absolutely necessary to declare either for peace or war, and if peace cannot be preserved without honour, why is not war commenced without hesitation? I am not, I confess, well informed of the resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. Any state, my Lords, is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort-and if we must fall, let us fall like

men.

THE QUEEN OF FRANCE.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in,-glittering like the morning star; full of life, and splendour, and joy.

Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate, without emotion, that elevation and that fall!

Little did I dream that, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom ;-little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men,-in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look, that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex,— that proud submission,—that dignified obedience,—that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone: It is gone,—that sensibility of principle,-that chastity of honour, which felt at stain like a wound,-which inspired courage whilst it mitigated

1 Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, and Queen of Louis XVI., guillotined 1793.

ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched; and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. -BURKE.1

FROM MR. SHERIDAN'S SPEECH ON THE TRIAL OF MR.

HASTINGS.2

(Mr. Burke had, in opening the prosecution, remarked, that prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause. To this sentiment the allusions in the following passage refer.)

An honourable friend of mine, who is now, I believe, near me, a gentleman, to whom I never can on any occasion refer without feelings of respect, and, on this subject, without feelings of the most grateful homage;—a gentleman, whose abilities upon this occasion, as upon some former ones, happily for the glory of the age in which we live, are not entrusted merely to the perishable eloquence of the day, but will live to be the admiration of that hour when all of us are mute, and most of us forgotten ;-that honourable gentleman has told you that prudence, the first of virtues, never can be used in the cause of vice. If, reluctant and diffident, I might take such a liberty, I should express a doubt, whether experience, observation, or history, will warrant us for fully assenting to this observation. It is a noble and a lovely sentiment, my Lords, worthy the mind of him who uttered it, worthy that proud disdain, that generous scorn of the means and instruments of vice, which virtue and genius must ever feel. I should doubt whether we can read the history of a Philip of Macedon, a Cæsar, or a Cromwell, without confessing, that there have been evil purposes, baneful to the peace and to

But

1 Edmund Burke (1730-1797), a distinguished orator, and writer in various departments of moral philosophy and politics. His terror and hatred of the French Revolution caused him to renounce his sympathy with the Whig party, and publicly in Parliament to renounce his friendship with Mr. Fox, the Whig leader. His "Reflections on the French Revolution" contain a prophetic history of its crimes. This celebrated work was answered by Sir James Macintosh's" Vindicia Gallicæ."

2 The celebrated dramatist, wit, and orator, who took the lead in Parliament with Whitbread and Burke in the prosecution, in 1788, of Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, for alleged crimes in his administration. The case was protracted for several years, and ended in the acquittal of Hastings. Such was the effect of Sheridan's eloquence, that at the conclusion of one of his philippics, the prime-minister Pitt moved the postponement of the discussion, on the ground, that under the excitement of such oratory no judgment could preserve its equilibrium of justice. Of Sheridan's spoken eloquence little survives; his comedies are still reckoned classical specimens of that department of literature. He was an attaché of the libertine society of the Prince of Wales (George IV.); he sacrificed his genius on unworthy altars; and gifted as he was with amiable and brilliant qualities, in the words of Goldsmith's epigram on Burke, though in another sense, Sheridan "to party" (and to something worse) "gave up what was meant for mankind,"

the rights of men, conducted-if I may not say, with prudence or with wisdom-yet with awful craft and most successful and commanding subtlety. If, however, I might make a distinction, I should say that it is the proud attempt to mix a variety of lordly crimes, that unsettles the prudence of the mind, and breeds the destruction of the brain. One masterpassion, domineering in the breast, may win the faculties of the understanding to advance its purpose, and to direct to that object everything that thought or human knowledge can effect; but, to succeed, it must maintain a solitary despotism in the mind-each rival profligacy must stand aloof, or wait in abject vassalage upon its throne. For the Power that has not forbade the entrance of evil passions into man's mind, has, at least, forbade their union;-if they meet they defeat their object, and their conquest, or their attempt at it, is tumult. Turn to the Virtues-how different the decree! Formed to connect, to blend, to associate, and to co-operate; bearing the same course, with kindred energies and harmonious sympathy, each perfect in its own lovely sphere, each moving in its wider or more contracted orbit, with different but concentring powers, guided by the same influence of reason, and endeavouring at the same blessed end-the happiness of the individual, the harmony of the species, and the glory of the Creator. In the Vices, on the other hand, it is the discord that insures the defeat; each clamours to be heard in its own barbarous language; each claims the exclusive cunning of the brain; each thwarts and reproaches the other; and even while their fell rage assails with common hate the peace and virtue of the world, the civil war among their own tumultuous legions defeats the purpose of the foul conspiracy. These are the Furies of the mind, my Lords, that unsettle the understanding; these are the Furies that destroy the virtue, Prudence,-while the distracted brain and shivered intellect proclaim the tumult that is within, and bear their testimonies, from the mouth of God himself, to the foul condition of the heart.-SHERIDAN.

MR. WILBERFORCE.1

Few persons have ever either reached a higher and more enviable place in the esteem of their fellow-creatures, or have

In desiring to supplement our article on General History with individual pictures of modern eminent persons, the crowd of great names that fill the stirring period of the

better deserved the place they had gained, than William Wilberforce. He was naturally a person of great quickness and even subtilty of mind, with a lively imagination, approaching to playfulness of fancy; and hence he had wit in an unmeasured abundance, and in all its varieties; for he was endowed with an exquisite sense of the ludicrous in character, the foundation of humour, as well as with the perception of remote resemblances, the essence of wit. These qualities however he had so far disciplined his faculties as to keep in habitual restraint, lest he should ever offend against strict decorum, by introducing light matter into serious discussion, or be betrayed into personal remarks too poignant for the feelings of individuals. For his nature was mild and

amiable beyond that of most men; fearful of giving the least pain in any quarter, even while heated with the zeal of controversy on questions that roused all his passions; and more anxious, if it were possible, to gain over rather than to overpower an adversary, and disarm him by kindness, or the force of reason, or awakening appeals to his feelings, rather than defeat him by hostile attack. His natural talents were cultivated, and his taste refined by all the resources of a complete Cambridge education.

His eloquence was of the highest order. It was persuasive and pathetic in an eminent degree; but it was occasionally bold and impassioned, animated with the inspiration which deep feeling alone can breathe into spoken thought, chastened by a pure taste, varied by extensive information, enriched by classical allusion, sometimes elevated by the more sublime topics of Holy Writ-the thoughts and the spirit

"That touch'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips with fire."

Few passages can be cited in the oratory of modern times of a more electrical effect than the singularly felicitous and striking allusion to Mr. Pitt's resisting the torrent of Jacobin principles-" He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed." The singular kindness, the extreme gentleness of his disposition, wholly free from gall, from vanity, or any selfish feeling, kept him from indulging in any

conclusion of the eighteenth century, and the commencement of the nineteenth, forces us to a narrow selection. We gladly therefore surrender Fox and Pitt, and many more, "With gifts and graces eminently adorned

To some great work,"

to do honour to the purest hearted of Christian patriots, and the noblest advocate of the rights of humanity in the abolition of the slave trade.

of the vituperative branches of rhetoric; but a memorable instance shewed that it was any thing rather than the want of power which held him off from the use of the weapons so often in almost all other men's hands. When a well-known popular member thought fit to designate him repeatedly, and very irregularly, as the "Honourable and religious gentleman," not because he was ashamed of the cross he gloried in, but because he felt indignant that any one in the British Senate should deem piety a matter of imputation, he poured out a strain of sarcasm which none who heard it can ever forget. A common friend of the parties having remarked to Sir Samuel Romilly, beside whom he sat, that this totally outmatched Pitt himself, the great master of sarcasm, the reply of that great man and just observer was worthy to be remarked,"Yes," said he, "it is the most striking thing I almost ever heard; but I look upon it as a more singular proof of Wilberforce's virtue than of his genius, for who but he ever was possessed of such a formidable weapon, and never used it?"

66

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

Napoleon Buonaparte is certainly the most extraordinary person who has appeared in modern times, and to whom, in some respects, no parallel can be found, if we search the whole annals of the human race. For though the conquests of Alexander were more extensive, and the matchless character of Cæsar was embellished by more various accomplishments, and the invaders of Mexico and Peru worked their purposes of subjugation with far more scanty means, yet the military genius of Napoleon shines with a lustre peculiarly its own, or which he shares with Hannibal alone, when we reflect that he never had to contend, like those conquerors, with adversaries inferior to himself in civilisation or discipline, but won all his triumphs over hosts as well ordered, and regularly marshalled, and amply provided as his own.

This celebrated man was sprung from a good family in Corsica, and while yet a boy fixed the attention and raised the hopes of all his connexions. In early youth his military genius shone forth; he soon gained the summit of his profession; he commanded at twenty-five a military operation of a complicated and difficult nature in Paris :1 being selected

1 In defeating the revolt of the "Sections of Paris," who opposed the establishment of the Directorial Government in October 1795. (See p. 292).