LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE,-HIS FIRMNESS AND
SKILL AS A DIPLOMATIST.

H

OW to negotiate with a perfect skill never degenerating into craft, how to form such a scheme of policy that his country might be brought to adopt it without swerving, and how to pursue this always, promoting it steadily abroad, and gradually forcing the home government to go all lengths in its support, this he knew; and he was, moreover, so gifted by nature, that whether men studied his despatches or whether they listened to his spoken words, or whether they were merely bystanders caught and fascinated by the grace of his presence, they could scarcely help thinking that if the English nation was to be maintained in peace or drawn into war by the will of a single mortal, there was no man so worthy to fix its destiny. He had faults, for his temper was fierce, and his assertion of self was so closely involved in his conflicts that he followed up his opinions with his feelings and with the whole strength of his imperious nature. But his fierce temper, being always under control when purposes of state so required, was far from being an infirmity; and was rather a weapon of exceeding sharpness, for it was so wielded by him as to have more tendency to cause dread and surrender than to generate resistance. Then, too, every judg ment which he pronounced was enfolded in words so complete as to exclude the idea that it could ever be varied, and to convey therefore the idea of duration. As though yielding to fate itself the Turkish mind used to bend and fall down before him.Kinglake.

LIVY, ix. c. 16. CICERO, pro lege Manil. § 26-48.

CHARACTER OF JEREMY BENTHAM.—AN HONEST AND INDEPENDENT PHILOSOPHER.

E was slenderly furnished with fancy, and far more capable of following a train of reasoning, expounding the theories of others, and pursuing them to their legitimate consequences, than of striking out new paths, and creating new objects, or even adorning the creations of other men's genius. With the single exception that he had something of the dogmatism of the school, he was a person of most praiseworthy candour in controversy, always of such self-denial that he sunk every selfish consideration in his anxiety for the success of any cause which he espoused, and ever ready to the utmost extent of his faculties, and often beyond the force of his constitution, to lend his help for its furtherance. In all the relations of private life he was irreproachable; and he afforded a rare example of one born in humble circumstances, and struggling, during the greater part of his laborious life, with the inconveniences of restricted means, nobly maintaining an independence as absolute in all respects as that of the first subject in the land-an independence, indeed, which but few of the pampered children of rank and wealth are ever seen to enjoy. For he could at all times restrain his wishes within the limits of his resources; was firmly resolved that his own hands alone should ever minister to his wants; and would, at every period of his useful and virtuous life, have treated with indignation any project that should trammel his opinions or his conduct with the restraints which external influence, of whatever kind, could impose.-Lord Brougham.

LIVY, xxxix. c. 40, 44. CICERO, Philipp. ix. § 10-12.

CHARACTER OF PITT.-HIS HIGH-MINDEDNESS.

YET

ET with all his faults and affectations, Pitt had, in a very extraordinary degree, many of the elements of greatness. He had genius, strong passions, quick sensibility, and vehement enthusiasm for the grand and the beautiful. There was something about him which ennobled tergiversation itself. In an age of low and dirty prostitution, it was something to have a man who might perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer her, a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for vengeance. History owes to him this attestation, that, at a time when anything short of direct embezzlement of the public money was considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness; that, at a time when it seemed to be taken for granted that Government could be upheld only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler parts of human nature; that he made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no other statesmen of his day thought it possible to do, except by means of corruption; that he looked for support not to a strong aristocratical connection, not to the personal favour of the Sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in his integrity and ability; that, backed by them, he forced an unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power; and that he used his power in such a manner as clearly proved him to have sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent services rendered to the State.

CICERO, Academ. Prior. ii. § 1-6.

De Senectute, § 10-12; also 16, 17, 37. LIVY, xxxix. c. 40, 44.

PITT.-HIS STRONG POINT PERSUASION, NOT

LEGISLATION.

IS powerful intellect was ill supplied with knowledge. Of

H1 this he had no more than a man can acquire while he

is a student at college. The stock of general information which he brought with him from Cambridge, extraordinary for a boy, was far inferior to what Fox possessed, and beggarly when compared with the massy, the splendid, the various treasures laid up in the large mind of Burke. He had no leisure to learn more than was necessary for the purposes of the day which was passing over him. What was necessary for those purposes such a man could learn with little difficulty. He was surrounded by experienced and able public servants. He could at any moment command their best assistance. From the stores which they produced his vigorous mind rapidly collected the materials for a good parliamentary case; and that was enough. Legislation and administration were with him secondary matters. framing statutes, of negotiating treaties, of organizing fleets and armies, of sending forth expeditions, he gave only the leavings of his time, and the dregs of his intellect. The strength and sap

To the work of

of his mind were all drawn in a different direction. It was when the House of Commons was to be convinced and persuaded that he put forth all his powers.-Lord Macaulay.

CICERO, Acad. Prior. ii. § 1-6. De Senect. § 10-12; 16, 17, 21.

CHARACTER OF PITT-HIS INTEGRITY, AUTHORITY, AND ELOQUENCE.

A

CHARACTER so exalted, so strenuous, so authoritative astonished a corrupt age, and the Treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption

imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes or the splendid conflagration of Tully, it resembled sometimes the thunder and sometimes the music of the spheres. He did not, like Murray, conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he, like Townshend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt but could not be followed.-Lord Macaulay.

VELLEIUS PATERCULUS, ii. c. 13.
LIVY, xxxix. c. 40, 44.

CICERO, de Sen. § 16, 17, 37. TACITUS, de Orat. c. 8.

CHARACTER OF JULIUS CÆSAR.—HIS VERSATILITY.

very

inferior

T is possible to be a very great man and to be still to Julius Cæsar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general -the only triumphant politician-inferior to none in point of eloquence-comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, and philosophers that ever appeared in the world; an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage--at one time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on punning, and collecting a set of good sayings