preferred to treat with Pitt; but he felt himself compelled to yield to the necessity of the case. The seals of the exchequer had now been in the hands of the lord-chief-justice of the king's bench for the last two months; and the affairs of the nation were getting into disorder at a period of more than ordinary emergency. Lord Mansfield was therefore commanded to open negotiations with Newcastle and Pitt; and in the course of a month a new and most powerful administration was organized with Pitt at its head.

The affairs of Britain now assumed a new aspect. Pitt's energy and determination wrought miracles in the government offices. To those who told him that his orders could not be executed within the time specified, he would peremptorily reply, "It must be done," and the mandate was obeyed. He once asked an officer who had been intrusted with the command of an important expedition how many men he should require: "Ten thousand," was the reply. "You shall have twelve," said the minister; "and then it will be your own fault if you do not succeed." The zeal of the minister was everywhere crowned with success. In July, 1758, Louisburg fell; Goree, Guadaloupe, Ticonderago, Niagara, Quebec, successively yielded to British prowess; Boscawen defeated the French fleet off Lagos; Hawke vanquished the Brest fleet under Conflans; Chandernagore yielded to Clive, Pondicherry to Coote; the allied arms triumphed at Minden; and the combined powers of France, Russia, and Austria, failed before the energy of Pitt.

On the death of George II., the fatal influence of Lord Bute over the new monarch soon threw a new aspect over the face of affairs. France had already made overtures of peace; nor was the minister of Britain disinclined to listen to them; but he felt aggrieved by the attempt of Spain to interfere in the negotiation, and having received information from Madrid which excited his suspicions of that government, he proposed an immediate attack upon Spain by intercepting the Plate fleet. The reception which his proposition met with convinced him that he was no longer minister; in fact, the administration had been already considerably modified. Disdaining to be nominally at the head of a cabinet which he could not direct, and responsible for measures which he could not guide, he resigned his offices in October, 1761, and accepted a pension of £3000 a year for the lives of himself, his son, and his wife, who was created baroness of Chatham. He had written to a female relation, some years before, severely reproaching her for the "despicable meanness" of which she had been guilty, in having accepted an annuity out of the public purse; the lady, on the present occasion, it is said, took her revenge, by sending him a copy of his own letter.

On the 25th of November, 1762, the articles of the peace of Paris were laid before the house by Fox, now the leader of the house of commons. Pitt opposed the motion for their approval with great energy and eloquence; but ministers triumphed by a majority of 319 to 65. In 1764, he greatly distinguished himself in the affair of Wilkes, by his opposition to general warrants.

The death of the earl of Egremont was a severe shock to the administration of Mr Grenville, and led to a renewal of negotiations with Pitt. The king sent for him twice, but found him impracticable. In

1766, when Lord Rockingham's administration came to an end, Lord Northington advised to send for Pitt, and to allow him his own conditious. This was acceded to; and Pitt was allowed to form his own cabinet. The several appointments were announced in the Gazette of the 2d of August. Mr Pitt, created Earl of Chatham, took to himself the duke of Newcastle's office of lord-privy-seal. Lord Camden was made chancellor in room of the earl of Northington, who was transferred to the presidency of the council. The earl of Shelburne was appointed one of the secretaries of state, Mr Conway continuing in office as the other. The place of first lord of the treasury was bestowed upon the duke of Grafton; and the honourable Charles Townshend became chancellor of the exchequer and ministerial leader in the house of commons. Sir Charles Saunders succeeded Lord Egmont at the head of the admiralty; and the earl of Hillsborough, Lord Dartmouth, as first lord of trade. Several changes were also made in the subordinate places of the treasury and admiralty boards. Viscount Barrington was continued as secretary at war; and Lord North and Mr George Cooke were associated in the office of paymaster-general, formerly held by Charles Townshend. The solicitor-general, Mr William de Grey, became attorney-general in the room of the honourable Charles Yorke, and the appointment of solicitor-general was given to Mr Edward Willes. The marquess of Granby was placed at the head of the army

The view taken by the public of these arrangements may be gathered from a letter of Lord Chesterfield's. "The curtain," says his lordship, writing on the 1st of August, "was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and discovered the new actors, together with some of the old ones. I do not name them to you, because to-morrow's Gazette will do it full as well as I could. Mr Pitt, who had a carte blanche given him, named every one of them; but what would you think he named himself for? lord-privy-seal, aud (what will astonish you, as it does every mortal here) Earl of Chatham. The joke here is that he has had a fall upstairs, and has done himself so much hurt that he will never be able to stand upon his legs again. Every body is puzzled how to account for this step; though it would not be the first time that great abilities have been duped by low cunning. But be it what it will, he is now certainly only Earl of Chatham, and no longer Mr Pitt in any respect whatever. Such an event, I believe, was never read nor heard of. To withdraw in the fulness of his power, and in the utmost gratification of his ambition, from the house of commons, which procured him his power, and which could alone insure it to him, and to go into that hospital of incurables, the house of lords, is a measure so unaccountable, that nothing but proof positive could have made me to believe it; but true it is. Lord Shelburne is your secretary of state; Charles Townshend has now the sole management of the house of commons; but how long he will be content to be only Lord Chatham's vicegerent there, is a question which I will not pretend to decide. There is one very bad sign for Lord Chatham in his new dignity, which is, that all his enemies, without exception, rejoice at it; and all his friends are stupified and dumb-founded. If I mistake not much, he will, in the course of a year, enjoy perfect otium cum dignitate.' On the 14th of the same month, we find his lordship expressing himself again in the same strain :—“It is certain that Mr Pitt has by his dignity of earl lost

the greatest part of his popularity, especially in the city; and I believe the opposition will be very strong, and perhaps prevail next session in the house of commons; there being now nobody there who can have the authority and ascendant over them that Pitt had."

The earl of Chatham held office until the end of 1768, when, on the appointment of Lord Hillsborough as colonial secretary, he sent the privy seal to the king by the hands of Lord Camden. This measure was indeed forced upon him by the determination which the king evinced to carry matters to an extremity with the Americans. He appeared little in parliament after this, except in support of Wilkes, until 1774, when the crisis of American affairs drew forth his lordship's energies, and seemed to revive all his youthful eloquence. He implored the ministry to pause and alter its policy with respect to America, but he spoke to deaf men; he brought in a bill for quieting the troubles in America, it was instantly rejected; he moved an address to the king to put a stop to hostilities, their lordships sneered at his apprehensions as visionary and groundless. Yet when, on the 7th of April, 1778, the duke of Richmond moved an address to the crown in which the necessity of acknowledging the independence of America was asserted, Chatham rose from a sick-bed, hastened to the house, and opposed the motion in a speech of great splendour. "My lords," he said, "I lament that my infirmities have so long prevented my attendance here, at so awful a crisis. I have made an effort almost beyond my strength, to come down to the house on this day, (and, perhaps, it will be the last time I shall ever be able to enter its walls,) to express my indignation at an idea that has gone forth of yielding up America. My lords,— I rejoice that the grave has not yet closed upon me,-that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the hand of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my lords, while I have sense and memory, I will never consent to deprive the royal offspring of the house of Brunswick of their fairest inheritance. Where is the man that will dare to advise such a measure? My lords, his majesty succeeded to an empire great in extent, as it was unsullied in reputation :-shall we tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and best possessions? Shall this great kingdom, which has survived, whole and entire, the Danish depredations, the Scottish inroads, and the Norman conquest,that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish armada, now fall prostrate before the house of Bourbon? Surely, my lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people, that, seventeen years ago, was the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell its ancient, inveterate enemy, 'take all we have, only give us peace?' It is impossible! I wage war with no man, or set of men,-I wish for none of their employments, nor would I co-operate with those who still persist in unretracted error; or who, instead of acting on a firm, decisive line of conduct, halt between two opinions, where there is no middle path. In God's name: if it be absolutely necessary to declare either for peace or war, and the former cannot be preserved with honour, why is not the latter commenced without hesitation ? I am not, I confess, well-informed of the resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. But,

my lords, any state is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort; and, if we must fall, let us fall like men !"

The duke of Richmond having replied to this speech, Lord Chatham attempted to rise again, but fainted, and fell into the arms of those who were near him. The house was instantly cleared, and medical assistance procured. He was conveyed to his seat at Hayes, where he expired on the 11th of May, 1778, in the seventieth year of his age. In figure, Lord Chatham was dignified and commanding. "There was a grandeur in his personal appearance," says a writer, who speaks of him when in his decline, "which produced awe and mute attention; and though bowed by infirmity and age, his mind shone through the ruins of his body, armed his eye with lightning, and clothed his lip with thunder."- "He was born an orator," says Wilkes, "and from nature possessed every outward requisite to bespeak respect, and even awe: a manly figure, with the eagle eye of the great Condé, fixed your attention, and almost commanded reverence the moment he appeared; and the keen lightning of his eye spoke the high respect of his soul before his lips had pronounced a syllable. There was a kind of fascination in his look when he eyed any one askance. Nothing could withstand the force of that contagion. The fluent Murray has faltered, and even Fox shrunk back appalled from an adversary 'fraught with fire unquenchable,' if I may borrow an expression of our great Milton. He had not the correctness of language so striking in the great Roman orator, but he had the verba ardentia,—the bold, glowing words."

Captain Cook.

BORN A. D. 1728.-died a. D. 1779.

JAMES COOK, the celebrated navigator, was the son of James Cook, a native of the county of Northumberland. His father's station was no higher than that of a farm-servant, and he was married to a woman in his own sphere of life. Young Cook was born on the 27th of October, 1728, at Morton in Cleveland, Yorkshire. He received the first rudiments of education from the school-mistress of his native village; afterwards, on his father's removal to Great Ayton, he was put to a dayschool, at the expense of Mr Skottowe, his father's employer, where he was instructed in writing and the first rules of arithmetic. About the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a haberdasher at Snaiths, about ten miles from Whitby; but upon some disagreement taking place between him and his master, he indulged his own inclination in binding himself an apprentice to Messrs Walker of Whitby, who had several vessels in the coal-trade. After serving a few years in the situation of a common sailor, he was made mate of one of Mr Walker's ships.

Early in the year 1755, when hostilities broke out between France and England, Cook entered on board the Eagle, of sixty guns, to which vessel Sir Hugh Palliser was appointed. He now distinguished himself as an active and useful seaman, and his promotion was forwarded by a letter of recommendation from Mr Osbaldeston, member for Scar. borough. On the 15th of May, 1759, he was appointed master of the Mercury, which soon after sailed to America, and joined the fleet un

der Sir Charles Saunders at the siege of Quebec. On this occasion he was recommended by Captain Palliser to the difficult and dangerous service of taking the soundings of the St Lawrence, between the island of Orleans and the north shore, previous to military operations against Quebec. This task he performed in a masterly manner; and soon afterwards was employed to survey the river below Quebec. After this, he was appointed master of the Northumberland, stationed at Halifax. At this period of his life it was that he first read Euclid and studied astronomy and some other branches of science. In the year 1762 he was with the Northumberland at the recapture of Newfoundland. In the latter end of the same year he returned to England, and married.

Early in 1763, when Admiral (then Captain) Greaves was appointed governor of Newfoundland, Cook went out with him to survey the coasts of that island. In 1765 he was with Sir William Burnaby on the Jamaica station; and that officer having occasion to send despatches to the governor of Yucatan, selected Cook for that mission, which he executed in a highly satisfactory manner. A relation of the voyage and journey which he undertook on this occasion was published in 1769, under the title of Remarks on a passage from the river Balise, in the bay of Honduras, to Merida, the capital of the province of Yucatan.' His first astronomical paper was printed in the 57th volume of the Philosophical transactions. It is entitled An observation of an Eclipse of the Sun at the island of Newfoundland, August 5th, 1766, with the longitude of the place of observation deduced from it.' Cook's observations were made at one of the Burgeo islands near Cape Ray. It obtained for him the character of an able astronomer.

The spirit for geographical discovery, which had gradually declined since the beginning of the 17th century, was now beginning to revive. Two voyages of this kind had been performed in the reign of George II., the one under Captain Middleton, the other by Captains Moore and Smyth, both with a view to discover a north-west passage through Hudson's bay to the East Indies. Two others, under Captains Byron, Wallis, and Carteret, had been undertaken soon after the conclusion of the peace in 1763, by order of George III., and before the return of these navigators, another voyage was resolved upon for astronomical purposes. It having been calculated that a transit of Venus over the sun's disk would happen in 1769, a memorial to his majesty was presented by the Royal society, setting forth the great importance of making proper observations on that phenomenon, and praying that a vessel might be fitted out, at the expense of government, for conveying proper persons to one of the Friendly islands, in order to make the necessary observations. This request being complied with, Dalrymple, an eminent member of the Royal society, was appointed to the command of the expedition. But in the execution of the project, an unexpected difficulty occurred. Mr Dalrymple, sensible of the impossibility of guiding a vessel through unknown and dangerous seas without any proper command over the crew, demanded a brevet commission as captain of the vessel. This commission, however, Sir Edward Hawke absolutely refused to sign, declaring, when pressed upon the subject, that he would Such as had formerly been granted to Dr Halley, in a voyage of discovery made by him.