questions to a fair issue; he was the patron, the supporter, the fellow-labourer of all who dared to resist arbitrary power, and would make a stand for the rights of man, and the principles of the constitution. In the pursuit of these things he could resist both the frowns of power and the clamours of the mob; and although his life was spent as one among the leaders of the high popular party, he was as often in controversy with others who, having no learning like his, and no discretion to guide them, went extravagant lengths to please the multitude, and as often the object of popular dislike, as he was of favour from the mass of his followers. In his controversy with Wilkes, he showed this courage abundantly: he was clearly in the right; he was attacked in a manner wholly vile and odious by a profligate man, and an unprincipled politician; he maintained his ground to the satisfaction of the reasoning and reflecting few; but he was the object of general and fierce popular indignation for daring to combat the worthless idol of the thoughtless mob.

In private life he was eminently agreeable, and his manners were those of a high-bred gentleman. His conversation was admirably diversified with both wit and argument, ordinary and rare information. Its vice was that of his understanding-a constant pursuit of paradox; and that of his character-a love of victory and a carelessness about truth. His etymological renown brought him in contact with many men of letters; and his ancient antagonist, Lord Thurlow, hopeless of living to see the last part of the Emeа πTEρоEVтα, proposed to make his acquaintance, that he might discuss its subject with him. They met accordingly, the ex-Chancellor volunteering a visit to Wimbledon, as being by a little the less infirm of the two. A considerable intimacy thus grew up between these veterans, who were probably reconciled even on political scores by their common enmity to the powerful minister of the day.

LORD CASTLEREAGH.

WE have stepped aside from contemplating the figures of those who had the confidence of George III., and who also presided over the councils of George IV. during the Regency and during his reign, in order to consider three of their opponents; but it is time that we return to survey others of the leading men in whose hands the guidance of the state was placed, until the period towards the end of his reign, when the Tory party was broken up by the differences between Mr. Canning and his colleagues. Those men also belonging to the times of George III. They were, like Lord Eldon, the component parts of Mr. Addington's administration, the cabinet which enjoyed his favour more than any he ever had after the dismissal of Lord North; and perhaps it was the mediocrity of their talents, in general, that chiefly recommended them to his regards. For with the exception of Lord Eldon and Lord St. Vincent, the list comprises no great names. Of the "safe and middling men," described jocularly by Mr. Canning, as "meaning very little, nor meaning that little well,"* Lord Castlereagh was, in some respects, the least inconsiderable. His capacity was greatly underrated from the poverty of his discourse; and his ideas passed for much less than they were worth, from the habitual obscurity of his expressions. But he was far above the bulk of his colleagues in abilities; and none "Happy the nation's fate, I ween,

As Britain's sons can tell,
Whose rulers very little mean,

Nor mean that little well."

of them all, except Lord St. Vincent, with whom he was officially connected only for a short time, exercised so large an influence over the fortunes of their country. Indeed scarce any man of any party bore a more important place in public affairs, or occupies a larger space in the history of his times.

Few men of more meagre acquirements than Lord. Castlereagh possessed, had before his day ever risen to any station of eminence in our free country; fewer still have long retained it in a State where mere Court intrigue and princely favour have so little to do with men's advancement But we have lived to see persons of far more obscure merit than Lord Castlereagh rise to equal station. Of sober and industrious habits, and become possessed of business-like talents by long experience, he was a person of the most commonplace abilities in all that regarded parliamentary display. He had sufficient quickness of apprehension and clearness of understanding, but nothing brilliant or in any way admirable marked either his conceptions or his execution. Nay, to judge of his intellect by his eloquence, we should certainly have formed a very unfair estimate of its perspicacity. For though it had no enlargement or comprehensiveness, it was very far from being confused or perplexed like his periods, and the listener who knew how distinctly the speaker could form his plans, how clearly his ideas were apprehended by himself, how great was his sagacity in dealing with others, might, comparing small things with great, be reminded of the prodigious contrast between the distinctness of Oliver Cromwell's understanding, and the hopeless confusion and obscurity of his speech. No man, besides, ever attained the station of a regular debater in our Parliament with such an entire want of all classical accomplishment, and indeed of all literary provision whatsoever. While he never showed the least symptom of an information extending beyond the more recent volumes of the Parliamentary Debates,

"the

or possibly the files of the newspapers only, his diction set all imitation, perhaps all description, at defiance. It was with some an amusement to beguile the tedious hours of their unavoidable attendance upon the poor, tawdry, ravelled thread of his sorry discourse, to collect a kind of ana from the fragments of mixed, incongruous, and disjointed images that frequently appeared in it. "The features of the clause"-"the ignorant impatience of the relaxation of taxation"-"sets of circumstances coming up and circumstances going down" -"men turning their backs themselves' upon honourable and learned gentleman's wedge getting into the loyal feelings of the manufacturing classes""the constitutional principle wound up in the bowels of the monarchical principle"-"the Herculean labour of the honourable and learned member, who will find himself quite disappointed when he has at last brought forth his Hercules"(by a slight confounding of the mother's labour which produced that hero, with his own exploits which gained him immortality)-these are but a few, and not the richest samples, by any means, of a rhetoric which often baffled alike the gravity of the Treasury Bench and the art of the reporter, and left the wondering audience at a loss to conjecture how any one could ever exist, endowed with humbler pretensions to the name of orator.

Wherefore, when the Tory party, "having a devil," preferred him to Mr. Canning for their leader, all men naturally expected that he would entirely fail to command even the attendance of the House while he addressed it; and that the benches, empty during his time, would only be replenished when his highlygifted competitor rose. They were greatly deceived; they underrated the effect of place and power; they forgot that the representative of a government speaks "as one having authority, and not as the Scribes." But they also forgot that Lord Castlereagh had some qualities well fitted to conciliate favour, and even to

provoke admiration, in the absence of everything like eloquence, and without having ever written a line in the Anti-Jacobin.' He was a bold and fearless man; the very courage with which he exposed himself unabashed to the most critical audience in the world, while incapable of uttering two sentences of anything but the meanest matter, in the most wretched language; the gallantry with which he faced the greatest difficulties of a question; the unflinching perseverance with which he went through a whole subject, leaving untouched not one of its points, whether he could grapple with it or no, and not one of the adverse arguments, however forcibly and felicitously they had been urged, neither daunted by recollecting the impression just made by his antagonist's brilliant display, nor damped by consciousness of the very rags in which he now presented himself-all this made him. upon the whole rather a favourite with the audience whose patience he was taxing mercilessly, and whose gravity he ever and anon put to a very severe trial. Nor can any one have forgotten the kind of pride that mantled on the fronts of the Tory phalanx, when, after being overwhelmed with the powerful fire of the Whig opposition, or galled by the fierce denunciations of the Mountain, or harassed by the brilliant though often tinsel displays of Mr. Canning, their chosen leader stood forth, and presenting the graces of his eminently patrician figure, flung open his coat, displayed an azure ribbon traversing a snowwhite chest, and declared "his high satisfaction that he could now meet the charges against him face to face, and repel with indignation all that his adversaries were bold and rash enough to advance."

Such he was in debate; in council he certainly had far more resources. He possessed a fund of plain sense, not to be misled by any refinement of speculation, or clouded by any fanciful notions. He went straight to his point. He was brave politically as well