power and the deficiency together called out in other men. The forbearance, the tenderness, the reverence, with which Coleridge was regarded, in the face of his vitiated life, are more than a compensation for what was wanting in himself. From the days when awe-struck schoolmates gathered round "the inspired boy" in the cloisters at Christ's Hospital, to the present moment, when his worshippers turn away from a sound of censure, as from a desecration of his grave, he has met with that magnanimous justice which it requires some of the loftiest qualifications to command; and in this influence lay one of the chief benefits of his life. Others were the sublime faculty by which he opened to us new worlds of thought, and made the oldest new; the subtlety of analysis by which he displayed the inner workings of what was before our eyes, before closed and impenetrable; the instinct by which he discerned relations among things which before were isolated; and the thrilling sense of beauty which he awakened by bringing all the appearances of nature into illustration of ideas before wholly abstract. Thus, his discourses on the laws and facts of thought, his dramatic criticisms, and his own poems, are full of lights and charms which hardly need the magic of his utterance to make them intoxicate the young thinker, and stimulate the faculties of the more mature. He was the wonder of his time. If he had not been subject to one great deficiency, he would have been its miracle. As it is, his fame is not likely to grow, less because his magical voice is silenced, than because his enchantment itself must be broken up by the touch of science. Even then, glorious will be the fragments that will remain. They will be truly the traces of old idolatries, not of one, but of many; for he spent his life in the worship of a succession of idols, those idols being ideas, which he called opinions, and which he was for ever changing. S. T. Coleridge was born in a Devonshire vicarage, in 1772; and he died at Highgate, on the 25th of July, 1834.

Bell.

A man of great benevolence, who indirectly contributed much Dr. Andrew to the great work of national education, which yet remains, for the most part, to be achieved, ought to be mentioned at the close of this period. Dr. Bell, a prebendary of Westminster, was once a chaplain in India, and there conceived the idea of extending the benefits of education by setting pupils to instruct each other. He reported his method; and it was soon adopted in England to such an extent, that he saw 10,000 schools established, attended by 600,000 children. He believed that the object of general education was gained; and so did many others. It required some years to show that nothing like education can be obtained by the ignorant teaching the ignorant. The results have been such as to disabuse the most sanguine. But public

attention was turned to the instruction of the childhood and youth of the nation; and, in this sense, we may be said to be still benefiting by the introduction of the Bell and Lancaster system. Dr. Bell employed his large fortune in acts of beneficence; devoting 50,000l. to the establishment of a college in his native city of St. Andrews. He died in January, 1831.

Having now recorded the acts, and buried the treasures, of an important period of our history, we must proceed to learn what further blessings have been brought home to our country and people by the life-giving hand of Peace.

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I.

The

FROM the time of the passage of the Reform Bill, the three The three parties in the State kindred with those which exist parties. in every free State began to accept one another's new titles, and the professions included in those titles. Tories, Whigs, and Radicals wished to be called Conservatives, Reformers, and Radical Reformers; and the easy civility of calling people by the name they like best, spread through public manners till the word Tory was seldom heard except among oldfashioned people, or in the heat of political argument. The Whig title has since revived, inevitably, from the Whigs — having ceased even to pretend to the character of Reformers; and the Radical Reformers were not numerous or powerful enough in Parliament to establish for themselves a title which should become traditional. There was some dispute, and a good deal of recrimination, at the outset, about the assumption by each party of its own title: the Tories declaring, that they were as reforming, in intention and in fact, as the Whigs, only in a preservative way; the Whigs declaring, that the only true conservatism was through reforms like theirs; and the Radicals, who were called Destructives by both the others, declaring, that a renovation of old institutions a regeneration on occasion was the only way to avoid that ultimate revolution which the Tories would invite, and the Whigs permit. While the titles were changing, the parties were as yet essentially the same as ever. As usual, they consisted mainly of the representatives of those who had much to lose, those who had much to gain, and the umpire party, disliked by both, whose function is to interpose in times of crisis, and whose fate it is to exhaust the credit acquired, in such seasons, during long intervals of indolence and vacillation. Such was, as usual, the constitution of the three political parties, after the passage of the Reform Bill, and when the changes in their titles actually took place; but there were clear-sighted men at that time who perceived that the change of

names was but the first sign of an approaching disintegration of the parties themselves, a disintegration which must be succeeded by more or less fusion, that fusion being introductory to a new exhibition of products. The old parties, notwithstanding their new names, were about to disappear. They could not be annihilated; but they would re-appear so transmuted that none but the philosopher would know them again,—with new members, a new language, a new task, and a whole set of new aims. As much of this prevision has come true as time has yet allowed for. The disintegration and fusion have taken place; and all thoughtful people see that a new formation of parties must be at hand. Öne limit of the transition-period of parties remains still future; the other must be laid down at the date of Sir Robert Peel's accession to power, in December, 1834. Here we have the old Eldon oracle speaking again, speaking "in the spirit of fear," and not “in that of power, and of love, and of a sound mind," and therefore giving out its truth in a dismal disguise; but still giving out more truth than anybody could use at the time. Here we have Lord Eldon's party view of the future; while the Wellingtons and Rodens, and Knatchbulls and Lyndhursts, and Wharncliffes and Ellenboroughs, were in power, at the opening of the year 1835:1 "The new ministers certainly have the credit, if that be creditable, of being inclined to get as much popularity by what are called reforms as their predecessors; and if they do not, at present, go to the full length to which the others were going, they will at least make so many important changes in Church and State, that nobody can guess how far the precedents they establish may lead to changes of a very formidable kind hereafter." Though Lord Eldon could see no other reason for Tories making changes than a hankering after popularity, we can discern in the facts, and his statement of them, the beginning of that wasting away of parties which he did not live to see.

offices.

The new Conservative rule began with a joke. Some, who could not take the joke easily, were very angry; but The Duke's most people laughed; and, among them, the person most nearly concerned, the Duke of Wellington,-laughed as cheerfully as anybody. Sir Robert Peel was at Rome: it must be a fortnight before he could arrive, and nothing could be done about the distribution of office in his absence; so the Duke took the business of the empire upon himself during the interval. This he called, not deserting his sovereign; and he was as well satisfied with himself in this singular way of getting over the crisis, as on all the other occasions when he refused to desert his sovereign. His devotion was such, that, for the interval, he 1 Life of Lord Eldon, iii. p. 244.

undertook eight offices,-five principal, and three subordinate. "The Irish hold it impossible," wrote a contemporary, "for a man to be in two places at once, 'like a bird.'1 The Duke has proved this no joke, he is in five places at once. At last, then, we have a united government. The Cabinet Council sits in the Duke's head, and the ministers are all of one mind." The angry among the Liberals treated the spectacle as they would have done if the Duke had proposed to carry on the government permanently in this manner. Condemnations passed at public meetings were forwarded to him, with emphatic assurances that the condemnation was unanimous; an orator here and there drew out in array all the consequences that could ever arise from the temporary shift being made a precedent; and Lord Campbell condescended to talk, at a public meeting at Edinburgh, of impeaching the multifarious Minister. At all this, and at a myriad of jokes, the Duke laughed, while he worked like a clerk from day to day, till the welcome sound of Sir Robert Peel's carriage-wheels was heard.

Position of

Peel.

It is a strong proof of the virulence of the party-spirit of the time, that even generous-minded men, experienced in Sir Robert the vicissitudes of politics, could not at first—nor till after the lapse of months or years appreciate the position of Sir Robert Peel. Everybody saw it at last; and there were many who, during that hard probation, watched him and sympathized with him with daily increasing interest and admiration; but there were too many who turned his difficulties against him, and who were insensible till too late to the rebuke involved in the fine temper which became nobler, and the brilliant statesmanship which became more masterly, as difficulties which he had not voluntarily encountered pressed upon him with a daily accumulating force. His being at Rome proved how little he had anticipated being called to office. He had no option about accepting it, his sovereign sent for him, and he must come; and, when he arrived, he found there was no possibility of declining a task which he believed to be hopeless. Unpopular as the Whig Ministry had become, the Conservatives were not the better for it, but the worse: for the cry for reform was growing stronger every day; and he could have no hope of gratifying the majority of his own party, as he could not attempt to repeal the Reform Bill, or to get back to the old ways. There was nothing before him but failure, with discredit, on every hand; but, while he would certainly never have chosen to fill a position so hard and so hopeless, he had a spirit whose nature it was to rise under difficulties, and to feel the greatest alacrity under desperate conditions.

1 England - Seven Administrations, iii. p. 141.