Burke, Pitt, Fox, have been drawn by | chance of a post worth £300 per annum ; the masters of every school, and we are and adhesion to B, will give me a chance thus acquainted with their minutest linea of £600 per annum, therefore I will adments seen under all varieties of light. here to B. I have no definite conviction Yet let us not through this familiarity de- on the question which of their principles prive these great men of the high consi- is best for the country; there is a good deration to which they are entitled. And deal to be said on both sides, and indivito keep us from any such error, let us dually they are both very "respectable” simply ask ourselves what statesman since men; but I have the chance of getting their death have approached, or even twice as much from B as from A, and it equalled them? Who among those who is a duty I owe to my family and to mysince their time have guided the destinies self, to stand by her Majesty's Governof England, with the solitary exception of ment, to whom God be gracious, and send Wellington, have carried captive in their a speedy appreciation of my merits, else I career the most distinguished of their con- may feel it my duty to turn a patriot. temporaries? With the one exception, England has had no natural leaders since. The days of allegiance to uncrowned merit are gone, not because there is any want of willing subjects, but because the dynasty of the kings by right divine has disappeared. Party men now are kept together purely by party ties; the spirit of clique has seized on the vacant throne of genius. Political adhesion now depends either on connection by marriage, or on the natural attraction inherent in the dispensers of patronage for the time being; and the most obsequious of political adherents feels in his inner nature a protest in favor of his own independence-a tacit caveat that his obedience is not to be construed into an admission of any natural right to command in the party obeyed, and that the fact of the one ruling and the other obeying is merely an accident.

But it is not alone in politics that this want of the Koenig is felt. We feel the void everywhere in society. There is no one to look up to; no one whom, if undressed, literally and metaphorically, we would see any propriety in obeying. This arises not so much from the intellectual mediocrity of the age as from its moral degradation. Our aristocracy have lost much of their nobility. Gentlemanly feeling is dying away; the old way of estimating things which was somewhat confused and hazy, because viewed through the light of a hundred emotions of the heart, undefined in their limits and fluctuating in their obligations with all the varieties of character among individual men-a grand, fine Turner painting, after all-has given place to a precise, definite system by which the value of every one, human and divine, can be ascertained within a hundred pounds. Adhesion to statesman A, will give me a probable

But to return to our three statesmen. It is a common mistake among those who have not read Burke's works to call him a mere theorist; but he was the most cautious and practical of statesmen, thoroughly aware of the intense action and reaction in human affairs, and therefore never attempting to carry principles to their extreme consequences. He knew that constitutions grew, and could not be spun out of logic; and so he labored rather to ameliorate rather than to change

to modify than to subvert. In fact, the political ideas he propounded were not unlike those of the "Idée Napoleonienne," only expressed in richer language, and modified by their adaptation to a constitutional system of government. He had the same preference as the two Napoleons for a perfect machine, with as few clogs or useless wheels as may be; but Burke's machine behoved to go by wind, by water, or by steam, and sometimes to stand still; whereas the engine of the Bonapartes was constructed with a view to perpetual motion, under the influence of steam only, and that always at high pressure.

Brougham thinks Burke exaggerated the mischiefs to be apprehended from the French revolution. He might, he says, have foreseen the possibility of a "new, orderly, and profitable government" rising out of the ruins of the Republic. “All this we now see clearly enough," he says, "having survived Mr. Burke forty years." We who have survived another eighteen years since Brougham made this remark, have seen this " new, orderly, and profitable goverment" disappear from the face of the earth, and another government, very orderly, though somewhat like a despotism, occupy its place. Burke has not yet been proved to have been wrong. |

The career of this distinguished states

man corroborates our remarks, as to the | capacious intellect, and find it impossible qualifications necessary to gain the prizes not to love his genial, erring, and we of ambition. Burke's mind was of the must add unprincipled nature. The formeditative cast, and he was far too honest mer had most of the qualities which conto make use of coups d'etat to further his duce to political power, but wanted conadvancement, while, great man though he ciliation; with which, however, he could was, he had not the majesty of Chatham dispense, inheriting he as did much of the to enable him to rise without them. The natural right to command, so largely posconsequence was, that his career as a states- sessed by his father. Fox had what Pitt man, so far as his personal advancement wanted; no one made friends so easily, was concerned, was a failure. but he had one defect which was fatal to his success as an ambitious man-he could not be trusted.

Brougham gives a discriminating, and of course an incongruous character of Fox. With such capacities to rise in his higher nature, and such facility of sinking in his lower nature, no one presents so puzzling a problem as Fox, if we attempt a moral estimate of his character. He seems, while we contemplate him, to undergo a perpetual metempsychosis. At one time he is Cato, and again he is Mephistopheles. We see him now as Socrates, scattering maxims of wisdom and morality; the morrow he is the ruined gambler, not unfrequently in a state of intoxication. Then another change comes over him; he goes to the House, and declaims in majestic terms on the rights of mankind, and his audience feel themselves elevated in moral tone as they listen to him; but next day there is a subscription to pay his gambling debts, which he accepts without hesitation. A great patriot, he yet seemed to wish for the triumph of Napoleon over his country, and he thwarted Pitt in his attempt to check the aggrandizement of Russia. Continually declaiming in favor of liberty, and denouncing the ministry as embarked in a conspiracy against the constitution, he retired with his party from the House of Commons, where it was his duty to watch over that very constitution, and defend it from all attacks.

Pitt was a much simpler character; cold, able, statuesque, draping himself in a proud self-respect, which rendered him incapable of any meanness, or of any thing tending to abate the dignity of his public life; he was a statesman modeled on the schoolboy notions of the patriot of Greece or Rome; equally as perfect, uncorruptible, and uncompromising, and as little capable of sympathizing with the infirmities and weaknesses of ordinary men.

We may say of Pitt that we admire and respect but do not love him, though no one now can hate him. Of Fox again we must say that we respect him not at all, but we admire the versatility of his

Brougham's sketch of Lord Melville is too racy to be omitted, though the Scotch statesman is hardly entitled to rank with those whose portraits we have been examining. The secret of his power, says Brougham, was

"No doubt, owing, partly to the unhesitating and unqualified determination which regulated his conduct of devoting his whole patronage to the support of his party, and to the extent of of India, as well as having the whole Scotch that patronage, from his being so long minister preferment at his absolute disposal; but it was also in part owing to the engaging qualities of the man-a steady, determined friend, who only stood the faster by those who wanted him the more; nay, who even in their errors or their faults would not give up his adherents. An agreeable companion, from the joyous hilarity of his manners, void of all affectation, all pride, all pretension; a kind and affectionate man in the relations of private life.' That such a man should, for so many years, have disposed of the votes of nearly all the Scotch commoners and peers, was the less to be wondered at when it is kept in view that at that time there was no doubt of the ministry's sta

bility; the political sky was clear and settled nothing to disturb the hearts of anxious morto the very verge of the horizon; there was tals. The wary and the pensive Scot felt sure of his election, if he had but kept by the true faith, and his path lay straight before him."

"It was, in truth, a crisis to try men's souls. For a while all was uncertainty and consternation, all were seen fluttering about like birds in an eclipse or a thunderstorm; no man could tell whom he might trust-nay, worse still, no man could tell of whom he could ask anything.

It was hard to say, not who were in office, but who were likely to remain in office. Our countrymen were in dismay and destruction. might truly be said they knew not which

It

way to look or whither to turn. But such a crisis was too sharp to last-it passed away, and then was to be seen a proof of Mr. Dundas's power amongst us, which transcended all expectation and almost surpassed belief, if, indeed, it is not rather to be viewed as an evidence of the acute foresight, the political second sight of the Scottish nation. The trusty band in both houses actually were found adhering to him against the existing government-nay, he held the proxies of many Scottish peers in open opposition! Well might his colleague exclaim to the hapless Addington, in such unheard of troubles, 'Doctor, the Thanes fly from us.' When the very Scotch peers wavered, and when the Grampian hills might next be expected to move about, it was time to think that the end of all things was at hand, and the return of Pitt and security and patronage and Dundas speedily ensued, to bless old Scotland, and reward her providence or her fidelity, her attachment at once to her patron and to herself."

If we had space, we would extract Brougham's sketch of Lord Eldon, a man in all respects equipped with those qualities essential to political success.

and powerful mind. Deficient in ornament, and even indicating a want of imagination, it is by no means bald, being impregnated throughout by close cogent reasoning, which often, in its concentration, rises to Demosthenic eloquence. The solitary object it aims at is to make an impression, to carry the object in hand, to hit the nail right on the head. That done, there is no finishing or polishing, the argument is clenched, and it is no slight logical force which will unfasten it. But his merits as an author are not to be estimated by particular passages, but by the method of treatment of his subject as a whole. He might, had he so chosen, have given more finish and ornament to his sentences, but he might thereby have sacrificed force to eloquence

-he might have secured the admiration of the critic and failed to convince the reader. In our humble opinion, we think he was right to avoid such risks. Broug ham was substantially a man of action, and only by accident, as it were, a man of letters; and to have made this accident anything else than a mere clothing to the substance, would have been incongruous. But by not being led astray in this

"The Judge, so prone to doubt that he could hardly bring his mind to decide, was, in all that practically concerned his party or himself, as ready to take a line and to follow it with a de-way by literary ambition, it has so haptermination of purpose as the least ingenious of ordinary statesmen. He, whose fears very much resembled his conscientious scruples, of which no man spoke more or felt less-he was about as often the slave of them as the Indian is of his deformed little gods, of which he makes much and then breaks them into pieces or casts them into the fire. Who, be the act mild or harsh, moderate or violent, sanctioned by the law and constitution or an open outrage upon both, was heard, indeed, to wail and to groan much of painful necessity-often vowed to God-spoke largely of conscience-complained bitterly of a hard lot; but the paramount sense of duty overcame all other feelings; and with wailing and with tears, beating his breast and only not tearing his hair, he did, in the twinkling of an eye, the act which unexpectedly discomfited his adversaries and secured his own power for ever."

We have given ample specimens of the style of Lord Brougham, chiefly on account of the merit of the extracts and their suitability to our object, but also because his style is eminently suggestive of the man. It is quite a natural style, the offspring of his own sagacious, direct,

VOL. XXXIX.—NO. I.

pened he has achieved a literary success. is style is a first-class style of its kind, the style of the man of business and ambition, the fit organ for those who attempt to compel fortune to their service, who feel that they have a right to be heard and obeyed. As a master, therefore, of a real genuine style, fitted for peculiar purwill be popular as an author long after poses, we prophesy that Lord Brougham the works of those who, at present, enjoy a greater literary reputation shall have been laid aside as unnatural and affected.

For a similar reason we expect that the reputation of Lord Brougham, as a statesman, will increase with time, and that posterity will assign him a higher rank among his contemporaries than that which he at present occupies; for we hold him to be a real genuine man, acting and speaking from the dictates of a strong, plain, practical mind, without fear, without adulation, and, as the greatest of all merits in the present day, without affectation.

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