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SIR GEORGE SAVILLE.

WHEN an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, and done with all the weight and authority that belonged to it, the world could cast its eyes upon none but him. I hope that few things which have a tendency to bless or to adorn life, have wholly escaped my observation in my passage through it. I have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman, and have seen him in all situations. He is a true genius; with an understanding vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even to excess; and illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of imagination. With these he possesses many external and instrumental advantages; and he makes use of them all. His fortune is among the largest; a fortune which wholly unencumbered, as it is, with one single charge for luxury, vanity, or excess, sinks under the benevolence of its dispenser. This private benevolence, expanding itself into patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, in which he has not reserved a peculium for himself of profit, diversion, or relaxation. During the session, the first in, and the last out of the House of Commons; he passes from the senate to the camp; and seldom seeing the seat of his ancestors, he is always in the senate to serve his country, or in the field to defend it. But in all well wrought compositions, some particulars stand out more eminently than the rest; and the things which will carry his name to posterity are

'his two bills; I mean that for a limitation of the claims of the crown upon landed estates; and this for the relief of the Roman Catholics. By the former he has emancipated property; by the latter he has quieted conscience; and by both, he has taught that grand lesson to government and subject--no longer to regard each other as adverse parties.

BURKE.

JOHN DUNNING, LORD ASHBURTON. JOHN DUNNING (a name to which no title could add lustre) possessed professional talents which may truly be called inimitable; for, besides their superlative excellence, they were peculiarly his own; and as it would scarcely be possible to copy them, so it is hardly probable that nature or education will give them to another. His language was always pure, always elegant; and the best words dropped easily from his lips into the best places with a fluency at all times astonishing, and, when he had perfect health, really melodious: his style of speaking consisted of all the turns, oppositions, and figures, which the old rhetoricians taught, and Cicero frequently practised, but which the austere and solemn spirit of Demosthenes refused to adopt from his first master, and seldom admitted into his orations, political or forensic. Many at the bar and on the bench thought this a vitiated style; but though dissatisfied as critics, yet, to the confusion of all criticism, they were transported as hearers. That faculty, however, in which no mortal ever sur

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passed him, and which all found irresistible, was his wit: this relieved the weary; this calmed the resentful, and animated the drowsy; this drew smiles even from such as were the objects of it, scattered flowers over a desert; and, like sunbeams sparkling on a lake, gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least interesting cause. Not that his accomplishments, as an advocate, consisted principally in volubility of speech, or liveliness of raillery: he was endued with an intellect sedate, yet penetrating; clear, yet profound; subtle, yet strong. His knowledge too was equal to his imagination, and his memory to his knowledge. He was not less deeply learned in the sublime principles of jurisprudence, and the particular laws of his country, than accurately skilled in the minute but useful practice of all our different courts. In the nice conduct of a complicated cause, no particle of evidence could escape his vigilant attention, no shade of argument could elude his comprehensive reason: perhaps the vivacity of his imagination sometimes prompted him to sport where it would have been wiser to argue; and, perhaps, the exactness of his memory sometimes induced him to answer such remarks as hardly deserved notice, and to enlarge on small circumstances, which added little weight to his argument; but those only who have experienced can in any degree conceive the difficulty of exerting all the mental faculties in one instant, when the least deliberation might lose the tide of action irrecoverably. The people seldom err in appreciating the character of speakers; and those clients who were too late to engage Dunning on

their side never thought themselves secure of success, while those against whom he was engaged were always apprehensive of a defeat.

As a lawyer, he knew that Britain could only be happily governed on the principles of her constitutional or public law; that the regal power was limited, and popular rights ascertained by it; but that aristocracy had no other power than that which too naturally results from property, and which laws ought rather to weaken than to fortify; he was therefore an equal supporter of just prerogative and of national freedom, weighing both in the noble balance of our recorded constitution. An able and aspiring statesman, who professed the same principles, had wisdom to solicit, and the merit to obtain the friendship of this great man; and a connexion, planted originally on the firm ground of familiarity in political sentiments, ripened into personal affection, which nothing but death could have dissolved or impaired. Whether in his ministerial station he might not suffer a few prejudices insensibly to creep on his mind, as the best men have suffered, because they were men, may admit of a doubt; but, if even prejudiced, he was never uncandid; and, though pertinacious in all his opinions, he had great indulgence for such as differed from him.

His sense of honour was lofty and heroic, his integrity stern and inflexible; and though he had a strong inclination to splendour of life, with a taste for the elegancies of society, yet no love of dignity, of wealth, or of pleasure, could have tempted him to deviate, in a single instance, from the straight line of truth and honesty.

He carried his democratical principles even into social life, where he claimed no more of the conversation than his just share; and was candidly attentive when it was his turn to be a hearer. His enmities were strong, yet placable; but his friendships were eternal: and if his affections ever subdued his judgment, it must have been in cases where the fame and interest of a friend were nearly concerned. The veneration with which he constantly treated his father, whom his success and reputation had made the happiest of mortals, could be equalled only by the amiable tenderness which he showed as a parent. He used to speak with wonder and abhorrence of Swift, who was not ashamed to leave a declaration, that he could not be fond of children; and with pleasure of the Caliph, who, on the eve of a decisive battle, which was won by his valour and wisdom, amused himself in his tent with seeing his children ride on his scimitar and play with his turban, and dismissed a general, as unlikely to treat the army with lenity, who. durst reprove him for so natural and innocent a recreation.

For some months before his death the nursery had been his chief delight, and gave him more pleasure than the cabinet could have afforded him but this parental affection, which had been a source of so much felicity, was probably a cause of his fatal illness. He had lost one son, and expected to lose another, when the author of this painful tribute to his memory parted from him, with tears in his eyes, little hoping to see him again in a perishable state. As he perceives, without affectation, that his tears now steal from

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