to the end of his days, dying, indeed, it may be said, in the utterance and vindication of it. Meanwhile in the difficulties to which this ministry also soon found itself reduced, another application was made to Pitt, so early as the end of February, 1766. At that time it came to nothing, but the attempt was renewed after a few months; and in the end Pitt received a carte blanche to frame a new cabinet, which was completed about the beginning of August. And a very extraordinary piece of handywork it turned out. He made an administration,' as Burke has said in a famous passage, so chequered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tessellated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit ofhite; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans, whigs and tories, treacherous friends and open enemies, that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on.' What most astonished the public in the whole arrangement was the manner in which Pitt disposed of himself: he appropriated the almost sinecure place of lord privy seal, and, leaving the old scene of his glory, went to the Upper House as Viscount Pitt and Earl of Chatham. The joke here is,' wrote Lord Chesterfield to a friend on the occasion, that he has had a fall upstairs, and has done himself so much hurt that he will never be able to stand upon his legs again. Everybody is puzzled how to account for this step; though it would not be the first time that great abilities have been duped by low cunning. But, be it what it will, he is now certainly only earl of Chatham, and no longer Mr. Pitt in any respect whatever.' We cannot enter into the history of the rickety administration thus attempted to be set up. Suffice it to say that it was in a state of confusion and embarrassment all the time it subsisted, and that Lord Chatham, its nominal head, was soon withdrawn from all share in the conduct of affairs by a serious illness, which, from the evidence furnished by his lately published correspondence, clearly appears to have been chiefly mental, and to have taken the form of a deep hypochondria, making him shrink with horror from business and from intercourse with any person beyond the circle of his own family. At last, on the 15th of October, 1768, he sent his friend Lord Camden to the king with a resignation of his office. This decision, and the relief from responsibility which it brought with it, probably had a beneficial effect on his health. In the session of parliament which began on the 9th of January, 1770, he again appeared in his place, and took as prominent and active a part in debate as he had ever done in his best days. One of the chief questions on which he exerted himself in this and the next session was that of the conduct of the House of Commons in the affair of Wilkes's election for Middlesex, which he condemned vehemently and without reserve, and contended to be a flagrant outrage on the first principles of the constitution. He also appeared occasionally in the session which began 21st January, 1772; in one speech in particular, which he delivered in May that year, in support of a bill for the relief of Protestant Dissenters, he showed, according to the report of the debate, as much oratory and fire as perhaps he ever did in his life.' But his name does not appear again in the debates till towards the end of the session of 1774, on the 27th of May in which year, though still labouring under a state of ill-health, which had long kept him absent from the House, he spoke warmly and impressively in opposition to one of Lord North's bills for subduing the resistance in America. He spoke also several times on the same now all-engrossing subject in the earlier part of the first session of the next parliament, which met in November of this year; but then a return of ill-health sent him back for nearly two years into retirement. When he again made his appearance in the House, in the end of May, 1777, it was to reiterate with increased earnestness his views and warnings on American affairs; and he continued to come down for the same purpose during the next session as often as the little strength remaining in his racked and shattered frame would permit. At last, on the 7th of April, 1778, after he had spoken once on a motion for an address to the king on the state of the nation, he attempted to rise again to notice something that had been said by the duke of Richmond in reply, when he dropped senseless into the arms of those beside him. He was carried home to his house at Hayes, in Kent, but never again rose from his bed, and died on Monday, the 11th of May, in the seventieth year of his age. All the enthusiasm which had been stirred by his name in former days was revived for the moment by the death, in circumstances so affecting, of the orator and statesman who for more than forty years had filled so large a space in the public eye, and whose memory was associated with so much of popular principle and national glory; and to a funeral and a monument in Westminster Abbey at the public expense, were added the more substantial rewards of a grant of twenty thousand pounds for the payment of his debts, and a pension of 4000l. a year to his descendants. As to Lord Chatham's real claims, either as an orator, a minister, or a patriot, we may observe in general that in each of these capacities he appears to have been at best the man merely of his own time. His eloquence, of the immediate effects of which there can be no question, must have partaken very much of the only half-intellectual art of acting, and been indebted for its power to his voice, his eye, and other mere external advantages, as much as to any higher qualities. At least no report that has come down to us of any of his speeches conveys an impression at all answering to their traditionary fame. Earnestness and fervour there is, as well as clearness and distinctness, with occasional point or happy aptness of expression; there is generally forcible reasoning, and a luminous disposition of the subject; but that is nearly all. Lord Chatham's eloquence is rarely irradiated by any imaginative colouring, and is without any remarkable depth or novelty of thought; its ordinary rhetorical characteristic is tawdriness, and its vein of reflection common-place. Indeed it is probably to this last-mentioned quality that it was in great part indebted for its immediate success; it hit the popular or general understanding, as it were, between wind and water. And to this effect also contributed the thoroughly English character of Lord Chatham's mind; a proud love of his country was his master-passion, and her greatness and glory ever the object on which he kept his eye. He was also altogether a public man-amiable and beloved, indeed, in his domestic circle, and both enjoying and returning very cordially the affection of his family, but, as his enemies admitted, free from dissipation of every kind, and having as little of vice or indolence or any other kind of sensuality in his composition or habits as any man of his time. On the subject of his ambition indeed it would be easy to say much, as much has been said; and some of his letters lately published go to show that his love of power was combined not only with great haughtiness of bearing towards his inferiors, but also with no small degree of what would now at least be called subserviency to those above him. But even in regard to this last most unfavourable exhibition which he makes of himself, something is to be allowed for the manners and indeed established etiquette of the age, which in all departments of social intercourse exacted a degree of formality and ceremonious observance which now seems extravagant and ridiculous, and if practised in the present day would really indicate a much greater degree of servility than it then implied. It can hardly be disputed that Chatham, whatever faults he may have had, was essentially a high-minded man, and it is most reasonable, when we find him appearing otherwise in any particular case, to set down the defect as one of manner rather than of character. The Life of Lord Chatham has been written by Almon, the bookseller, in 3 vols. 8vo., under the title of 'Anecdotes of the Life of the Earl of Chatham;' and much more accurately, as well as fully, by the Rev. Mr. Thackray, in his History of the Earl of Chatham,' 2 vols. 4to. Of his own writings nothing has been given to the world except a small volume of letters addressed to the son of his elder brother, afterwards Lord Camelford, which were published a few years ago by the late Lord Grenville, and his 'Correspondence, in 4 vols. 8vo., which has only very recently appeared. The latter publication abounds in matter illustrative both of the life of Chatham and of the political history of his time. By his wife, who survived till 1803, besides two daughters, he had three sons, the political distinction acquired by one of whom, the subject of the next article, rivalled that of his illustrious father. PITT, THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, second son of the first earl of Chatham, was born at Hayes, in Kent, 28th May, 1759. His elementary edu cation was conducted at home, under the immediate | care of the Reverend Edward Wilson, afterwards canon of Windsor, and anxiously superintended by his father, whose favourite he was, and who early formed high anticipations of the figure he would make in life. He was sent in 1773 to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where his studies were principally under the direction of Dr. Pretyman (who afterwards took the name of Tomline, and became bishop of Winchester, and the biographer of his distinguished pupil). Although he was little more than fourteen years of age when he went to reside at the university,' says Bishop Tomline, and had laboured under the disadvantage of frequent ill health, the knowledge which he then possessed was very considerable; and, in particular, his proficiency in the learned languages was probably greater than ever was acquired by any other person in such early youth. In Latin authors he seldom met with difficulty; and it was no uncommon thing for him to read into English six or seven pages of Thucydides, which he had not previously seen, without more than two or three mistakes, and sometimes without even one.' Mr. Pitt was probably very well taught when he came up to the university; but this way of stating the matter only shows that the bishop's own scholarship was small. After leaving Cambridge, Mr. Pitt visited France,_and studied for a short time at Rheims. On his return to England, being intended for the profession of the law, he entered himself of Lincoln's Inn; and he was called to the bar in 1780. But after having gone the western circuit only once or twice, he was returned to parliament for the borough of Appleby, the patron of which was then Sir James Lowther (afterwards earl of Lonsdale); and from this date his original profession was given up for the House of Commons and a political career. He took his seat on the 23rd of January, 1781, and his first appearance in debate was on the 26th of February following, on the motion for the second reading of Mr. Burke's famous bill for the regulation of the civil list establishments. He gave his hearty support to the measure, and,' says the report, in a speech directly in answer to matter that had fallen out in the course of the debate, displayed great and astonishing powers of eloquence. His voice is rich and striking, full of melody and force; his manner easy and elegant; his language beautiful and luxuriant. He gave in this first essay a specimen of eloquence not unworthy the son of his immortal parent. He afterwards spoke repeatedly on the side of the opposition in the course of this and the following session, before the termination of which it may be said that he had taken his place with Burke, Fox, and Sheridan (the last also a member of only the same standing with himself), in the front rank of the debaters of the day. It was on the 7th of May, 1782, a few weeks after the fall of the North and the appointment of the second Rockingham administration, that Mr. Pitt made his first motion for the reform of the representation of the people. The motion was defeated by an inconsiderable majority; but the mover continued for some years after this to advocate, if not to hold, the principles or opinions which he announced on this occasion. At this date indeed he was so zealous a friend of reform as to take a leading part in some proceedings out of doors for the promotion of that object. The death of the Marquis of Rockingham in the beginning of July having dissolved the administration of which he was the head, and that of Lord Shelburne having succeeded, Mr. Pitt was appointed to office and to a seat in the cabinet, as chancellor of the exchequer, having just entered his twenty-fourth year. This was the administration to which it was left to finish the contest that had arisen out of the attempt to tax the Americans, by acknowledging the independence of the United States, and concluding peace with France and Spain. It was assailed upon these and various other grounds by the famous coalition formed between the adherents of the two immediately preceding ministers, as respectively represented by Lord North and Mr. Fox; and the issue was, that in March, 1773, Lord Shelburne and his colleagues were driven from office by the united force of this new opposition, and a cabinet was formed, nominally under the premiership of the Duke of Portland, but in which the chief power was actually lodged in the hands of North and Fox, who were appointed secretaries of state. The alliance of whigs and tories however, which had carried this victory, was now opposed by another body of P. C., No. 1127. similar composition, formed by the Shelburne whigs and the tories who, seceding from North, professed themselves the friends and supporters of the court, which was well understood to bear with impatience the yoke of the new ministry. Of this opposition Pitt was the recognised leader in the House of Commons. Among other manoeuvres to which he had recourse with the view of annoying and damaging the government, was the renewal of his motion for parliamentary reform. The effect, as had been anticipated, was to array Fox and North against each other in the debate and the division; but the motion nevertheless was negatived in rather a full house by a majority of nearly two to one. The serious opposition to the government did not begin till the next session, when Fox brought forward his India bill; but even that measure was carried through all its stages in the House of Commons by great majorities, and only encountered a formidable resistance when it reached the Lords, where all the personal influence of the king was exerted to procure its defeat. This object being attained, his majesty, with his characteristic decision, followed up his advantage by dismissing Mr. Fox and Lord North, when they would not resign, and by appointing Mr. Pitt prime minister, with the offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. This was in the middle of December, 1783. The state of parties was now very extraordinary, and gave rise to the most remarkable contest in the history of parliament. In the House of Commons the force of the opposition very considerably outnumbered that of the government, even after all the impression that the influence of the crown had been able to make upon the ranks of the former; so that if the issue of the struggle had depended solely upon that assembly, it could not have been doubtful or long deferred. But, if Mr. Pitt had the representatives of the nation against him, he had decidedly the nation itself on his side, and with this, backed by the support of the crown, his position was impregnable, for, if it came to the worst, a dissolution could in a moment put an end to the existence of the present House of Commons, and secure another in accordance with the prevailing popular feeling. Such an appeal to the people however was for obvious reasons far from palatable to the crown, and not to be resorted to if it could be avoided, although in this case the circumstances were as favourable for such an experiment as they could ever be expected to be, the permanent body of the House of Lords, whose union with the Commons might have considerably strengthened the latter, being already ministerial by a steady though not a very large majority. Theoretically, indeed, the crown might have made a majority for itself in that branch of the legislature more directly than in the other house; but practically, a creation of peers for such a purpose would have been a more violent and unconstitutional measure than a dissolution in any circumstances, and, ventured upon coutemporaneously with a dissolution, would have been a wholly unexampled stretch of the prerogative, the effect of which upon the public mind probably would have been to counteract all the good effects that were to be hoped for from the other expedient. The policy which Mr. Pitt adopted was very masterly, and it was carried out with a steadiness and courage which would have been wonderful in the most veteran statesman. He did not dissolve the parliament immediately, but first suffered the opposition to waste their strength and damage themselves in the public opinion to an infinitely greater extent than ever by a long succession of infuriated and unavailing attempts to drive him from office; and then, when, after a battle which lasted for three months, he had reduced their majority from between fifty and sixty to one, he sent them back to their several constituencies, to be onehalf of them rejected at a new general election. About 160 of them in fact lost their seats, and were dismissed to private life, with little to console them in their retirement except the name they received of Fox's Martyrs.' Mr. Pitt's biography from this date is little else than the history of the public affairs of the kingdom so long as he lived. He continued at the head of the ministry which this great victory had established in power, for about seventeen years-a most eventful and important period, in the course of which the relations of parties were altogether changed, and this country and Europe were suddenly and violently translated from a state of profound peace into the most general and most convulsive war that had been known in modern times. [BONAPARTE; BURKE; GEORGE III.] The elder Pitt, as we have seen in the last article, owes his chief fame as a minister to his conduct of the war in which he VOL. XVIII.-2 C PITTA, M. Vieillot's name for a genus of remarkable birds, placed by Mr. Swainson among the Myiotherinæ, or Ant-Thrushes. [MERULIDE, vol. xv., p. 122, where the generic character of the genus and that of the subgenera Chlorisoma and Grallaria are given.] found the country involved on his first accession to power; | As to the merits of his general system of administration, but it has been generally thought unfortunate for his son's opinion is still nearly as much divided as ever. With repolitical reputation that he should have been transformed gard to the character of his oratory there is perhaps begin. from a peace into a war minister. In point of fact, the na- ning to be a more general agreement; and we may venture tion certainly continued to make a very steady economic to say, without incurring the chance of any very loud or exprogress during the first nine peaceful years of his adminis- tended dissent, that, imposing and effective as it was at the tration, and the military results of the last eight were on moment of delivery, it owed its success as much to the imthe whole decidedly disastrous. During the former period pression which it made upon the ear, and to what we may the trade of the kingdom was estimated to have increased by call its mere mechanical qualities, as to any diviner inspiravery nearly a third; and in the five years from 1788 to tion. It wanted even the earnestness and occasional fire of 1788, the revenue had received an augmentation of his father's eloquence; and of either splendour of imagina5,000,0007., of which not more than 1,500,000l. was calcu- tion or any remarkable depth or force of thought, it must lated to have arisen from new taxes. At the same time the be admitted to have been nearly destitute. Its highest expenditure was not greater in 1790 than it had been in quality appears to have been a power of sarcasm, which was 1784, being in both years under 12,000,0007. The estab- the proper expression of a nature like that of Pitt, cold, lishment of a new constitution for the East India Company proud, and contemptuous, and having little sympathy either (1784), the establishment of a new sinking fund (1786) with the ordinary vices and weaknesses, or with the better [NATIONAL DEBT, xvi., p. 100], the arrangement of a com- feelings and enjoyments, of his fellow-men. mercial treaty with France on very liberal principles (1786), the consolidation of the customs (1786), acts passed for the relief of the Roman Catholics in England, Scotland, and | Ireland (1791, 1792), besides various minor measures for the suppression of smuggling, were the administrative innovations that chiefly distinguished this period, and that were understood to owe their origin mainly to the premier. In 1785 Mr. Pitt also once more brought forward the subject of the amendment of the representation of the people in parliament; but he did not call in the aid of his authority as minister to ensure the success of his motion, which was negatived by a considerable majority, and which he never renewed. Afterwards, when the question of reform was taken up by the Society of the Friends of the People, and brought forward at their instance by Mr. (now Lord) Grey, the proposal found in Mr. Pitt one of its most determined opponents. To the exertions that were now begun to be made for the abolition of the slave trade, he lent the aid of his eloquence and of his own vote; but upon this question also he declined to use his power or influence as the head of the government. He took much the same course in regard to the prosecution of Warren Hastings, and the correction of the abuses of the Indian government. All the measures, it may be observed, to which Pitt gave only this kind of support, failed of success during his administration. One of the most remarkable of the contests and victories that illustrate this first period of his government, occurred in the session of 1788-9, when he successfully maintained against Mr. Fox the right of parliament to supply the temporary defect of the royal authority occasioned by the incapacity of the reigning king—a right which seems to be now received as an established doctrine of the constitution. Almost the only memorable legislative measure of the latter years of Mr. Pitt's first ministry was the union with Ireland, which was effected in 1799. It is now known that the disappointment of the expectations which he considered himself entitled to entertain of the abolition, or at least very great mitigation, of the penal and disabling laws affecting the Roman Catholics, was the reason which he assigned to the king for retiring from office soon after the passing of this measure. He and his friends resigned in March, 1801. For some time Mr. Pitt gave his support to the administration of his successor Mr. Addington; but when the rapidly growing conviction of the incompetency of the new cabinet began to foretel its speedy downfall, he joined in the general cry against it, and the result was that in May, 1804, he became again prime minister. He remained at the head of affairs till his death, on the 23rd of January, 1806, the consequence partly of a wasted constitution, partly, it is generally believed, of a broken heart. The overthrow of the new coalition which he had succeeded in forming against France by the series of successes achieved by that power in the latter part of the year 1805, is supposed to have combined with the vexation arising from the impeachment of his friend Lord Melville to destroy him. He had for some years been accustomed to stimulate his overtaxed powers of body and mind by a lavish indulgence in wine; and this habit also no doubt had its share in shortening his days. The public bearing of Mr. Pitt was cold and lofty; but he is said to have unbent himself very gracefully among his intimate friends, and the few who really knew him well seer to have been strongly attached to him. Whatever were his faults, there was no meanness in his character. Pitta. (Vieill., Temm.) M. Lesson remarks that, under the name of Myiothera, Illiger and Cuvier united the Brèves of Buffon and the AntThrushes properly so called. These Brèves are remarkable, he observes, for the vivid colours of their plumage, their long legs, and their very short tail. They are only found, he adds, in the Malaisian Islands, whilst the Ant-Thrushes belong to the New Continent as well as to the Old World. Mr. Swainson notices the genus Pitta as one of remarkable beauty, and observes that they have the graduallycurved bill of the true thrushes, but much stronger. "The predominant colour of their plumage,' continues Mr. Swainson, 'is green, the sides of the head and wings being generally variegated with vivid blue; some species have a hood of black, and all are confined to New Holland and the neighbouring isles of the Indian Seas. America indeed presents us with a representation of these genera, in the subgenera Grallaria, Vieill., and Chamaza, Vig.; but the species are very few, and they are coloured in the homely hues of ordinary thrushes. To this group, as a subgenus, we refer Chlorisoma, called by some writers by the barbarous and unmeaning name of Kitta. The bill is clearly that of a thrush, while the legs place it among the Myotherine (Myiotherina), of which it seems to be the rasorial subgenus, both on account of its size, its crest, and its affinity to Myophonus. There are two or three species, all natives of India.' The genus Myothera, on the other hand, is chiefly restricted to tropical America, and comprises numerous species of a smaller size, clothed in dark colours, but prettily variegated with white. Although distinctly separated from the Oriental group by their abruptly-hooked and stronglytoothed bill, they are yet so intimately allied to the small bush-shrikes (Thamnophiline) that it is almost impossible to draw a distinction between them.' 'Of all the tribes of insects which swarm in the tropics the ants are the most numerous; they are the universal devastators, and in the dry and overgrown forests of the interior the traveller can scarcely proceed five paces without treading upon their nests. To keep these myriads within due limits, a wise Providence has called into existence the ant-thrushes, and has given to them this particular food. Both are proportionate in their geographic range, for, beyond the tropical latitudes the ants suddenly decrease, and their enemies, the Myothera, totally disappear. As a gegeral distinction by which this family may be known from the bush-shrikes, we may mention the difference in the feet, the structure of one being adapted for walking, while that of the other is more suited for perching. The ant-thrushes are very locally distributed; for, although the group is tropical, we frequently found that a particular species, very common in one forest, was replaced in another by a second; while a third locality in the same district would present us with still another kind, different from those we had previously found. Cayenne and Surinam, in like manner, furnish us with many species totally unknown in the forests of Brazil.' To return to Pitta. We select, as an example, Pitta Gigas, Brève Geant, or Giant Pitta. Description.-Size equal to that of a magpie, but the tail 1s short and squared, and the wings cover it entirely. A very brilliant azure blue covers the back, the scapulars, the rump, and tail; a less vivid tint is spread over the wings, the quills of which are black, coloured with azure towards the tips; summit of the head, nape and demi-collar of the lower part of the neck black; feathers of the front and eyebrows ashy-brown; throat whitish; an ashy-brown tint is spread over all the lower parts; the feet are very long and of a horny ash-colour. Total length nine inches. Locality.-Sumatra. (Temm.) of the bill, passes backwards so as to include the eye, and surrounds the occiput; tail deep tarnished green, wings reddish, but the three or four secondary feathers nearest the body are opaline bluish ash; iris, bill, and feet very bright vermillion red. Total length eleven inches two or three lines. The male and female have nearly the same livery. The young of the year differ in the colour of their bill and feet, which are black; in that of the wings, which is a tarnished rusty red, and in the very clear blue, which is nearly whitish, of all the rest of the plumage. This blue tint is more vivid in middle age, and passes by degrees from bright azure blue to celadon-green. Individuals during moult have the plumage varied with these two tints very vivid and pure. Localities.-Java and Sumatra. (Temm.) مساد Pitta Gigas. Chlorisoma. (Sw.) Example, Chlorisoma thalassinum (Kitta thalassina, Piroll Thalassin, Temm.). Description.-Greater part of the plumage very brilliant celadon-green; a velvety black band springs at the angle Grallaria Rex, PITTACAL, one of the ingredients of wood-tar, and so named by Reichenbach, who discovered it, from airTa, pitch, and ráλos, ornament, on account of its fine colour. When a little barytes-water is added to impure picamar, or to oil of tar deprived of its acid, the liquor directly becomes of a fine blue tint, which very soon passes into the colour of indigo: like this pigment, it assumes a copper colour when rubbed, and according to its purity becomes afterwards golden or brass yellow. Pittacal is inodorous, tasteless, and not volatile; at a high temperature it is decomposed and charred, but does not give out ammonia. It is suspended in water in so fine a state of division, that it passes through filters and gives a blue colour to the water, but it does not dissolve in it; light and air do not act upon it; it is insoluble in alcohol and æther; it dissolves in cold diluted sulphuric and hydrochloric acid; acetic acid also dissolves it readily, and the solution is of a fine red colour; alkalis restore the blue colour; nitric acid decomposes it. Reichenbach states that it is a more delicate test of acids and alkalis than litmus. PITTACUS, one of the so-called seven wise men of Greece, was the son of Hyrradius, and born at Mitylene in the island of Lesbos, about the year 652 B.C. Nothing is known of his education and the early part of his life, and the first facts which his biographer, Diogenes Laertius, mentions are, that, with the assistance of the brothers of Alcæus, he delivered his native island from the tyranny of Melanchrus (B.C. 612), and that when the Mitylenæaus were involved in a war with the Athenians about the pos session of the town of Sigeum on the Hellespont, Pittacus gained the victory over the Athenian general Phrynon by a singular stratagem. He came into the field armed with a casting-net, a trident, and a dagger, and first entangled and then despatched his adversary (B.C. 606). In this war Alcæus left his shield a trophy to the enemy. It must have been soon after this war that Mitylene was distracted by the two political parties which about this time began to appear in various parts of Greece. The aristocratic party, to which Alcæus and his brother Antimenidas belonged, was driven from the town, and the popular party unanimously elected Pittacus to the office of æsymnetes to defend the constitution. During his administration, which lasted from 590 to 580 B.C., he overcame his adversaries, and gained them by his clemency and moderation. Even Alcæus, who had assailed him in his poems with the greatest bitterness, became reconciled. Pittacus regulated the affairs of his country by the most salutary laws and institutions, and in B.C. 580 he voluntarily resigned his office and withdrew from public life. Valerius Maximus (vi. 5, ext. i.) erroneously states that Pittacus was made æsymnetes at the time of the war with the Athenians for the purpose of conducting it but this is sufficiently refuted by the authority of Strabo, the fragments of Alcæus, and Diogenes Laertius. Pittacus passed the last ten years of his life in quiet retirement, enjoying the esteem and love of the best and wisest of his countrymen; and when the Mitylenæans wished to reward him for his services with an extensive tract of territory, he refused to accept it for himself, but had it made consecrated ground, which to the time of Diogenes Laertius retained the name of the grounds of Pittacus. He died in B.C. 570, at the age of 82. He was the author of a considerable number of elegies, of which a few fragments are still extant. Diogenes Laertius has preserved a short letter ascribed to Pittacus, and addressed to Croesus, king of Lydia, which contains an answer to an invitation of the king to come to see his magnificent treasures. Many of the numerous maxims of practical wisdom current among the antients were ascribed to Pittacus, and are preserved in the works of Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Elian, and others. PITTOSPORA CEÆ are polypetalous exogenous plants with a definite number of hypogynous stamens, a superior one- or two-celled ovary, which in the former case has parietal placenta, numerous ovules, a single style, and hard seeds 3 Pittosporum Tomentosum. 1, the stamens and pistil; 2, a ripe fuit; 3. the same divided transversely; 4, a section of a seed with the minute embryo near the base. containing a very small embryo in the region of the hilum. Their position in a natural arrangement is unsettled, but appears to be near the Vitaceous order, rather than the Rharanaceous or Polygalaceous. All the species contain in greater or less abundance a resinous substance, the use of which is unknown. Many of the species are pretty shrubs or bushes, sometimes extremely graceful, but they are of no known use. Most of them are natives of Australia, The names of Sollya and Billardiera recal to the mind some of the prettiest twiners of the greenhouse. PITTS, WILLIAM. The very recent death of this highly-gifted artist prevents our attempting a biography, for which the materials are not yet collected. Still, rather than entirely pass over the name of one who will henceforth be known as one of the greatest among British artists, we content ourselves with giving a brief record of him. He was born in London, in the year 1790, and brought up by his father to his own business, which was that of a chaser, or what would have been termed in Italy an orefice, a branch of art now regarded as little better than a mechauical one, and accordingly turned over almost entirely to artisans, although it was that in which Cellini displayed his mastery and earned his reputation. Whether Pitts subsequently studied under any sculptor we do not know. His very early marriage, at about the age of nineteen, would seem to indicate that he was even then following his profession on his own account. It is likely that for what instruction in sculpture he ever had, he was chiefly indebted to Flaxman, for he was employed by him in chasing the shield of Achilles, designed and modelled by himself. Indeed there seems to have been great similarity of feeling and taste between Pitts and Flaxman, for both displayed their talents in poetical subjects and extensive compositions consisting of a number of figures. As a counterpart to the shield of Achilles by the one, may be placed the shield of Eneas by the other; also the shield of Hercules, from Hesiod, and the Brunswick shield, which is a large circular relief, representing George IV. in a car in the centre, and in the other compartments the principal events of the House of Hanover. Pitts was also employed on the Wellington shield, which was executed under the immediate inspection of Stothard. By way of parallel to Flaxman's two series of designs from Homer and Dante, may be mentioned similar graphic compositions by Pitts from Virgil and Ossian, only the first of which has been engraved, being etched by himself in 1831; as yet they are hardly known to the public, whereas the designs of Flaxman are known throughout Europe. Both for the exquisite fancy which they display and for their masterly graces of execution, some of his smaller subjects in relief have obtained for Pitts with many the title of the British Cellini.' Yet, except as indicative of congenial fancy and artistical power, such appellation is utterly inappropriate, hardly any two individuals being so utterly dissimilar in personal character as the arrogant and daring Benvenuto and the meek and unassuming William Pitts, who was an enthusiast entirely devoted to his own art, and utterly unskilled in the art of winning his way to popularity and fortune. Hence it is matter of regret rather than surprise that he should not have obtained patronage at all in proportion to his ability and his genius; or that he encountered many disappointments, and was latterly involved in embarrassments. How far these last had any share in impelling him to the fatal act by which he terminated his life, it is difficult to judge. He destroyed himself by poison, April 16, 1840. The following is a list of his chief productions, arranged according to their dates :-The Deluge, 1823; Samson slaying the Lion; the Creation of Eve; Herod's Cruelty, 1824; a Chariot-race, 1826; the Pleiades; Shield of Æneas, 1828; the Rape of Proserpine, and the Nuptials of Peirithous, two bas-reliefs, about eight feet long, executed for Mr. Simmons, of the Regent's Park, 1829; the Brunswick Shield, 1830; the Apotheoses of Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton; and another series of reliefs in two of the drawing-rooms at Buckingham Palace, 1831; the Shield of Hercules, 1834; a long bas-relief or frieze of all the English sovereigns from the Conquest, 1837; a design for a masonic trophy, 1839; the Triumph of Ceres, and a small subject modelled in wax, exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1840. Whatever difference of opinion may exist with regard to Pitts' talents, there can only be one opinion as to his enthusiastic devotion to his profession, when it is known upon good authority that he sometimes had not his clothes off for a fortnight together, snatching during all that while only short intervals for bodily rest. He used to observe that even a day of eminence as a sculptor would not be too dearly purchased by a life of anxious toil. In addition to the works above enumerated, may be mentioned two of his latest performances, the 'Kemble Tribute,' presented to C. Kemble, Esq., and a vase, executed for her |