an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds. His education appears to have been further prosecuted afterwards; and he was familiar with the Latin classics, although there is no reason to believe that he had much acquaintance with the Greek. In all our own classical writers he was well versed; and his time was much given to reading them. A correspondence with his nephew, which Lord Grenville published about thirty years ago, showed how simple and classical his tastes were, how affectionate his feelings, and how strong his sense of both moral and religious duty. These letters are reprinted in the present work, because the answers have since been recovered; but it contains a great body of other letters both to and from him. Amongst the latter, are to be found constant tokens of his amiable disposition. The We regard this work, indeed, as one of the greatest value; and hold the editors (of whom Mr. Taylor,* his great-grandson and personal representative, is one) to have formed a wise resolution, both as to their own duty, and the best service they could render at once to the memory of their illustrious ancestor, and to the public interests, by determining to keep back no part of the precious documents intrusted to their care. first volume alone is completed, and lies before us. We understand that four or five more are to follow without much delay. The letters contained in the present volume, though, of course, less interesting than those which may be expected in the sequel, contain, nevertheless, important matter of various kinds, both in Lord Chatham's own letters, and in those of his correspondents. They throw, also, considerable light upon that firm and determined mind, of which we have spoken in the very inadequate attempt to portray his character. The earliest date is 1741, when he was only twentyeight years of age; and they come down to the year 1759. The editor, Mr. Wright, has given full notes, containing exactly the kind of information which the perusal of the letters would set the reader upon seeking, and which he could not find without turning over many books. Nothing, therefore, can be more convenient than the form of the publication. We may somewhat regret its appearing in single volumes; we shall accordingly expect the continuation with impatience; but in the mean-while our readers have a right to be made acquainted with some of the contents of the present volume. There is much allowance to be made for the overdone politeness, and something for the very aristocratic habits of the last age, in observing the intercourse of private society, and the forms, at least, in which it was carried on. This probably, rather than any real This respectable gentleman is grandson of the late Lord Stanhope, being the son of his daughter Lady Lucy, by his first wife, who was the niece of Mr. Pitt, and the grand-daughter of Lord Chatham. humility of disposition, must account for such a style as the following, and similar letters to the Duke of Newcastle; a personage whose wealth and rank, and accidental place at the head of the Whig party, could alone command any portion of respect; for his talents were of the lowest description, and his political life was a mere scene of party-jobbing from first to last. Bath, April 5, 1754. 'My Lord Duke,-I received the honour of your Grace's letter of the 2nd instant yesterday evening, and I take this opportunity of the post, to return you my sincerest, humblest thanks, for the great condescension and very kind manner in which it is written. I should make a very ill return to your Grace's goodness, if I were to go far back into the disagreeable subject that has occasioned you the trouble of writing a long and very obliging letter. Amidst all your business, I should be ashamed to teaze your Grace's good-nature with much repetition of an uneasy subject, and necessarily so stuffed with impertinent egotisms. Whatever my sensations are and must be of my situation, it is sufficient that I have once openly exposed them to your view, as I thought I owed it to your Grace and myself to do. As to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I hope your Grace does not think me filled with so impertinent a vanity, as to imagine it any disparagement to myself to serve under your Grace, as the head of the Treasury. But, my Lord, had I been proposed for that honour, and the King reconciled to the thought of me, my honour would have been saved, and I should have declined it with pleasure in favour of Mr. Legge, from considerations of true regard for his Majesty's service. My health at the best is too unsettled, &c. Very few have been the advantages and honours of my life; but among the first of them, I shall ever esteem the honour of your Grace's favourable opinion. You have tried me, and have not found me deceive you; to this your Grace's favourable opinion and to your protection I recommend myself, and hope that some retreat neither dishonourable nor disagreeable may (when it is practicable) be opened to me.' A like tone, when employed towards Lord Hardwicke, cannot so much surprise any one; although in these days, even towards such a person, the following would be deemed a somewhat exaggerated expression of respect from a person in the commanding position then occupied by Mr. Pitt. 'Bath April 6, 1754. 'My Lord,-No man ever felt an honour more deeply, than I do that of your Lordship's letter. Your great goodness in taking the trouble to write, amidst your perpetual and important business, and the very condescending and infinitely obliging terms, in which your Lordship is pleased to express yourself, could not fail to make impressions of the most sensible kind. I am not only unable to find words to convey my gratitude; but I am much more distressed to find any means of deserving the smallest part of your Lordship's very kind attention and indulgence to a sensibility carried, perhaps, beyond what the cause will justify, in the eye of superior and true wisdom. I venerate so sincerely that judgment, that I shall have the additional unhappiness of standing self-condemned, if my reasons, already laid before your Lordship, continue to appear | We have hitherto had the whole chapter of accidents insufficient to determine me to inaction. 'I am now to ask a thousand most humble pardons of your Lordship for the length, and, I fear, still more for the matter, of this letter. If I am not quite unreasonable, your Lordship's equity and candour will acquit me: if I am so unfortunate as to appear otherwise, where it is my ambition not to be thought wrong, I hope your Lordship's generosity and humanity will, notwithstanding, pardon failings that flow from no ill principle, and that never can shake my unalterable wishes for the quiet and security of Government. This language, however, is ascribable to the fashion of the day; it is that of respect; it may be little more than courtesy. No other feelings are expressed, and no affection is pretended. As much cannot be said of Lord Bute's letters to Lord Chatham; these are in a somewhat fulsome strain of tenderness not altogether usual among statesmen. 'Saturday, March 2, 1757. against us; the time must be at hand for better things. Is there a man of the whole opposite party, that would not abandon his colours, to stand as near the Hope of England as we do? Victory is before us; our enemies know it and tremble. Long may you continue, my dear Pitt, in an office that your parts and good heart adorns; may you be found there at that critical minute than, sooner or later, we are sure (if alive) to meet with: this is the hope, nay, the real comfort of him who will ever share your adversities, and rejoice in your happiness. I am, my dearest friend, most affeetionately yours,' &c. "The 'greater person than either of us,' was, of course, that very honest and sincere character Frederick, Prince of Wales-a man who, even in those times of falsehood, in all its ramifications of intrigue and job, stood unrivalled in the prevailing arts of his age. Lord The following brief letter is not conceived in quite the same style as either of the preceding ones. Exeter had written to complain of his militia regiment being ordered to Bristol, contrary, he said, to an "assurance from Mr. Pitt that they should not.' This was the reply: 'My Lord, 'My dearest Friend, 'I cannot think of interrupting your airing this fine day; yet must pour out my heart in the sincerest congratulations upon the success of your great and most able conduct yesterday.* I have for some time past seen many gloomy and desponding worthy men. With these I have ever insisted, that measures once taken, maturely weighed, and thought the best, the safest, and "The matter of your Lordship's letter surprises me most generous, were to be pursued, let the inconstant as much as the style and manner of it. I never degale of popular favour blow which way it will. Iceive, nor suffer any man to tell me I have deceived know how much we think alike; and you have acted on him. I declare upon my honour, I know nothing of this, as on all other occasions, the part of Horace's the order to march the Rutlandshire militia, if any such "firmum et tenacem propositi virum." You feel the be given. I desire therefore to know what your Lordinward satisfaction arising from it, and have met with ship means by presuming to use the expression of bethe most deserved applause; but had opinions (through ing deceived by me. I am your Lordship's humble W. PITT. suspicion, envy, or the arts of party) taken another servant, turn, I am certain the firm support and countenance of him who is some day to reap the fruits of my friend's unwearied endeavours for the public safety, would make him perfectly easy under the frowns of prejudiced, deluded, fluctuating men. Go on, my dear Pitt: make every bad subject your declared enemy, every honest man your real friend. I, for my part, must desire ever to share with you in both, who am unalterably, your most affectionate friend, and devoted servant.' Again, 'My dear Friend, 'March, 1757. 'I delay going out of town till I hear from your Lordship.' Among the most singular pieces contained in this correspondence is the elaborate and very able despatch of Mr. Pitt to Mr. B. Keene, our Ambassador at Ma drid, instructing him to attempt bringing over Spain from the Family Compact, and making her take part with this country; especially in recovering Minorca, the importance of which he seems to have rated very high. The part of these instructions which will now strike the English and French reader most, is that in which Mr. Pitt authorizes the ambassador to offer the cession of Gibraltar to Spain. This would, no doubt, be held a very impolitic and even a discreditable measure nowadays; but the circumstances are materially changed since the famous defence of that fortress by Elliot has made the honour of our arms and nation be more or less dependent upon its retention; and we may be well assured that Lord Chatham would have been the last person in the country to counsel such a sacrifice had he lived to the present times. In 1757, his colleagues fully concurred with him on this In the House of Commons, on the debate upon the point; and they laid before the King a Cabinet miKing's message for granting 200,000l. for an army of ob-nute, in which the following passage occurs, and of servation, and enabling his Majesty to fulfil his engage which a copy was forwarded to the Ambassador:-'In ments with the King of Prussia. 'I enter heartily into the base, unworthy manner that you have been treated in. Though no perfidy in that quarter will ever surprise me, yet I own I am amazed at the impudence of the assertion. I regret extremely not having had my share in the tragedy. I confess I am anxious about your situation. It is my noblest, best friend's fortune that is at stake; it is mine, nay, 'tis that of a greater person than either of us-of one who knows, who feels your danger, and still looks upon it as his own. I say, I am anxious, my friend, but that is all; far from desponding, I look on all that happens now as the last efforts of a long, adverse fortune. before I agree to any offer of that kind, lest it should be wrongly construed a fear of him; and indeed his political conduct the last winter was so abandoned that he must, in the eyes of the dispassionate, have totally undone all the merit of his former conduct. As to any gratitude to be expected from him or his family, the whole tenor of their lives has shown them void of that most honourable sentiment. But when decrepitude or death puts an end to him as a trumpet of sedition, I shall make no difficulty, in placing the second son's name instead of the father's, and making up the pension 30007.' this necessary view their Lordships most humbly sub-made public; but we can answer for its perfect authenmit their opinion to your Majesty's great wisdom- ticity: The making Lord Chatham's family suffer that overtures of a negotiation should be set on foot for the conduct of their father is not in the least agreewith that Court, in order to engage Spain, if possible, able to my sentiments. But I should choose to know to join their arms to those of your Majesty, for the ob-him to be totally unable to appear on the public stage taining a just and honourable peace, and mainly for recovering and restoring to the crown of England the most important island of Minorca, with all the forts and fortresses of the same, as well as for re-establishing some solid system in Europe; and inasmuch as it shall be found necessary for the attaining these great and essential ends, to treat with the Crown of Spain as an effectual condition thereunto, concerning an exchange of Gibraltar for the island of Minorca, with the ports and fortresses thereof, their Lordships are most humbly of an unanimous opinion, that the Court of Spain should, without loss of time, be sounded with respect to their dispositions thereupon; and if the same should all be found favourable, that the said negotiation should be carried forward and ripened for execution, with all possible despatch and secrecy.' It may be added that General Wall, the Spanish Prime Minister, received this proposal, according to Sir B. Keene's report of his conference, with cool politeness;' and showed no disposition at all to quit the French alliance. From so unpleasing a picture of the Monarch, let us turn to view the great Statesman's amiable feelings in private life, as depicted in the following letter to his wife. It is contained in the present volume. 'My dear Love, 'Hayes, Saturday, July 1, 1758. after a journey which the little rain must have made 'I hope this letter will find you safe arrived at Stowe, pleasant. Hayes is as sweet with these showers as it can be without the presence of her who gives to every In the following letter, Lord Bute, then prime cour-sweet its best sweetness. The loved babes are delighttier, and indeed Governor of the young Prince, afterwards so well known as George III., thus mentions him to Mr. Pitt: 'Friday, August 5, 1757. 'My Dearest Friend, I heartily thank you for giving me this early notice of this event;* for, terrible as it is, certain knowledge is better than uncertain rumours. I do not know that, in my life, I ever felt myself so affected with any foreign transaction. Oh, my dear friend, what dreadful auspices do we begin with! and yet, thank God, I see you in office. If ever the wreck of this crown can be preserved to our amiable young Prince, 'tis to your efforts, your abilities, my dear Pitt, that he must owe it. Let what will happen, one thing comforts me: I know you have a soul fit for these rough times; that, instead of sinking under adversity, will rise and grow stronger against it. 'Farewell, my dearest friend. No event shall ever make me cease to be one minute most affectionately, most sincerely, yours,' &c. &c. fully well, and remembered dear mamma over their strawberries; they both looked for her in the prints, and told me "Mamma gone up there-Stowe Garden." As the showers seem local, I may suppose my sweet love enjoying them with a fine evening sun, and finding beauties of her acquaintances grown up into higher perfection, and others before unkown to her and still so to me, accomplishing the total charms. "The messenger is just arrived, and no news. Expectation grows every hour into more anxiety-the fate of Louisburgh and of Olmutz probably decided, though the event unknown-the enterprise crowned with success or baffled, at this moment-and indications of a second battle towards the Rhine. I trust, my life, in the same favouring Providence that all will be well, and that this almost degenerate England may learn from the disgrace and ruin it shall have escaped, and the consideration and security it may enjoy, to be more deserving of the blessing. 'Sister Mary's letter of yesterday will have carried down the history of Hayes to last night; and the continuator of this day has the happiness to assure my The following remarkable letter is from the self-sweetest love of the health of its inhabitants, young same amiable young Prince,' when he had nearly ruined his country by his senseless and obstinate bigotry about America. It certainly breathes a spirit 4. the reverse of 'amiable.' He is writing in answerto Lord North's proposal for putting Mr. William Pitt's name in Lord Chatham's pension. The letter is not contained in the work before us; nor has it ever been and old. The young are so delightfully noisy that I hardly know what I write. My most affectionate compliments to all the congress. Your ever loving hus band.' The short notices which follow are not a little curious. Dr. Markham, afterwards Archbishop of York, in a letter to the Duchess of Queensbury, solicited her * The defeat of the Duke of Cumberland by Marshal Grace to apply to Mr. Pitt for a Consulship, which the D'Etrees at Hastenbach, on the 25th of July; in conse- Doctor says a worthy friend of his much desired. This quence of which the city of Hanover was taken posses-friend was no less a man than Edmund Burke! It is sion of by the French. VOL. XXXIV.-SEPTEMBER, 1838. 9 time,' says Dr. Markham, 'I should say who my friend | very generally prevalent, that this great man, at one is. His name is Edmund Burke-as a literary man he may possibly be not quite unknown to you. He is the author of a piece which imposed on the world as Lord Bolingbroke's, called, 'The advantages of Natural Society,' and of a very ingenious book, published last year, called, a "Treatise on the Sublime and the Beautiful.' These melancholy and striking lines-the last that General Wolfe wrote to his patron-were penned only four days before his glorious death: 'I am so far recovered as to do business; but my constitution is entirely ruined, without the consolation of having done any considerable service to the state; or without any prospect of it.' The King of Prussia's opinion of Mr. Pitt is given in some very remarkable expressions, in an extract of a letter from Sir A. Mitchell, the British envoy at Berlin:-A few days before his Prussian Majesty left the camp of Schmotseiffen in order to fight the Russians, talking at table of England, he said-"Il faut avouer que L'Angleterre a été longtems en travail, et qu'elle a beaucoup soufferte pour produire Monsieur Pitt; mais enfin elle est accouchée d'un Homme.' Such a testimony, from such a Prince, crowns you with honour, and fills me with pleasure.' We shall close our extracts with the following letter, which was written by Mr. Pitt to the Prussian Monarch, in January 1759: 'Sire, La lettre qui me comble de glorie, et que votre Majesté a daigné me faire de la même main qui fait le salut de l'Europe, m'ayant penetré de sentimens au dessus de toute expression, il ne me reste qu'à supplier votre Majesté, qu'elle veuille bien permettre qu'au défaut de paroles, j'aye recours aux foibles efforts d'un zèle inalterable pour ses interêts, et que j'aspire à rendre ma vie entière l'interprète d'un cœur rempli d'admiration, et profondement touché de la plus vive, et de la plus respectueuse reconnoissance. En vous dédiant, Sire, un devouement de la sorte, je ne fais qu'obéir aux volontés du Roi, qui n'exige rien tant de ceux qui ont l'honneur de servir sa Majesté dans ses affaires, que de travailler avec passion à rendre indissolubles les liens d'une union si heureuse entre les deux Cours. 'Agréez, Sire, qu'animé de ces vues je fasse des vœux pour les jours de votre Majesté, et qu'en tremblant, je la suive en idée, dans la carrière d'actions merveilleuses qui se succedent continuellement, sans cesser, toutefois, d'être prodiges; et que j'ose supplier très humblement votre Majesté, qu'au milieu de tous ses travaux, elle veuille bien songer, un moment, à me continuer la gloire et le bien inestimable de cette protection, qu'elle m'a fait la grace de m'accorder. Je suis, avec le plus profond respect, Sire, de votre Majesté, 'Le très humble et très obéissant serviteur, 'W. PITT.' No notice has been taken in this article of a report period of his life, laboured under a degree of irritation amounting to mental disease. That the evidence of this is drawn from suspicious sources-the remains of his political and even personal antagonists-is certain. But an historical sketch of his character could hardly be exempt from the charge of imperfection, if not of partiality, which should avoid all notice of the subject. That he laboured under some depression of spirits, aggravated, in all probability, by the treatment which he had experienced from inferior minds, devoid of all gratitude for his former services, and all due appreciation of his great capacity, may readily be admitted. It is also the fact, that through repeated attacks of an hereditary gout, to which he was from his early age a martyr, he experienced great irritability during the same period, namely, that of his last Administration. The intrigues of his Cabinet, his unhappy differences with George Grenville first, and afterwards with Lord Temple also, his brothers-in-law, together with the admitted severity of his gout during the time in question, will sufficiently explain the reluctance which he showed to engage in business, to attend Cabinet meetings, and to present himself at Court. The remaining circumstances relied upon, as his squandering away the ample legacy of Sir William Pynsent, and his impetuous proceedings in carrying on improvements at his Kentish villa, with no regard to expense, and even little attention to the period of the day or night when he required the work to be done,—may all be well accounted for by the known ardour of his disposition; and are truly to be reckoned among the natural ebullitions of the same vehement determination of purpose which, exerted upon greater things, formed the leading feature of his commanding character. The same kind of charge has been made against Napoleon, from the like overflowings having been remarked of a genius grand, and consistently grand, while it occupied only channel; and imputations of this kind, it must proper be observed, are always acceptable to those who envy the greatness which they cannot aspire to emulate, and misconstrue actions which they cannot comprehend. its From the Edinburgh Review. CHARACTER OF M. TALLEYRAND. The calumny which we have been exposing brings us naturally to the contemplation of that remarkable person who is the object of its attack; and among the many that have figured in modern times, we shall in vain look for any one who presents a more interesting subject of study. His whole history was marked with strange peculiarities, from the period of infancy to the said himself, had come back from their long exile without having either learnt or forgotten any thing, deemed it prudent to lay upon the shelf the ablest and most experienced man in the country, that their councils might have the benefit of being swayed by the Polignacs and other imbecile creatures of their legitimate Court.* But it is from this constant employment of M. Talleyrand that the principal charge against the integrity of his political character has been drawn. The Chief latest scenes of a life protracted to extreme, but vigorous and undecayed, old age. Born to represent one of the most noble families in France, an accident struck him with incurable lameness; and the cruel habits of their pampered caste made his family add to this infliction the deprivation of his rank as eldest son. He was thus set aside for a brother whose faculties were far more crippled by nature than his own bodily frame had been by mischance; and was condemned to the ecclesiastical state, by way of at once providing for him, and getting rid of him. A powerful house, how-Minister and Councillor of the Directory, he became ever, could not find in Old France much difficulty in suddenly the chief adviser of the Consular Governsecuring promotion for one of its members in the ment. When Napoleon took the whole power to himchurch; be his disposition towards its duties ever so self he continued his Minister. When the indepenreluctant, or his capacity for performing them ever so dence of Switzerland was rudely invaded, he still preslender. The young Perigord was soon raised over sided over the department of Foreign Affairs. When the heads of numberless pious men, and profound the child and champion of Jacobinism had laid his theologians, and became Bishop of Autun, at an age parent prostrate in the dust, clothed himself with the when he had probably had little time for reflection Imperial purple, maltreated the Pope, and planted the upon his clerical functions, amidst the dissipations of iron crown of Italy on his brow, the republican exthe French capital; into which neither his personal bishop remained in his service. When he who aftermisfortune, nor the domestic deposition occasioned by wards so eloquently avowed, that 'General, Consul, it, had prevented him from plunging with all the zeal Emperor, he owed all to the people,' studied to disof his strenuous and indomitable nature. His abilities charge that debt by trampling on every popular right, were of the highest order; and the brilliancy with the advocate of freedom was still to be seen by his which they soon shone out, was well calculated to side, and holding the pen through which all the Resecure his signal success in Parisian society, where his scripts of despotic power flowed. When the adopted rank would alone have gained him a high place; but Frenchman, who, with the dying accents of the same where talents also, even in the humblest station, never powerful and racy eloquence, desired that 'his ashes failed to rise in the face of the aristocratic genius of might repose near the stream of the Seine, among the the place,' and the habits of a nation of courtiers. people whom he had so much loved,' was testifying The great event of modern times now converted all the warmth of his affection by such tokens as the Frenchmen into politicians-gave to state affairs the merciless conscription, and breathing out his tenderundisturbed monopoly of interest which the pleasures ness in proclamations of war that wrapped all France of society had before enjoyed-and armed political and all Europe in flame-the philosophic statesman,— talents with the influence which the higher accom- the friend of human improvement, the philanthropist plishments of refined taste and elegant manners had who had speculated upon the nature of man, and the hitherto possessed undivided and`almost uncontrolled. structure of government in both worlds, and had quitM. Talleyrand did not long hesitate in choosing his ted his original profession because its claims were part. He sided with the Revolution party, and con- inimical to the progress of society,-continued intinued to act with them; joining those patriotic mem-separably attached to the person of the military ruler, bers of the clerical body who gave up their revenues the warrior tyrant; and although he constantly tenderto the demands of the country, and sacrificed their exclusive privileges to the rights of the community. But when the violence of the Republican leaders, disdaining all bounds of prudence, or of justice, or of humanity, threatened to involve the whole country in anarchy and blood, he quitted the scene; and retired first to this country, where he passed a year or two, and then to America, where he remained until the more regular government of the Executive Directory tempered the violence of the Revolution, and restored order to the State. Since that period, he always filled the highest stations either at home or in the diplomatic service, except during a part of the Restoration Government, when the incurable folly of those Princes who, as he ed sounder advice than ever was followed, never scrupled to be the executor of Ordinances which he then most disapproved. The term of boundless, unreflecting, and miscalculating ambition was hastened by its excesses; Napoleon was defeated; foreign powers occupied France; and the Emperor's Minister joined them to restore the Bourbons. With them he acted for some time, nor quitted them until they disclosed the self-destructive bent of their feeble and unprincipled minds,-to rule by tools incapable of any acts but those of sycophancy and prostration, and ani * His resignation in 1815-16 was owing to the praiseworthy cause already stated; but the Bourbons never sought to draw him afterwards from his retirement. |