ripened in his mind, to the season of their mellowest maturity-and, at length, of being present at that scene when the soul, separated from all external support, exhibits the nakedness of its real worth. From one so furnished for the task we look for information of a more interesting kind than that which is contained in the volumes before us; and it is with great pleasure we learn that the remaining part of the work will bring us to a nearer view of this unrivalled statesman, so as to let us see what was the residuum of the man, stripped of the trappings of of fice, and relieved from the burden of his own greatness, in the careless modes of private life, and ordinary intercourse. Independently, indeed, of our curiosity on this subject, one cannot but have pity on a human being living under so severe and relentless a requisition upon his powers, solaced by no domestic sympathies, and with so few intervals for repairing the waste of his energies. We have, therefore, the greater pleasure in learning, that those few intervals were intervals of vivacity and good humour, in which friendship had its full dues, and little children were the playmates of the prime minister.

We incline to think that the Bishop has done wisely in determining to conclude Mr. Pitt's political and public life before he relates to us such particulars of his private intercourse, habits, and manners, as have fallen with in his observation. Every step we take in the narrative of that astonishing career of intellectual exertion which was run by this great character, tends to inflame our curiosity to see his mind in its undress. The longer the eye has been dazzled with brilliancy, the more welcome is the shade; and the longer the look has been strained upwards, the more pleasantly does it repose on the level prospect of the sprightly meadows and verdant plains of familiar scenery. Among the distinctions of Mr. Pitt, we contemplate it as the chief, that his private life will bear this in spection. The case is rare, and, therefore, the more deserving of admiration. It is the great infelicity of man's vari able composition, that great genius usu

1

ally pursues a course that leaves it doubtful, whether posterity, in balancing the account with it, has a surplus or deficiency. In the settlement with Mr. Pitt's memory, we have only to compute our gains: his very debts, which were paid by the public, were in truth our own. To indemnify the estate of a man for the entire abstraction of his mind from his own concerns, and the simple dedication of his entire self to the public, no part of whose private fortune was wasted by excess or extravagance, but whose personal interests were wholly absorbed in his patriotism, while the correctness of his moral example was the only point of his character on which his profligate enemies could even exercise their wit, was in effect only to pay a price for that which was above all price, and to purchase, for a small salvage, the only means by which the vessel of the state could be saved from destruction. Mr. Pitt did much, very much, in his life; but he has done much also in his death. If we look to the operative continuance of his principles after his death, scarcely any man has lived to greater purpose. It is a great thing to say that, for twenty years and upwards, this one "ruled the wilderness of free minds," with almost unbounded authority, by dint of mind alone-that he "wielded at will this fierce democratie," without the favour of the populace, by the irresistible conviction of his virtue and his vigour: but that, embodied in his principles, he should be the prime minister after his death; that those who had opposed him through life should have felt themselves, as his immediate successors, constrained, by a paramount necessity, to tread in his steps; that successive administrations, by persevering in the course marked out by him, should have carried us to triumphs that seemed impossible; that the counsels of a new reign, of a prince who, ere he felt what it was to govern, was perfectly hostile to his measures, should, by the very stress of their exigency and preservative efficacy, be drawn into the adoption of them-are facts which we dare assert to be true, and which, we dare further affirm, have no parallel in the history of empires or of man.

man

In reading the Bishop's account of the education, studies, and early habits of Mr. Pitt, we cannot help remarking, that it is but just to suppose that a certain serious part of the system of his mental culture may have operated to have given him that diligence and exactness in the conduct of business which gained him in so remarkable a degree the confidence of the public; and was, in fact, one of the principal grounds of that involuntary predilection by which, in the midst of all the noisy popularity which accompanied the walk of his great opponent, Mr. Fox, he held, as by a charm, the understanding and rational voice of the country. We learn from his right reverend biographer that he read and studied the Scriptures with peculiar attention, and was regular in his attendance at chapel; and we know that, however by the force of an overwhelming weight of public business, the sentiments and principles first nurtured in his mind by the habits alluded to, may have been driven from his thoughts, they did, in fact, meet him again when he stood most in need of them, and cast a gleam of holy comfort upon the last moments of his existence. A principle so active at the commencement and conclusion of life could not be entirely dormant during the course of it; accordingly, we find Mr. Pitt, in every discussion in which the interests of religion, or the dignity of eternal truth, or the moral ends of social institutions, came directly or incidentally under consideration, invariably taking his stand at that post where every Christian is bound to keep watch and ward. His whole political life bore the impression of his early culture; and transcendant as were his talents for business, and his powers of eloquence, it was evident that his remarkable hold of the public opinion was in no small degree owing to the influence of his private worth. The characters opposed to him could bear no comparison with him in this respect. Mr. Fox had some kindly qualities, and was good-humoured to his eulogists and flatterers, but his virtues were such as required neither sacrifice nor self-control; in a moral view his example

was extremely pernicious, and society owed him nothing as a man or as a Christian: Mr. Sheridan was a man of depraved manners and gross addictions; his extraordinary talents corruscated round his party with short and intermittent flashes, but his character was like a spell about it that helped to perpetuate its ill success. It did not seem that either of these eminent persons loved their country enough to feel the importance of its mind and character; they insulted its institutions by their examples, and appeared ready to hazard all in the desperate game of their party politics. Of party they were the champions, and to party they were the martyrs, for neither the prince nor the people would trust them; and, while clamour followed at their heels, confidence and esteem were crowning their rival. Mr. Pitt was not the "Man of the People," but he was the man for the people. He had their homage-his opponents had their huz zas; his popularity was anchored deep in the mind of the country-that of his, political rivals floated on the stormy surface of passion and delusion. In a country so capable as England of understanding and appreciating public men, and so full of a certain sagacity in affairs, the fruit of experience, practical efficiency in the serious business of government, must be the recommendation of her statesmen; for serious business we look for sober men, and, whatever vain distinctions the philoso pher may make between public and private principle, the honest vulgar know much better; they will not believe themselves safe under an administration the elements of which are morally unsound.

Mr. Pitt's mind took its first infusion of political principle from a man remarkable for his stern independence of thinking-from one who, for a course of years, was seated on a loftier eminence of mental command over his contemporaries than any statesman that had gone before him: for, of Lord Chatham, it is not too much to say, that his superiority to the men of his time was such, and so irresistible the combination of his eloquence, his character, his manner, his voice, his coun

tenance, that every thing was his by challenge, by right, and by surrender, which others gain by persuasion, by compromise, and by concession. His son early imbibed from him the same rudiments of greatness; and the remarkable difference between his first access to power and that of his great rivals, Mr. Burke, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Sheridan, was this, that they were introduced, he came alone and unattended; he entered at once into conflict with those men of great stature, with his single staff, against their spears, which were like weavers' beams; nor was there any one to bear a shield before him, or herald to proclaim his approach. His father's name was rather of detriment than advantage to him; it placed him at once under a comparison which would have disparaged any powers but his; and, as if all things conspired to crush him under the weight of premature success and sudden responsibility, he stood, at five-andtwenty, the single column on which the fate of the empire reposed, with the ground trembling beneath him, and the elements taging around him.

Mr. Burke's youth was a season of preparation, and the mediocrity of his fortune saved him from a premature trial of his strength. The costly apparatus of his great intellect was all ready for use and application before he came forth into public life; it is true he merited and commanded patronage; but it is true that he obtained it; great as were his powers they were enlisted in the cause of party; and, even after they came out in all the dignity and effulgence of their own peculiar lustre, they enlightened, but they did not lead; they pointed out the rocks and the shallows, but they did not steer the vessel. The youth of Mr. Fox was a long season of irresponsible exertion; to overthrow the power that first brought him into notice and into action, in the sunshine of which he first grew and expanded, was from the time he discovered its weakness and his own strength, the employment of all his energies. This lasted through a course of years, ending in a victory which he first disgraced by a coalition with his adversary, and then lost by

him.

his ill use of the power it gave By the sentence of his sovereign, or, as some would say, of the great and intelligent public, perhaps by their joint decree, he was condemned to be a "brilliant debater," the most brilliant, indeed, that the world ever produced, for the rest of his life; save some short intervals, in which little was done to distinguish him, and what was best done, was done most in imitation of his much calumniated rival, as if to bear the strongest testimony to the ascendency of that rival, and to justify the choice which had decided their fortunes. Of Mr. Sheridan, who, from a vortex of festivity, folly, and inebriety, from a course of shifts and difficulties, want and waste, negligence and distress, was suddenly introduced into the great council of the nation, it would argue much ignorance, or prejudice, not to admit the prodigious natural powers. But he was altogether the son and disciple of faction, a determined partyman, and in general pledged "jurare in verba magistri." His best exertions, too, were characterised by art and contrivance, and studied effect; the odour of the theatre accompanied them, and a spurious splendour invested them. In his life was practically evinced the necessity of a moral substratum to support the efforts of genius, and to give them their worth and efficacy. His triumphs were fugitive; and even the gratitude, which his occasional displays of patriotism inspired, never mellowed into national esteem. He was incapable of fixing his ascendancy, or of confirming his authority, or of accumulating favour; his course was dazzling, vibrating, and discontinuous; as bright in the morning as in the me ridian of his life; till in conclusion he sunk into a sort of twilight in which he was scarcely discernible from the mass, and in which the shadows of his departed glory beckoned him to his grave. Mr. Pitt entered at once upon his great trial before the public, and came out of it with the sentence of mankind in his favour. Every thing in the condition of the state required renovation and repair, and his first task was the most unpopular imaginable—that of restoring the revenue by a vast addition to

the public burdens.

A quick succession of difficulties, such as would have overwhelmed any other man of mature age and experience, served only to draw out the capabilities of his young mind, and to place him upon a par with each exigency as it arose. He scarcely divided his responsibility with others, so much was each great mea sure notoriously his own, and so thoroughly did he develope and embrace all its political bearings. But he had not only to digest, but to defend every procedure against an irritated and determined opposition, combining their talents to sift and expose it; and capable, by their great ingenuity, eloquence, and experience, of putting it to the severest tests. In all these contests, however, it was manifest to the world, that Mr. Pitt stood upon a ground from which nothing could remove him—a familiar business-like acquaintance with his whole subject, in all its details, in all its relations, and in all its facts.Every thing was subordinate to this truth and accuracy of tact-this precision and felicity in the handling of his subject; so that his speeches, full and flowing, and argumentative as they were, produced satisfaction without satiety, and delight without the dissipation of thought. There was no instance of the House expressing weariness or impatience under any demand made upon its time by his treatment of the most extensive subjects. From the first moment to the last of his political career, the tide of his eloquence was observed to be always full without overflowing, "magna non nimia, plena non tumida, læta non luxuriosa;" the plenitude of his first years, neither needed expansion, nor suffered diminution; whatever was the level of his subject, to that his mind rose, and there it stopped. A certain high-minded disinterestedness of character was wrought into his manner, and transpired in his lofty declamation; but that which was in others, the evident effect of art and study, was too easily produced, and too much in harmony with the virtuous tone of his behaviour in public and in private, to be suspected. As he made no sacrifices to temporary effect, but kept himself at an altitude above the

atmosphere in which vulgar ambition inhales the breeze of popular fayour, he was thoroughly credited in all he advanced; and, perhaps, there never existed an orator, with such powers of expression, whose exertions of them have been less accompanied by the sus picion of his abusing them to selfish purposes. But however true to the question, however faithful to his sub-. ject, Mr. Pitt never failed to adorn it with the treasures of his chastised imagination. We have still sounding in our ears his perfect tones, his rich and rounded diction, his continuous flow, his volume, his vigour, his distinctness, his perspicuity, his copiousness, his ease, his grace, which made it an easy thing to follow his luminous tract through all the variety of his details and expositions, and all the mazes of his most expanded arguments.

(To be continued.)

Abstract of the Proceedings of a Convention of the Diocess of Maryland, held in St. Paul's Church, Baltimore, June 20th, 21st, and 22d, A. D.

1821.

(Continued from page 277, and concluded.)

THE Rev. Dr. Davis, chairman of the committee on the state of the Church, made a report, which, after being read by paragraphs, and amended as follows, was accepted :

The committee on the state of the Church respectfully report, that the lateness of their appointment, and the short space allowed them for deliberation, do not permit them to perform their duties in a manner conformable to their own wishes, or to the expectations of the Convention.

An abstract of the parochial documents submitted to them, forms the principal portion of the report which they are about to make. This, together with the abstract published by the last Convention, will, they believe, exhibit an accurate view of the condition of that portion of the diocess to which they refer.

The committee, however, take the liberty of recommending to the attention of the Convention, two or three

subjects, which, although not necessarily arising from the papers submitted to them, are, in their judgment, intimately connected with the welfare of the Church. The want of time will permit them to give only a hasty sketch of their views.

Among the evils to which the authority of the Convention may possibly apply a partial remedy, they present the scanty and precarious support provided for the rectors of parishes, as one which calls for the interposition of this body. Subscriptions they consider as objectionable on many grounds. Instead of this mode of support, which is certainly the cause of the frequent removals of rectors, they request the Convention to recommend to the several vestries of the diocess, the adoption of a different plan. In the city of Baltimore, and in some other places, the pews of the churches have been sold to the parishioners, subject to certain rents; and the holders considering them as property acquired by purchase, have, hitherto, very generally paid the rents reserved. In two or three other parishes, the pews, though never sold, are rented from year to year, and have never failed to yield a tolerable support. If the plan of pew rent be adopted, the committee confidently expect more punctual payments, and a more permanent maintenance than have yet been experienced by the clergy. It is not feared that much opposition will be made by any member of the Church, to a change recommended by a solemn vote of the Convention. The present mode of raising support having been tested for half a century, is universally acknowledged to be inadequate and inefficient.

The committee also beg leave to recommend, that this Convention adopt the practice which prevails in most of the diocesses in the United States, of electing, at each meeting, delegates to the General Convention, who may hold themselves in readiness to attend special calls of that body during the ensuing year.

The committee are compelled to express their strong regret at discovering so general a neglect, throughout the diocess, of the establishment of parochial

libraries. This measure they believe to be of vast importance to the prosperity of the Church. They, therefore, request the Convention to enforce the order passed last year, and earnestly recommend to all rectors and vestrymen to exert themselves in effecting so desirable an object.

The committee further report, that there prevails a great want of uniformity and regularity in the mode of granting testimonials and credentials to lay-delegates, from which disappoint

ments and other inconveniences result. Of the evil which they have in view the present session has afforded many instances. It is, therefore, recommended, that each parish and church in the diocess be requested to appoint, annually, a register and wardens; and that in future no delegate be permitted to take a seat in Convention, unless he produce a certificate, signed by the rector or a warden, to the following effect, viz.

This is to certify, that

pointed by the vestry of or church, in

has

been duly apparish

county, a delegate to represent the said parish in the next Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Maryland; as witness my hand, this day of

Anno Domini 18 A. B. Register or Warden. And it is further recommended, that the Convention direct the standing committee to furnish each candidate for holy orders with a printed copy of all the testimonials which the Canons of the Church require him to exhibit to that body or to the Bishop.

The committee offer the following abstract of the statements made by the vestries to the Convention :—

St. Peter's parish, Talbot, has three houses for divine worship. Christ Church, in Eaton, is a commodious house, and in good repair. The worthy pastor has lately effected the establishment of a new congregation, in a remote corner of the parish, where religious worship is faithfully attended. There are in the parish about eighty families. The salary of the rector, arising from pew rents and a small fund at interest, amounts to about $600.