his constitution, was sinking fast in a decline, and his afflicted wife, after attending him in a fruitless excursion to Cheltenham for relief, watched over his pillow with most anxious solicitude, and received his last sigh on the evening of March 2, 1786."

After a long and painful interval of grief for the loss of so excellent a husband, this lady soon evinced, that her zeal in the cause of civil and religious liberty had experienced no abatement. During the combat about the regency, in 1789, she saw indeed, in the conduct of both parties, much more to censure than to approve, and she considered them as still engaged in a mere contest for place. She deprecated the doctrine of hereditary right, as advanced by Mr. Fox, though she considered it as expedient to invest the heir-apparent with the royal powers. She had no objection to the restrictions proposed by Mr. Pitt, which she thought strictly constitutional; but she was very far indeed from approving the whole of his proceedings.

"Mrs. Jebb had already hailed the auspicious dawn of the French revolution, and sympathised in the emancipation of a great people from despotic power. Having deprecated the attempt of the allied sovereigns to restore the degrading yoke of the Bourbons, with every friend to freedom and humanity, she rejoiced in their defeat. She lamented still more the rash determination of her own country, to take a part in their iniquitous design, and saw no glory or advantage in the most successful warfare, which could in any respect compensate for the misery and desolation to which it must inevitably lead. And, therefore, during the alarm, which in 1792 was so artfully excited, to cover the apostacy of Mr. Pitt from the cause of reform, and to involve England in the intrigues of the continent, she endeavoured to dispel the public infatuation, and to induce a more calm and dispassionate consideration of the real dangers to be apprehended from the delusions of the day. In two spirited and judicious letters, addressed under popular titles, to "John Bull, from one of his brethren," she

opposed the absurd reasoning of the alarmists, with equal vivacity and shrewdness: and, vindicating the great cause of public freedom, she deprecated the idea of interfering in the concerns of the French republic, and pointed out the calamities which must result from a war as unnecessary as unjust."

Meanwhile, it seems Mr. Fox was gradually regaining the place which he had originally held in this lady's esteem. At a latter period she lamented his rapidly declining health, and wished most heartily that he might live to make a peace; an event, on the completion of which, the wishes of that great statesman were most ardently bent. When he was no more, she turned her eyes towards Mr. Whitbread and Sir Samuel Romilly, whom she described as "continuing honest."

After a long and painful illness, accompanied by a confinement of many years, Mrs. Jebb died at her house in HalfMoon-Street, Piccadilly, January 20, 1812; and we have been the more particular concerning her life, and quoted more fully from her biography, as this work has never been regularly published, and is therefore in the hands of a few of her friends, one of whom has been kind enough to transmit a copy.

In 1813 Mr. Meadley published his "Memoirs of Algernon Sydney," which he dedicated to the Rev. John Disney, D. D. F. S. A. "on account of his steady attachment to the cause of civil and religious liberty, and the early sacrifice made to conscience and to principle."

Our author laments, that while the name of Algernon Sydney has been held out as an example of pure and disinterested patriotism, so little should have been known of his personal history. The meagre detail of Collins has been chiefly followed by every subsequent writer, notwithstanding the numerous and important documents since presented to the public. An enlarged view of his life and character has, therefore, long been wanting to remove the prejudices of the ignorant, and to strengthen the attachment of more generous minds. !

"In attempting to supply this obvious desideratum in our national literature, the present writer has spared no pains in his enquiries after new and important facts. And, notwithstanding many disappointments, he trusts that some curious and interesting information will be found to have rewarded his research. If, indeed, he had fortunately succeeded in recovering Sydney's letters to his uncle, the Earl of Northumberland, or those successively addressed to Sir John and Sir William Temple, he might have done greater justice to the theme. But whilst every attention was paid to his enquiries, by the noble families in whose possession there seemed to be the greatest probability of their being still preserved, no traces of these letters could be found.

"The author's access to manuscript authorities has consequently been confined to a few documents which still remain at Penshurst, unnoticed or misquoted by Collins; and such, as being deposited in the public offices, which are now, for the first time, presented to the world. But he has endeavoured to supply the defect of original information, by a careful search after all that is contained in the histories, or even in the journals of the times: and he has neglected no means of procuring either facts or illustrations which might tend to the improvement of his work, ever remembering the chief duty of a biographer, to trace the progress of his hero through surrounding circumstances, and not too minutely to detail the story of his age."

The Sydneys, or Sidneys, as they formerly denominated themselves, were originally of French extraction. They settled in England in the reign of Henry II., at which period, one of that family (Sir William) accompanied the king as his chamberlain from Anjou. They chiefly resided in the counties of Sussex and Surrey until the reign of Edward VI., who in 1552, was pleased to reward the services of his tutor, Sir William Sydney with the forfeited park and manor of Penshurst, in Kent, on which they removed to Sussex. His son, Sir Henry, was for many years chief-governor of Ireland; one

of his grandsons was the gallant and accomplished Sir Philip; and Sir Robert, another, obtained the honours of the peerage from James I., first as Baron Sydney, of Penshurst, and afterwards as Viscount Lisle and Earl of Leicester.

Algernon, the second son of Robert, the second Earl of Leicester, by the Lady Dorothy Percy, daughter of Henry, Earl of Northumberland, was born in 1622; and it is no less surprising than true, that the precise month and day has never been ascertained by the present or any former biographer. Descended from a line of ancestors, distinguished no less by the splendour of their family alliances, than the eminent virtues displayed, and the high offices exercised by them, this youth soon exhibited talents of no ordinary kind. During the unhappy civil wars, he took part with the parliament, and enjoyed high military rank both in England and Ireland. When it was proposed by the ruling party to bring Charles to trial, his name was included in the list of judges; but although he was present at one or two meetings of the commissioners, yet he declined to sit in judgment on his sovereign. Notwithstanding this, on the restoration, he was obliged to live a considerable time, as an exile, in foreign countries, and was only permitted to return, at the request of his dying father. Being afterwards included in the act of indemnity, he resided in his native country, until cut off, during the reign of Charles II., by one of the most flagitious violations of justice that ever disgraced any state in Christendom.

It is supposed that Algernon Sydney gave great offence to the court, by his answer to Filmer, in which he not only maintained the doctrine of resistance to tyranny, but the right of the people" to change the families or persons who abused the power with which they had been entrusted." The perjury employed to cut him off; the nomination of a packed jury by a sheriff of London; the brutal conduct of Sir George Jefferies, by constantly interrupting the prisoner in his defence, as well as by the virulence of his charge; his subsequent conviction and execution; are all facts well known to the public. Indeed, in the reign of William III., the attain

der was reversed, and the whole of the proceedings, on this memorable occasion, obliterated from the public records.

The name of the presiding judge has been long held in execration. We are told, indeed, "that the inhuman Jefferies boasted to the king of the important services he had rendered him by such a gross violation of law and decency; and is said to have been afterwards rewarded for such services, with a present of a valuable ring!"

After estimating his various claims as a patriot, an author, and a statesman, his biographer concludes as follows:

"Such was Algernon Sydney; such, by the liberal and enlightened, has he ever been esteemed. His little errors are lost in the blaze of transcendent genius; of virtues, such as fall not to the common lot of man! Let those who calumniate his character, and revile his principles, remember, that to the practical assertion of those very principles, at the revolution, England has owed her best superiority over the nations of Europe.

"If he formed too favourable an opinion of the dignity of human nature, and recommended a freedom too pure and too lofty for the passions and prejudices of the mass of mankind; it was the error of a mind sublime and generous: the greatest benefactors of their species have uniformly cherished an equal enthusiasm. And while the censures of the venal and the base are heard of but for a moment, the name of Sydney will live in the memory of the just, and his conduct will excite the emulation of the honourable; while his character and principles will be applauded by every friend to the liberties of Britain.

"And if, in the revolving annals of her history, that day shall ever arrive, when the despotic prince and the profligate minister shall again prompt the patriot of noble birth to do or to die for his country; then may the image of Algernon Sydney rise up to his admiring eye; and against the darkness of fate, whether its smile or his frown awaits his "well-considered enterprise," let him fortify its spirit by an example of magnanimity so choice and so complete."