nius, the stores of his memory, and the brilliancy of his imagination, were displayed with a grace and profusion which seemed to be increased by the malady that oppressed him; or, perhaps, the spectator instinctively drew a comparison between his bodily condition, and the intellectual vigour which he exhibited, as we are apt to aggrandise the superiority of whatever is performed under seeming disabilities till the probable at last swells into the marvellous.

With Lord George Germain also, he continued to live in uninterrupted friendship, both while he presided at the Board of Trade, and after he had resigned that office. He represents himself, indeed, as having sometimes conducted some delicate transactions for his lordship, and in a manner always satisfactory to him. This was in consequence of the great number of American loyalists who, on his levee days, usually resorted to him ; and he mentions one instance, in particular, of a naval officer, who had written a letter to Lord George Germain, containing expressions highly disrespectful to him and to Cumberland, upon whom he immediately waited, and compelled him to write and sign an apology of his own dictating.

When Lord North's administration was subverted, and the Board of Trade was dissolved by the operations of what is commonly called Burke's Bill, Cumberland was dismissed with a compensation which he represents as less than a moiety of what he was deprived of. This diminution of his

pecuniary resources, concurring with his Spanish losses, which had compelled him to sacrifice the patrimony he was born to, reduced him to the necessity of diminishing his expenditure, and of providing an establishment more suitable to his income.

London, however, is not the place where a public man can best pursue plans of economy; nor, perhaps, is it desirable that any place should be at once the scene of liberal competency, and of subsequent embarrassment. A man commonly flies from a spot that has witnessed his prosperity, when he can no longer maintain even the appearance of it; and it is the surest way, indeed, to avoid the painful retrospections of our own mind, and the suspicious condolence of our friends and acquaint

ance.

Cumberland, therefore, forsook the metropolis, and, with the remnant of his shattered fortune, sought peace and health in the retreats of Tunbridge, nor had he ever afterwards, according to his own declaration, an abiding place in town. The comforts and conveniencies of this spot he has celebrated in his Memoirs, and he had reason to do so, for he says, that " during the whole of his long residence at Tunbridge Wells, he never experienced a single hour's indisposition that confined him to his bed," though previously to that period he had undergone as much illness, and fought as hardly for his life with fevers, as most men.

Of his residence at this place, and of some of the events that befell him there, he thus pleasingly speaks in the poem which he published so shortly before his death:

"Hail to thee, Tunbridge! Hail, Hygeian fount!

Still as thy waters flow, may they dispense
Health to the sick and comfort to the sad!
Sad I came to thee, comfortless and sick
Of many sorrows: still th' envenom'd shaft
Of base injustice rankl'd in my breast;
Still on my haggard cheek the fever hung-
'My only recompense'-Thirty long years
Have blanch'd my temples since I first was taught
The painful truth, that I but mock'd my hopes,
And fool'd my senses, whilst I went astray

To palaces and courts to search for that,
Which dwells not in them.-No: to you, my books!
To you, the dear companions of my youth,
Still my best comforters, I turn'd for peace:
To you at morning break I came, with you
Again I commun'd o'er the midnight lamp,
And haply rescu'd from the abyss of time
Some precious relics of the Grecian muse,
Which else had perish'd: These were pleasing toils,
For these some learned men, who knew how deep
I delv'd to fetch them up, have giv'n me praise,

And I am largely paid; of this no court,
No craft can rob me, and I boldly trust
The treasure will not perish at my death.

Here, wrapt in meditation, I enjoy'd
My calm retreat; here in the honest hearts
Of a brave peasantry I now repos'd
That confidence, which never was betray'd
By them, nor from them shall it be withdrawn
To the last moment of my life, by me.

Four gallant sons, 'twixt land and sea, I shar'd;
My country had them all; and two had died
On distant shores beyond the Atlantic stream.

When England call'd her volunteers to arms,
And rear'd her beacon on the neighb'ring hill,
That overhangs our hamlet: At the call
Uprose my brave compatriots, seiz'd their arms,
Flock'd to the standard of unconquer'd* Kent,
And bade me lead them forth; I took the sword,
Gift of their love, on which they had engrav'd
A pledge by them kept sacred through a course
Of nine years faithful service, and I trust
Till by command I took my last sad leave,

My eye was never from them, nor my heart."

One part of the preceding extract (that where he commemorates the many hours of unalloyed happiness which he derived from his books), will be read by every literary man with a pleasing consciousness of its truth. How few reflections upon the employment of time, indeed, can equal those which a scholar feels when he retraces in his imagination the hours he has devoted to voluntary and secluded study. The remembrance of past actions, on which virtue has fixed her approving stamp, may equal, but certainly cannot surpass them. In a mind tinctured with the love of knowledge, every pleasing idea is associated, as it contemplates those moments of placid enjoyment when instruction was silently insinuating itself, and when every day opened new stores of intellectual wealth which the eager pupil of wisdom panted to possess. Inanimate objects become connected with our progress, and we remember, with delight, the shady walk, the silent grove, or the beauteous landscape, where we first

Invicta, the motto to the arms of Kent.

opened some favourite volume, or first dwelt upon some matchless effusion of the muse still cherished by the memory. These are emotions familiar to the bosom of every student, and they are such as ever come with welcome, for they revive the recollection of a period which is endeared to him by the most pleasing images of past felicity. Our advancement in knowledge, or our completion of what we wish to know, is attended by few of those gay and inspiriting sensations which accompany our initiation, when all before us is new and untried, and hope promises, with flattering delusion, all that we wish, and more than we find.

Books are companions which accommodate themselves, with unreproaching willingness, to all our humours. If we are jocund, or if we are sad, if we are studious to learn, or desirous only to be amused, he that has a relish for reading, will find the ready means of supplying all his intellectual wants in the silence of his library. They are friends whom no estimation can overvalue; they are always at our call, and ready to offer their aid and consolation; nor need we overstrain our de◄ sires by courtesy, for the moment they cease to be welcome we may dismiss them from our society without fear of reproach or offence. Of what other friends can we say as much?

Cumberland, though he retired to them from the tumults of public life, was not des