himself, and more than once repeated, Oh, what times! oh, 'my country!"*

The latter part of Pitt's life had been clouded by disappointments and mortifications. The King's objection to Fox, and the consequent refusal of the chief politicians to join his Ministry; his compulsory recourse to Addington's assistance, and the speedy defection of his ignominious ally; his failure in saving Lord Melville from forced resignation and impeachment†; and the defeat of his continental policy by the surrender of Ulm and the battle of Austerlitz +; must have come as successive blows to his spirit. This period was one of unusual care, anxiety, and depression; but his mind unquestionably possessed sufficient

*Diary, ib. p. 346. Wilberforce says, in a letter written at the time: He spoke very little for some days before he died, and was extremely weakened and reduced on the Wednesday morning, when ' he was first talked to as a dying man. He expired early on Thursday morning.' (Life, vol. iii. p. 252.)

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† Lord Fitzharris, Lord Malmesbury's eldest son, who was a Lord of the Treasury at the time, gives the following account of Pitt's feelings with respect to the vote against Lord Melville: I have ever thought that an aiding cause of Pitt's death, certainly one that tended to shorten his existence, was the result of the proceedings against his 'old friend and colleague, Lord Melville. I sat wedged close to Pitt ' himself the night when we were 216 to 216, and the Speaker, Abbot (after looking as white as a sheet, and pausing for ten minutes), gave the casting vote against us. Pitt immediately put on the little cocked 'hat that he was in the habit of wearing when dressed for the evening, ' and jammed it deeply over his forehead, and I distinctly saw the tears 'trickling down his cheeks.' (Lord Malmesbury, ib. p. 347.)

A song written by Walter Scott for the anniversary meeting of the Pitt Club of Scotland, in 1814, commences with the following

stanza :

'O dread was the time and more dreadful the omen,

When the brave on Marengo lay slaughtered in vain,
And beholding broad Europe bowed down by her foemen,
Pitt closed in his anguish the map of her reign.

Not the fate of broad Europe could bend his brave spirit
To take for his country the safety of shame;

O then in her triumph remember his merit,

And hallow the goblet that flows to his name.'

Marengo was the first step in Bonaparte's career of independent aggression, and in June, 1800, the date of the battle of Marengo, broad Europe was not bowed down by her foemen. Moreover, the Peace of Amiens, in which Pitt heartily concurred, was made in the following year; and this peace was generally considered (if Sheridan's dictum was true) to involve the safety of shame.' The allusion seems more appropriate to Austerlitz than to Marengo.

strength to bear the weight, if his body had not been undermined by physical causes.

Shortly after Mr. Pitt's death, a motion was made in the House of Commons for a grant of 40,000l. to pay his debts. The motion was carried without opposition, and the money was afterwards paid to his executors, Lord Chatham and the Bishop of Lincoln. Mr. Wilberforce tried to induce Pitt's private friends to contribute this sum, liberally offering to bear his share, but he failed in the attempt. Mr. Pitt's friends had raised 12,0007. in the autumn of 1801, shortly after his resignation, in order to relieve him from embarrassment; and one of the subscribers to this sum wished it to be included in the grant; but to this proposal Mr. Wilberforce strongly objected, and it was in consequence abandoned.* From 1784 to 1801, Mr. Pitt had held the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, the joint salary of which was then about 75007. a year, together with an official residence in Downing Street. Besides this, he had, since 1792, held the sinecure office of Warden of the Cinque Ports, with a salary of 3000l. a year, to which the use of Walmer Castle was attached. Wilberforce says, that he lived at the rate of 5000l. or 60007. a year. The celebrated inscription under Pitt's monument in Guildhall, by Mr. Canning, records in his honour, that Dispensing for near twenty years the favours of the Crown, he lived without osten'tation, and he died poor.' But if, being unmarried and having no expensive tastes or pursuits, he was at the same time in the receipt of an ample income, it would have been rather natural that he should have died rich, than that he should have died poor. We can only explain the contrary result on the supposition that, being entirely indifferent about money, and engrossed with public affairs, he neglected to attend to his own expenditure, and was plundered by his domestics.

At the time of Pitt's death there was a general disposition among the leaders of all political parties, on account of the critical state of our relations with the Continent, to sink minor differences in a general union, and to form a Coalition Government resting on a wide and comprehensive basis. This idea, promulgated and enforced by Lord Grenville, was adopted by Pitt, and would have been carried into effect by him in 1804, if his attempt had not been frustrated by the King's refusal to admit Fox into the Cabinet. The result of this failure was, that even Pitt was only able to form a weak and struggling administration; and if he had lived, the King would doubtless

* Life of Wilberforce, vol. iii. p. 244–54.

have been compelled by Parliamentary pressure to allow his minister to seek strength in the quarters where alone it could be obtained. We propose, in another article, to trace the consequences of this state of parties, and to show how the project of a Coalition Government, including the ablest men of different political connexions, was realised by Mr. Pitt's survivors.

ART. VI. Tom Brown's Schooldays. By AN OLD BOY. 4th edition. Cambridge: 1857.

No

To two books can well be less like each other than Tom 'Brown's Schooldays' and the later volumes of 'Dr. Newman's "Sermons,' but they have one characteristic point of resemblance. Each is a prolonged dramatic aside. Dr. Newman addresses Roman Catholics that Protestants may overhear him, and the Old Boy' speaks to his contemporaries through the medium of his juniors. Like old-fashioned sermons, the book is addressed to two descriptions of persons: boys and men. The part of the book which is addressed to boys is very simple, and we think so good that hardly any praise can be too high for it. The author has succeeded in an attempt in which Miss Edgeworth failed. The weak point of such stories as 'Barring out,' 'Eton Montem,' Frank,' and others in which schoolboys and their doings are put upon the scene, is that they were written by a woman who could only guess at the real character of that most curious phase of society, life at a public school. 'Tom 'Brown,' on the contrary, is the exact picture of the bright side of a Rugby boy's experiences told with a life, a spirit, and a fond minuteness of detail and recollection which is infinitely honourable to the author. Many men have received equally strong impressions from their passage through a public school, but few would, we think, be able to paint them with so much vigour and fidelity. It requires so much courage, so much honesty, so much purity, to traverse that stage of life without doing and suffering many things which make the recollection of it painful, that a man who can honestly describe his school experience in the tone which the author of Tom Brown' maintains throughout this volume without an effort, has a very high claim indeed to the respect and gratitude of his readers. It would be hard to imagine a more cheerful or a more useful lesson to a public school boy. Every corner of the playground, every rule of football, every quaint school usage, almost every room in the schoolhouse, is sketched so boldly and yet

so accurately that Rugboans will, no doubt, be able to realise to themselves every sentence of the book. Even the gentiles of Eton, Harrow, or Winchester, bigoted, as they are sure to be, in favour of their own institutions, cannot fail to see that Tom Brown was a very fine fellow, and that, though he had the misfortune to be at Rugby, they can hardly do better than follow his example in several particulars.

The story itself is so slight that it hardly admits of criticism. It is nothing more than a series of pictures of various parts of boy life. First of all we have the infancy of Tom Brown amongst what were, though under the influence of free trade and scientific agriculture they have almost ceased to be, the Berkshire downs. The charms of open air, springy turf, and rural feasts, glorified by exhibitions of wrestling and backsword; the wisdom of hedge doctors, and the delights of rambling about with village companions after birds' nests or bulrushes, are set forth very picturesquely, but we must say rather tyrannically. It is not every one who has had the good fortune to be born in a country village with its quaint customs and primitive simplicity. The aristocratic contempt which the Old Boy' expresses for such of his juniors as 'go gadding over 'half Europe every holidays' is rather hard upon those who, if they took his advice to find their pleasures at home, would have no amusement more exciting than a visit to Astley's, and no sport more wholesome than fishing in the Serpentine. After a short episode at a private school, which finds little favour in the eyes of his biographer, Tom Brown is transported to Rugby by the orthodox stage coach, the fine old English gentleman of the road. At Rugby a certain Harry East, the fidus Achates of the hero, takes him in hand at once, and introduces him to a football match, which is described in the style of a Homeric battle, and with a certain combination of zest and solemnity which almost makes us suspect that the game was only played last week, and that in some mysterious manner the Old Boy's' whole prospects in life depended on its issue. Its incidents and management are curiously characteristic of the whole system of English public school life. The game is anything but a mere amusement. Indeed, the name can only be applied to so solemn an institution by a classical metaphor. It is an arywv, something between a battle and a sacrifice. Every boy ' in the school must be there.' 'Some of the sixth stop at the 'door to turn the whole string of boys into the close. The 'rest go forwards to see that no one escapes by any of the sidegates.' The two armies are regularly marshalled: there are the goal keepers and their captain; the quarters and their

6

captain; and the players up in their various divisions, each led by its own captain; and last of all comes the great Panjandrum himself, Old Brooke, who is to kick off. How that mighty king of men, and Menelaus his brother, good at need, and Crab Jones, the many counselled, and the swiftfooted East, and the newly arrived Tom Brown, and other stalwart souls of heroes demeaned themselves on the occasion, the Old Boy' relates in a manner half Greek and half Gothic; for if the contest itself is Homeric, the songs and the beer by which it is celebrated in the evening, and the eloquence with which Pater Brooke' exhorts his survivors on the prospect of his own removal from amongst them, are redolent rather of the Walhalla than of the Pantheon.

In the midst of all this glory, valour, and rejoicing, the tidings of our might, the festal city's blaze, and the wine cup crowned in light, some tenderly disposed readers may be inclined to turn a pitying eye on the unfortunates who were forced into playing against their will; and, certainly, though young gentlemen with a proper allowance of muscle and due toughness of lungs may find it both pleasant and profitable to kick and be kicked for the glory of their respective sides, the unlucky boys, 'obliged to stay in goal' and arranged so as to 'occupy the whole space between the goal posts at distances of ' about five yards apart,' would appear to claim some pity. To stand sentry over nothing for a couple of hours, keeping yourself warm by blowing your fingers and stamping your feet, and looking on while others play, is certainly not the liveliest amusement in the world. Such hardships are, however, an essential part of the system. It is the distinctive peculiarity of most of our public schools that the boys voluntarily force each other and themselves to acquire a certain physical training which to a vast proportion of them is the most important branch of their school education. The whole genius of the system is quite opposed to so low a view of the great mysteries of football, cricket, and boating, as that which regards them as mere amusements; they are exercises and tasks, the performance of which is enforced by far stronger sanctions than any which the authorities of the school have it in their power to apply. Even when, as at Eton, no direct force is employed to compel the boys to play at the games of the season, there is an indirect compulsion at least as inexorable. A boy may not be actually obliged to play on any particular occasion; but if he habitually abstains from doing so he becomes a social outcast, and exposes himself to a very strong suspicion of being guilty of the one unpardonable sin-punishable by unlimited thrashing, contempt,