LORD ELDON-MR. WILBERFORCE.

LORD ELDON is an exceedingly good-natured man; but this does not prevent him, like other good-natured people, from consulting his own ease or interest. The character of good-nature, as it is called, has been a good deal mistaken; and the present Chancellor is not a bad illustration of the grounds of the prevailing error. When we happen to see an individual whose countenance is "all tranquillity and smiles;" who is full of good-humour and pleasantry; whose manners are gentle and conciliating; who is uniformly temperate in his expressions, and punctual and just in his everyday dealings; we are apt to conclude from so fair an outside, that

"All is conscience and tender heart"

within also, and that such a one would not hurt a fly. And neither would he without a motive. But mere good-nature (or what passes in the world for such) is often no better than indolent selfishness. A person distinguished and praised for this quality will not needlessly offend others, because they may retaliate; and besides, it ruffles his own temper. He likes to enjoy a perfect calm, and to live in an interchange of kind offices. He suffers few things to irritate or annoy him. He has a fine oiliness in his disposition, which smooths the waves of passion as they rise. He does not enter into the quarrels or enmities of others; bears their calamities with patience; he listens to the din and clang of war, the earthquake and the hurricane of the political and moral world with the temper and spirit of a philosopher; no act of injustice puts him beside himself, the follies and absurdities of mankind never give him a moment's uneasiness, he has none of the ordi

nary causes of fretfulness or chagrin that torment other tre
undue interest they take in the conduct of their nega
the public good. None of these idle or frivolous sour
content, that make such havoc with the peace of human
discompose his features or alter the serenity of his pose
nation is robbed of its rights,

"If wretches hang that Ministers may dine,”—-—

the laughing jest still collects in his eye, the cordial ; i the hand is still the same. But tread on the toe of car amiable and imperturbable mortais, or let a lump of soot 21.5 à 62 the chimney and spoil their dinners, and see how they w it. All their patience is confined to the accidents that beda. all their good-humour is to be resolved into giving u concern about anything but their own ease and seiTheir charity begins and ends at home. Their being the common infirmities of temper is owing to their indad rei the common feelings of humanity; and if you toe-h the place, they betray more resentment, and break out (like children) into greater fractiousness than others, par 1 2 greater degree of selfishness, and partly because they are ma surprise, and mad to think they have not guarded every against annoyance or attack, by a habit of callous insensi. pampered indolence.

An instance of what we mean occurred but the other dis allusion was made in the House of Commons to something proceedings in the Court of Chancery, and the Lord Chance.or comes to his place in the Court, with the statement in ha fire in his eyes, and a direct charge of falsehood m hu without knowing anything certain of the matter, with sa any inquiry into it, without using any precaution or punis least restraint upon himself, and all on no better authority tha common newspaper report. The thing was (not that we are puting any strong blame in this case, we merely bring a illustration) it touched himself, his office, the inviolateisty jurisdiction, the unexceptionableness of his proceedin na wet blanket of the Chancellor a temper instantly took fire

der! All the fine balancing was at an end; all the doubts, all
the delicacy, all the candour real or affected, all the chances that
there might be a mistake in the report, all the decencies to be ob-
served towards a Member of the House, are overlooked by the
blindness of passion, and the wary Judge pounces upon the para-
graph without mercy, without a moment's delay, or the smallest
attention to forms! This was indeed serious business, there was
to be no trifling here; every instant was an age till the Chancel-
lor had discharged his sense of indignation on the head of the
indiscreet interloper on his authority. Had it been another per-
son's case, another person's dignity that had been compromised,
another person's conduct that had been called in question, who
doubts but that the matter might have stood over till the next term,
that the Noble Lord would have taken the Newspaper home in
his pocket, that he would have compared it carefully with other
newspapers,
that he would have written in the most mild and
gentlemanly terms to the Honorable Member to inquire into the
truth of the statement, that he would have watched a convenient
opportunity good-humouredly to ask other Honourable Members
what all this was about, that the greatest caution and fairness
would have been observed, and that to this hour the lawyers' clerks
and the junior counsel would have been in the greatest admiration
of the Chancellor's nicety of discrimination, and the utter ineffi-
cacy of the heats, importunities, haste, and passions of others to
influence his judgment? This would have been true; yet his
readiness to decide and to condemn where he himself is concerned,
shows that passion is not dead in him, nor subject to the control
of reason; but that self-love is the main-spring that moves it,
though on all beyond that limit he looks with the most perfect
calmness and philosophic indifference.

"Resistless passion sways us to the mood
Of what it likes or loaths."

All people are passionate in what concerns themselves, or in what they take an interest in. The range of this last is different in different persons; but the want of passion is but another name for the want of sympathy and imagination.

The Lord Chancellor's impartiality and conscientious exactness

are proverbial; and is, we believe, as inflexible as a de all cases that occur in the stated routine of legal practice. impatience, the irritation, the hopes, the fears, the conform of the applicants move him not a jot from his intended ero looks at their claims with the "lack lustre eye" of prosen difference. Power and influence apart, his next stronge is to indulge in the exercise of professional learning and s....u amuse himself with the dry details and intricate wind. law of equity. He delights to balance a straw, to se turn the scale, or make it even again; and divides and a scruple to the smallest fraction. He unravels the wed ment and pieces it together again; folds it up and krys that he may examine it more at his leisure. He hugs : to his breast, and takes home a modest doubt or a nice solace himself with it in protracted, luxurious dailiance seems, in his mind, to be of the very essence of justice He hurries through a question than if no one was waiting sult, and he was merely a dilettanti, fanciful judge, who my Lord Chancellor, and busied himself with quibbles and tilios as an idle hobby and harmless illusion. The premi Chancellor's disposition gives one almost a surfent of and candour: we are sick of the eternal poise of chudnė ness; and would wish law and justice to be decided at cast of the dice (as they were in Rabelais) rather than be à m frivolous and tormenting suspense. But there is a h even this extreme refinement and scrupulousness of the Chanceng The understanding acts only in the absence of the passova. „At the approach of the loadstone, the needle trembies, and prunity to it. The air of a political question has a wonderful wayar brace and quicken the learned Lord's faculties. The breach of court speedily oversets a thousand objections, and scat cobwebs of his brain. The secret wish of power is a them make-weight, where all is so nicely balanced beforehand in the case of a celebrated beauty and heiress, and the brother of Lord, the Chancellor hesitated long, and went through the as usual, but who ever doubted, where all this indecision end? No man in his senses, for a single instant! We shal press this point, which is rather a ticklish one. Some per