topographer and antiquary. His British Topog-fore, is correctly what I just now stated it to be-Could raphy, Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, Mr Hastings have been condemned to infamy for writing his enlarged edition of Camden's Britannia, and this book? various other works, evince great research and untiring industry. His valuable collection of books and manuscripts he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

LORD ERSKINE.

was

The published Speeches of THOMAS, LORD ERSKINE (1750-1823), are among the finest specimens we have of English forensic oratory. Erskine was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. He served both in the navy and army, but threw up his commission in order to study law, and was called to the bar in his twenty-eighth year. His first speech, delivered in November 1778, in defence of Captain Baillie, lieutenantgovernor of Greenwich Hospital (who charged with libel), was so brilliant and successful as at once to place him above all his brethren of the bar. In 1783 he entered parliament as member for Portsmouth. The floor of the House of Commons, it has been said, is strewed with the wreck of lawyers' reputations, and Erskine's appearances there were, comparatively, failures. In 1806 he was made Lord Chancellor and created Baron Erskine. He enjoyed the Great Seal but for a short time, having retired in 1807 on the dissolution of the Whig ministry. After this he withdrew in great measure from public life, though mingling in society, where his liveliness and wit, his vanity and eccentricities, rendered him a favourite. In 1817 he published a political fragment, entitled Armata, in which are some good observations on constitutional law and history. We subjoin extracts from Erskine's speech in defence of John Stockdale, December 9, 1789. Stockdale had published a defence of Warren Hastings, written by the Rev. John Logan, which, it was said, contained libellous observations upon the House of Commons.

On the Law of Libel.

Gentlemen, I tremble with indignation to be driven to put such a question in England. Shall it be endured, that a subject of this country may be impeached by the Commons for the transactions of twenty years-that the accusation shall spread as wide as the region of lettersthat the accused shall stand, day after day and year after year, as a spectacle before the public, which shall be kept in a perpetual state of inflammation against him; yet that he shall not, without the severest penalties, be permitted to submit anything to the judgment of mankind in his defence? If this be law (which it is for you to-day to decide), such a man has no trial. That great a court, but an altar; and an Englishman, instead of hall, built by our fathers for English justice, is no longer being judged in it by God and his country, is a victim and a sacrifice.

On the Government of India.

The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilisation, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature. To be governed at all, they must be governed by a rod of iron; lost to Great Britain, if skill and military prowess had and our empire in the East would long since have been not united their efforts to support an authority, which Heaven never gave, by means which it never can sanction.

Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject; and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself amongst reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be suppressed. I have heard them in my youth, from a naked savage in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. Who is it?' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure-' who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains and empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection. . .

Gentlemen, the question you have therefore to try upon all this matter is extremely simple. It is neither more nor less than this: At a time when the charges against Mr Hastings were, by the implied consent of the Commons, in every hand and on every table-when, by their managers, the lightning of eloquence was incessantly consuming him, and flashing in the eyes of the public-when every man was with perfect impunity saying, and writing, and publishing just what he pleased of the supposed plunderer and devastator of nationswould it have been criminal in Mr Hastings himself to remind the public that he was a native of this free land, It is the nature of everything that is great and useful, entitled to the common protection of her justice, and both in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild that he had a defence in his turn to offer to them, the and irregular, and we must be contented to take them outlines of which he implored them in the meantime to with the alloys which belong to them, or live without receive, as an antidote to the unlimited and unpunished them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism, but poison in circulation against him? This is, without its wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom colour or exaggeration, the true question you are to when it advances in its path: subject it to the critic, decide. Because I assert, without the hazard of contra- and you tame it into dullness. Mighty rivers break diction, that if Mr Hastings himself could have stood down their banks in the winter, sweeping away to death justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this the flocks which are fattened on the soil that they fervolume in his own defence, the author, if he wrote it tilise in the summer: the few may be saved by embankbona fide to defend him, must stand equally excused and ments from drowning, but the flock must perish from justified; and if the author be justified, the publisher hunger. Tempests occasionally shake our dwellings cannot be criminal, unless you had evidence that it was and dissipate our commerce; but they scourge before published by him with a different spirit and intention them the lazy elements, which without them would stagfrom those in which it was written. The question, there-nate into pestilence. In like manner, Liberty herself,

Justice and Mercy.

venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my Lords, I must say, that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage. Nay, more, I can say, and will say, that as a peer of parliament, as Speaker of this right honourable House, as Keeper of the Great Seal, as Guardian of his Majesty's Conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England; nay, even in that character alone in which the noble duke would think it an affront to be considered

Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer as a man-I am at this moment as respectable-I justice, as we look, hereafter, to have justice administered beg leave to add, I am at this moment as much to ourselves. Upon the principle on which the Attor-respected-as the proudest peer I now look down ney-general prays sentence upon my client-God have upon.' MR CHARLES BUTLER, an English barrister mercy upon us! Instead of standing before him in of some distinction (1750-1832), in his Reminisjudgment with the hopes and consolations of Christians, cences says: "The effect of this speech, both within we must call upon the mountains to cover us; for which the walls of parliament and out of them, was proof us can present, for omniscient examination, a pure, digious. It gave Lord Thurlow an ascendency in unspotted, and faultless course? But I humbly expect the House which no Chancellor had ever posthat the benevolent Author of our being will judge us as sessed; it invested him in public opinion with a I have been pointing out for your example. Holding character of independence and honour; and this, up the great volume of our lives in his hands, and though he was ever on the unpopular side in regarding the general scope of them, if he discovers benevolence, charity, and good-will to man beating in politics, made him always popular with the people.' He was at the same time the secret and confidential adviser of the king, and the dictator of the House of Lords.

the heart, where he alone can look-if he finds that our conduct, though often forced out of the path by our infirmities, has been in general well directed-his allsearching eye will assuredly never pursue us into those little corners of our lives, much less will his justice select them for punishment, without the general context of our existence, by which faults may be sometimes found to have grown out of virtues, and very many of our heaviest offences to have been grafted by human imperfection upon the best and kindest of our affections. No, gentlemen; believe me, this is not the course of divine justice, or there is no truth in the Gospels of Heaven. If the general tenor of a man's conduct be such as I have represented it, he may walk through the shadow of death, with all his faults about him, with as much cheerfulness as in the common paths of life; because he knows that, instead of a stern accuser to expose before the Author of his nature those frail passages which, like the scored matter in the book before you, chequers the volume of the brightest and best-spent life, his mercy will obscure them from the eye of his purity, and our repentance blot them out for ever.

LORD THURLOW.

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.

The one speech of Thurlow's was not more popular or effective than one sentence by the Irish orator, JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN (1750-1817), in his speech in defence of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, prosecuted by the government for a seditious libel. The libel contained this declaration: In four words lies all our power-universal emancipation and representative legislature.'

'I speak,' said Curran, 'in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.'

One short speech by the rough, vigorous lawyer and Lord Chancellor, EDWARD THURLOW (1732-matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may 1806), has been pronounced 'superlatively great' in effect. The Duke of Grafton, in the course of a debate in the House of Lords, took occasion to reproach Thurlow with his plebeian extraction and his recent admission to the peerage. The Chancellor rose from the woolsack, and, as related by an eye-witness, advanced slowly to the place from which the Chancellor generally addresses the House; then fixing on the duke the look of Jove when he grasped the thunder, 'I am amazed,' he said, in a loud tone of voice, at the attack the noble duke has made on me. Yes, my Lords,' considerably raising his voice, 'I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honourable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble Lords the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone.

No one

A passage in Cowper's Task (Book II.) had probably suggested this oratorical burst:

We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire! that, where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

The Character of Falstaff.

thinking, and acute criticism on poetry, the drama, and fine arts, found many admirers, especially among young minds. He was a man Falstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine constitution; of decided talent, but prone to paradox, and swayed by prejudice. He was well read in the an exuberation of good-humour and good-nature; an overflowing of his love of laughter and good-fellowship ; old English authors, and had in general a just a giving vent to his heart's ease and over-contentment and delicate perception of their beauties. His with himself and others. He would not be in character style was strongly tinged by the peculiarities of if he were not so fat as he is; for there is the greatest his taste and reading; it was often sparkling, keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagination and pungent, and picturesque in expression. Hazlitt the pampered self-indulgence of his physical appetites. was a native of Shropshire, the son of a Unitarian He manures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he minister. He began life as a painter, but failed does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out his in attaining excellence in the profession, though jokes as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, he retained through life the most vivid and where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon intense appreciation of its charms. His principal them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain it snows of meat and support was derived from the literary and political drink. He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, journals, to which he contributed essays, reviews, and we live with him in a round of invitations to a and criticisms. He wrote a metaphysical treatise rump and dozen. Yet we are not to suppose that he On the Principles of Human Action, 1805; an was a mere sensualist. All this is as much in imagination abridgment of Tucker's Light of Nature, 1807; as in reality. His sensuality does not engross and stupefy Eloquence of the British Senate, 1808. In 1813 his other faculties, but 'ascends me into the brain, clears Hazlitt delivered a series of Lectures on English away all the dull crude vapours that environ it, and Philosophy at the Russell Institution. In 1817 makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.' appeared his View of the English Stage, and a His imagination keeps up the ball after his senses have collection of essays entitled The Round Table. done with it. He seems to have even a greater enjoyIn 1818 he lectured at the Surrey Institution on ment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his the English Poets. The English Comic Writers, ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated description The Dramatic Literature of the Time of Elizabeth, enrich his discourse with allusions to eating and drinkwhich he gives of them, than in fact. He never fails to and the Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, were ing; but we never see him at table. He carries his own then successively produced, being chiefly comlarder about with him, and he is himself a tun of posed of theatrical criticisms contributed to the man.' His pulling out the bottle in the field of battle journals of the day. He wrote also Table Talk, is a joke to shew his contempt for glory accompanied 1821-22; The Spirit of the Age (criticisms on con- with danger, his systematic adherence to his Epicurean temporaries), 1825; The Plain Speaker, a collection philosophy in the most trying circumstances. Again, of essays, 1826. Various sketches of the galleries such is his deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, of art in England appeared from his pen, and that it does not seem quite certain whether the account Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, of his hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with such an originally contributed to one of the daily papers. out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack, with only He wrote the article 'Fine Arts' for the Encyclo-self as a trick to humour the jest upon his favourite proone halfpenny-worth of bread, was not put there by himpædia Britannica, and essays on the English pensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He Novelists and other standard authors, first pub-is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, lished in the Edinburgh Review. In the London Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, and other periodicals, the hand of Hazlitt may be traced. His most elaborate work was a Life of Napoleon, in four volumes (1828-30), which evinces all the peculiarities of his mind and opinions, but is very ably written. Shortly before his death-which took place in London on the 18th of September 1830-he had committed to the press the Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., containing remarks on arts and artists. The toils, uncertainties, and disappointments of a literary life, and the contests of bitter political warfare, soured and warped the mind of Hazlitt, and distorted his opinions of men and things; but those who trace the passionate flights of his imagination, his aspirations after ideal excellence and beauty, the brilliancy of his language while dwelling on some old poem, or picture, or dream of early days, and the undisguised freedom with which he pours out his whole soul to the reader, will readily assign to him both strength and versatility of genius. He had felt more than he had reflected or studied; and though proud of his acquirements as metaphysician, he certainly could paint emotions better than he could unfold principles. The only son of Mr Hazlitt has, with pious diligence and care, collected and edited his father's works in a series of handsome portable volumes.

a

&c., and yet we are not offended, but delighted with him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters to shew the humorous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more object to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view, than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian who should represent him to the life, before one of the police-offices.

The Character of IIamlet.

It is the one of Shakspeare's plays that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens to him, we apply to ourselves, because he applies it to himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moraliser; and what makes him worth attending to is, that he moralises on his own feelings and experience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear is distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is unstudied development of character. Shakspeare had the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shewn more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: everything is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort; the incidents succeed each other