but those rather who deemed my sentiments worth discussion, and who corrected me with frankness and affability.

Cæsar. Lucullus! you perhaps have taken the wiser and better part, certainly the pleasanter. I can not argue with you: I would gladly hear one who could, but you again more gladly. I should think unworthily of you if I thought you capable of yielding or receding. I do not even ask you to keep our conversation long a secret; so greatly does it preponderate in your favour; so much more of gentleness, of eloquence, and of argument. I came hither with one soldier, avoiding the cities, and sleeping at the villa of a confidential friend. To-night I sleep in yours, and, if your dinner does not disturb me, shall sleep soundly. You go early to rest, I know.

Lucullus. Not however by daylight. Be assured, Caius Julius, that greatly as your discourse afflicts me, no part of it shall escape my lips. If you approach the city with arms, with arms I meet you; then your denouncer and enemy, at present your host and confidant.

Casar. I shall conquer you.

Lucullus. That smile would cease upon it: you sigh already.

Cæsar. Yes, Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall overcome my oppressor: I know my army and myself. A sigh escaped me; and many more will follow: but one transport will rise amid them, when, vanquisher of my enemies and avenger of my dignity, I press again the hand of Lucullus, mindful of this day.

MR. PITT AND MR. CANNING.

Pitt. Dear Canning, my constitution is falling to pieces, as fast as your old friend Sheridan would tell you, the constitution of the country is, under my management. Of all men living, you are the person I am most desirous to appoint my successor. My ambition is unsatisfied, while any doubt of my ability to accomplish it remains upon my mind. Nature has withholden from me the faculty of propagating my species: nor do I at all repine at it, as many would do: since every great man must have some imbecile one very near him, if not next to him, in descent.

Canning. I am much flattered, sir, by your choice of me, there being so many among your relatives who might expect it for themselves. However, this is only another instance of your great disinterestedness.

room; I would advise you never to speak until you have thoroughly learnt your sentences. Do not imagine that, because I have the gift of extemporary eloquence, you have the same. No man ever possessed it in the same degree, excepting the two fanatics, Wesley and Whitfield.

Canning. In the same degree certainly not; but many in some measure.

Pitt. Some measure is not enough. Canning. Excuse me: Mr. Fox possessed it greatly, though not equally with you, and found it enough for his purpose.

Pitt. Fox foresaw, as any man of acuteness may do, the weaker parts of the argument that would be opposed to him, and he always learnt his replies: I had not time for it. I owe everything to the facility and fluency of my speech, excepting Pitt. You may consider it in that light if you the name bequeathed me by my father and, will: but you must remember that those who although I have failed in everything I undertook, have exercised power long together and without and have cast in solid gold the clay colossus of control, seldom care much about affinities. The France, people will consider me after my death as Mamelukes do not look out for brothers and the most extraordinary man of my age. cousins: they have favourite slaves who leap into their saddles when vacant.

Canning. Do you groan at this? or does the pain in your bowels grow worse? Shall I lift up Canning. Among the rich families, or the the cushion of your other chair yonder? ancient aristocracy of the kingdom...

Pitt. Hold your tongue! prythee hold your tongue! I hate and always hated these. I do not mean the rich they served me. I mean the old houses they overshadowed me. There is hardly one however that I have not disgraced or degraded; and I have filled them with smoke and sore eyes by raising a vassal's hut above them.

I desire to be remembered as the founder of a new system in England: I desire to bequeath my office by will, a verbal one: and I intend that you, and those who come after you, shall do the same!

As you are rather more rash than I could wish, and allow your words to betray your intentions; and as sometimes you run counter to them in your hurry to escape from them, having thrown them out foolishly where there was no occasion nor

Pitt. Oh! oh!

Canning. I will make haste, and then soften by manipulation those two or three letters of condolence.

Pitt. Oh! oh! ... next to that cursed fellow who foiled me with his broken weapon, and befooled me with his half-wit, Bonaparte.

Canning. Be calmer, sir! be calmer.

Pitt. The gout and stone be in him! Port wine and Cheltenham-water! An Austrian wife, Italian jealousy, his country's ingratitude, and his own ambition, dwell with him everlastingly.

Canning. Amen! let us pray!

Pitt. Upon my soul, we have little else to do. I hardly know where we can turn ourselves. Canning. Hard indeed! when we can not do that!

Be comforted, sir! The worse the condition of

Pitt. If they should ever be strong again, they of mine. You are soberer than I am: but! would crush us.

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better for it: a pop-gun must have a pellet at both ends."

Ah, Canning! why have I not remembered my father as perfectly in better things? I have none of his wit, little of his wisdom: but all his experience, all his conduct, were before me and within my reach. I will not think about him now, when it would vex and plague me.

Canning. It is better to think of ourselves than of others; to consider the present as everything, the past and future as nothing.

you will become prime minister; you will then have plenty of folks ready to lie for you; and it would be as ungentlemanly to lie yourself as to powder your own hair or tie your own shoe-string. I usually had Dundas at my elbow, who never lied but upon his honour, or supported the lie but upon his God. As for the more delicate duty of prevarication, take up those letters of inquiry and condolence, whether you have rubbed the seals off or not in your promptitude to serve me, and lay them carefully by; and some years hence, when anyone exclaims, "What would Mr. Pitt have said!" bring out one from your pocket, and cry, "This is the last letter his hand, stricken by death, could trace." Another time you may open... I am delighted at finding that the very idea one from Burke, some thirty years after the supposed receipt of it, and say modestly, "Never but on this momentous occasion did that great man write to me. He foretold, in the true spirit of prophecy, all our difficulties." But remember; do not quote him upon finance; else the House will laugh at you. For Burke was as unable to cast up a tailor's bill, as Sheridan is to pay it.

Pitt. In fact, they are nothing: they do not exist: what does not exist, is nothing. Canning. Supposing me to be prime minister

has given a fresh serenity to your countenance. Pitt. Because it makes me feel my power more intensely than ever; or at least makes me fancy I feel it. By my means, by my authority, you are to become the successor of a Shelburne, of a Rockingham, and a Chatham.

Canning. Sir, I request you to consider... Pitt. Whether I have the right of alluding to what all have the right of recollecting, and which right all will exercise. I wish you as well as if, by some miracle in my favour, I had been enabled to beget you that which I hope to do is hardly less miraculous; and, if I did not bring to my mind what you are, I should not feel what I am. Do not you partake of the sentiment? Would it be any great marvel or great matter, if the descendant of some ancient family stepped up to the summit of power; even with clean boots on? You must take many steps, and some very indirect ones; all which will only raise you in your own esteem, if you think like a politician.

You are prone to be confident and overweening. Be cautious not to treat parliament as you may fancy it deserves, and not to believe that you have bought votes when you have paid the money for them.

Canning. Why, sir?

I was about to give you another piece of advice, which on recollection I find to be superfluous. Surely my head sympathises very powerfully with my stomach, which the physicians tell me is always the case, though not so much with us in office as with the honourable gentlemen out. I was on the point of advising you never to neglect the delivery of long speeches: the minister who makes short speeches enjoys short power. Now, although I have constantly been in the habit of saying a great deal more than was requisite to the elucidation of my subject, for the same reason as hares, when pursued, run over more ground than would bring them into their thickets, I would have avoided it with you, principally to save my breath. You can no more stop when you are speaking, than a ball can stop on an inclined plane. You bounce at every impediment, and run on; often with the very thing in your mouth that the most malicious of your adversaries would cast against you; and showing what you would conceal, and concealing what you would show. This is of no ill consequence to a minister: it goes for sincerity and plain dealing. It would never have done at Christ-church or Eton: for boys dare detect anything, and laugh with all their hearts. I think it was my father who told me (if it was not my father I forget who it was) that a minister must have two gifts: the gift of places and the gift of the gab. Perfectly well do I remember his defence of this last expression, which somebody at table, on another occasion, called a vulgarism. At the end of the debate on it, he asked the gentleman whether all things ought not to have names; whether there was any better for this; and whether the learning and ingenuity of the company could invent one. Whenever the liberty or restriction of the press The importance of the faculty was admirably is in debate, you will do wisely to sport a few exhibited, he remarked, by the word gift: he touches of wit, or to draw out a few sentences of then added, with a smile, "The alliteration itself declamation on blasphemy and blasphemers. I has its merit: these short sayings are always the have observed by the countenances of country

Pitt. Because it will be expected of you in addition to speak for a given space of time. The people must be made to believe that their representatives are persuaded: and a few plain words are never thought capable of effecting this. Your zeal and anxiety to leave no scruple on the mind of any reasonable man, must be demonstrated by protestations and explanations; and your hatred of those who obscure the glory of England, in their attempts to throw impediments in your way, must burst forth vehemently, and stalk abroad, and now and then put on a suit that smells of gunpowder.

Canning. I have no objection to that.

Pitt. It saves many arguments, and stops more; and in short is the only comprehensible kind of political economy.

gentlemen, that there is something horrifying in the sound of the word, something that commands silence.

Pitt. I hope you will be rather more retentive; and remember at what time you are to lament, as well as at what time you are to joke and

Canning. I do not well understand the mean- banter. On these occasions, lower your voice, ing of it.

Pitt. Why should you? Are you to understand the meaning of everything you talk about? If you do, you will not be thought deep. Be fluent, and your audience will be over head and ears in love with you. Never stop short, and you will never be doubted. To be out of breath is the only sign of weakness that is generally understood in a chancellor of the exchequer. The bets, in that case, are instantly against him, and the sounder in wind carries off the king's plate.

Canning. I am aware that to talk solemnly of blasphemy, gives a man great weight at the time, and leaves it with him. But if a dissenter or a lawyer should ask me for a definition of a blasphemer?

Pitt. Wish the lawyer more prudence, and the dissenter more grace. Appeal to our forefathers. Canning. To which of them? The elder would call the younger so, and the younger the elder. Pitt. Idiots! but go on.

Canning. In our own days the Lutheran denounces the Unitarian for it: he retorts the denunciation. The Catholic comes between, to reconcile and reclaim them. At first he simmers; then he bubbles and boils; at last, inflamed with charity, he damns them both. "To you, adopted heir of the Devil and Perdition," says he to the believer in God's unity, "it would be folly and impiety to listen a moment longer. And you, idle hair-splitter, are ignorant, or pretend to be, that transubstantiation rests upon the same authority as trinitarianism. The one doctrine shocks the senses, the other shocks the reason: both require to be shocked, that faith may be settled."

assume an air of disdain or pity, bless God that such is the peculiar happiness of our most favoured country, every man may enjoy his opinion in security and peace.

Canning. But some, I shall be reminded, have been forced to enjoy it in solitude and prison.

Pitt. Never push an argument or a remark too far: and take care to have a fellow behind you who knows when to cry question! question! As for reminding, those only whom you forget, will remind you of anything. Others will give you full credit for the wisdom of all your plans, the aptness of all your replies, the vivacity of all your witticisms, and the rectitude of all your intentions.

Canning. Unless it should fatigue you, sir, will you open your views of domestic polity a little wider before me?

Pitt. Willingly. Never choose colleagues for friendship or wisdom. If friends, they will be importunate: if wise, they may be rivals. Choose them for two other things quite different; for tractability and connections. A few men of business, quite enough for you, may be picked up anywhere on the road-side. Be particular in selecting for all places and employments the handsomest young men, and those who have the handsomest wives, mothers, and sisters. Every one of these brings a large party with him; and it rarely happens that any such is formidable for mental prowess. The man who can bring you three votes, is preferable to him who can bring you thrice your own quantity of wisdom. For, although in private life we may profit much by the acquisition of so much more of it than we had ourselves, yet in public we know not what Very like your Saint Augustin," interposes to do with it. Often it stands in our way; often the Unitarian: "he should have written this. it hides us; sometimes we are oppressed by it. When Faith enters the school-room, Reason must Oppose in all elections the man, whatever may be not whisper if she might, she would say per- his party or principles, who is superior to yourself haps, the question is, whether the senses or arithmetic be the most liable to error."

Sir! sir!" cries again the catholic, "you have no right to bring any question into the house of God without his leave, nor to push your sharp stick against the bellies of his sheep, making them shove one another and break the fold." Pitt. Do not run wild in this way, retailing the merriment of your Oxford doctors in their snug parties. Such, I am sure, it must be for you have not had time to read anything since you left Eton : you think but little, and that little but upon youself: nor has indeed the wing of your wit either such a strength of bone in it or such a vividness of plumage.

Canning. I don't know that. I must confess, however, I drew a good deal both of my wit and my divinity from our doctors, when they had risen twice or thrice from the bottle, and turned their backs on us from the corner of the room.

in attainments, particularly in ratiocination and eloquence. Bring forward, when places are found for all the men of rank who present themselves, those who believe they resemble you; young declaimers, young poets, young critics, young satirists, young journalists, young magazine-men, and young lampooners and libellers: that is, those among them who have never been more than ducked and cudgelled. Every soul of them will hope to succeed you by adoption.

My father made this remark *, in his florid way. When an insect dips into the surface of a stream, it forms a circle round it, which catches a quick radiance from the sun or moon, while the stiller water on every side flows without any; in like manner a small politician may attract the notice of the king or people, by putting into

Pitt's father never made it: but it was necessary to attribute it to some other person than Pitt himself.

Canning. What! even when they can get nothing and want nothing from you?

motion the pliant element about him; while to me after my death, as the most honest man quieter men pass utterly away, leaving not that ever lived. even this weak impression, this momentary sparkle. On which principle Dundas used to say, "Keep shoving, keep shoving!" I do not know whether the injunction was taken by all his acquaintance in the manner and in the direction he intended.

A great deal has been spoken, in the House and out of the House, on parliamentary reform.

Canning. I have repeatedly said that without it there is no salvation for the country: this is embarrassing.

Pitt. Not at all: oppose it: say you have changed your mind: let that serve for your reason; and do not stumble upon worse by running against an adversary. You will find the country going on just as it has gone on.

Canning. Bad enough; God knows!

Pitt. But only for the country. People will see that the fields and the cattle, the streets and the inhabitants, look as usual. The houses stand, the chimneys smoke, the pavements hold together: this will make them wonder at your genius in keeping them up, after all the prophecies they have heard about their going down. Men draw their ideas from sight and hearing. They do not know that the ruin of a nation is in its probity, its confidence, its comforts. While they see every day the magnificent equipages of contractors and brokers, read of sumptuous dinners given by cabinet-ministers and army agents, and are invited to golden speculations in the East and in the West, they fancy there is an abundance of prosperity and wealth; whereas, in fact, it is in these very places that wealth and prosperity are shut up, accumulated, and devoured.

Pitt. They want from me more than you are aware of: they want my example to stand upon. They will take their aim against our country from behind my statue.

Canning. She has fleshier parts about her than the heel, and their old snags will stick tight in them till they rattle in the coffin.

Pitt. Do not disturb them. You may give over your dalliance with reform whenever you are tired of it. You did not begin as a states-man but as a states-boy: you were under me and you can not act more wisely than by telling folks that I had seen my error in the latter part of my life.

Canning. Perhaps they will not believe me. Pitt. Likely enough! but courtesy and interest will require their acquiescence, and they will act as if they did. The noisiest of the opposition are the lawyers; partly from rudeness, partly from rapacity. Lay it down as a rule for your conduct, that the most honest one in parliament is as indifferent about his party as about his brief: whoever offers him his fee has him. Of these there is hardly an individual who had any more of a qualification than you or I had: yet they assume it, as well as we. Is there in this no fallacy, no fraud? Some of them were so wretchedly poor, that a borrowed watch-key hung from a broken shoestring at their tattered fob; and when they could obtain on credit a yard of damaged muslin for their noses, they begged a pinch of snuff at the next box they saw open, and sneezed that they might reasonably display their acquisition.

Canning. I wonder that these people should cry out so loudly for a fairer representation.

Pitt. Some have really the vanity to believe that they would be chosen, and might choose their colleagues; others follow orders; the greater part wish no such thing; and, if they thought it likely to succeed, would never call for it. The fact is this: the most honest and independent members of parliament are elected by the rotten boroughs. They pay down their own money, and give their own votes: they are not subservient to the aristocracy nor to the treasury. The same can not be said on any other description of members. I never ventured to make such a remark in parliament. The people would be alarmed and struck with horror, if you clearly showed that the very best part of their representation is founded on nothing sounder than on rank corruption. Perhaps I am imprudent in suggesting the fact to you, knowing your diabetes of mind, and having found that your tongue is as easily set in motion, and as unconsciously, as the head of a mandarin on the chimney-piece at an inn.

I deferred from session to session a reform in parliament; because, having sworn to promote it by all the means in my power, I did not wish to seem perjured to the people. In the affair of Maidstone nobody could prove me so I only swore I had forgotten what nobody but myself could swear that I remembered. It was evident to the whole world that I was a perjured man; it was equally that I was a powerful one: and the same nation which would have sent another to the pillory, sent me to the Privy Council. It is inconceivable to you what pleasure I felt in committing it, when I reflected on the difference it proved between me and people in general. But beware of fancying you resemble me. My father's crutch was my sceptre, and it will fall into the grave with me. There is no bequeathing or devising this part of the inheritance. I improved it not a little. My adherents at Maidstone thought my father would have hesitated to forget so bravely. Appearances were against me. The main object of my early life, what I had repeated every day, what brought me into credit and into power, was unlikely to escape my memory in an instant; and in the midst of those who at that time had surrounded me, applauded me, and fol- Pitt. It is then unnecessary to remind you that lowed me. Yet bishops and chancellors will drink | you want only a numerical majority. Talents

Cease to be speculative.

Canning. We cease to be speculative when we touch the object.