quick apprehension, commercial and political knowledge of Johnstone; the constitutional principles, legal precision, readiness, acuteness, and vigour of Dunning: the extensive, accurate, and multifarious knowledge; the brilliant, variegated, and grand imagery; the luminous illustration; the rapid invention; the clear, strong, diversified, abundant reasoning; the comprehensive and expanded philosphy of Burke.

A personage was now rising to the first rank, in the first assembly in the world, who must have held a very exalted situation in any assembly of statesmen and orators that it ever contained.-Charles James Fox, the second son of Henry, afterwards Lord Holland, by Lady Georgina, sister to the Duke of Richmond, was born January 24th, 1749. His father soon perceived the superiority of his intellectual powers, and spared no pains on his education. Mr. Fox made it a rule, in the tuition of his children, to follow and regulate, but not to restrain nature. At table, Charles, when a boy, was permitted to

enter into the conversation of men, and acquitted himself to the astonishment of all present. Perhaps the early habit of thinking with freedom, and speaking with readiness, may have contributed to that prompt exertion of his great talents, which makes a considerable part of his senatorial excellence. Perhaps it, on the other hand, conduced to the hasty consideration which he not unfrequently bestows on a subject; and from which he views it too cursorily, without employing his powers in investigating and probing it to the bottom. His father's indulgence to his favourite Charles sometimes led the youth to petulance. One day, Lady Georgina saying something on a subject of Roman history, which Charles perceived to be erroneous, he immediately asked, with much contempt, what she knew about the Romans? and with more knowledge and force of argument, than filial reverence, he demonstrated her error :-nor did his father chide his forwardness. When Mr. Fox was Secretary of State, young Charles used to read his dispatches; and when not ten years

of age, one day told his father that a paper; which he had just read, was too feeble, and threw it into the fire. The Secretary made out another copy, without the slightest reprimand. Most parents would agree in thinking that the father's indulgence, even to Charles Fox, was excessive. Few, very few, can have an opportunity of ascertaining its effects on sUCH A SUBJECT.

When fourteen years of age, his father, just created Lord Holland, carried Charles to Spa, and allowed him five guineas a night for a Pharo-bank, an allowance which probably generated his propensity to gaming.

At Eton, Charles's literary acquirements were far beyond those of his contemporaries, although several of them were excellent scholars. His attainments were not the effects of habitual application, but of the occasional exercise of extraordinary powers. He very early discovered a strong bias to pleasure and dissipation. This inclination was increased by his father, who lavishly

supplied him with such sums as invited extravagance. The profusion of young Fox was unbounded, and long before he was of age he had expended most enormous sums.

At Oxford, his talents and learning created admiration and even astonishment. Although his time seemed devoted to gaming, and every other species of dissipation, he excelled all of his standing in literary acquirements: he was a profound classical scholar; he read Aristotle's Ethics and Politics with considerable case. His favourite authors were Demosthenes and Homer. *

* He has retained through life his knowledge of the Greek language, and is still particularly conversant with Homer. He can discuss the works of the bard, not only as a man of exquisite taste, and as a philosophical critic, which from such a mind might be expected, but as a grammarian. No professed philologist can more accurately know the phraseology and versification of the poet. One day, a clergyman, eminent for knowledge of the Greek language, was attempting to prove that a verse in one of the books of the Iliad was not genuine, because it contained measures not used by Homer. Mr. Fox instantly recited twenty other verses of the same measure, to shew that deviation from the usual feet did not imply interpolation.

History, ethics, and politics, were his favourite studies; and he seems early to have considered himself as destined to be a senator and a statesman. He staid but a short time at Oxford, made the tour of Europe; and though he plunged into every excess into which the pleasurable regions of the South allure Britons in the hey-day of youth, he acquired an extensive and profound knowledge of the constitution, laws, government, nature, arts, and manners of the several countries which he visited. He, like Alcibiades, surpassed all of his age in the force and versatility of his genius, and in the intemperance of his conduct.

In the twentieth year of his age he procured a seat in Parliament; and, young as he was, distinguished himself among the

He, indeed, could converse with a Longinus, on Homer's beauty, sublimity, and pathetic; with an Aristotle, on his exhibitions of man; and with a pedagogue, on his dialects, his dactyls, spondees, and anapaests. Such is the rapidity with which Fox darts into a subject, that he can meet men of the greatest knowledge, on at least equal terms, on their peculiar studies,