its course; but a larger acquaintance with mankind, more of what is termed "knowledge of the world," greatly mitigated the strength of his opinions, and his minute study of the ancient history of our own constitution completed his emancipation from earlier prejudices-nay, rather cast his opinions into the opposite scale; for it is certain that during the last thirty or forty years of his life, in other words, during all his political life, far from tolerating revolutionary courses, or showing any tenderness towards innovations, he was a reformer on so small a scale that he could hardly be brought to approve of any change at all in our Parliamentay constitution. He held the measure of 1831-32 as all but revolutionary; augured ill of its effects on the structure of the House of Commons; and regarded it as having in the result worked great mischief on the composition of that body, whatever benefit it might have secured to the Whigs as a party movement. Lord Holland had made up his mind to an entire approval of the scheme as necessary, if not for the country, at least for the Liberal party, to which he was devoted; and he supported it, as his uncle had done the far less extensive reform proposed by Lord Grey in 1797, which, less as it was, very much exceeded any reform views of his own-supported it as a party measure, necessary for keeping together the Liberal body, and consolidating their power.

Although Mr. Allen, during the latter and principal period of his life, never abandoned his scientific pursuits, retaining his full knowledge of physical and moral science, and his early taste for such speculations, yet it was chiefly between the politics of the day and the constitutional history of this country that he divided his time. No one could be more useful as an adviser upon all political measures, because he clearly saw their tendency, and never for a moment suffered himself to be led astray by party prejudice or popular clamour. Indeed, like all who, in the enthusiasm of

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younger years, have been for a while beguiled into extravagant democratic opinions, he rather leant too severely against merely popular courses, and was somewhat too much inclined to have the public affairs which are directed for the good of the people managed with as little as possiblé of their interference or consent-forgetting that no real security for those affairs taking that direction can be had, except by giving a sufficient control to the popular voice. But chiefly of the Court he was always distrustful, and herein he had the genuine Whig spirit excited and confirmed by his deep study of our former history. The only failing which seemed occasionally to lessen the weight of his counsel was a certain irritability of temper and impatience of contradiction, especially upon subjects which he had deeply studied, and on which he had formed a clear and strong opinion. It must be said that the by-stander could well sympathize with those little ebullitions when they escaped him in argument with some sciolist, or some every-day politician whose whole knowledge of his subject was picked up in the clubs, or gathered from the papers of the morning, or at best gleaned from the recent volumes of the 'Parliamentary Debates.'

If it be asked what was the peculiar merit, the characteristic excellence of Mr. Allen's understanding, the answer is not difficult to make. It was the rare faculty of combining general views with details of fact, and thus at once availing himself of all that theory or speculation presents for our guide, with all that practical experience affords to correct those results of general reasoning. This great excellence was displayed by him in everything to which he directed his mind, whether it were the political questions of the day, which he treated as practically as the veriest drudge in any of the public offices, and yet with all the enlargement of view which marked the statesman and the philosopher; or the specula

tions of history, which he studied at once with the acumen that extracts from it as an essence the general progress of our species, after the manner of Voltaire and Millar; and with the minute observation of facts and weighing of evidence which we trace through the luminous and picturesque pages of Robertson and Gibbon. He for whom no theory was too abstract, no speculation too general, could so far stoop to the details of practical statesmanship as to give a friend, proceeding for the first time on a delicate and important mission, this sound advice: "Don't ever appear anxious about any point, either in arguing to convince those you are treating with, or in trying to obtain a concession from them. It often may happen that your indifference will gain a much readier access to their minds. Earnestness and anxiety are necessary for one addressing a public assembly-not so for a negotiator."

The character of Mr. Allen was of the highest order. His integrity was sterling, his honour pure and untarnished. No one had a more lofty disdain of those mean tricks to which, whether on trifles or matters of importance, worldly men have too frequent recourse. Without the shadow of fanaticism in any of its forms, he was, in all essential particulars, a person of the purest morals; and his indignation was never more easily roused than by the aspect of daring profligacy or grovelling baseness. His feelings, too, were warm; his nature kind and affectionate. No man was a more steady or sincere friend; and his enmity, though fierce, was placable.

It may naturally be asked how it happened that one of his great talents, long experience, and many rare accomplishments, intimately connected as he was with the leading statesmen of his time (the Ministers of the Crown for the last ten years of his life), should never have been brought into public life, nor ever been made in any way, available to the service of the

country? Nor can the answer to this question be that he had no powers of public speaking, and would, if in Parliament, have been for the most part a silent member; because it would not be easy to name a more unbroken silence than was for many long years kept by such leading Whigs as Mr. Hare, Lord John Townsend, and General Fitzpatrick, without whom, nevertheless, it was always supposed that the Whig phalanx would have been wanting in its just proportions; and also because there are many important, many even high political, offices that can well and usefully be filled by men wholly unused to the wordy war; yet Mr. Allen never filled any place, except as Secretary, nay Under-Secretary, for a few months, to the Commissioners for treating with America in 1806. Then I fear we are driven, in accounting for this strange fact, to the high aristocratic habits of our Government, if the phrase may be allowed; and can comprehend Mr. Allen's entire exclusion from power no other way than by considering it as now a fixed and settled rule that there is in this country a line drawn between the ruling caste and the rest of the community not, indeed, that the latter are mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, but that, out of a profession like the bar, intimately connected with politics, or out of the patrician circles, themselves the monopolists of political preferment, no such rise is in ordinary cases possible. The genius of our system, very far from consulting its stable endurance, appears thus to apportion its labours and its enjoyment, separating the two classes of our citizens by an impassable line, and bestowing freely upon the one the sweat and the toil, while it reserves strictly for the other the fruit and the shade.

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LORD ABINGER.

FEW men have ever appeared in the profession of the law endowed with a greater store of the qualities required to form an accomplished advocate than James Scarlett, afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord Chief Baron, and to the Peerage as Lord Abinger. His understanding was piercing and subtle; no man had more sagacity in seeing through obscure matters, or finding his way through conflicting difficulties, or reconciling contradictions, or dispelling doubts, or, if need were, in raising them; no man could bring more ingenuity to devise explanations, or overcome obstacles, or provide defence, or secure escape. Then he was, though naturally irritable, yet by habit completely master of his temper, always entirely self-possessed, hardly ever to be thrown off his guard by anger or vexation; and, habit becoming a second nature, he had all the external aspect and much of the reality of a placid goodhumour, though this was drawn over a somewhat sensitive interior. He had thus in the largest measure these two great qualifications of the Nisi Prius leader -perfect quickness of perception and decision, and imperturbable self-possession.

There is the greatest difference between the two sides of Westminster Hall in the qualities which form the leading Advocate. In truth, Courts of Equity hardly know what the lead of a cause is; for each of three, or it may be four or five counsel, go in much the same way over nearly the same ground; and it does not even follow that the junior takes the same view of the case with those who have gone before