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siness; could equally detect and practise sophistry. He could state and explain the most intricate matters, even in figures, with the utmost perspicuity. His parts were rather above business; and the warmth of his imagination, joined to the. impetuosity and restlessness of his temper, made him incapable of conducting it long together with prudence and steadiness.

He was a most complete orator and debater in the house of commons; eloquent, entertaining, persuasive, strong, and pathetic, as occasion required; for he had arguments, wit, and tears, at his command. His breast was the seat of all those passions which degrade our nature and disturb our reason. There they raged in perpetual conflict; but avarice, the meanest of them all, generally triumphed, ruled absolutely, and in many instances, which I forbear to mention, most scandalously.

His sudden passion was outrageous, but supported by great personal courage. Nothing exceeded his ambition, but his avarice; they often accompany, and are frequently and reciprocally the causes and the effects of each other; but the latter is always a clog upon the former. He affected good-nature and compassion; and perhaps his heart might feel the misfortunes and distresses of his fellow-creatures, but his hand was seldom or never stretched out to relieve them. Though he was an able actor of truth and sincerity, he could occasionally lay them aside, to serve the purposes of his ambition or avarice.

He was once in the greatest point of view that ever I saw any subject in. When the opposition, of which he was the leader in the house of com

mons, prevailed at last against sir Robert Walpole, he became the arbiter between the crown and the people; the former imploring his protection, the latter his support. In that critical moment his various jarring passions were in the highest ferment, and for a while suspended his ruling one. Sense of shame made him hesitate at turning courtier on a sudden, after having acted the patriot so long, and with so much applause; and his pride made him declare, that he would accept of no place; vainly imagining, that he could, by such a simulated and temporary self-denial, preserve his popularity with the public, and his power at court. He was mistaken in both. The king hated him almost as much for what he might have done, as for what he had done; and a motley ministry was formed, which by no means desired his company. The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.

He made several attempts afterwards to retrieve the opportunity he had lost, but in vain; his situation would not allow it.-He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables; and his retreat to popularity was cut off: for the confidence of the public, when once great, and once lost, is never to be regained. He lived afterwards in retirement, with the wretched comfort of Horace's miser:

Populus me sibilat, &c.

I may, perhaps, be suspected to have given too strong colouring to some features of this portrait; but I solemnly protest, that I have drawn it conscientiously, and to the best of my knowledge,

from a very long acquaintance with, and observa tion of, the original. Nay, I have rather softened than heightened the colouring. Chesterfield.

CHARACTER OF LORD HARDWICKE.

LORD Hardwicke was, perhaps, the greatest ma→ gistrate that this country ever had. He presided in the court of chancery above twenty years, and in all that time none of his decrees were reversed, nor the justness of them ever questioned. Though avarice was his ruling passion, he was never in the least suspected of any kind of corruption: a rare and meritorious instance of virtue and self-denial, under the influence of such a craving, insatiable, and increasing passion.

He had great and clear parts; understood, loved, and cultivated the belles lettres. He was an agreeable, eloquent speaker in parliament, but not without some little tincture of the pleader.

Men are apt to mistake, or at least to seem to mistake, their own talents, in hopes, perhaps, of misleading others to allow them that which they are conscious they do not possess. Thus lord Hardwicke valued himself more upon being a great minister of state, which he certainly was not, than upon being a great magistrate, which he certainly was.

All his notions were clear, but none of them great. Good order and domestic details were his proper department. The great and shining parts of government, though not above his parts to conceive, were above his timidity to undertake,

By great and lucrative employments, during the course of thirty years, and by still greater parsimony, he acquired an immense fortune, and established his numerous family in advantageous posts and profitable alliances.

Though he had been solicitor and attorney-general, he was by no means what is called a prerogative lawyer. He loved the constitution, and maintained the just prerogative of the crown, but without stretching it to the oppression of the people.

He was naturally humane, moderate, and decent; and when, by his former employments, he was obliged to prosecute state-criminals, he discharged that duty in a very different manner from most of his predecessors, who were too justly called the blood-hounds of the crown.'

He was a cheerful and instructive companion, humane in his nature, decent in his manners, unstained with any vice (avarice excepted), a very great magistrate, but by no means a great minister. Chesterfield.

CHARACTER OF MR. GRENVILLE.

HERE began to dawn the first glimmerings of this new colony system. It appeared more distinctly afterwards, when it was devolved upon a person, to whom on other accounts this country owes very great obligations. I do believe that he had a very serious desire to benefit the public. But with no small study of the detail, he did not seem to have

his view, at least equally, carried to the total cir cuit of our affairs. He generally considered his objects in lights that were rather too detached. No man can believe, that at this time of day I mean to lean on the venerable memory of a great man, whose loss we deplore in common. Our little party-differences have been long ago composed; and I have acted more with him, and certainly with more pleasure with him, than ever I acted against him. Undoubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of this house, except in such things as some way related to the business that was to be done in it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power, through the laborious gradations of public service; and to secure to himself a well-earned rank in parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a perfect practice in all its business.

Sir, if such a man fell into errours, it must be from defects not intrinsical: they must be rather sought in the particular habits of his life; which, though they do not alter the groundwork of character, yet tinge it with their own hue.

He was bred in a profession. He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest

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