A letter, not less interesting, from Lord Ripon, gives some striking particulars of this mission. Lord Ripon had accompanied him to the Congress. "I allude to his first mission to the Continent, at the close of 1813. I travelled with him from the Hague to Bâle, where he first came in contact with any of the ministers of the Allied powers; and thence we proceeded to Langres, where the headquarters of the Grand Army were established, and where the allied sovereigns, the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia, with their respective ministers, were assembled."

The letter proceeds to state the views of the mission, much of whose success it attributes to the combined suavity and firmness of Lord Castlereagh's conduct. But, an instance of his prompt and sagacious decision suddenly occurred. Blucher's impetuous advance had been checked, with serious loss, by a desperate assault of Napoleon, who, availing himself of this success, had fallen upon all the advanced forces of the Allies. There was wavering at headquarters, and there were even proposals of retiring beyond the Rhine. It was essential to reinforce Blucher, but there were no troops at hand. Lord Castlereagh demanded, "Where were any to be found?" He was answered, that there were two strong corps of Russians and Prussians under the command of Bernadotte; but that he was 66 very tenacious of his command," and they could not be withdrawn without a tedious negotiation,-in other words, we presume, without fear of giving that clever but tardy commander a pretext for abandoning the alliance altogether. The difficulty was, by a high authority, pronounced insurmountable. Lord Castlereagh, who was present at the council, simply demanded, "whether the reinforcement was necessary;” and, on being answered in the affirmative, declared that the order must be given; that England had a right to expect that her allies should not be deterred from a decisive course by any such difficulties; and that he would take upon himself all the responsibility that might arise, regarding the CrownPrince of Sweden.

The order was issued: Blucher was reinforced; Napoleon was beaten at

Laon; and the campaign rapidly approached its close. Still, formidable difficulties arose. Napoleon, though he had at last found that he could not face the army of the Allies, conceived the daring manœuvre of throwing himself in their rear-thus alarming them for their communications, and forcing them to follow him back through France. The consequences of a desultory war might have been the revival of French resistance, and the ruin of the campaign. The manœuvre became the subject of extreme anxiety in the Allied camp, and some of the chief authorities were of opinion, that he ought to be pursued. It is said (though the Memoir has not yet reached that part of the subject,) that the decision of leaving him behind, and marching direct on Paris, was chiefly owing to Lord Castlereagh; who pointed out the weakness of taking counsel from an enemy, the advantage of finding the road to Paris open at last, and the measureless political importance of having the capital in their possession.

This advice prevailed: a few thousand cavalry were sent in the track of Napoleon, to entrap him into the idea that he was followed by the Grand Army, while Schwartzenberg marched in the opposite direction; and the first intelligence which reached the French army was in the thunderclap which announced the fall of the Empire!

Lord Harrowby's letter, in referring to a subsequent period, gives a curious instance of the chances on which the highest events may turn.

"Now for my other service in the dark. After the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington at Paris, the Government was naturally most anxious to get him away. But how? Under whatever pretext it might be veiled, he would still call it running away, to which he was not partial. But, when Castlereagh was obliged to leave Vienna, in order to attend his duty in parliament, I was fortunate enough to suggest that the Duke should be sent to replace him; and that would be a command which he could not refuse to obey.

"When I mentioned this to the Duke, just after I left you-for I was then quite full of the memory of my

little exploits-he quite agreed that, if he had been at Paris, on the return of Buonaparte to France, it would have been highly probable that they would have seized him.

"Small events are great to little men; and it is not nothing, to have contributed in the smallest degree to the success of the Congress at Vienna, (nor was it then so called,) and of the subsequent campaign, and to the saving of the Duke for WATERLOO!"

After this triumphant course of political life, with every gift of fortune around him, and perhaps the still higher consciousness of having achieved a historic name, how can we account for the closing of such a career in suicide?

The only probable cause was the intolerable burden of public business, by his having in charge the chief weight of the home department as well as the foreign. His leadership of the House of Commons was enough to have worn him out. Canning once said "that no vigour of mind or body can stand the wear and tear of a minister, above ten years." Castlereagh had been immersed in indefatigable toil since 1794. He had stood "the wear and tear" for thirty years. His life was wholly devoted to business.

During the summer he rose at five, in winter at seven, and frequently laboured for twelve or fourteen hours in succession.

In person he was tall, with a mild and very handsome countenance in early life, of which we must regret that the portrait in the first volume of the Memoir gives but an unfavourable resemblance. The most faithful likeness is that by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in the Windsor Gallery of Statesmen, though it has the effeminate air which that admirable painter had the unlucky habit of giving to his men.

The death of Lord Castlereagh seems to have been justly attributed to mental exhaustion, with the addition of a fit of the gout, for which he had taken some depressing medicines. The state of his spirits was marked by the King, on his Majesty's departure for Scotland. At the Cabinet Council, he had been observed to remain helplessly silent, and his signature to public papers had become

suddenly almost illegible. On those symptoms, he was expressly put into the hands of his physician, and sent to Foot's Cray, his villa in Kent. The physician attended him until the Monday following. Early on that day he was hastily summoned, and found his Lordship dead in his dressing-room.

A letter from the Duke of Wellington conveyed the lamentable intelligence to the present Marquis, who was then at Vienna. After some prefatory remarks, the Duke says"You will have seen, that I witnessed the melancholy state of mind which was the cause of the catastrophe. I saw him after he had been with the King on the 9th instant, to whom he had likewise exposed it. But, fearing that he would not send for his physician, I considered it my duty to go to him; and not finding him, to write to him, which, considering what has since happened, was a fortunate circumstance.

"You will readily believe what a consternation this deplorable event has occasioned here. The funeral was attended by every person in London of any mark or distinction, of all parties; and the crowd in the streets behaved respectfully and creditably."

The Duke's remarks on "the fortunate circumstance" of applying to the physician, we presume to have meant, the vindication of the Marquis's character from the guilt of conscious suicide. For the same reason, we have given the details. They relieve the mind of the Christian and the Englishman from the conception, that the most accomplished intellect, and the highest sense of duty, may not be protective against the mingled crime and folly of self-murder.

We have now given a general glance at the matériel of those volumes. They contain a great variety of public documents, valuable to the future historian, though too official for the general reader. One, however, is too curious to be altogether passed by: it is from Lord Brougham, (dated 1812,) offering himself for employment in American affairs:

"MY LORD,-I am confident that the step which I am now taking can

not be misconstrued by your lordship. Under the present circumstances, I beg to make a tender of my services to his Majesty's government in the conduct of the negotiation with the United States, wheresoever the same may be carried on.

"I am induced to think that I might be of use as a negotiator in this affair. I trust it is unnecessary to add, that I can have no motive of a private or personal nature in making this offer. Should it be accepted, I must necessarily sustain a considerable injury in my professional pursuits," &c.

We think that, in giving these volumes to the country, the present Marquis of Londonderry has not merely fulfilled an honourable fraternal duty, but has rendered a service to public character. Faction had calumniated Lord Castlereagh throughout a large portion of his career. The man who breaks down a fierce rebellion, and who extinguishes a worthless legislature, must be prepared to encounter the hostility of all whose crimes he has punished, or whose traffic he has put to shame. The felon naturally hates the hand which holds the scales of justice, and, if he cannot strike, is sure to malign. The contemptuous dignity with which Lord Castlereagh looked down upon his libellers, and his equally contemptuous disregard of defence, of course only rendered libel more inveterate; and every low artifice of falsehood was exerted against the administration of a man who was an honour to Ireland.

His course in England was in a higher region, and he escaped the mosquitoes which infest the swamps of Irish political life. Among the leaders of English party he had to contend with men of honour, and on the Continent his task was to sustain the cause of Europe. There, mingling with monarchs in the simplicity of a British gentleman, he carried with him all the influence of a great British minister, and entitled himself to that influence by the value of his services. Yet, among the highest distinctions of his statesmanship, we have but slight hesitation in naming the rapid overthrow of the rebellion. The scene was new, the struggle

singularly perplexing. Political artifice was mingled with brute violence. If the spirit of revolt raged in the superstition, the fears, and the rude memories of peasant life, it was still more hazardously spread among the professional ranks, whose ambition was frenzied by the prospect of a republic, or whose guilt was to be screened by its establishment. He has been charged with tyranny and torture in its suppression; his correspondence in these volumes shows the manly view which he took of the true condition of Ireland.

The question of the safety of Ireland has now come before the legislature once again, in all its breadth. Is Ireland to be a perpetual seat of rebellion? is every ruffian to find there only an armoury? is every faction to find there only a paradeground? Is its soil to be a perpetual fount of waters, that can flow only to poison the healthful channels of society? Is the power of government to be employed only in the hideous duties of the gaoler and the executioner? Is the noblest constitution that man has ever seen to be utterly paralysed, from the moment when it touches a soil containing millions of our fellow subjects?-and to be paralysed by the act of these millions?

These are the questions which well may disturb the pillow of the statesmen of England. We have no hesitation in answering them. As the ruin of Ireland has been the act of a false religion, its renovation must be the act of the true. This is no time for tardiness in this experiment. Revolt has thrown aside its arms, but its antipathy remains. We shall have revolt upon revolt, until the country is turned into a field of battle or a sepulchre. If the rude, vulgar, and cowardly conspirators of the present hour have found followers, what might not be the national hazard if some valorous hand and vivid intellect-some one of those mighty men who are born to take the lead of nations, should marshal the willing multitudes at a time when England was once again struggling for the liberties of Europe? Are we to leave Ireland, with all its natural advantages, to the unchecked

progress of superstition, until, like the Roman Campagna, under the same auspices, it exhibits nothing but a desert, where man by daylight should put on his swiftest speed, and where he should not sleep by night, unless he had already taken measure of his grave? The Memoir prefixed to the official papers in these volumes touches with singular brevity on the personal characteristics of the late Marquis of Londonderry.

But the true biography of a public man is to be found in his public career. There flattery can deceive no longer, and panegyric is brought to the test of posterity. It fell to the lot of Lord Castlereagh to take a lead in the four most memorable transactions of his time ;--in the overthrow of the Irish Rebellion; in the establishment of the Union; in the downfall of the French empire; and in the settlement of the peace of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. Those four are his claims on the living gratitude of his country, and on the homage of the generations to come. The mind which was equal to those tasks must have been a mind of power; the determination which could have sustained him, in defiance of all personal and public danger, must have been of the highest order of personal and public intrepidity; and the patriotism which, in every advance of his official distinctions, and every act of his ministerial duty, directed his steps, as it then raised him above all the imputations of party, now retains his memory in that elevation, which

partisanship can no more reach than it can comprehend. Estimable in all the relations of private life, and honourable in all the trusts of statesmanship, the bitterness of Opposition has never dared to touch his personal character; and even faction has shown its sense of his services, by never venturing to insult his tomb. If the enemies of Ireland remember him with hatred, the historian of Ireland must record him with honour. If faction in England cannot yet be reconciled to the man who kept it at bay, it must remember him as the statesman who was neither to be bought nor baffled; whose life was a security to the constitution, and whose conduct formed the most prominent contrast to that of those subsequent possessors of office, whom it found the means alternately to corrupt and to control.

It is not our wish to offer a rash and groundless panegyric to any man. We refer simply to the facts-to the eminence of England under his policy, and to its sudden difficulties under the abandonment of his principles. We think Lord Castlereagh entitled to the full tribute which can be paid by national respect to the memory of a statesman distinguished by courage and conduct, by unblemished honesty, and by unfailing honour. We think him fully entitled to bear upon his monument the name of A GREAT BRITISH MINISTER.

The most passionate avidity for renown cannot desire a nobler name.