tioned its extraordinary attributes, and indeed it must be actually heard in order to form any appreciation of its effects.

It must be acknowledged by the admirers of Mr. Bushe that his delivery constitutes his chief merit as an advocate, for his other powers, however considerable, do not keep pace with it. His style and diction are remarkably perspicuous and clear, but are deficient in depth. He has a remarkable facility in the use of simple and unelaborated expression, and every word drops of its own accord into that part of the sentence to which it most properly belongs. The most accurate ear could not easily detect a single harshness, or one inharmonious concurrence of sounds in the course of his longest and least premeditated speech. But at the same time, there is some want of power in his phraseology, which is not either very original or picturesque. He indulges little in his imagination, from a dread, perhaps, of falling into those errors to which his countrymen are so prone, by adventuring upon the heights which overhang them. But I am at the same time inclined to suspect that nature has not conferred that faculty in great excellence upon him; an occasional flash gleams for a moment over his thoughts, but it is less the lightning of the imagination than the warm exhalation of a serene and meteoric fancy. Curran, with all his imperfections, would frequently redeem the obscurity of his language by a single expression, that threw a wide and piercing illumination far around him, and left a track of splendour upon the memory of his audience which was slow to pass away; but, if Bushe has avoided the defects into which the ambition and enthusiasm of Curran were accustomed to hurry him, he has not approached him in richness of diction, or in that elevation of thought, to which that great speaker had the power of raising his hearers with himself. He was often "led astray," but it was "by light from Heaven." On the other hand, the more level and subdued cast of thinking and of phrase which have been adopted by Mr. Bushe, are better suited to cases of daily occurrence; and I own that I should prefer him for my advocate in any transaction which required the art of exposition, and the elucidating quality which is so important in the conduct of ordinary affairs. He has the power of simplifying in the highest degree. He evolves with a surprising facility the most intricate facts from the most embarrassing complication, and reduces in a moment a chaotic heap of incongruous materials into symmetry and order. In what is called "the narration" in discourses upon rhetorick, his talent is of the first rank. He clarifies and methodises every topic upon which he dwells, and makes the obscurest subject perspicuous and transparent to the dullest mind.

His wit is perfectly gentlemanlike and pure. It is not so vehement and sarcastic as that of Plunket, nor does it grope for pearls, like the imagination of Curran, in the midst of foulness and ordure. It is full of smooth mockery and playfulness, and dallies with its victim with a sort of feline elegance and grace. But its gripe is not the less deadly for its procrastination. His wit has more of the qualities of raillery than of imagination. He does not accumulate grotesque images together, or surprise by the distance of the objects between which he discovers an analogy. He has nothing of that spirit of whim which pervaded the oratory of Curran, and made his mind appear at moments like a transmigration of Hogarth. Were a grossly ludicrous similitude to offer itself to him, he would at once discard it as incompatible with

that chastised and subjugated ridicule in which alone he permits himself to indulge. But from this circumstance he draws a considerable advantage. The mirth of Curran was so broad, and the convulsion of laughter, which by his personations (for his delivery often bordered upon a theatrical audacity) he never failed, whenever he thought proper, to produce, disqualified his auditors and himself for the more sober investigation of truth. His transitions, therefore, were frequently too abrupt; and with all his mastery over his art, and that Protean quality by which he passed with an astonishing and almost divine facility into every different modification of style and thought, a just gradation from the extravagance of merriment to the depth of pathetic emotion could not always be preserved. Bushe, on the other hand, never finds it difficult to recover himself. Whenever he deviates from that sobriety which becomes the discussions of a court of justice, he retraces his steps and returns to seriousness again, not only with perfect ease, but without even leaving a perception of the change. His manner is admirably chequered, and the various topics which he employs, enter into each other by such gentle and delicate degrees, that all the parts of his speech bear a just relation, and are as well proportioned as the several limbs of a fine statue to the general composition of the whole. This unity, which in all the arts rests upon the same sound principles, is one of the chief merits of Mr. Bushe as a public speaker.

There is a fine natural vein of generous sentiment running through his oratory. It has often been said that true eloquence could not exist in the absence of good moral qualities. In opposition to this maxim of ethical criticism, the example of some highly gifted but vicious men has been appealed to; but it must be remembered, in the first place, that most of those whose deviations from good conduct are considered to afford a practical refutation of this tenet (which was laid down by the greatest orator of antiquity) were not engaged in the discussion of private concerns, in which, generally speaking, an appeal to moral feeling is of most frequent occurrence; and in the next place, there can be little doubt, that although a series of vicious indulgences may have adulterated their natures, they must have been endowed with a large portion of generous instinct. However their moral vision might have been gradually obscured, they could not have been born blind to that sacred light which they knew how to describe so well. Nay more: I will venture to affirm, that, in their moments of oratorical enthusiasm, they must have been virtuous men. As the best amongst us fall into occasional error, so in the spirit of lenity to that human nature to which we ourselves belong, we should cherish the hope that there are few indeed so bad, as not in imagination at least to relapse at intervals to better sentiment and a nobler cast of thought. However the fountains of the heart may have been dried and parched up, enough must at least remain to shew that there had been a living spring within them. At all events there can be no eloquence without such an imitation of virtue, as to look as beautiful as the original from which the copy is made. Mr. Bushe, I confidently believe, bears the image stamped upon his breast, and has only to feel there, in order to give utterance to those sentiments which give a moral dignity and elevation to his speeches. His whole life, at least, is in keeping with his oratory; and any one who heard him would be justly satisfied that he had been listening to a highminded, amiable, and honourable man. The following extract from

one of his best speeches will illustrate the quality to which I have alluded, as well as furnish a favourable example of the general tone of his eloquence. He is describing the forgiveness of a husband; and, as this article has already exceeded the bounds which I had prescribed to myself, I shall conclude with it. "It requires obdurate and habitual vice and practised depravity to overbear the natural workings of the human heart: this unfortunate woman had not strength farther to resist. She had been seduced, she had been depraved, her soul was burdened with a guilty secret; but she was young in crime and true to nature. She could no longer bear the load of her own conscience-she was overpowered by the generosity of an injured husband, more keen than any reproaches she was incapacitated from any further dissimulation; she flung herself at his feet. I am unworthy,' she exclaimed, ' of such tenderness and such goodness—it is too late-the villain has ruined me and dishonoured you: I am guilty.'-Gentlemen, I told you I should confine myself to facts; I have scarcely made an observation. I will not affront my client's case, nor your feelings, nor my own, by common-placing upon the topic of the plaintiff's sufferings. You are Christians, men: your hearts must describe for me; I cannot-I affect not humility in saying that I cannot; no advocate can—as I told you, your hearts must be the advocates. Conceive this unhappy nobleman in the bloom of life, surrounded with every comfort, exalted by high honours and distinctions, enjoying great property, the proud proprietor, a few hours before, of what he thought an innocent and an amiable woman, the happy father of children whom he loved, and loved the more as the children of a wife whom he adored-precipitated in one hour into an abyss of misery which no language can represent, loathing his rank, despising his wealth, cursing the youth and health that promised nothing but the protraction of a wretched existence, looking round upon every worldly object with disgust and despair, and finding in this complicated woe no principle of consolation, except the consciousness of not having deserved it. Smote to the earth, this unhappy man forgot not his character :-he raised the guilty and lost penitent from his feet: he left her punishment to her conscience and to Heaven; her pardon he reserved to himself: the tenderness and generosity of his nature prompted him to instant mercy -he forgave her-he prayed to God to forgive her; he told her that she should be restored to the protection of her father, that until then her secret should be preserved and her feelings respected, and that her fall from honour should be as easy as it might; but there was a forgiveness for which she supplicated, and which he sternly refused: he refused that forgiveness which implies the meanness of the person who dispenses it, and which renders the clemency valueless because it makes the man despicable: he refused to take back to his arms the tainted and faithless woman who had betrayed him: he refused to expose himself to the scorn of the world and his own contempt :-he submitted to misery; he could not brook dishonor."

Note. Since the above article was written, Mr. Bushe has been raised to the office of Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in consequence of the resignation of Mr. Downes, who has at last proved himself possessed of the Christian virtue which Mr. Bushe used to say was the only one he wanted.

COUNTRY LIFE IN ENGLAND.

A Letter from Mons. le Vicomte de L to Mons. C. de V——, in Paris. From the French MS.

It has been often remarked by travellers, that nothing is known of the English till they are seen in their true element, (as their James I. used to call it), in the country-in those mansions, parks, gardens, parsonages, and cottages, which gem the beautiful surface of their isle, and announce at once the independence, and the affluence, and the taste of its inhabitants. You may imagine, therefore, that I joyfully availed myself of an opportunity which offered of observing their country life, by accepting an invitation from Sir C B(whom you remember at Paris) to pass a week at his seat in the county of E- —, about seven leagues from London. The family is among the most respectable and ancient of the English gentry;—a class of admirable worth and most important influence in the country. We have nothing corresponding to them exactly: well would it be for France if we had. They are the connecting link between the high aristocracy and the mere commoner-their root deeply embedded in the healthy soil of the people-their branches shading and ornamenting proudly the higher institutions of the country, and often affording protection and appui to the throne itself. They are not poor and proud barons and marquises, with barren titles, pensions from the civil list, and privileges enjoyed at the expense of trade and of husbandry; but independent gentlemen, unpaid and active magistrates, diligent members of parliament, zealous promoters of county and local interests, hunters without oppression, friends of the poor, patrons of the church. The ancestors of my friend Sir C. B. have represented their county in Parliament twenty-five times within two hundred years; and the present head of the family only lately retired, from a desire of repose, and because he left his seat to a firm friend of his own principles. The family mansion stands at one end of a noble park, full of fine timber, planted by his great grandfather. The park is contiguous to the old and venerable forests of Eand H- -, whose oaks

are as ancient as the Conqueror, and of which my friend Sir C. is one of the Verderors, or keepers. The forests of England were, like those of France, originally places of regal pastime, set apart by royal Nimrods many centuries ago, with tyrannical disregard of the property and rights of the tenants of the soil. But as the free spirit of the boasted English Common Law has prevailed over the arbitrary customs of the Forest Codes-as property has become more valuable, and secured by laws better ascertained-as wolves and bears have been extirpated, and even stags and foxes are less in vogue than formerly, the royal authority over the forests has become little more than nominal; the real guardianship of them has fallen into the hands of the neighbouring Seigneurs and 'Squires, who, either by permission of the Crown or by continued encroachments on its prerogatives, have acquired the whole benefit and property in the few rights of forest which are still existing. In the forest of E― the Verderors (keepers of the vert-greensward) are even elected by the freeholders of the district, in the same manner as Justices of the peace formerly were, and as Members of Parliament now are, or ought to be, according to - and

In fact, the oppressive pageantry of the Royal Hunt has long been disused in England-George III. used to follow his stag-hounds like a plain country-squire-and the King of England could not shew his magnificent brother of Wg, when in this country, a single spot where he could trample on his peasant's harvest, and drive boars over his vineyards, in the true style of the German potentate. Their chief purpose being thus at an end, the forests have decreased in extent and grandeur much more rapidly than ours in France; where, to say nothing of other causes, the Grand Veneur and master of the royal hunt still hold a splendid rank among the ancient ornaments of the monarchy. If you were not such a fervent admirer of the vieille cour and all its systems, you might agree with me that a free English forest is all the pleasanter and the more lovely from the absence of all associations of barbarous slavery and oppressive ferocity in its green glades and lovely wildernesses. Oppression has, in fact, no more place in these sylvan retirements than in the umbrageous wilds of wooded America, where man walks abroad in all that unfettered energy of spirit to which your friend, M. de C, might reconcile even you by his eloquence. But enough of politics, whether du droit, or du gauche, or du

I found on my arrival the family of the park, and the neighbouring gentlemen, busy in discussing and preparing for a sort of fête champêtre under their venerable forest oaks. The young ladies and young men were in a bustle, inviting friends, ordering music, planning arrangements, appointing a patroness or queen of the day, and joyfully anticipating this rendezvous of rural festivity. The idea pleased me much: it was national and appropriate, and the execution was in every way worthy of it. The custom, I learnt, was annual, having been established only a few years. The zeal and energy, and good humour with which every one took a part in the preparatory operations, were highly amusing. One lady made flowers and bouquets-another learnt hunting-airs to play on the guitar-grave members of parliament and clergymen were riding about ordering a band, selecting a spot for the fête, writing to London for a celebrated, French-horn player, arranging a programme of the proceedings, and settling the contributions of viands, fruits, wines, &c. which each family should contribute. At about one o'clock on the day appointed, the family coaches of the neighbouring squires, filled with laughing and happy young girls, and prudent mothers, and chaperones, might be seen moving towards the happy spot-a lovely and shady glade at the foot of a bold hill in the thick of the forest. This hill commanded a prospect of unrivalled beauty, down the course of the broad and glittering Thames, and over the green and distant hills of Surry and Kent. We have no such prospect in France; none so varied, so green, so cultivated, and so refreshing. This forest is equally unlike any of ours. Fontainebleau is more imposing, more magnificent, and more triste. St. Germain is dulness and monotony itself to this varied and riant greenwood, where the deer trip merrily through the thickets, disturbed by no royal piqueurs, where the paths wind beautifully in artless labyrinths, and every variety of bower and thicket invites the wanderer with its natural and luxuriant freshness. The trees, however, are not to be compared to the stately grandeur of our oaks and beeches at Fontainebleau; and the pines of the Jura are wanting. The party met on the brow of the hill; and after enjoying