and it would redound only so much the more to the gentleness of his character to suppose that his mild recital of these transactions arose, not from an insensibility to his lordship's dissimulation, but from a sincere oblivion in his own breast, of every sentiment of anger and displeasure. What I have said, I have delivered as a general opinion, called forth by a contemplation of my subject; and I have formed the opinion from a close observation of their conduct who talk most loudly of forgiveness of injuries; who affect most vehemently to practise what they inculcate; and who prove, by their actions, that they pardon only when they cannot revenge, and praise the loveliness of forbearance when their hearts are bursting under its inevitable restraint. Their submission to injuries is involuntary, and, therefore unwilling: but they know how to mask their sentiments, and extract from a servitude they abhor, maxims of obedience which might sanctify the lips of a Saint.

I know the difficulty with which our nature bends to the infliction of evil without forming a design (I will not say a wish-perhaps that's impossible at the moment of suffering) of retaliation. I know also how hard it is so to subdue the evil passions of our heart, as to be able and willing to do justice to him who has wronged us; and therefore I am the more willing to praise the placability of Cumberland, and the sincerity with which he allows, to Lord Halifax, those eminent

virtues and qualifications which he indubitably possessed.

I had known him too intimately," he observes, "not to know, in the very moment, of which I have been speaking, that what he was by accident he was not by nature. I am persuaded he was formed to be a good man, he might also have been a great one: his mind was large, his spirit active, his ambition honourable; he had a carriage noble and imposing; his first approach attracted notice, his consequent address ensured respect; if his talents were not quite so solid as some, nor altogether so deep as others, yet they were brilliant, popular, and made to glitter in the eyes of men ; splendor was his passion; his good fortune threw opportunities in his way to have supported it; his ill fortune blasted all those energies which should have been reserved for the crisis of his public fame; the first offices of the state, the highest honours which his sovereign could bestow, were showered upon him when the spring of his mind was broken, and his genius, like a vessel overloaded with treasure, but far gone in decay, was only precipitated to ruin by the very freight, that in its better days would have crowned it with prosperity and riches."-" He had filled the high stations of First Lord of Trade and Plantations, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Principal Secretary of State, First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Lieutenant of the County of Northampton, and Knight of the

Garter. He had no son, and his title is extinct. I saw him in his last illness, when his constitution was an absolute wreck; I never knew that man, whose life, if circumstantially detailed, would furnish a more striking moral, and a more tragical catastrophe. Nature endowed him liberally with her gifts, Fortune showered her favours profusely upon him, Providence repeatedly held forth the most extraordinary vouchsafements. What a mournful retrospection! I am not bound to dwell upon it. I turn from it with horror."

Such was the mixture of applause and disapprobation with which he mentioned his early friend and patron, when age had cooled his resentments, strengthened his mind, and invigorated his piety. Let us hear how he contemplated the same subject only a few weeks before his death.

When in a luckless hour I threw aside
My college gown, and Halifax was pleas'd
To call me to his confidence, methought
Form more engaging never grac'd a court;
Aspiring, elegant, with genius fraught,
A scholar in my native college train'd,
With academic honours justly crown'd;
In his domestic character correct,
The faithful husband of a virtuous wife-
Such he appeared to me, and such he was;
A patron better fitted to attract

My admiration than engage my love:
Active in office, warm in party zeal,
And if with eloquence not richly stor'd,

Yet in deliv'ry he so grac'd his speech,

That he stood high in fame, and first of those

With whom Newcastle in that easy time

Held brief consult, and bustled through his day.
But where no system is, chance gives no heed
To cause or consequence, but veers about
And as it whirl'd Newcastle's windmill round,

It swept my patron out of place and power.
Fierce war ensu'd; high swell'd the indignant heart
Of this bold Montagu, the foe declar'd

Of his false friend; but the same chance, that caus'd,
Soon cur'd the mischief and allay'd the strife.

So this short tragedy was soon wound up,

And Montagu and Capulet shook hands.—
Heav'n! what sweet tempers politicians have!
Meanwhile of this sage minister I saw
As much as my humility desir'd,

And knew as much as small men know of great.
Of him, with whom so much of life I pass'd,
If more I were to tell, 'twould only prove
The sun that rises clear may set in clouds."-

-Retrospection.*

Here the conclusion corresponds with that of the preceding extract, and they both refer to events well known, I suppose, to the author, but not very generally familiar to the world. They need not be so; he to whom they relate is dead: a solemn proposition: and I cannot help thinking that it would have been more decorous in Cumberland to have refrained wholly from touching upon his vices, or to have done it more explicitly than by dark hints and exclamations of horror. These only serve to awaken the imagination without satisfying the reason; and when conjecture is idly excited in its darkest colours, we all know that

* A poem in familiar blank verse, devoted to the celebration of those eharacters and events which had been before celebrated in prose in his Memoirs. It was published only a few weeks before his death.

there is a propensity in man to push it to extremities. I would deprecate, therefore, every attack which comes masked in the guise of exclamatory disgust or insidious benevolence, which, by a sinister kind of charity, affects to deplore the excesses it more than exposes by telling their existence, without disclosing their magnitude and quality. A man will sooner lose his character by a shrug of the shoulder aptly performed at his appearance, or a smile of significant surprise when he talks of honesty, or a solemn shake of the head when another praises his integrity, than he will by any open and manifest attack conducted either by truth or artifice; and, by a parity of reasoning, to record the merits of any one, to refer mysteriously, at the conclusion, to the contrast between those merits and certain defects, and then abruptly to quit the discussion as one too heart-rending, too skocking to be pursued, is the most certain, though not the most allowable method, to make the reader believe all that we wish, and more than is true.