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ships; your armaments you derive from your arsenals; your provisions and stores form part of the equipment of your fleets; and after this, all must depend upon the ability of your captains and admirals. These, supplied with very general instructions, do as they please within the limits of their respective commands. When, like Nelson, they happen to be warmed with the fire of genius, they pass beyond these limits and follow the enemy to the world's end. Whatever merit or demerit belongs to a naval war is, therefore, far more completely due to naval commanders, than success or failure in operations by land can be attributed to the leaders of armies. The latter are often starved by the home government; the former can scarcely be so, assuming that they have wit enough to see that their equipments are complete before they quit port. To claim credit to Mr Pitt, therefore, for the triumphs of the 1st of June and of the Nile, is to do scant justice to the gallant officers and crews who, on these memorable occasions, so well sustained the honour of the British flag. No doubt Mr Pitt might have neglected the fleet as he did the army, in which case England must have become a province of France, and the pleasant book now before us never could have seen the light; but we hold it to be next to an impossibility for any British government systematically to neglect the fleet. Perhaps the nearest approach to that imbecile policy was made just before Lord Derby first came into office. The example set by his Administration was not, however, thrown away, and the fleet has ever since had plenty of money spent upon it. We wish that we were able to add, judiciously spent, and to the permanent benefit of the country.

For these reasons we hold that Lord Stanhope is mistaken when he appeals to the triumphs of the British fleet as testifying to Pitt's merits as a War Minister. They testify to Pitt's wisdom in demand

ing, and to the liberality of Parliament in supplying, the funds necessary to build ships and to collect crews; but for the manner in which ships and crews bore themselves in the day of battle, the men and their officers are alone to be thanked. As we have already said, however, Pitt possessed one great quality-he was a brave man. His war administration was not, therefore, "that of a mere driveller," as Lord Macaulay, with characteristic extravagance, asserts. Extravagant we admit it to have been, not so much because of the lavish hand with which he scattered subsidies among his allies (for England, since she cannot or will not keep on foot armies large enough to fight her own battles, must hire other powers to fight them for her), as because neither his subsidies nor his loans brought about the desired end. So far, however, it was a wise administration, that it never took its colour from passing events, but in adversity as well as in prosperity continued always the same. His unbending resolution thus prepared the way for triumphs which he did not live to witness. We quite agree that if he had had a Wellesley to advise him his successes on land might have been as complete as his successes at sea; but in this case the merit would have been Wellesley's, not his and surely it is not going too far to add, that if he had been a little more sharp-sighted than he was, he might have discovered in the British army a Wellesley, or something like a Wellesley, even as early as 1799.

To Pitt's indomitable courage, the manner in which he bore himself during the Irish rebellion and the mutiny in the fleet bear ample testimony. The latter, by far the greatest danger that ever threatened England since she became a nation, he overcame by wise conciliation; the former he put down, after a good deal of blundering, with a strong hand. That atrocious deeds were done, and some injustice perpetrated in dealing with the Irish

rebellion, may be too true. Neither are we prepared to deny that both in England and in Scotland the laws affecting treason and sedition were sometimes stretched to the uttermost. But let it never be forgotten that a mutiny in which almost all the seamen of the English fleet took part was overcome without the loss of a single life except that of Parker at the Nore. Besides, for the cruelties of Irish Orangemen, and the overzeal of Scotch judges and English at torney-generals, it is scarcely fair to hold the Prime Minister responsible. Mr Pitt desired the law to be put in force; he never wished it to be strained beyond its proper tension. The party outcry raised against him on that head is, therefore, as groundless as it is silly.

All this, it will be seen, brings us back to the axiom which we began the present paper by enunciating. It is as a financier before the war broke out, as an uncompromising defender of the public and private liberties of the country after hostilities occurred, that Mr Pitt stands far above the statesmen of his own or of almost any other day. Liberal also he was in criticising the motives of others, and well disposed to coalesce with talent and integrity wherever he could find them. But he was too loyal and too honourable to press upon the King or his Ministers individuals who had rendered themselves obnoxious not only to royal disfavour but to public censure. Why should Whig writers accuse him of acting unfairly towards Mr Fox? There was a time when Fox's opinions and his appeared to be on most subjects very much the same. There was a time also, at the beginning of his career, when he might have been content to act on a footing of equality with Fox, perhaps even of inferiority. But was it his fault that Fox ran out of bounds in his admiration of liberal principles ? or that, as experience taught him their relative strength, Pitt should have preferred the first to the second

place in a Cabinet of which Fox was invited to be a member? Look no farther than to the silly escapade of the silly Duke of Norfolk, and to Fox's participation in it; and then say whether it would have been consistent, either with loyalty or self-respect, had Pitt stooped to share his power in latter years with his great rival. The Duke, at that critical period when disaffection was at its height, took the opportunity of Fox's birthday to remind the two thousand motley guests who met him at table, that Washington could at one time calculate on the services of only two thousand followers, and that they knew the result. And by-and-by, in acknowledging the toast of his own health, he added: "I propose to you the health of the only sovereign whom we acknowledge-the sovereignty of the people." Not long afterwards, Fox, as if to endorse so flagrant an outrage on decency, repeated this toast. in terms quite as objectionable. Both the Duke of Norfolk and he were, be it observed, corresponding members, at this time, of societies of which the objects were understood to be disloyal; and the toasts which they proposed were known to be the very watchwords of these societies. Could such indecencies be passed over? Surely not. Yet neither the Duke nor Mr Fox were brought under the operations of the law, which might have dealt severely with them. The King was simply advised to strike their names out of the list of the Privy Councillors— Earl Granville, Mr Windham, and the Duke of Portland, all being consenting parties to that measure. Yet see how far wounded pride will carry even honest men. Lord Granville, in 1804, refused to return to office, unless Fox were brought in likewise. Pitt could not prevail upon the King to consent to this arrangement; whereupon Lord Granville and his friends went at once into opposition, and both then and subsequently did their best to cover Pitt's

fair fame with obloquy. Even General Grey, the most candid of Whig writers, does not hesitate, in his memoir of his father, to inveigh against Mr Pitt on account of his behaviour on that occasion.* Now, all this is wrong. Mr Pitt, in 1804, could not share his power with any man. He could not force the King to consent to this; and Fox made no secret of his determination never to coalesce with Pitt, except on terms of absolute equality. Besides, how could Pitt, after voluntarily pledging himself not again to bring forward the Catholic question, take to him, as a colleague and an equal, a man pledged even more deeply to a course of action diametrically the reverse? this is not all.

But

When Fox, by the death of Pitt, acceded to office, he fell at once into Pitt's views respecting the Catholic question. Convinced he continued to be, as he had always been, that sound policy demanded its settlement; yet he preferred the King's ease to the accomplishment of his own wish. What did Pitt do more than this? and if he be justly blamed, why not blame Fox also Or is it only because Fox was a Whig, and Pitt a Tory, that Whig writers, while they bitterly censure the one, take no notice of the political cowardice of the other, or else invent excuses for it?

How Pitt bore the burden of affairs from 1804 to 1806, with what difficulties he had to grapple at the outset in order to make his position good, we leave Lord Stanhope to tell. At home success at tended all his measures; abroad everything seemed to go against him. The triumph of Trafalgar was, in his opinion, more than counterbalanced by the overthrow of Austerlitz, and his heart sank

within him. Yet he had by this time formed the personal acquaintance of that great man who was destined in after years to make up for previous shortcomings; and he appears to have arrived, as if by intuition, at a just appreciation of Sir Arthur Wellesley's character. "I never met any military officer," he said of him to Lord Wellesley, "with whom it was so satisfactory to converse. He states every difficulty before he undertakes any service, but none after he has undertaken it."

one.

Pitt's life in private all this while was an anxious and troubled He seems never to have paid the smallest attention to his private affairs. With an income rather exceeding than falling short of £10,000 a-year, he got miserably into debt, though he had neither a family to support nor heavy electioneering bills to pay. Yet he was as free from vice as a public man could be. He had no taste for gaming; his personal expenditure was moderate. The truth seems to have been that everybody imposed upon him. For servants' wages alone, and the costs of eating and drinking in the kitchen, his bills came to not less than £2500 a-year.

No income, however large, could bear such carelessness as this, and he who gave the law to Europe came at last to live in dread that any day an execution might be put into his house. We cannot excuse this, neither does his biographer excuse it; but it was considered at the time to be rather a proof of the extraordinary honesty of the minister than of the reckless improvidence of the man. Hence the merchants of London twice came forward with a gratuitous offer of £100,000 to set him free, which, however, he declined; and a few

We must be permitted, in passing, to express what we feel--our admiration of the good taste with which General Grey pleads his father's cause. We do not, of course, pretend to agree with him in regard to the soundness of many of his father's views; but if we had ever entertained a doubt of the perfect honesty of Earl Grey's intentions, the pleasant volume, for which we are indebted to his son, would have removed it.

of his personal friends were in the end obliged to subscribe enough to secure for him a furnished house in which to live. It is very pitiable to contemplate the great statesman reduced to this state of need, even while we are conscious that, in a moral point of view, he is by no means blameless for the result.

Mr Pitt had never been a strong man. He was advised, as we have shown elsewhere, to sustain his strength in early youth by liberal potations of port-wine, and the practice grew upon him. It does not appear that he habitually drank to intoxication. From time to time, indeed, even this effect seems to have been produced; and once, at least, he noticed wittily enough the Jeremiad of a friend over the catastrophe. "It made my head ache," observed Wilberforce, while describing his sensations on seeing Pitt rise to speak under the influence of wine. A very proper division of labour," was Pitt's rejoinder, "that I should drink the wine, and he have the headache."

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The progress of that illness which, at the early age of forty-seven, removed Mr Pitt from the scene of his labours, Lord Stanhope has well described. Gout, which could not be brought to the extremities, preyed upon the system, and he was advised to try the effect of the Bath waters, then considered to be specific in such cases. But just as his enemy had begun to settle in the foot, tidings of the overthrow of the Austrians reached him, and the shock drove the disease back again upon the vitals. He was with difficulty removed to his house at Putney, where everything that medical skill could do was applied to relieve him. It was all in vain. He sank by degrees, and would lie at times, for hours together, apparently unconscious. Lord Stanhope assures us that a story which we had long accustomed ourselves to regard as apocryphal is really true, and that the last words spoken

by the great statesman were, "Oh my country! how I leave my country!" A writer in the 'Times,' under the signature of "D. C. L.," put in an opposite opinion; to which, on the authority of Mr Dundas Hamilton, Lord Stanhope has replied. It is not for us to decide between suchant agonists; but we do not hesitate to express what we feel, that we should have been better pleased had Lord Stanhope been able to assure us that Pitt's last thoughts were employed upon things even higher than the condition of his country. Great men are not necessarily irreligious men, and it is a pity that their religion should be kept out of sight. It is more than a pity when, in their dying moments, pains are taken to obscure it.

It was, for example, but a poor copy of a worn-out heathenism, when Colonel Napier flashed before the glazed eyes of his expiring step-father the blood-stained colours of the 22d regiment. And much as we venerate the memory of Pitt, we acknowledge that to us the record of a humble committal of himself and all the sources of his anxiety to the care of that Great Being before whom he expected shortly to appear, would have been infinitely more gratifying than the repetition of a story, of the authenticity of which his biographer appears to be so jealous. This, however, is a matter of taste as well as of feeling; and if Lord Stanhope conceives that he is elevating his hero in the estimation of the good and the wise by standing out for what, when all is said and done, appears to be a tradition and nothing more, we have not a single word to say against the circumstance. On the contrary, we accept the statement gratefully, because it comes from a generous pen, and end our article as we began it, by thanking the noble Lord for one of the most interesting and agreeable pieces of biography which it has been our good fortune of late years to peruse.

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ACROSS THE CHANNEL.

I HAVE been on the Continent this year. "Well, what of that? Every dog has his day, and you have just had yours. The rest of the kennel have either gone before you, or are to follow. If you propose, as I guess from your tone, to make this feat an excuse for addressing the public, I can tell you that, in this experienced and wideawake age, no one can impart anything worth listening to, unless he has got at the source of the Niger, or gone right across Australia, or found the north-west passage to the Chinese Sea." Admitted, my good friend, if one be sitting down to write his "travels," as the term used to be if he is to give his daily hour of rising and going to rest-to specify what he has eaten, what he has drunken, and wherewithal he has been clothed-to take and record solar and lunar observations to inform us of the geology and other instructive facts in physical geography which come across his notice to give in detail his views derived from close and accurate observation regarding the structural development and psychological characteristics of the races of men he encounters-to particularise their costume, describe their marriage ceremonies, their religious observances, their sports and pastimes, and so on-give a treatise on the philosophy of their respective languages, illustrated by examples, follow up with a brief summary of the history of each nation, and a statement of its commercial and agricultural statistics, and so forth, after the example of Clarke's Travels' and Archdeacon Coxe's 'Letters from Switzerland.' But, adopting a different method, a Frenchman wrote an account of a tour across his own chamber, and made a good thing of it. It is possible, then, to find something that one can chat about, even within the bounds of the Continent of Europe.

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Hence, I propose to make use of this visit, which I chance to have made before the general rush of tourists-my early private view, as it were, before the time of general admission-and give a few hints of how matters stand for the present season, for the benefit of those who are to follow. It has strengthened my inclination so to do, that upwards of twenty years have elapsed since my last preceding visit to the opposite shores of the Channel; and as many events and changes have occurred within that interval, there is a good opportunity for comparing the present with the past.

If the reader, who has gone thus far with me, be one who considers it his simple and undivided duty when he crosses the water, to ground himself thoroughly in Murray,' as his guide, philosopher, and friend; go where he is there told to go, see what he is there taught to see-in fact, follow him with blind implicit obedience in thought, word, and deed, as a sort of tourist's scripture, to such a person I have nothing to say. Being of a tolerant disposition-a quality which I attribute to the nature and treatment of the stomach-I shall not be needlessly disrespectful to any man's religion; and the sole parting word I have to say to such a person contains a recommendation not to peruse the following pages. If he neglect this sincere and disinterested advice, he will certainly expose himself to much irritation and distress of mind.

There is a notion abroad that

these passive believers in the divinity of the established touring codes are men of stolid, phlegmatic, unexcitable natures. This is an utter mistake. They are often in a high degree excitable and sensitive, especially on all matters connected with the fulfilment of their duty as tourists; and the nervous anxiety with which they guard themselves against

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