pencil of Reynolds and the chisel of Nollekens have handed them down to us, were disagreeably harsh and exaggerated. In his descendants, the aspect was preserved; but it was softened, till it became, in the late lord, the most gracious and interesting countenance that was ever lighted up by the mingled lustre of intelligence and benevolence. As it was with the faces of the men of this noble family, so was it with their minds. Nature had done much for them all. She had moulded them all of that clay of which she is most sparing. To all she had given strong reason and sharp wit; a quick relish for every physical and intellectual enjoyment; constitutional intrepidity, and that frankness by which constitutional intrepidity is generally accompanied; spirits which nothing could depress; tempers easy, generous, and placable; and that genial courtesy which has its seat in the heart, and of which artificial politeness is only a faint and cold imitation. Such a disposition is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed on any family. people with the bayonet. Many of his contemporaries had a morality quite as lax as his; but very few among them had his talents, and none had his hardihood and energy. He could not, like Sandys and Doddington, find safety in contempt. He therefore became an object of such general aversion as no statesman since the fall of Strafford has incurred-of such general aversion as was probably never in any country incurred by a man of so kind and cordial a disposition. A weak mind would have sunk under such a load of unpopularity. But that resolute spirit seemed to derive new firmness from the public hatred. The only effect which reproaches appeared to produce on him, was to sour, in some degree, his naturally sweet temper. The last steps of his public life were marked, not only by that audacity which he had derived from nature-not only by that immorality which he had learned in the school of Walpole-but by a harshness which almost amounted to eruelty, and which had never been supposed to belong to his character. His severity increased the unpopularity from which it had sprung. The well-known lampoon of Gray may serve as a specimen of the feeling of the country. All the images are taken from shipwrecks, quicksands, and cormorants. Lord Holland is represented as complaining, that the cowardice of his accomplices had prevented him from putting down the free spirit of the city of London by sword and fire, and as pining for the time when birds of prey should make their nests in Westminster Abbey, and unclean beasts burrow in St. Paul's. But training and situation greatly modified the fine qualities which nature lavished with such profusion on three generations of the house of Fox. The first Lord Holland was a needy political adventurer. He entered public life at a time when the standard of integrity among statesmen was low. He started as the adherent of a minister who had indeed many titles to respect; who possessed eminent talents both for administration and for debate; who understood the public interest well, and who meant fairly by the country; Within a few months after the death of this but who had seen so much perfidy and mean- remarkable man, his second son Charles apness, that he had become skeptical as to the peared at the head of the party opposed to the existence of probity. Weary of the cant of American War. Charles had inherited the patriotism, Walpole had learned to talk a cant bodily and mental constitution of his father, of a different kind. Disgusted by that sort of and had been much-far too much-under his hypocrisy which is at least a homage to virtue, father's influence. It was indeed impossible he was too much in the habit of practising the that a son of so affectionate and noble a spirit less respectable hypocrisy which ostentatiously should not have been warmly attached to a displays and sometimes even stimulates vice. parent who possessed many fine qualities, and To Walpole, Fox attached himself politically who carried his indulgence and liberality to and personally, with the ardour which belonged wards his children even to a culpable extent. to his temperament. And it is not to be denied, The young man saw that the person to whom that in the school of Walpole he contracted he was bound by the strongest ties, was, in the faults which destroyed the value of his many highest degree, odious to the nation; and the great endowments. He raised himself, indeed, effect was what might have been expected to the first consideration in the House of Com- from his strong passions and constitutional mons; he became a consummate master of the boldness. He cast in his lot with his father, and art of debate; he attained honours and im- took, while still a boy, a deep part in the most mense wealth-but the public esteem and con- unjustifiable and unpopular measures that had fidence were withheld from him. His private been adopted since the reign of James the friends, indeed, justly extolled his generosity Second. In the debates on the Middlesex and good-nature. They maintained, that in election, he distinguished himself, not only by those parts of his conduct which they could his precocious powers of eloquence, but by the least defend, there was nothing sordid; and vehement and scornful manner in which he that, if he was misled, he was misled by bade defiance to public opinion. He was at amiable feelings-by a desire to serve his that time regarded as a man likely to be the friends, and by anxious tenderness for his most formidable champion of arbitrary governchildren. But by the nation he was regarded ment that had appeared since the Revolution as a man of insatiable rapacity and desperate to be a Bute with far greater powers-a ambition; as a man ready to adopt, without scruple, the most immoral and the most unConstitutional measures; as a man perfectly fitted, by all his opinions and feelings, for the work of managing the Parliament by means of secret service-money, and of keeping down the VOL. IV.-58 Mansfield with far greater courage. Happily his father's death liberated him early from the pernicious influence by which he had been misled. His mind expanded. His range of observation became wider. His genius broke through early prejudices. His natural bene 2 Q volence and magnanimity had fair play. In a very short time he appeared in a situation worthy of his understanding and of his heart. From a family whose name was associated in the public mind with tyranny and corruptionfrom a party of which the theory and the practice were equally servile-from the midst of the Luttrells, the Dysons, the Barringtonscame forth the greatest parliamentary defender of civil and religious liberty. come a mere form, as it was in the Irish House of Peers before the Union. This was a great misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. It was not by occasionally addressing fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly auditors, that his grandfather and his uncle attained their unrivalled parliamentary skill. The former had learned his art in "the great Walpolean battles," on nights when Onslow was in the chair seven. teen hours without intermission; when the thick ranks on both sides kept unbroken order till long after the winter sun had risen upon them; when the blind were led out by the hand into the lobby; and the paralytic laid down in their bed-clothes on the benches. The pow. ers of Charles Fox were, from the first, exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The great talents of the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was the more unfortunate, because the peculiar species of eloquence, which belonged to him in common with his family, required much practice to develope it. With strong sense, and the greatest readiness of wit, a certain tendency to hesitation was hereditary in the line of Fox. This hesitation arose, not from the poverty, but from the wealth of their vocabulary. They paused, not from the difficulty of finding one expression, but from the difficulty of choosing between several. It was only by slow degrees, and constant exercise, that the first Lord Holland and his son overcame the defect. Indeed, neither of them The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural dispositions of his house. But his situation was very different from that of the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some important respects it was better; in some it was worse than theirs. He had one great advantage over them. He received a good political education. The first lord was educated by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox was educated by his father. The late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by the first Lord Holland, made his great talents useless, and worse than useless, to the state. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by Mr. Fox led him, at the commencement of his public life, into great faults, which, though afterwards nobly expiated, were never forgotten. To the very end of his career, small men, when they had nothing else to say in defence of their own tyranny, bigotry, and imbecility, could always raise a cheer by some paltry taunt about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment of the Lord May-overcame it completely. * or, and other measures in which the great Whig leader had borne a part at the age of one or two-and-twenty. On Lord Holland no such slur could be thrown. Those who most dissent from his opinions must acknowledge, that a public life, more consistent, is not to be found in our annals. Every part of it is in perfect harmony with every other; and the whole is in perfect harmony with the great principles of toleration and civil freedom. This rare felicity is in a great measure to be attributed to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord Holland, as was natural in a person of his talents and expectations, began at a very early age to take the keenest interest in politics; and Mr. Fox found the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so hopeful a pupil. They corresponded largely on political subjects when the young lord was only sixteen; and their friendship and mutual confidence continued to the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick. Under such training, such a man as Lord Holland was in no danger of falling into those faults which threw a dark shade over the whole career of his grandfather, and from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free. In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for the unsound parts of an argument, and a great felicity in exposing them. He was decidedly more distinguished in debate than any peer of his times who had not sat in the House of Com mons. Nay, to find his equal among persons similarly situated, we must go back eighty years to Earl Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brougham, Plunkett, and other eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate, carried to the Upper House an eloquence formed and matured in the Lower. The opinion of the most discerning judges was, that Lord Holland's oratorical performances, though sometimes most successful, afforded no fair measure of his oratorical powers; and that, in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and animated, he would have attained a very high order of excellence. It was, indeed, impossible to converse with him without seeing that he was born a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the exercise of the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With the On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as greatest good-nature and good-breeding, he compared with his grandfather and his uncle, was the very opposite to an assenter. The Laboured under one great disadvantage. They word "disputatious" is generally used as a were members of the House of Commons. He word of reproach; but we can express our became a peer while still an infant. When meaning only by saying that Lord Holland was he entered public life, the House of Lords was most courteously and pleasantly disputatious. a very small and a very decorous assembly. In truth, his quickness in discovering and apThe minority to which he belonged was scarce- prehending distinctions and analogies was ly able to muster five or six votes on the most such as a veteran judge might envy. The law. important nights, when eighty or ninety lords yers of the Duchy of Lancaster were astonish. were present. Debate had accordingly be-led to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the esoteric parts of their science; and complained that as soon as they had split a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind lees happily constituted, there might have been a risk that this turn for subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own ingenuity. He puts his logic to its proper use; and in him the dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman. tic as it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young town of logwood by a water-privilege in Michigan, may soon displace those turrets and gardens which are associated with so much that is interesting and noble-with the courtly magnificence of Rich-with the loves of Ormond-with the counsels of Cromwellwith the death of Addison. The time is coming when, perhaps, a few old men, the last survi vors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets, and squares, and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties-of painters and poets-of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. They will then remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them-the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings; the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enig His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps, as we have already intimated, his opinions on two or three great questions of Foreign Policy were open to just objection. Yet even his errors, if he erred, were amiable and respectable. We are not sure that we do not love and admire him thematical mottoes. With peculiar fondness they more because he was now and then seduced from what we regard as a wise policy, by sympathy with the oppressed; by generosity towards the fallen; by a philanthropy so enlarged that it took in all nations; by love of peace, which in him was second only to the love of freedom; by the magnanimous credulity of a mind which was as incapable of suspect-portraits in which were preserved the features ing as of devising mischief. will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many ages; those of the best and wisest Englishmen of two geneTo his views on questions of Domestic Po- rations. They will recollect how many men licy, the voice of his countrymen does ample who have guided the politics of Europe-who justice. They revere the memory of the man have moved great assemblies by reason and who was, during forty years, the constant pro- eloquence-who have put life into bronze and tector of all oppressed races, of all persecuted canvass, or who have left to posterity things sects-of the man, whom neither the preju-so written as it shall not willingly let them die dices nor the interests belonging to his station cou seduce from the path of right-of the noble, who in every great crisis cast in his lot with the commons-of the planter, who made manful war on the slave-trade-of the landowner, whose whole heart was in the struggle against the corn-laws. We have hitherto touched almost exclusively on those parts of Lord Holland's character which were open to the observation of millions. How shall we express the feelings with which his memory is cherished by those who were honoured with his friendship? Or in what language shall we speak of that house, once celebrated for its rare attractions to the furthest ends of the civilized world, and now silent and desolate as the grave? That house was, a hundred and twenty years ago, apostrophized by a poet in tender and graceful lines, which have now acquired a new meaning not less sad than that which they originally bore: were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the singular character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Reynolds' Baretti; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at the Luxemburg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Auster. litz. They will remember, above all, the grace and the kindness, far more admirable than grace-with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember the venerable and benignant countenance and the cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They will remember that temper which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement, seemed only to make sweeter and sweeter; and that frank politeness, which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among ambassadors and earls. will remember that constant flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so various, so rich with observation and anecdote; that wit which never gave a wound; that exquisite Yet a few years, and the shades and struc- mimicry which ennobled, instead of degrading; tures may follow their illustrious masters. that goodness of heart which appeared in every The wonderful city which, ancient and gigan-look and accent, and gave additional value ta "Thou bill, whose brow the antique structures grace, They every talent and acquirement. They will re- joy that he had done nothing unworthy of the member, too, that he whose name they hold in friend of Fox and Grey; and they will have reverence was not less distinguished by the in- reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking back flexible uprightness of his political conduct on many troubled years, they cannot accuse than by his loving disposition and his winning themselves of having done any thing unworthy manners. They will remember that, in the of men who were distinguished by the friendlast lines which he traced, he expressed his ship of Lord Holland. WARREN HASTINGS.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, OCTOBER, 1841.] THIS book seems to have been manufactured | fect, our own view of the life and character of in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants on both sides have been most faithfully kept; and the result is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, full of undigested correspondence and undiscerning panegyric. Mr. Hastings. Our feeling towards him is not exactly that of the House of Commons which impeached him in 1787; neither is it that of the House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813. He had great qualities, and he rendered great services to the state. But to represent him as a man of stainless virtue, is to make him ridiculous; and from regard for his memory, if from no other feeling, his friends would have done well to lend no countenance to such puerile adulation. We believe that, if he were now living, he would have sufficient judgment and suthcient greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride, that the splendour of his fame would bear many spots. He would have preferred, we are confident, even the severity of Mr. Mill to the puffing of Mr. Gleig. He would have wished posterity to have a like. ness of him, though an unfavourable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else. If it were worth while to examine this performance in detail, we could easily make a long article by merely pointing out inaccurate statements, inelegant expressions, and immoral | doctrines. But it would be idle to waste criticism on a bookmaker; and, whatever credit Mr. Gleig may have justly earned by former works, it is as a bookmaker, and nothing more, that he now comes before us. More eminent men than Mr. Gleig have written nearly as ill as he, when they have stooped to similar drudgery. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by the History of Greece, or Scott by the Life of Napoleon. Mr. Gleig is neither a Goldsmith nor a Scott; but it would be un-"Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, just to deny that he is capable of something better than these memoirs. It would also, we hope and believe, be unjust to charge any Christian minister with the guilt of deliberately maintaining some propositions which we find in this book. It is not too much to say, that Mr. Gleig has written several passages, which bear the same relation to the "Prince" of Machiavelli that the "Prince of Machiavelli bears to the "Whole Duty of Man," and which would excite amazement in a den of robbers, or on board of a schooner of pirates. But we are willing to attribute these offences to haste, to thoughtlessness, and to that disease of the understanding which may be called the Furor Biographicus, and which is to writers of lives what the goître is to an Alpine shepherd, or lirt-eating to a Negro slave. while sitting to young Lely. "If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling." Even in such a trifle, the great Protector showed both his good sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish all that was. characteristic in his countenance to be lost, in the vain attempt to give him the regular fea tures and the smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated minions of James the First. He was content that his face should go forth marked with all the blemishes which had been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse; but with vas lour, policy, authority, and public care, written in all its princely lines. If men truly great knew their own interest, it is thus that they would wish their minds to be portrayed. Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and illustrious race. It has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish sea-king, whose sails were long the terror of both coasts of the British channel; and who, after many fierce and doubtful strug gles, yielded at last to the valour and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendour of the line of Hastings needs no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore, in the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. | and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his . From another branch sprang the renowned mind a scheme which, through all the turns Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the of his eventful career, was never abandoned. White Rose, whose fate has furnished so He would recover the estate which had be striking a theme both to poets and to histo- longed to his fathers. He would be Hastings rians. His family received from the Tudors of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in in the earldom of Huntingdon; which, after long fancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intel dispossession, was regained in our time by lect expanded and as his fortune rose. He a series of events scarcely paralleled in ro- pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will, which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. When, under å tropical sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford. And when his long public life, so singularly checkered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed forever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die. mance. The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, claimed to be considered as the heads of this distinguished family. The main stock, indeed, prospered less than some of the younger shoots. But the Daylesford family, though not ennobled, was wealthy and highly considered, till, about two hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed in the great ruin of the Civil War. The Hastings of that time was When he was eight years old, his uncle, a zealous Cavalier. He raised money on his Howard, determined to take charge of him, own lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, and to give him a liberal education. The boy joined the royal army, and, after spending went up to London, and was sent to a school half of his property in the cause of King at Newington, where he was well taught but Charles, was glad to ransom himself by mak-ill fed. He always attributed the smallness of ing over most of the remaining half to Speaker his stature to the hard and scanty fare of his Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford still re- seminary. At ten he was removed to Westmained in the family; but it could no longer minster school, then flourishing under the care be kept up; and in the following generation of Dr. Nichols. Vinny Bourne, as his pupils it was sold to a merchant of London. affectionately called him, was one of the mas Before the transfer took place, the last Hast-ters. Churchill, Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, ings of Daylesford had presented his second Cowper, were among the students. With son to the rectory of the parish in which the Cowper, Hastings formed a friendship which ancient residence of the family stood. The neither the lapse of time, nor a wide dissimiliving was of little value; and the situation of larity of opinions and pursuits, could wholly the poor clergyman, after the sale of the estate, dissolve. It does not appear that they ever was deplorable. He was constantly engaged met after they had grown to manhood. But in lawsuits about his tithes with the new lord many years later, when the voices of a crowd of the manor, and was at length utterly ruined. of great orators were crying for vengeance on His eldest son, Howard, a well-conducted the oppressor of India, the shy and secluded ' young man, obtained a place in the Customs. poet could imagine to himself Hastings the The second son, Pynaston, an idle, worthless Governor-General, only as the Hastings with boy, married before he was sixteen, lost his whom he had rowed on the Thames and played wife in two years, and went to the West Indies, in the cloister; and refused to believe that so where he died, leaving to the care of his un- good-tempered a fellow could have done any fortunate father a little orphan, destined to thing very wrong. His own life had been strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune. spent in praying, musing, and rhyming among Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the waterlilies of the Ouse. He had preserved the 6th of December, 1732. His mother died in no common measure the innocence of childa few days later, and he was left dependent hood. His spirit had indeed been severely on his distressed grandfather. The child was tried, but not by temptations which impelled early sent to the village school, where he him to any gross violation of the rules of solearned his letters on the same bench with the cial morality. He had never been attacked sons of the peasantry. Nor did any thing in by combinations of powerful and deadly enehis garb or fare indicate that his life was to mies. He had never been compelled to make take a widely different course from that of the a choice between innocence and greatness, young rustics with whom he studied and between crime and ruin. Firmly as he held played. But no cloud could overcast the in theory the doctrine of human depravity, his dawn of so much genius and so much ambi-habits were such, that he was unable to conceive tion. The very ploughmen observed, and long how far from the path of right, even kind and remembered, how kindly little Warren took to noble natures may be hurried by the rage of his book.. The daily sight of the lands which conflict and the lust of dominion. his ancestors had possessed, and which had passed into the hands of strangers, filled his young brain with wild fancies and projects. He loved to hear stories of the wealth and greatness of his progenitors-of their splendid housekeeping, their loyalty, and their valour. On one bright summer day, the boy. then just seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as threescore Hastings had another associate at Westminster, of whom we shall have occasion to make frequent mention-Elijah Impey. We know little about their school days. But we think we may safely venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part of the prank. Warren was distinguished among his com |