very death-bed, we may say, is surrounded—the mistress who had last sacrificed her virtue and honour, and the husband and the children of that woman, who were occupying places in the royal household, as the price of the wife and the mother's shame. It is well known that it was not until afterthe accession of the present sovereign, that Lady Conyngham, and the man from whom she derives the right of being so entitled, together with their offspring, received an intimation that their presence was no longer desirable at Windsor Castle, from which they departed, in consequence, amid the ridicule and scorn of the empire.

It was an interesting period for an American to be in London, that of the death of one king, and the accession of another; and, as such events are not of every-day occurrence, we esteemed ourselves particularly fortunate in being on the spot at the time. The various ceremonies consequent upon them,—the lying in state,—the obsequies,—the proclamation,—the prorogation of Parliament, and so forth, were well worth witnessing; but, by far the most interesting result they produced, was the general election which followed the dissolution of the legislature. We were enabled, through the kindness of a gentleman who was a candidate, to study the whole process of an election in a free borough, having accompanied him, at his invitation, to the scene of political strife, and remained there until the contest was brought to a close. By occupying a few pages with an account of it, we may, perhaps, communicate some degree of information and pleasure to a portion of our readers, without being guilty of too wide a digression.

The two first days subsequently to our arrival in the town, were spent in visiting those persons whose suffrages were not ascertained at the time when the candidates made their canvass, two or three weeks before, that is to say,—called personally upon every one who possessed a vote, and requested his support. In this, there is no mincing of the matter in the least,—the suffrage is openly asked, and as openly promised or refused; but it is only among the more respectable class, that this ceremonial is sufficient,—the others "thank their God they have a vote to sell." On the third day, the election commenced. Two temporary covered buildings had been erected near each other in the principal part of the town, in one of which were the hustings and the polls, and the other was employed for the sittings of a species of court, where the qualifications of suspected voters were tried. About nine in the morning, the candidates, three in number, proceeded to the former booth, if we may so term it, and, after the settlement of the necessary preliminaries, were proposed and seconded as representatives of the borough, in the order in which they stood on the hustings. These were partitioned into three divisions,—one belonging to each of the opposing gentlemen,—which were crowded with their respective friends. Directly below the hustings, which were considerably elevated, was a table, round which were seated the poll clerks, and others officially connected with the election. This was separatedby a board running across the building, from the polls, which were also divided into three parts, or boxes, corresponding with the divisions of the hustings. All the proposers and seconders made speeches, as well as the candidates,—and nothing could surpass the amusing nature of the scene during the discourses of two of the haranguers, who were particularly obnoxious to a large portion of the assembled crowd. They were saluted with a vast variety ofgentleepithets, and almost every method of annoyance and interruption was put in practice. After thespeechificationwas concluded, the polling commenced. It was done by tallies. The committee of each candidate, marshalled in succession ten of their friends at a time, who appeared in the box belonging to their party, and, on being asked, one after another, for whom they voted, gave, vivâ voce, either a plumper for one, or split their vote amongst two of the candidates. This system was regularly prosecuted, until the diminished numbers of one of the parties, rendered it difficult to collect ten men in time, when as many as could be brought together, were sent in. On the last day of the election, not more than one vote was polled in an hour in one of the boxes.

The candidates were obliged to remain in their places on the hustings, day after day, from the opening until the closing of the polls, and thank aloud every one who gave them a vote. At the end of every day's polling, the three gentlemen made speeches, all pretty much of the same purport, expressing their thanks for the support they had received, and their perfect confidence of ultimate success. There were not more than six or seven hundred voters in the town; and yet, for eight days, was the contest carried on. On the ninth, one of the parties retired from the field, and the other two were declared duly elected; after which they were chaired. The reason of this protraction, was owing in part to the unavoidable slowness of vivâ voce voting, but chiefly to the number of votes objected to, by persons whose occupation it was to point out every flaw they could discover in the qualifications of those who appeared at the polls. One of those persons was in the employ of each candidate, and, as the struggle was close and somewhat acrimonious, objections were made on the slightest possible grounds, which were furnished in abundance, by the variety of circumstances that disqualified a man for voting in that borough. Whenever an objection was made, the objector stated the cause of it; and, having written it down on a piece of paper, handed it to the voter objected to, who repaired with it to the other booth. Here, having shown it to the assessor, or judge, who was invested with unlimited power to decide upon every question of qualification, he was tried in his turn. This was by far the more interesting and amusing of the two booths. The trial was conductedin regular form. The accused, so to call him, was placed at the bar of the court, where he was cross-questioned, and confronted with friendly and adverse witnesses; and then the lawyers in attendance, who had been respectively largely feed by the several candidates, pleaded for, or against his qualifications, according as he was a friend, or not, of their employer. When the arguments were finished, the assessor either rejected his vote, or sent him back to the polls with a certificate of qualification, which he exhibited, and had his suffrage recorded. In some instances, the trials were speedily despatched; but, generally, they occupied a considerable space of time, so that when the polls were finally closed, there were at least a hundred names on the books of the court, of persons who were yet to be arraigned.

It would require more space than is at our disposal, to enter into any detail of the odd speeches which were made, and the various scenes, laughable and serious, that occurred during the course of the election. For the same reason, we cannot dwell upon the observations which are naturally excited by the whole matter; but, we may remark, that we became fully satisfied, that frequent Parliaments, with the present election system, would be one of the greatest evils which could be inflicted on England. The seldomer, certainly, that such sluices of varied corruption are opened, the better. Here was a whole town for weeks in a state of the worst kind of commotion,—almost all the usual labours of the lower classes were suspended; unrestricted freedom of access to taverns and alehouses, at the expense of those who were courting their sweet voices, was afforded them; and some idea may be formed of the use that was made of it, from the fact that the bill brought to one of the candidates, by the keeper of an inn, for a single night's debauch, amounted to nearly a hundred pounds sterling. At the bar of the court where the qualifications were examined, abundant evidence was given, that this indirect species of bribery was not the only kind which was in operation. The intense eagerness manifested by the greater part of those to whose votes objections had been made, to obtain a decision of the assessor in their favour,—the quantity and grossness of the falsehoods they uttered, in order to effect that object, rendered palpable the existence of some very potent motive for desiring the possession of a suffrage. That these evils are to be attributed mainly to the vivâ voce mode of voting, we have little doubt, and, assuredly, the tree which produces such fruit, cannot be sound. But, we feel no desire to involve ourselves in a discussion concerning the best system of election, which has been debatedusque ad nauseam, and we shall therefore return to our proper subject.

There are various pictures afforded by the different portions of the career of his late Majesty, which it may be of the highest benefit for republican Americans to contemplate. It was beautifully said by Sheridan, in one of the most brilliant of his speeches, that Bonaparte was an instrument in the hands of Providence to make the English love their constitution better; cling to it with more fondness; hang round it with more tenderness: and in the same way we may affirm that such kings as George IV. are eminently calculated to strengthen our attachment to the republican institutions of this country. The history of their lives furnishes that gross evidence of the absurdities involved in the doctrine of hereditary right, which cannot fail to disgust and revolt. It presents the spectacle of a ruler the least fitted to rule. It proves that princes, from the very circumstance of being princes, are the least likely to be able to execute those duties which devolve upon them, with efficiency or conscientiousness—that the situation in which they are placed by their birth, nullifies the very reason for which their order was first established, and renders them a curse instead of a blessing. What was the source from which royal privileges and authority first flowed? Was it not the superiority in various ways of the persons who were invested with them, and which caused them to be considered as pre-eminently qualified to discharge the functions incumbent on a king? And is not the name of king at present, a by-word for inferiority in every respect in which inferiority is degrading? Every deficiency indeed of talent, knowledge, virtue, is regarded so much as a matter of course in a personage of royal station, that the slightest proof of the possession of either, which in an humbler individual would just be sufficient to screen him from remark, is cried up as something wonderful. Think of a king being able to quote a Latin line, or make a speech of ten minutes in length!—the boast of Mr. Croly with regard to George IV. Such an unusual occurrence is deemed almost incredible, and many persons, even among his own subjects, will firmly believe that neither feat was performed in consequence of original information and faculties, but resulted from the suggestions of another.

But by far the most important light in which we republicans can contemplate the career of George IV. in connexion with the object of increasing our love for the institutions under which we live, is that of morality and religion. The point may be conceded, which is always advanced as the main argument in support of hereditary monarchical government—that it is better adapted to preserve the peace of a country by keeping the succession free from difficulty and doubt, though a reference to history may perhaps warrant the denial even of this position, by exhibiting the various usurpations, murders, unnatural rebellionsof children against parents, and other heart-sickening crimes, the consequences of the right invested in one family of exercising sovereign rule, which have so often plunged whole nations into misery and blood;—but this point may be acknowledged; we may admit that elections of chief magistrates are more likely to be the source of frequent troubles. If it can nevertheless be shown, that there is that in the very essence of monarchical institutions which is in any way hostile to virtue, the question ought to be considered as settled in favour of the system that is free from this insuperable objection; for it cannot be denied, that any principle at all tending to aid the propagation of immorality, is the worst which can be admitted into the social and political compacts by which men are united together, and should most be deprecated and eschewed. No matter what apparent or real beneficial results may flow from it, they cannot counterbalance the detriment it may inflict upon the surest guarantee of permanent good to man, both in his individual and aggregate capacity—both with regard to his temporal and eternal interests. National happiness and prosperity of a durable character, are inseparable from national virtue. The evils produced by dissensions concerning the chief power in a state, are in a degree contingent and temporary; those engendered by immorality are certain and lasting. Let then the pages, not merely of the book which tells the story of George IVth of England, but of all history be consulted, and who will deny that they furnish overwhelming evidence that the moral atmosphere of courts has been at all times tainted and baleful; that they have been ever the centres of corruption and vice, and that they must ever be so? They must ever be so, we assert, because the natural and unavoidable result of raising any collection of persons above the opinion, as it were, of the rest of the world, and of surrounding them with a species ofprestigewhich prevents their vices and follies from being viewed in their real hideousness, is to ensure amongst them the sway of immorality. They thus form a sanctuary for corruption, which can never be established in a country where no factitious distinctions exist; there profligacy can have no refuge when hard pressed by public opinion, no ramparts behind which to protect itself from the assaults of that potent enemy; and it will never in consequence be able to obtain there any other than individual dominion.

If we turn our eyes upon the condition of the English court as it now exists, although it may be less exceptionable than when George was at its head, we shall find sufficient justification of the foregoing remarks. The present sovereign, it is well known, is unfortunate in possessing a mind of that nervous description, which renders any considerable excitement a thing to be avoided; it was the effect produced upon it by his appointment to theLord High Admiraltyship during his brother's life, which occasioned his removal from that post. His moral character is certainly less disreputable than that of his predecessor; but who can witness, without feelings akin to disgust, the spectacle of a family of illegitimate offspring exalted in the palace, and following him in all his perambulations? It is far from our wish to cast any reflection upon those unfortunate persons, who are in no way accountable for the ignominy and guilt connected with their birth. The shame and the reproach are for the author of the stain, who exposes himself to double reprehension, by the countenance he virtually lends to the cause of immorality. William IV., however, is a paragon in comparison to his next brother, the Duke of Cumberland, a person, who, if he has given any warrant for the tenth part of the imputations which rest upon him, can only have escaped the penalties inflicted by the law on the greatest offences, because he is the brother of the king. We cannot convey a better idea of the estimation in which he is held in London, than by stating, that in all the caricatures where an attempt is made to embody the evil spirit, his person is used for that purpose.

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