hope for many years of bodily and mental vigour. The case was widely different when he left the bar of the Lords. He was now too old a man to turn his mind to a new class of studies and duties. He had no chance of receiving any mark of royal favour while Mr. Pitt remained

accomplished; and the domain, alienated more than seventy years before, returned to the descendant of its old lords. But the manor-house was a ruin; and the grounds round it had, during many years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto; and, in power; and, when Mr. Pitt retired, before he was dismissed from the bar of Hastings was approaching his seventieth the House of Lords, he had expended year. more than forty thousand pounds in adorning his seat.

The general feeling both of the directors and of the proprietors of the East India Aid from the Company was, that he had East India great claims on them, that Company. his services to them had been eminent, and that his misfortunes had been the effect of his zeal for their interests. His friends in Leadenhall Street proposed to reimburse him for the costs of his trial, and to settle on him an annuity of five thousand pounds a-year. But the consent of the Board of Control was required; and at the head of the Board of Control was Mr. Dundas, who had himself been a party to the impeachment, who had, on that account, been reviled with great bitterness by the partizans of Hastings, and who, therefore, was not in a very complying mood. He refused to consent to what the Directors suggested. The Directors remonstrated. A long controversy followed. Hastings, in the meantime, was reduced to such distress, that he could hardly pay his weekly bills. At length a compromise was made. An annuity of four thousand a-year was settled on Hastings; and, in order to enable him to meet pressing demands, he was to receive ten years' annuity in advance. The Company was also permitted to lend him fifty thousand pounds, to be repaid by instalments, without interest. This relief, though given in the most absurd manner, was sufficient to enable the retired governor to live in comfort, and even in luxury, if he had been a skilful manager. But he was careless and profuse, and was more than once under the necessity of applying to the Company for assistance, which was liberally given.

Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in politics, and that interference was not much to his honour. In 1804 he exerted himself strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington, against whom Fox and Pitt had combined, from resigning the Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a man so able and energetic as Hastings can have thought that, when Bonaparte was at Boulogne with a great army, the defence of our island could safely be entrusted to a Ministry which did not contain a single person whom flattery could describe as a great statesman. It is also certain that, on the important question which had raised Mr. Addington to power, and on which he differed from both Fox and Pitt, Hastings, as might have been expected, agreed with Fox and Pitt, and was decidedly opposed to Addington. Religious intolerance has never been the vice of the Indian service, and certainly was not the vice of Hastings. But Mr. Addington had treated him with marked favour. Fox had been a principal manager of the impeachment. To Pitt it was owing that there had been an impeachment; and Hastings, we fear, was on this occasion guided by personal considerations rather than by a regard to the public interest.

The last twenty-four years of his life were chiefly passed at Daylesford. He amused himself with em- Hastings's bellishing his grounds, last years at riding fine Arab horses, Daylesford. fattening prize-cattle, and trying to rear Indian animals and vegetables in England. He sent for seeds of a very fine custardapple, from the garden of what had once been his own villa, among the green hedgerows of Allipore. He tried also to naturalize in Worcestershire the delicious He had security and affluence, but not leechee, almost the only fruit of Bengal the power and dignity, which, when he which deserves to be regretted even His political landed from India, he had amidst the plenty of Covent Garden. life termi- reason to expect. He had The Mogul emperors, in the time of their nated. then looked forward to a greatness, had in vain attempted to coronet, a red riband, a seat at the introduce into Hindostan the goat of the Council Board, an office at Whitehall. table-land of Thibot, whose down supplies He was then only fifty-two, and might the isoms of Cashmere with the materials

of the finest shawls. Hastings tried, with | East India Company was renewed, and no better fortune, to rear a breed at much discussion about In

Literary

amusements.

Hastings Daylesford; nor does he seem to have dian affairs took place in before Parlia succeeded better with the cattle of Bootan, Parliament. It was deter- ment in 1813; his reception. whose tails are in high esteem as the best mined to examine witnesses fans for brushing away the mosquitoes. at the bar of the Commons, and HasLiterature divided his attention with tings was ordered to attend. He had his conservatories and his menagerie. He appeared at that bar once before. It had always loved books, was when he read his answer to the and they were now neces- charges which Burke had laid on the sary to him. Though not table. Since that time twenty-seven years a poet, in any high sense of the word, he had elapsed; public feeling had underwrote neat and polished lines with great gone a complete change; the nation had facility, and was fond of exercising this now forgotten his faults, and remembered talent. Indeed, if we must speak out, only his services. The reappearance, too, he seems to have been more of a Trissotin of a man who had been among the most than was to be expected from the powers distinguished of a generation that had of his mind, and from the great part passed away, who now belonged to hiswhich he had played in life. We are tory, and who seemed to have risen from assured in these Memoirs that the first the dead, could not but produce a solemn thing which he did in the morning was and pathetic effect. The Commons reto compose a copy of verses. When the ceived him with acclamations, ordered a family and guests assembled, the poem chair to be set for him, and, when he made its appearance as regularly as the retired, rose and uncovered. There were, eggs and rolls; and Mr. Gleig requires indeed, a few who did not sympathize us to believe that, if from any accident with the general feeling. One or two of Hastings came to the breakfast-table the managers of the impeachment were without one of his charming performances present. They sat in the same seats in his hand, the omission was felt by all which they had occupied when they had as a grievous disappointment. Tastes been thanked for the services which they differ widely. For ourselves, we must had rendered in Westminster Hall; for, say that, however good the breakfasts at by the courtesy of the House, a member Daylesford may have been-and we are who has been thanked in his place is conassured that the tea was of the most sidered as having a right always to occupy aromatic flavour, and that neither tongue that place. These gentlemen were not nor venison - pasty was wanting we disposed to admit that they had employed should have thought the reckoning high several of the best years of their lives if we had been forced to earn our repast in persecuting an innocent man. They by listening every day to a new madrigal accordingly kept their seats, and pulled or sonnet composed by our host. We are their hats over their brows; but the exglad, however, that Mr. Gleig has pre- ceptions only made the prevailing enserved this little feature of character, thusiasm more remarkable. The Lords though we think it by no means a beauty. received the old man with similar tokens It of respect. The University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws; and, in the Sheldonian theatre, the undergraduates welcomed him with tumultuous cheering.

good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds. Dionysius in old times, Frederic in the last century, with capacity and vigour equal to the conduct of the greatest affairs, united all the little vanities and affectations of provincial blue-stockings. These great examples may console the admirers of Hastings for the affliction of seeing him reduced to the level of the Hayleys and Sewards.

When Hastings had passed many years in retirement, and had long outlived the common age of men, he again became for a short time an object of general attention. In 1813 the charter of the

ceived by the public with marks of respect | fourscore years before, the little Warren,

FREDERIC THE GREAT.

(EDINBURGH REVIEW, APRIL, 1842.)

Frederic the Great and his Times. Edited, with an Introduction, by THOMAS CAMPBELL, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London : 1842.

compilation.

THIS work, which has the high honour of and Bavaria. The soil of Brandenburg being introduced to the world by the was for the most part sterile. Even author of "Lochiel" and round Berlin, the capital of the province, A well-written "Hohenlinden," is not and round Potsdam, the favourite rewholly unworthy of so sidence of the Margraves, the country distinguished a chaperon. It professes, was a desert. In some tracts, the deep indeed, to be no more than a compilation; sand could with difficulty be forced by but it is an exceedingly amusing com- assiduous tillage to yield thin crops of rye pilation, and we shall be glad to have and oats. In other places, the ancient more of it. The narrative comes down at forests, from which the conquerors of the present only to the commencement of the Roman Empire had descended on the Seven Years' War, and therefore does Danube, remained untouched by the hand not comprise the most interesting portion of man. Where the soil was rich it was of Frederic's reign. generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators whom its fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several valuable possessions, and among them the rich city and district of Magdeburg; and he left to his son Frederic a principality as considerable as any which was not called a kingdom.

It may not be unacceptable to our readers that we should take this opportunity of presenting them with a slight sketch of the life of the greatest king that has, in modern times, succeeded by right of birth to a throne. It may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and eventful a story within the limits which we must prescribe to ourselves. Should we be compelled to break off, we shall, when the continuation of this work appears, return to the subject.

The Great
Elector.

The Prussian monarchy, the youngest Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. of the great European States, but in Ostentatious and profuse, negligent of population and revenue the his true interests and of his Marquisate of Frederic I. Brandenburg fifth amongst them, and in high duties, insatiably eager first king of and the Ho- art, science, and civilization for frivolous distinctions, Prussia. henzollerns. entitled to the third, if not he added nothing to the real weight of to the second place, sprang from a humble the State which he governed: perhaps origin. About the beginning of the he transmitted his inheritance to his fifteenth century, the Marquisate of children impaired rather than augmented Brandenburg was bestowed by the Em- in value, but he succeeded in gaining the peror Sigismund on the noble family of great object of his life, the title of king. Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century In the year 1700 he assumed this new that family embraced the Lutheran doc- dignity. He had on that occasion to trines. Early in the seventeenth century undergo all the mortifications which fall it obtained from the king of Poland the to the lot of ambitious upstarts. Cominvestiture of the duchy of Prussia. pared with the other crowned heads of Even after this accession of territory, Europe, he made a figure resembling that the chiefs of the house of Hohenzollern which a Nabob or a Commissary, who hardly ranked with the electors of Saxony had bought a title, would make in the

These researches were not confined to
Europe. No head that towered above
the crowd in the bazaars of Aleppo, of
Cairo, or of Surat, could escape the
crimps of Frederic William. One Irish-
man more than seven feet high, who was
picked up in London by
Tall recruits.
the Prussian ambassador,
received a bounty of near £1,300 sterling

company of Peers whose ancestors had every country was ransacked by his agents been attainted for treason against the for men above the ordinary stature. Plantagenets. The envy of the class which he quitted, and the civil scorn of the class into which he intruded himself, were marked in very significant ways. The Elector of Saxony at first refused to acknowledge the new Majesty. Louis the Fourteenth looked down on his brother king with an air not unlike that with which the Count in Molière's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifices in return for her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.

William I.

Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince who must be allowed to have possessed Frederic some talents for administration, but whose character was disfigured by the most odious vices, and whose eccentricities were such as had never been seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and diligent in the transaction of business, and he was the first who formed the design of obtaining for Prussia a place among the European powers, altogether out of proportion to her extent and population, by means of a strong military organization. Strict economy enabled him to keep up a peace establishment of sixty thousand troops. These troops were disciplined in such a manner, that, placed beside them, the household regiments of Versailles and St. James's would have appeared an awkward squad. The master of such a force could not but be regarded by all his neighbours as a formidable enemy and a valuable ally.

Frederic William I.

But the mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated, that all his inclinations became passions, and all Strange character of his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons. While the envoys of the Court of Berlin were in a state of such squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign capitals; while the food placed before the princes and princesses of the blood-royal of Prussia was too scanty to appease hunger, and so bad that even hunger loathed it no price was thought too extravagant for tall recruits. The ambition of the king was torm a brigade of giants, and

very much more than the ambassador's salary. This extravagance was the more absurd, because a stout youth of five feet eight, who might have been procured for a few dollars, would in all probability have been a much more valuable soldier. But to Frederic William, this huge Irishman was what a brass Otho, or a Vinegar Bible, is to a collector of a different kind.

aversion

to war.

It is remarkable, that though the main end of Frederic William's administration was to have a great The king's military force, though his reign forms an important epoch in the history of military discipline, and though his dominant passion was the love of military display, he was yet one of the most pacific of princes. We are afraid that his aversion to war was not the effect of humanity, but was merely one of his thousand whims. His feeling about his troops seems to have resembled a miser's feeling about his money. He loved to collect them, to count them, to see them increase; but he could not find it in his heart to break in upon the precious hoard. He looked forward to some future time when his Patagonian battalions were to drive hostile infantry before them like sheep. But this future time was always receding; and it is probable that, if his life had been prolonged thirty years, his superb army would never have seen any harder service than a sham fight in the fields near Berlin. But the great military means which he had collected, were destined to be employed by a spirit far more daring and inventive than his own.