likely to be the most formidable champion of arbitrary government that had appeared since the Revolution-to be a Bute with far greater powersa Mansfield with far greater courage. Happily his father's death liberated him early from the pernicious influence by which he had been misled. His mind expanded. His range of observation became wider. His genius broke through early prejudices. His natural benevolence and magnanimity had fair play. In a very short time he appeared in a situation worthy of his understanding and of his heart. From a family whose name was associated in the public mind with tyranny and corruption-from a party of which the theory and the practice were equally servile-from the midst of the Luttrells, the Dysons, the Barringtons-came forth the greatest parliamentary defender of civil and religious liberty. The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural dis The first positions of his house. But his situation was very different from that of the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some important re spects it was better; in some it was worse than theirs. He had one great advantage over them. He received a good political education. lord was educated by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox was educated by his father. The late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by the first Lord Holland made his great talents useless, and worse than useless, to the state. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by Mr. Fox led him, at the commencement of his public life, into great faults which, though afterwards nobly expiated, were never forgotten. To the very end of his career, small men, when they had nothing else to say in defence of their own tyranny, bigotry and imbecility, could always raise a cheer by some paltry taunt about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment of the lord mayor, and other measures in which the great Whig leader had borne a part at the age of one or two and twenty. On Lord Holland, no such slur could be thrown. Those who most dissent from his opinions must acknowledge that a public life more consistent is not to be found in our annals. Every part of it is in perfect harmony with every other part; and the whole is in perfect harmony with the great principles of toleration and civil freedom. This rare felicity is in a great measure to be attributed to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord Holland, as was natural in a person of his talents and expectations, began at a very early age to take the keenest interest in politics; and Mr. Fox found the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so hopeful a pupil. They corresponded largely on political subjects when the young lord was only sixteen; and their friendship and mutual confidence continued to the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick. Under such training, such a man as Lord Holland was in no danger of falling into those faults which threw a dark shade over the whole career of his grandfather and from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free. On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his grandfather and his uncle, laboured under one great disadvantage. They were members of the House of Commons. He became a Peer while still an infant. When he entered public life, the House of Lords was a very small and a very decorous assembly. The minority to which he belonged was scarcely able to muster five or six votes on the most important nights, when eighty or ninety lords were present. Debate had accordingly become a mere form, as it was in the Irish House of Peers before the Union. This was a great misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. It was not by occasionally addressing fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly auditors that his grandfather and his uncle attained their unrivalled parliamentary skill. The former had learned his art in “the great Walpolean battles," on nights when Onslow was in the chair seventeen hours without intermission, when the thick ranks on both sides kept unbroken order till long after the winter sun had risen upon them, when the blind were led out by the hand into the lobby and the paralytic laid down in their bedclothes on the benches. The powers of Charles Fox were, from the first, exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The great talents of the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was the more unfortunate because the peculiar species of eloquence which belonged to him, in common with his family, required much practice to develope it. With strong sense and the greatest readiness of wit, a certain tendency to hesitation was hereditary in the line of Fox. This hesitation arose, not from the poverty, but from the wealth of their vocabulary. They paused, not from the difficulty of finding one expression, but from the difficulty of choosing between several. It was only by slow degrees and constant exercise that the first Lord Holland and his son overcame the defect. Indeed, neither of them overcame it completely. In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for the unsound parts of an argument and a great felicity in exposing them. He was decidedly more distinguished in debate than any peer of his time who had not sat in the House of Commons. Nay, to find his equal among persons similarly situated, we must go back eighty years-to Earl Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brougham, Plunket and other eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate, carried to the Upper House an eloquence formed and matured in the Lower. The opinion of the most discerning judges was that Lord Holland's oratorical performances, though sometimes most successful, afforded no fair measure of his oratorical powers, and that, in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and animated, he would have attained a very high order of excellence. It was, indeed, impossible to converse with him without seeing that he was born a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the exercise of the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With the greatest good nature and good breeding, he was the very opposite to an assenter. The word " disputatious" is generally used as a word of reproach; but we can express our meaning only by saying that Lord Holland was most courteously and pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his quickness in discovering and apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a veteran judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as soon as they had split a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might have been a risk that this turn for subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own ingenuity. He put his logic to its proper use; and in him the dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman. His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps, as we have already intimated, his opinions on two or three great questions of Foreign Policy were open to just objection. Yet even his errors, if he erred, were amiable and respectable. We are not sure that we do not love and admire him the more because he was now and then seduced from what we regard as a wise policy, by sympathy with the oppressed, by generosity towards the fallen, by a philanthropy so enlarged that took in all nations, by love of peace, which in him was second only to the love of freedom, by the magnanimous credulity of a mind which was as incapable of suspecting as of devising mischief. To his views on questions of Domestic Policy, the voice of his countrymen does ample justice. They revere the memory of the man who was, during forty years, the constant protector of all oppressed races, of all persecuted sects-of the man, whom neither the prejudices nor the interests belonging to his station could seduce from the path of right-of the noble, who in every great crisis cast in his lot with the commons-of the planter, who made maníul war on the slave trade-of the landowner, whose whole heart was in the struggle against the corn-laws. We have hitherto touched almost exclusively on those parts of Lord Holland's character which were open to the observation of millions. How shall we express the feelings with which his memory is cherished by those who were honoured with his friendship. Or in what language shall we speak of that House, once celebrated for its rare attractions to the furthest ends of the civilised world and now silent and desolate as the grave? That House was a hundred and twenty years ago apostrophised by a poet in tender and graceful lines, which have now acquired a new meaning not less sad than that which they originally bore: "Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace, Thine evening breezes and thy noon-day shade." Yet a few years and the shades and structures may follow their illustrious masters. The wonderful city which, ancient and gigantic as it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young town of logwood by a water-privilege in Michigan, may soon displace those turrets and gardens which are associated with so much that is interesting and noble-which the courtly magnificence of Rich-with the loves of Ormond-with the counsels of Cromwell-with the death of Addison. The time is coming when, perhaps a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets and squares and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties-of painters and poets-of scholars, philosophers and statesmen. They will then remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them-the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the carving, the grotesque gilding and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many ages; those portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many men who have guided the politics of Europe-who have moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence-who have put life into bronze and canvas, or who have left to posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them die-were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the singular character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and accom plishment, every art and science had its place. They will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner and the last comedy of Scribe in an other; while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Reynold's Baretti; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at the Luxembourg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, the grace-and the kindness, far more admirable than grace--with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember the venerable and benignant countenance and the cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They will remember that temper, which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement seemed only to make sweeter and sweeter; and that frank politeness, which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist who found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls. They will remember that constant flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so various, so rich with observation and anecdote; that wit which never gave a wound; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled instead of degrading; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look and accent and gave additional value to every talent and acquirement. They will remember, too, that he whose name they hold in reverence was not less distinguished by the inflexible uprightness of his political conduct than by his loving disposition and his winning manners. They will remember that, in the last lines which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had done nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey; and they will have reason to feel similar joy if, in looking back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse themselves of having done anything unworthy of men who were distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland. WARREN HASTINGS. (OCTOBER, 1841.) Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers by the Rev. G. R. GLEIG, M.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1841. THIS book seems to have been manufactured in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants on both sides have been most faithfully kept; and the result is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, fuil of undigested correspondence and undiscerning panegyric. If it were worth while to examine this performance in detail, we could easily make a long article by merely pointing out inaccurate statements, ineleBut it would be idle to waste gant expressions and immoral doctrines. criticism on a bookmaker; and, whatever credit Mr. Gleig may have justly earned by former works, it is as a bookmaker, and nothing more, that he now comes before us. More eminent men than Mr. Gleig have written nearly as ill as he, when they have stooped to similar drudgery. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by the "Vicar of Wakefield" or Scott by the "Life of Napoleon." Mr. Gleig is neither a Goldsmith nor a Scott; but it would be unjust to deny that he is capable of something better than these Memoirs. It would also, we hope and believe, be unjust to charge any Christian minister with the guilt of deliberately maintaining some propositions which we find in this book. It is not too much to say that Mr. Gleig has written several passages which bear the same relation to the "Prince "Prince" of Machiavelli bears to the "Whole Duty of Man," and which would excite amazement in a den of robbers or on board of a schooner of of Machiavelli that the pirates. But we are willing to attribute these offences to haste, to thoughtless ness, and to that disease of the understanding which may be called the Furor Biographicus, and which is to writers of lives what the goitre is to an Alpine shepherd or dirt-eating to a Negro slave. We are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes of our readers if, instead of dwelling on the faults of this book, we attempt to give, in way necessarily hasty and imperfect, our own view of the life and character of Mr. Hastings. Our feeling towards him is not exactly that of the House of Commons which impeached him in 1787; neither is it that of the House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813. He had great qualities and he rendered great services to the state. But to represent him as a man of stainless virtue is to make him ridiculous; and from regard for his memory, if from no other feeling, his friends would have done well to lend no countenance to such adulation. We believe that, if he were now living, he would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that the splendour of his fame would bear many spots. He would nave wished posterity to have a likeness of him, though an unfavourable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else. "Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to young Lely. "If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling." Even in such a trifle the great Protector showed both his good sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish all that was characteristic in his countenance to be lost in the vain attempt to give him the regular features and smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James I. He was content that his face should go forth marked with all the blemishes which had been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse; but with valour, policy, authority and public care written in all its princely lines. If men truly great knew their own interest, it is thus that they would wish their minds to be portrayed. Warren Hastings sprung from an ancient and illustrious race. It has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish sea-king whose sails were long the terror of both coasts of the British Channel, and who, after many fierce and doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valour and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendour of the line of Hastings needs no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore, in the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. From another branch sprang the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished 'so striking a theme both to poets and to historians. His family received from the Tudors the earldom of Huntingdon, which, after long dispossession, was regained in our time by a series of events scarcely paralleled in romance. The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, claimed to be considered as the heads of this distinguished family. The main stock, indeed, prospered less than some of the younger shoots. But the Daylesford family, though not ennobled, was wealthy and highly considered till, about two hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed by the great ruin of the civil war. The Hastings of that time was a zealous cavalier. He raised money on his lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, joined the royal army, and, after spending half his property in the cause of King Charles, was glad to ransom himself by making over most of the remaining half to Speaker Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford still remained in the family; but it could no longer be kept up, and in the following generation it was sold to a merchant of London. Before this transfer took place, the last Hastings of Daylesford had presented his second son to the rectory of the parish in which the ancient residence |