for sin, and reward for those who imitate the Godhead in His universal bounty to His creatures. These honours you deserve, and they will surely be paid, when all the jargon of influence and party and patronage are swept into oblivion.

I have spoken what I think, and what I feel, of the mover of this bill. An honourable friend of mine, speaking of his merits, was charged with having made a studied panegyric. I don't know what his was. Mine, I am sure, is a studied panegyric; the fruit of much meditation; the result of the observation of near twenty years. For my own part, I am happy that I have lived to see this day; I feel myself overpaid for the labours of eighteen years, when, at this late period, I am able to take my share, by one humble vote, in destroying a tyranny that exists to the disgrace of this nation, and the destruction of so large a part of the human species.

EDMUND BURKE

EDMUND BURKE.

HERE lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the Universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind;
Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote;
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
And thought of convincing while they thought of dining;
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit;
Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit;
For a patriot, too cool; for a drudge, disobedient;
Too fond of the Right to pursue the Expedient:
In short, 't was his fate, unemploy'd or in place, Sir,
To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor.

THIS is no trifler, no short-flighted wit,
No stammerer of a minute, painfully
Deliver❜d. No! the Orator hath yoked
The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car.

GOLDSMITH.

EDMUND BURKE.

Thrice welcome Presence! how can patience e'er
Grow weary of attending on a track

That kindles with such glory? All are charm'd,
Astonish'd; like a hero in romance,

He winds away his never-ending horn;

Words follow words, sense seems to follow sense :
What memory and what logic! till the strain
Transcendent, superhuman as it seem'd,
Grows tedious even in a young man's ear.
Genius of Burke! forgive the pen seduced
By specious wonders, and too slow to tell
Of what th' ingenuous, what bewilder'd men,
Beginning to mistrust their boastful guides,
And wise men, willing to grow wiser, caught,
Rapt auditors! from thy most eloquent tongue,
Now mute, for ever mute in the cold grave.

WORDSWORTH.

391

BURKE, in his public character, found himself, as it were, in a Noah's Ark, with a very few men and a great many beasts. He felt how much his immediate power was lessened by the very circumstance of his measureless superiority to those about him. He acted, therefore, under a perpetual system of compromise, - a compromise of greatness with meanness; of comprehension with narrowness; of the philosopher-who, armed with the twofold knowledge of history and the laws of spirit, as with a telescope, looked far around and into the far distance with the mere men of business, or with yet coarser intellects, who handled a truth, which they were required to receive, as they would handle an ox, which they were desired to purchase. But why need I repeat what has been already said in so happy a manner by Goldsmith of this great man? And if it was his fate to "cut blocks with a razor," I may be permitted to add that, in respect of Truth, though not of Genius, the weapon was injured by the misapplication.

COLERIDGE.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

WHAT can be more extraordinary, than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the Earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a Parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors, when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the South and the poverty of the North; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the Earth; to call together Parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and, lastly, to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if the short line. of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs?

There would be no end to instance in the particulars of all his wickedness; but to sum up a part of it briefly: What can be more extraordinarily wicked than for a person to endeavour not only to

THE TRUE FINE GENTLEMAN.

393

exalt himself above, but to trample upon, all his equals and betters? to pretend freedom for all men, and under the help of that pretence to make all men his servants? to take arms against taxes of scarce two hundred thousand pounds a-year, and to raise them himself to above two millions? to quarrel for the loss of three or four ears, and strike off three or four hundred heads? to fight against an imaginary suspicion of I know not what two thousand guards to be fetched for the King, I know not from whence, and to keep up for himself no less than forty thousand? to pretend the defence of Parliaments, and violently to dissolve all even of his own calling, and almost choosing to set up counsels of rapine and courts of murder? to fight against the King under a commission for him; to take him forcibly out of the hands of those for whom he had conquered him; to draw him into his net with protestations and vows of fidelity, and, when he had caught him in it, to butcher him, with as little shame as conscience or humanity, in the open face of the whole world to fight against monarchy when he declared for it, and declare against it when he contrived for it in his own person? to abuse perfidiously and supplant ingratefully his own general first, and afterwards most of those officers, who, with the loss of their honour and hazard of their souls, had lifted him up to the top of his unreasonable ambitions? to break his faith with all enemies and with all friends equally and to make no less frequent use of the most solemn perjuries than the looser sort of people do of customary oaths? to usurp three kingdoms without any shadow of the least pretensions, and to govern them as unjustly as he got them? to seek to entail this usurpation upon his posterity, and with it an endless war upon the nation? and, lastly, by the severest judgment of Almighty God, to die hardened, and mad, and unrepentant, with the curses of the present age, and the detestation of all to succeed?

ABRAHAM COWLEY: 1618-1667.

THE TRUE FINE GENTLEMAN.

WHEN a good artist would express any remarkable character in sculpture, he endeavours to work up his figure into all the perfection his imagination can form; and to imitate not so much what is, as what may or ought to be. I shall follow their example, in the idea

I am going to trace out of a fine gentleman, by assembling together such qualifications as seem requisite to make the character complete. In order to this I shall premise in general, that by a fine gentleman I mean a man completely qualified as well for the service and good, as for the ornament and delight, of society.

When I consider the frame of mind peculiar to a gentleman, I suppose it graced with all the dignity and elevation of spirit that human nature is capable of. To this I would have joined a clear understanding, a reason free from prejudice, a steady judgment, and an extensive knowledge. When I think of the heart of a gentleman, I imagine it firm and intrepid, void of all inordinate passions, and full of tenderness, compassion, and benevolence. When I view the fine gentleman with regard to his manners, methinks I see him modest without bashfulness, frank and affable without impertinence, obliging and complaisant without servility, cheerful and in good humour without noise.

These amiable qualities are not easily obtained; neither are there many men that have a genius to excel this way. A finished gentleman is perhaps the most uncommon of all the great characters in life. Besides the natural endowments with which this distinguished man is to be born, he must run through a long series of education. Before he makes his appearance and shines in the world, he must be principled in religion, instructed in all the moral virtues, and led through the whole course of the polite arts and sciences. He should be no stranger to Courts and to camps: he must travel to open his mind, to enlarge his views, to learn the policies and interests of foreign States, as well as to fashion and polish himself, and to get clear of national prejudices; of which every country has its share. To all these more essential improvements, he must not forget to add the fashionable ornaments of life, such as are the languages and the bodily exercises most in vogue; neither would I have him think even dress itself beneath his notice.

It is no very uncommon thing in the world to meet with men of probity; there are likewise a great many men of honour to be found. Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters are frequent: but a true fine gentleman is what one seldom sees. He is properly a compound of the various good qualities that embellish mankind. As the great poet animates all the different parts of learning by the force of his genius, and irradiates all the compass of his knowledge