as having done a real good substantial deed which it would take a good deal of sin to counterbalance; and the old gentleman in the watch-box was down upon them with his cannister while they were in this humor, I promise you.

As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably droll enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure on a crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron saucer: so ricketty and unsteady, that whenever an enthusiastic person kissed the figure, with more than usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer, with more than common readiness, (for it served in this respect as a second or supplementary cannister,) it gave a great leap and rattle, and nearly shook the attendant lamp out: horribly frightening the people further down, and throwing the guilty party into unspeakable embarrassment.

the troops were ranged. In the magnificent proportions of the place, they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans, lively peasants from the neighboring country, groups of pilgrims from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many insects; and high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and making rainbow colors in the light, the two delicious fountains welled and tumbled bountifully.

A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the balcony; and the sides of the great window were bedecked with crimson drapery. An awning was stretched too, over the top, to screen the old man from the hot rays of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were turned up to this window. In due time, the chair was seen approaching to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's feathers, close behind. The doll within it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some, but not by any means the greater part, kneeled down. The guns upon the ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that the benediction was given; drums beat; trumpets sounded; arms clashed; and the great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, and scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like partycolored sand.

On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, the Pope bestows his benediction on the people, from the balcony in front of St. Peter's. This Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue: so cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright: that all the previous bad weather vanished from the recollection in a moment. I had seen the Thursday's Benediction dropping damply on some hundreds of umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred fountains of Rome-such fountains as they are!-and on this Sunday morning, they were running diamonds. The miles of What a bright noon it was, as we rode miserable streets through which we drove away! The Tiber was no longer yellow, (compelled to a certain course by the Pope's but blue. There was a blush on the old dragoons: the Roman police on such occa- bridges, that made them fresh and hale sions) were so full of color, that nothing in again. The Pantheon, with its majestic them was capable of wearing a faded as- front, all seamed and furrowed like an old pect. The common people came out in face, had summer light upon its battered their gayest dresses; the richer people in walls. Every squalid and desolate Hut in their smartest vehicles; Cardinals rattled the Eternal City (bear witness every grim to the church of the Poor Fishermen in old palace, to the filth and misery of the their state carriages; shabby magnificence plebeian neighbor that elbows it, as certainflaunted its threadbare liveries and tar-ly as Time has laid its grip on its Patrician nished cocked hats, in the sun; and every coach in Rome was put in requisition for the Great Piazza of St. Peter's.

One hundred and fifty thousand people were there, at least! Yet there was ample room. How many carriages were there, I don't know; yet there was room for them too, and to spare. The great steps of the church were densely crowded. There were many of the Contadini from Albano (who delight in red) in that part of the square; and the mingling of bright colors in the crowd, was beautiful. Below the steps,

head!) was fresh and new with some ray of the sun. The very prison in the crowded street, a whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense of the day, dropping through its chinks and crevices; and dismal prisoners who could not wind their faces round the barricading of the blocked-up windows, stretched out their hands, and clinging to the rusty bars, turned them towards the overflowing street as if it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, that way.

But, when the night came on, without a

I

cloud to dim the full moon, what a sight it | concourse had dispersed; the moon was was to see the Great Square full once more, looking calmly down upon her wrinkled and the whole church, from the cross to image in the river, and half a dozen men the ground, lighted with innumerable lan- and boys, with bits of lighted candle in their terns, tracing out the architecture, and hands, moving here and there, in search of winking and shining all round the colon- any thing worth having, that might have nade of the piazza! And what a sense of been dropped in the press, had the whole exultation, joy, delight, it was, when the scene to themselves. great bell struck half-past seven-on the By way of contrast, we rode out into old instant-to behold one bright red mass of ruined Rome, after all this firing and boomfire soar gallantly from the top of the cu-ing, to take our leave of the Coliseum. I pola to the extremest summit of the cross, had seen it by moonlight before (I never and, the moment it leaped into its place, could get through a day without going back become the signal of a bursting out of to it), but its tremendous solitude, that countless lights, as great, and red, and blaz-night, is past all telling. The ghostly piling as itself, from every part of the gigan-lars in the Forum; the triumphal arches of tic church; so that every cornice, capital, Old Emperors; those enormous masses of and smallest ornament of stone, expressed ruin which were once their palaces; the itself in fire; and the black, solid ground-grass-grown mounds that mark the graves work of the enormous dome seemed to of ruined temples; the stones of the Via grow transparent as an egg-shell! Sacra, smooth with the tread of feet in A train of gunpowder, an electric chain ancient Rome; even these were dimmed, -nothing could be fired more suddenly in their transcendent melancholy, by the and swiftly, than this second illumination; dark ghost of its bloody holidays, erect and and when we had got away, and gone upon grim; haunting the old scene; despoiled a distant height, and looked towards it two by pillaging Popes and fighting Princes, hours afterwards, there it still stood, shin- but not laid; wringing wild hands of weed, ing and glittering in the calm night like a and grass, and bramble; and lamenting to jewel! Not a line of its proportions want- the night in every gap and broken arching; not an angle blunted; not an atom of the shadow of its awful self, immovable!

its radiance lost.

The next night-Easter Monday-there was a great display of fireworks from the castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an opposite house, and made our way to our places, in good time, through a dense mob of people choking up the square in front, and all the avenues leading to it; and so loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on this bridge (execrable works), and, among them, great vessels full of burning tow were placed, glaring strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the stone counterfeits above them.

The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon: and then, for twenty minutes, or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every color, size, and speed; while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. The concluding burst the Girandola-was like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive castle, without smoke or dust.

In half an hour afterwards, the immense

As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next day, on our way to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that a little wooden cross had been erected on the spot where the poor Pilgrim Countess was murdered. So we piled some loose stones about it, as the beginning of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we should ever rest there again, and look back at Rome.

From the Eclectic Review.

THE AGE OF PITT AND FOX.

The Age of Pitt and Fox. By the Author of Ireland and its Rulers.' In 3 volumes. Vol. I. 8vo. London: T. C. Newby, 1846.

FEW periods of our history are more interesting or instructive than that embraced in the work before us. It is sufficiently distant for us to judge of its actors and events with a good degree of impartiality, and yet near enough to engage our sympa

thies, and to exercise the influence of pre- selfish as the other politicians by whom sent and living interests. Some other pe- they were surrounded. Burke was probably riods are invested with deeper importance, one of the purest of his class, but his pasand present specimens of our common na- sions were too vehement, and his judgments ture, of a higher and nobler mould. This too treacherous and hasty, to allow of his is pre-eminently the case with the times of being regarded with the confiding admirathe Long Parliament and the Common- tion which is inspired by the highest class wealth; but that era stands apart from all of statesmen. Whilst we listen to the splenothers in our history, having qualities of its did oratory of Fox, unrivalled in his powown which eschew comparison, and for the ers of debate, we unconsciously worship most part stand out in contrast, with all the speaker as the anointed oracle of truth. which preceded or have followed. The age But a moment's reflection and our worship of Pitt and Fox has a distinctive interest, ceases. There is nothing to sustain our which is greatly derived from the character faith. The evidences of deep earnestness of its chief actors, and the crisis it consti- are wanting, even the ordinary and outward tuted in the history of parties. Their marks of consistency are absent. The actalents were singularly varied, yet of the tor is more visible than the man. The highest order, and their personal history party leader rather than the self-sacrificing had few points in common. The son of patriot is the image which remains before the Earl of Chatham, ending his career as the mind. The elements of moral greatthe idol of the Tories and the sworn enemy ness were wanting, and his life, therefore, of reform; Charles James Fox ejected notwithstanding his splendid powers, failed from the North administration, and becom- to accomplish its proper vocation. A gaming the eloquent champion of popular rights; whilst Edmund Burke, in some respects superior to both, renouncing his earlier position and friendships, entered into alliances as hostile to his reputation as they were injurious to the progress of liberty throughout Europe. In the contests of that day, however, the highest element of statesmanship is wanted. It is but occasionally that we meet with the nobler spirit which so frequently appeared in the Long Parliament, where the personal was merged in the public, the partisan in the patriot, where an honest consecration to the welfare of the many became the rule, and constituted the end of senatorial labors. Personal ambition, or party feuds, make up for the most part the history. It is a gladiatorial scene which we witness, the struggles of faction rather than of principle, the vehemence and passion of selfish combatants, rather than the co-operation of enlightened intellects to work out the salvation of nations.

bler and a debauchee, he failed to carry along with him the confiding trust of the popular mind, by which alone he could hope to make way against the stolid obstinacy of the king, and the violent prejudices of an ignorant and besotted squirearchy. Thus it has ever been in English history, and though in particular cases we may regret the result, we do not, on the whole, wish it were otherwise Despotic ministers may work out their designs whatever be their character, but the advocates of popular freedom can triumph only by transparent integrity and deep earnestness. 'These are the elements of their power, without which they will be like Samson shorn of his strength. It would be easy to name living senators of liberal views, and of more than average talent, who yet fail to make any impression on the country, because there is no faith in the deep seriousness of their advocacy. It was so with Fox and his associates, though the fascination of his manNo illusion can be more perfect than that ners, the splendor of his gifts, and the which has been practised on the young in- fearful tragedies which marked the period tellect of England. To dispel it is no of his public life, gave him, probably, greatgrateful task, but to do so is absolutely er power than was ever possessed by any needful in order that the true lesson of his other popular statesman similarly constituttory should be learnt. We have been ac- ed. What might have been the result had customed to connect great names with im- he associated the elements of moral with mortal principles, and our admiration of the those of intellectual greatness, it is not for latter has been associated, by a natural law, us to say. We have our opinion on this with the former. There was little, how-point, and when occasion requires shall be ever, in the spirit and inward purposes of free to express it.

the men to warrant this. They were of the The work which has given occasion to earth, earthy, with views as secular and these remarks-of which the first volume

are ;

of civil trusts and emoluments. A knowledge of this fact is essential to an accurate estimate of English history from the period of the Revolution to the accession of George III. The following extract will aid the intelligent reader, in tracing out the threads of a narrative, which exhibits both the glory and the weakness of Whiggism.

only has yet appeared-is the production of a clever man, completely acquainted with the times described. It is somewhat too sketchy for our taste, and is deficient in what, for want of a better name, we will term the philosophy of the subject. The standard of public morality applied is, moreover, in some cases exceedingly lax, and the style is loose and inaccurate. Yet, notwithstanding these drawbacks, the work 'The Whig party had acquired great hisis both attractive and useful. It may be torical lustre by their overthrow of the Stuarts read with advantage by all classes, and may in the seventeenth century. They had oriserve as a good introduction to the history ginated the Revolution of 1688: their schemes of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. were sanctioned by the Tories, and that great The period embraced is that which inter- historical event had been accomplished by the vened between the close of the American union of both parties. But the burthen of and the commencement of the Peninsular the Whigs. The adherents of the exiled family maintaining the Revolution was thrown upon war; and the objects kept in view through- were formidable in number and influence, and out, and which it is designed to illustrate, down to the period of 1748, it was not imthe nature of the English government, possible for enterprising statesmen to have in practice, as distinguished from the tech-effected a counter-revolution. Many of the nical constitution of law books; the char-Tories aided the Jacobites, and the fear of acters and principles of the illustrious men 'Popery alone deterred a large portion of the who presided over English affairs; the in- In addition to the difficulty of supporting a nation from championing the ancient Dynasty. fluence of the French Revolution; and the new family upon the throne, the Whigs were legislative independence of Ireland. The embarrassed by the characters of the two first present volume embraces only a very brief Georges. They had no qualities of insinperiod, and commences with the fall of uation, and were in many respects unsuited Lord North's administration in March, for England; they were formal and pedantic 1782. The immediate occasion of this in their notions, and did not properly feel their event was the disasters of the American war, which had gradually increased the Whig minorities, until they became too powerful to allow the court favorite longer to retain office. From the year 1775, upwards of one hundred millions had been expended, thirteen colonies, besides several West India and other islands had been lost, and an exhausting war with America, France, Spain, and Holland, was being waged. It was, therefore, obviously quite time, that the obstinacy of the king should be overruled by the popular branch of the legislature, and the minister who had servilely lent himself to the crown should be

driven from office.

glory as British kings. On the other hand, the rashness and incapacity of the Stuart Pretenders dispirited the Tories, and nullified their schemes. And from the landing of King William at Torbay, in 1688, down to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the success of the Revolution wavered, and the great cause of rational and constitutional liberty would have been lost, but for the skill and happy sagacity of Sir Robert Walpole. Thus the services which the Whigs had rendered to the monarchy, gave them a claim to the respect and confidence of the king; but like all political parties they stretched their claims too far, and they evidently thought that the Revolution of 1688 had destroyed the prerogative of the sovereign to rule without responsible advisers, but had also created a privilege for the Whigs to advise the crown in perpetuity.'—vol. i. pp. 7, 8.

The party which succeeded was that of the Whigs, and no slight difficulty was experienced in inducing the monarch to Such was the political state of this party recall them to his councils. Nothing but when George II. ascended the throne in the necessity of the case overcame his 1760. The young king, then in his twentyreluctance, and, as we shall presently see, third year, determined to break through he retained them no longer than that the restraints under which his predecessors necessity lasted. The part acted by the had been held, and to assert for the crown, Whigs in 1688 had placed them in a com- the right reserved to it by the constitution, manding position, and given them a long of choosing its own advisers. His early tenure of office; occasionally, indeed, in-associates had been opposed to the interrupted in its earlier period, but ultimately terests of the Whigs, whose haughty bearsettling down to something like a monopol ying and neglect of the genius and busi

They were ready to defend the theory of monarchy, and were desirous of keeping the soveespouse the popular cause, provided the people reign their creature. They were eager to were ready to remain their clients. They wished to introduce into political life, new men of genius, who were to exhibit their talents, adorn the party, but should not aspire to sitting in the Cabinet.

ness capacity of 'new men' contributed general principles so happily expressed as to much to the success of his policy. The seem suited for the Rockingham creed alone. great revolution families' were astonished at the temerity of the monarch. Their long possession of office had engendered the notion of its being their right. They constituted an oligarchy, popular in their theory, but despotic and corrupt in their rule; overshadowing the throne only to divide amongst themselves the spoils of the state. To their dictation the young mon- cherished the tenets of Whiggery, but it ap''The Shelburne party, on the other hand, arch refused to submit, and on this point plied them after a different fashion from the he was clearly right. The great mass of Rockingham school. They thought that Engthe community felt with him, and had his land should be governed by a much larger subsequent selection been wise, had the and even more formidable junto than the great ministers chosen been men of large capacity Revolution families; they cordially acknowand patriotic views, intent on the wise con-ledged the existence of a power, which was duct of national affairs and the true interests of both king and people, George III. would have been entitled to the lasting gratitude of his subjects. That this was not the case we need scarcely remark. Sufficient proof of the fact is furnished by the downfall of the North administration, under circumstances of peculiar ignominy,

in 1782.

only superciliously recognized by the Rockingham Whigs; in short, the Shelburne party thought that the true idea of the Revolution of 1688, was that the English public should govern, and not a collection of great families. The supporters of the Shelburne system distinguished between a public and a populace, as they discriminated between a Whig party, divine right of kings, they spurned the prinand a faction of families. Laughing at the ciple that the Dukes of Bedford and DevonThe cabinet which succeeded took its shire should parcel out the empire between name from the Marquis of Rockingham, them. They thought that the king had a its nominal head. It was composed of two right to choose his ministers from the host of divisions, known as the Rockingham and public men in parliament, and they boldly the Shelburne Whigs, and all its chief offi- claimed the right of men of commanding talent ces, excepting the chancellorship, which to sit in the cabinet, even though fortune had not given them ancestors, who (in the gracethe king insisted on Lord Thurlow retain-ful catchwords of the Rockinghams) had bled ing, were distributed amongst the aristocra- with Hampden in the field, or died with Sydtic members of the party. The following ney on the scaffold.' They went to the king's sketch of the two sections which composed closet, as his ministers; they did not comport this administration, furnishes the secret of themselves as his masters, or demean themits short-lived existence. A house so di-selves (Like Lord North and his colleagues) vided was not likely to stand long against the determined hostility of the king.

-23.

reign would not be thrown upon his metal by as if they were his servants. A manly sovethe Shelburne system of politics, nor would a despotic monarchy select his tools from men 'Lord Rockingham's followers were what bred in that school. To both king and people might be called the family compact Whigs-their conduct was more truly respectful than representing the principles of prescriptive that of the Rockingham party.'--Ib. pp. 21 Whiggery. Lord Shelburne's faction had originally been formed by Lord Chatham, and affected to act independently of party tiesthey were Whigs of progression, and stoutly Charles James Fox, then 'in the flush combated the leading article of the Rocking of his popularity, and political fame,' was ham creed that the great Revolution families should govern England.' One party was one of the secretaries of state, whilst Edan oligarchy with a historical fame, and conmund Burke, infinitely his superior in federated under hereditary leaders;-its Rus- morals, and inferior to none of his contemsells-Cavendishes--and Bentincks, and a poraries in the gigantic splendors of his inswarm of minor Whig families being all bound tellect, was assigned only the subordinate together by ancient recollections-habitual in-office of paymaster of the forces. tercourse and family alliances. They formed one was the son of Lord Holland, the other a vast junto, of great ambition and prodigious power. Their politics had been elaborately an Irish gentleman of slender means and digested into a system by the genius of Burke, of no family influence, and in this fact the who gave them a political code, and who fur secret of their disproportionate reward is nished them with a variety of maxims, and found.

The