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crifice to peace, after declaiming so long against war. It might indeed be want of power, rather than of sincerity. His eloquence appears to have been the genuine English eloquence; simple, direct, and vigorous, rather than subtle and ornamented. In the heat of debate, his voice was apt to become sharp and disagreeable. It is strange, that, knowing so well how to speak, this great man did not write better. The fragment of history published after his death is remarkable for a sort of laborious simplicity; and its morality seems liberal to laxity. I was surprised to find his diplomatic correspondence with M. Talleyrand was not written in very good French.

Pitt, the reverse of Fox in every thing, had more art and logic, a choice of expressions never equalled, and the most poignant irony, without the persuasive eloquence of his great opponent. Burke was all imagination; but, judging particularly from what he wrote on the French revolu tion, an ungovernable imagination, the liveliness and exuberance of which might dazzle and delight, but proved little, and did not convince. His learning and wit gave his conversation a peculiar charm; yet, at a certain period of his parliamentary life, it was observed, that the benches of the House became empty whenever he spoke, and he was called, from that circumstance, the dinner-bell. Possibly the delight attending the exercise of imagination and wit, is greater and more lasting for the actor, than those acted upon.

The last living of these great men, Mr Windham, is less unlike Burke than either of the others, with a simpler style of eloquence, and an imagination more under command; his ideas, however, appear full as eccentric, and more paradoxical. He

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likes to cut his way through the opinions and principles of the rest of the world, provided they are modern opinions and principles, for his innovations consist in changing nothing, and his originality in doing what was always done. He whose object is only resistance, will attain it equally, whether he swims faster than the stream, or stands against it, and lets it pass by him. The following bon mot is given to Mr Sheridan: The generality of men, said he, see only two sides to a question, but Mr Wm contrives to find always a third, and then pairs off with himself.

The reporters are persons employed by the editors of newspapers, to take notes of the principal speeches in Parliament. They were seated behind me in the gallery, and I took advantage of the opportunity to observe their mode of proceeding. Far from setting down all that is said, they only take notes, to appearance very carelessly, one word in a hundred, to mark the leading points. It is difficult to understand how they can afterwards give the connected speeches we see in the papers, out of such slender materials, and with so little time to prepare them; the speeches of the night, spoken, perhaps, at two or three o'clock in the morning, or later, being served up to the luxurious inhabitants of this capital at their breakfast the same morning. What a life! One of these reporters, named Woodfall, who is dead, was able without any notes, and entirely from memory, to write, on his return from the House, all that had been said worth repeating. They are crowded in the gallery, with the rest of the people, writing on their knees, in a constrained attitude, laughing and whispering jokes among themselves about the solemn business going forward below, and often

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praying that such or such tiresome speakers may have done soon, and sit down again.

The exclamation hear! hear! hear! so often mentioned in the reports of speeches in the newspapers, surprised me much, the effect being quite different from what I expected. A modest, genteel hear! hear! is first heard from one or two voices,

others join, -more and more,-crescendo,till at last a wild, tumultuous, and discordant noise pervades the whole house, resembling very nearly that of a flock of frightened geese; rising and falling, ending and beginning again, as the member happens to say any thing remarkable.

Judging from the reputed taciturnity of this nation, it might be supposed that the gravity of a legislative assembly would be more particularly observable in the British Senate; instead of which, it is the merriest place that ever was. These legislators seem perpetually on the watch for a joke; and if it can be introduced in the most serious debate, it succeeds so much the better. Some of the members, Mr Sheridan for instance, are such complete masters of the senatorial risibility, that, by a significant word, or expression of countenance, they can, when they please, put their honourable colleagues in good humour. English taciturnity is not proof against a sally of wit, and still less, perhaps, against a stroke of buffoonery, called here humour. I have been told that the French have no humour. Without bringing in Moliere to confute this, I thought it sufficient to produce "Les Battus payent l'Amende," which happened to be by me; and I trust no Englishman who reads it will say we have no humour. I am ready to grant, that, in general, we do not descend quite so low.

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The French are trifling and decorous,-the English grave and farcical.

Considering the growing importance of public opinion,--of that modern tribunal, which governments are obliged to consult now-a-days, and before whom the most despotic think fit to justify their measures, paying it the compliment of imposing upon it; considering again the influence a daily communication of the debates in Parliament has on this public opinion, and that, but for the report of speeches, they would be unknown to the nation at large, or even would not exist such as they are, being intended for the people full as much as for the House, it is very natural to feel a considerable degree of surprise at finding the persons employed in collecting this all-important communication, taking on their knees, and by stealth, the notes which are to feed the political appetite and legitimate curiosity of an enlightened public. Instead of an alimentary organ, Mr W-m seems to look upon it as rather a secretory one, of which he is ashamed.

The freedom of the press is considered in England as the palladium of national liberty; on the other hand, the abuse of it is undoubtedly its curse. It is the only plague, somebody has said, which Moses forgot to inflict on Egypt. This modern plague penetrates, like the vermin of the old, into the interior of families, carrying in its train defamation and misery. The press diffuses as to politics as many falsehoods as truths; and although it furnishes means of refutation, apparently reciprocal, and, from the shock of opinions, the real truth might be expected to come at last, it is in fact reciprocity all on one side; for I find every one reads only the papers of his party, strengthening his er

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rors and prejudices instead of removing them. The constitution leaves to every man the use of his pen as of his sword, and he may be punished for a libel as for a murder; but the one crime is more difficult to prove than the other, it is susceptible of so many different degrees, and takes such various shapes, that it commonly escapes the grasp of the law, although its consequences are infinitely more general and extensive. The evil is, no doubt, easier pointed out than its remedy. But whatever evils may result from the freedom of the press, it is not now to be suppressed, being so closely interwoven in the English manners and national constitution, as not to be torn from it without destroying the whole texture; and, notwithstanding its enormous inconveniences, it is impossible to deny, that this people owes much to this freedom. It has tasted of the tree of knowledge, and, cannot now return to its primitive state of ignorance and in

nocence.

The consequence of this general publicity is, a sort of transparency of the body-politic, which allows you to see many wonderful, and some alarming natural processes: the labour of the stomach and of the intestines, and the suction of innumerable hungry vessels, carrying health and strength, or disease and death, in incessant streams of blood and humours, to every part of the body. Any derangement is, of course, observed immediately; and the cause, as well as the seat of the disorder, being obvious, the hand and the knife can penetrate, cleanse, and remove, without danger, under the guidance of the eye. A body so formed and constituted would have the chance of a long and healthy life, although it might not be a joyful one; and the mind appertaining to that body would, in