consider language rather as a toy than as an instrument.” She had all these advantages, and she aimed at nothing in conversation which she could not accomplish with ease. and grace; so that one felt as if she might have been more brilliant than she was had she been disposed to try. She had sense, and strength and clearness of purpose upon all occasions; and a harmony and unity of the whole being, inward and outward, which, being so perfect, was in itself a charm. But what, perhaps, most charmed me in my gravity was a fresh light-heartedness, new to my experience as well as contrasted with my own conditions of existence :

"For the hours

Had led her lightly down the vale of life,
Dancing and scattering roses, and her face
Seemed a perpetual daybreak, and the woods
Where'er she rambled echoed through their aisles
The music of a laugh so softly gay

That spring, with all her songsters and her songs,
Knew nothing like it."*

It was of her that I so wrote, though not by name. Of casual and superficial sensibilities she knew nothing; and when the deeps were broken up, which could happen to her as to others, it seemed as if she could suffer only in paroxysms, and that in these she must either conquer or die. Her way was to conquer; but once she did nearly die; her strong nerves gave way, and for some months she was unable to speak intelligibly or to walk. These physical consequences being removed, however, and her health restored, she resumed her constitutional sprightliness; the past was past, and not a trace of a trouble remained.

* Ernesto.

SPEECHES.

CHAPTER VI.

ARTICLES IN THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. — GIFFORD. "ISAAC COMNENUS." VISITS TO THE CONTINENT AND TO MISS FENWICK AT BATH.-VIEWS OF MYSELF.

ANNO DOM. 1824-28. ANNO ET. 24-28.

IN 1825 I made my first attempt to speak in public. It was made in a debating society to which the Villiers brothers and the other men I have mentioned belonged, and was reported in a letter to my stepmother of March 12, 1825; adverting, first, to a speech delivered on the same evening by Hyde Villiers:

"I heard him make his first speech in the Academics last week with great success. It was able, orderly, and distinct; with no grace of language other than harmony and simplicity. There was no striking embellishment in the speech; but his manner of delivering it was extremely expressive and imposing. I made my first attempt last night, and failed. I know of no other reason for my failure than the mere disability to collect my thoughts and give them connected utterance. My speech, if speech it could be called, reminds me of Le Fevre's pulse.* When I felt thoroughly embarrassed, I said that I felt myself not capable of going through with it, and therefore I

The allusion is to a passage in the account of Le Fevre's death, in "Tristram Shandy," vol. vi. chap. xi.: "The pulse fluttered-stoppedwent on-throbbed-stopped again-moved-stopped- Shall I go on? No."

should give it up. And I do not know that I could have done anything better. But I felt it hard to hear some speakers string their nothings together with ease and fluency, while I, who had something to say, had no power to speak it. Also, it could not but be matter of some mortification to exhibit a failure to a large audience, most of them men of ability. I do not consider the experiment conclusive; and, disagreeable as it is, it must be renewed. If I find that I am really unable to speak in public, it is always useful that men should be aware of their incapacities; and it is necessary that I should ascertain mine in this instance, since it would materially influence even my present pursuits. Since I came to Downing Street I have had some talk with Villiers on the subject of my début last night. He says I made him excessively nervous, but he did not expect it would end as it did; there was no appearance of shyness, my voice was firm and clear, and when I made my dead stands he always thought that I was deliberately collecting myself, and that I should go on well after. He calls my break-down the coolest thing he ever saw."

My father and stepmother replied, the former beginning and the latter finishing the letter:

"Persevere by all means, and redeem the opinion of the society (if they be so inexperienced as to form one on a début) even at the expense of incurring more wounds to vanity for a while; but attempt no reply till, by premeditated speaking, you have got over the hurry of spirits. from desuetude." "Your father is hurried to get other things ready for the post, so gives me his paper to express my mortification on the very natural and most picturesque account of your feelings. The coolness that was taken for impudence was pride that would not show mortification. I have always observed an inequality in

your speech when upon any argument; sometimes fluent and rapid, and sometimes hesitating and vacant. I am glad I was not present, I should have been so very nervous. Your failure was partly nervous, though not in the way of shyness; but I trust practice will, at least, give you the exercise of your full powers, whatever they may be; and if you have them, I am impatient to have the present impression on your audience removed. Had I to speak I should feel as you did, and as I have done many a time when I had any very painful thing to say: I have fixed upon the sentence and made my tongue do it like a parrot, without any sense in my head, or in my heart either, but of its own thumping."

In less than a fortnight I reported a second attempt: "I spoke last night sufficiently to my own satisfaction. I got off a little speech thoroughly by rote, so that I was sure I could not be prevented from speaking it except through an absolute deprivation of intellect and utterance; I rose without any nervous excitation further than what would be of advantage to me, and with nothing of the nervous depression which had attended my former attempt, and I spoke it quite fluently to the end. I felt no want of self-possession, and made the emphasis and manner of delivery pretty much according to my ideal of what it ought to be. I felt in speaking as if I could have digressed and come back to my rote speech at pleasure; but I had determined not to do it, and perhaps would have found myself wrong if I had. However, till this is done, all I know respecting my talents in this way is that I can recite before any given audience any given speech I have gotten as much by heart as ever I got an alphabet."

A copy of the speech was enclosed, and it shows that, with all my admiration for my Benthamite friends, I was far from adopting their opinions. It might be supposed,

indeed, from the language, that I was an ardent Conservative; but the truth is that, though I was of this way of thinking when called upon to think upon the subject at all, I cared little for politics; and for the greater part of my life I was not in the habit of even reading the newspapers. Of political economy, nevertheless, I was a sedulous student.

A few months later my letters make mention of another speech and of its success. "The effect, however, was a good deal broken and spoiled towards the end by a sort of minim rest, as the musicians have it; that is, I made a total pause, and stood upon the floor for some time, racking my recollection for what was to come next. . . . Certainly, nothing could be less like impromptu speaking than the perfectly fluent delivery of the two portions and the dead stand-still between them. However, I have not much desire to get credit for doing more than I can do, and have no objection to every one's knowing that I get by heart all I can say, until I can say something without. It is more satisfactory to feel a good foundation for any reputation, great or small, which one may come by."

An extract from one of my speeches may be worth transcribing. It was in refutation of my friends, the young Benthamites. "That all our motives originate in selfishness is, in my opinion, though perfectly true, very immaterial. For I believe it is not denied that by virtue of association we come to be actuated by such motives as, in common language, are called disinterested; and how does it signify what be the original principles of our nature so long as the derivative are the acting ones? The immediate instigating causes of our acts are what concerns us in life, not the remote metaphysical origin. You may trace back closely, you may follow far, the successions and dependencies of our acts and feelings; you may