tion of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He was, at one time, half-inclined to surrender it into Mr. Pitt's dilatory hands, and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone from it, and the gaudy colouring of popularity sunk into the sable ground from which it rose! It was, however, persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion. Mr. Wilberforce said too little on this occasion of one, compared with whom he was but the frontispiece to that great chapter in the history of the world—the mask, the varnishing, and painting—the man that effected it by Herculean labours of body, and equally gigantic labours of mind was Clarkson, the true Apostle of human redemption on that occasion, and who, it is remarkable, resembles in his person and lineaments more than one of the Apostles in the Cartoons of Raphael. He deserves to be added to the Twelve !*

*After all, the best as well as most amusing comment on the character just described was that made by Mr. Sheridan, who being picked up in no very creditable plight by the watch, and asked rather roughly who he was, made answer"I am Mr. Wilberforce!" The guardians of the night conducted him home with all the honours due to Grace and Nature.

MR. CANNING.

MR. CANNING was the cleverest boy at Eton : he is, perhaps, the cleverest man in the House of Commons. It is, however, in the sense in which, according to Mr. Wordsworth," the child is father to the man." He has grown up entirely out of what he then was. He has merely ingrafted a set of Parliamentary phrases and the technicalities of debate on the themes and school-exercises he was set to compose when a boy. Nor has he ever escaped from

the trammels imposed on youthful genius: he has never assumed a manly independence of mind. He has been all his life in the habit of getting up a speech at the nod of a Minister, as he used to get up a thesis under the direction of his school-master. The matter is nothing; the only question is, how he shall express himself. The consequence has been as might be expected. Not being at liberty to choose his own side of the question, nor to look abroad into the world for original (but perhaps unwelcome) observations, nor to follow up a strict chain of reasoning into its unavoidable consequences, the whole force of his mind has been exhausted in an attention to the ornaments of style and to an agreeable and imposing selection of topics. It is his business and his inclination to embellish what is trite, to gloss over what is true, to vamp up some feeble sophism, to spread the colours of a meretricious fancy over the unexpected exposure of some dark intrigue, some glaring iniquity

"Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array

Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight
With painted plumes in goodly order dight:

VOL. II.

9

As those same plumes, so seemed he vain and light,
That by bis gait might easily appear;

For still he fared as daucing in delight,

And in his hands a windy fan did bear,

That in the idle air he moved still here and there."

SPENSER.

His reasoning is a tissue of glittering sophistry; his language is a cento of florid commonplaces. The smooth monotony of his style is indeed as much borrowed, is as little his own, as the courtly and often fulsome strain of his sentiments. He has no steady principles, no strong passions, nothing original, masculine, or striking in thought or expression. There is a feeble, diffuse, showy, Asiatic redundancy in all his speeches-something vapid, something second-hand in the whole cast of his mind. The light that proceeds from it gleams from the mouldering materials of corruption : the flowers that are seen there, gay and flaunting, bloom over the grave of humanity !Mr. Canning never, by any chance, reminds one of the poet or the philosopher, of the admirer of nature, or even the man of the world -he is a mere House-of-Commons man, or,

since he was transferred there from College, appears never to have seen or thought of any other place. He may be said to have passed his life in making and learning to make speeches. All other objects and pursuits seem to have been quite lost upon him. He has overlooked the ordinary objects of nature, the familiar interests of human life, as beneath his notice.* There is no allusion in any of his speeches to any thing passing out of the House, or not to be found in the classics. Their tone is quite Parliamentary-his is the Delphin edition of Nature. Not an image has struck his eye, not an incident has touched his heart, any farther than it could be got up for rhetorical and stage effect. This has an ill effect upon his speeches it gives them that shining and bloated appearance which is the result of the confined and heated atmosphere of the House. They have the look of exotics, of artificial, hot-house plants. Their glossiness, their

:

* Mr. Canning, when on a tour to the Lakes, did Mr. Wordsworth the honour of paying him a visit. The favour was duly appreciated, but quite unexpected. Really we do not know any one so little capable of appreciating the Lyrical Ballads.