My dear Wilberforce:

"I am not the person to argue with you on a subject in which I am a good deal concerned. I hope too that I am incapable of doubting your kindness to me (however mistaken I may think it,) if you let any sentiment of that sort actuate you on the present occasion. I must suppose that some such feeling has inadvertently operated upon you, because whatever may be your general sentiments on subjects of this nature, they can have acquired no new tone or additional argument from any thing that has passed in this transaction. You must be supposed to bring this forward in reference

to the individual case.

In doing so, you will be accessary in load one of the parties with unfair and unmerited obloquy. With respect to the other party, myself, I feel it a real duty to say, to you frankly that your motion is one for my removal. If any step on the subject is proposed

which had been on foot to induce him to enter Addington's administration. When they quitted office in 1801, Dundas proposed taking as his motto, Jam rude donatus. Pitt suggested to him that having always been an active man, office, and then that his having taken such a he would probably wish again to come into motto would be made a ground for ridicule. Dundas assented, and took another motto. Addington had not long been in office, before Pitt's expectation was fulfilled, and Dundas undertook to bring Pitt into the plan; which was to appoint some third person head, and bring in Pitt and Addington on equal terms under him. Dundas, accordingly, confiding in his knowledge of all Pitt's ways and feelings, set out for Walmer Castle; and after dinner, and Port wine, began cautiously to open his proposals. But he saw it would not do, and stopped abruptly. Really,' said Pitt with a sly severity, and it was almost the only sharp thing I ever heard him say of any friend, 'I had not the curiosity to ask what I was to be.""

Amongst the letters addressed to Mr. Wilberforce, to be found in these volumes, is one written by John Wesley from his death-bed,

from which he was never roused. They are on the day before he sank into the lethargy probably the last written words of that extraordinary man.

When a statement had been made to the house of the cruel practices approaching certainly to torture, by which the discovery of concealed arms had been enforced in Ireland, John Claudius Beresford rose to reply, and said with a force and honesty, the impression of which I never can forget, 'I fear, and feel deep shame in making the avowal-I fear it is too true-I defend it not-but I trust I may be permitted to refer, as some palliation of these atrocities, to the state of my unhappy country, where rebellion and its attendant horrors had roused on both sides to the highest pitch all the strongest passions of our nature.'

I was

with Pitt in the House of Lords when Lord Clare replied to a similar charge-Well, suppose it were so; but surely,' &c. I shall never forget Pitt's look. He turned round to me with that indignant stare which sometimes marked his countenance, and stalked out of the house."

It is not generally known that at the period of Lord Melville's trial a coolness almost approaching to estrangement had arisen between that minister and Mr. Pitt. The following extract from one of Mr. Wilberforce's Diaries on this subject affords an authentic and curious

illustration of Mr. Pitt's character:

"I had perceived above a year before that Lord Melville had not the power over Pitt's mind, which he once possessed. Pitt was taking me to Lord Camden's, and in our tete-a

"February 24, 1791.

Unless Divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra mundum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise, in opposing that execrable villany which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; and if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh! be not weary of well-doing. Go on in the name of God, and in the power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it. That He who has guided you from your youth up, may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir, your affectionate servant,

"JOHN WESLEY."

There are, in this work, some occasional additions to the stock of political anecdotes. Of these we transcribe the following speci

mens:

"Franklin signed the peace of Paris in his old spotted velvet coat (it being the time of a court-mourning, which rendered it more particular.) What,' said my friend the negotiator, is the meaning of that harlequin coat?' It is that in which he was abused by Wedderburne.' He showed much rancour and personal enmity to this country-would not grant the common passports for trade, which were, however, easily got from Jay or Adams.

"Dined with Lord Camden; he, very chatty and pleasant. Abused Thurlow for his duplicity and mystery. Said the king had said to him occasionally he had wished Thurlow and Pitt to agree; for that both were necessary to him-one in the Lords, the other in the Commons. Thurlow will never do any thing to oblige Lord Camden, because he is a friend of Pitt's. Lord Camden himself, though he speaks of Pitt with evident affection, seems rather to complain of his being too much under the influence of any one who is about him; particularly of Dundas, who prefers his countrymen whenever he can.-Lord Camden is sure that Lord Bute got money by the peace of Paris. He can account for his sinking near £300,000 in land and houses; and his paternal estate in the island which bears his name was not above £1500 a-year, and he is a life-tenant only of Wortley, which may be £8000 or £10,000. Lord Camden does not believe Lord Bute has any the least connexion with the king now, whatever he may have had. Lord Thurlow is giving constant dinners to the judges, to gain them over to his party, was applied to by *, a wretched sort of dependant of the Prince of Wales, to know if he would lend him money on the joint bond of the prince and dukes of York and Clarence, to receive double the sum lent, whenever the king should die, and either the Prince of Wales, the dukes of York and Clarence, come into the inheritance. The sum intended to be raised is £200,000.

""Tis only a hollow truce, not a peace, that is made between Thurlow and Pitt. They can have no confidence in each other."

It is perhaps the most impressive circumstance in Mr. Wilberforce's character, that the lively interest with which he engaged in all these political occurrences was combined with a consciousness not less habitual or intense of their inherent vanity. There is a seeming paradox in the solicitude with which he devoted so much of his life to secular pursuits, and the very light esteem in which he held them. The solution of the enigma is to be found in his unremitting habits of devotion. No man could more scrupulously obey the precept which Mr. Taylor has given to his "Statesman"-To observe a "Sabbatical day

to the world, not merely with recruited energy, but in a frame of mind the most favourable to the right discharge of its duties. Things in themselves the most trivial, wearisome, or even offensive, had, in his solitude, assumed a solemn interest from their connexion with the future destinies of mankind, whilliant and alluring objects of human ambition had been brought into a humiliating contrast with the great ends for which life is given, and with the immortal hopes by which it should be sustained. Nothing can be more heartfelt than the delight with which he breathed the pure air of these devotional retirements. Nothing more soothing than the tranquillity which they diffused over a mind harassed with the vexations of a political life.

Mr. Wilberforce retired from Parliament in the year 1825. The remainder of his life was passed in the bosom of his family. He did not entirely escape those sorrows which so usually thicken as the shadows grow long, for he survived both his daughters; and, from that want of worldly wisdom which always characterized him, he lost a very considerable part of his fortune in speculations in which he had nothing but the gratification of parental kindness to gain or to hope. But never were such reverses more effectually baffled by the invulnerable peace of a cheerful and selfapproving heart. There were not wanting external circumstances which marked the change; but the most close and intimate observer could never perceive on his countenance even a passing shade of dejection or anxiety on that account. He might, indeed, have been supposed to be unconscious that he had lost any thing, had not his altered fortunes occasionally suggested to him remarks on the Divine goodness, by which the seeming calamity had been converted into a blessing to his children and to himself. It afforded him a welcome apology for withdrawing from society at large, to gladden, by his almost constant presence, the homes of his sons by whom his life has been recorded. There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, he yielded himself to the current of each successive inclination; for he had now acquired that rare maturity of the moral stature in which the conflict between inclination and duty is over, and virtue and self-indulgence are the same. Some decline of his intellectual powers was perceptible to the friends of his earlier and more active days; but

"To things immortal time can do no wrong,

And that which never is to die, for ever must be young."

Looking back with gratitude, sometimes eloquent, but more often from the depth of the emotion faltering on the tongue, to his long career of usefulness, of honour, and enjoyment, he watched with grave serenity the ebb of the current which was fast bearing him to his eternal reward. He died in his seventyfifth year, in undisturbed tranquillity, after a very brief illness, and without any indication of bodily suffering. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the presence of a large

ing the depths of the heart, and playing over the mere surface of the mind, they relieved the subtleties of logic by a quibble or a pun, and illuminated, by intense flashes of wit, the metaphysical abysses which it was their delight to tread. Even when directing the spiritual affections to their highest exercise, they hazarded any quaint conceit which crossed their path, and yielded to every impulse of fancy or of passion. But divinity was no longer to retain the foremost place in English literature. The Tillotsons and Seckers of a later age were alike distrustful of their readers and of themselves. Tame, cautious, and correct, they rose above the Tatlers and Spectators of their times, because on such themes it was impossible to be frivolous; but they can be hardly said to have contributed as largely as Steele and Addison to guide the opinions, or to form the character of their generation.

This depression of theology was aided by the state of political parties under the two first princes of the house of Brunswick. Low and high church were but other names for whigs and tories; and while Hoadley and Atterbury wrangled about the principles of the revolution, the sacred subjects which formed the pretext of their disputes were desecrated in the feelings of the multitude, who witnessed and enjoyed the controversy. Secure from farther persecution, and deeply attached to the new order of things, the dissenters were no longer roused to religious zeal by invidious secular distinctions; and Doddington and Watts lamented the decline of their congregations from the standard of their ancient piety. The former victims of bigotry had become its proselytes, and anathemas were directed against the pope and the pretender, with still greater acrimony than against the evil one, with whom good protestants of all denominations associated them.

The theology of any age at once ascertains and regulates its moral stature; and, at the period of which we speak, the austere virtues of the Puritans, and the more meek and social, though not less devout spirit of the worthies of the Church of England, if still to be detected in the recesses of private life, were discountenanced by the general habits of society. The departure of the more pure and generous influences of earlier times may be traced no where more clearly than in those works of fiction, in which the prevailing profligacy of manners was illustrated by Fielding, Sterne, and Smollet; and proved, though with more honest purposes, by Richardson and Defoe.

It was at this period that the Alma Mater of Laud and Sacheverel was nourishing in her bosom a little band of pupils destined to accomplish a momentous revolution in the national character. Wesley had already attained the dawn of manhood when, in 1714, his future rival and coadjutor, George Whitfield, was born at a tavern in Gloucester, of which his father was the host. The death of the elder Whitfield within two years from that time, left the child to the care of his mother, who took upon herself the management of the "Bell Inn;" though as her son has gratefully recorded, she "prudently kept him, in his ten

der years, from intermeddling with the tavern business." In such a situation he almost inevitably fell into vices and follies, which have been exaggerated as much by the vehemence of his own confessions, as by the malignity of his enemies. They exhibit some curious indications of his future character. He robbed his mother, but part of the money was given to the poor. He stole books, but they were books of devotion. Irritated by the unlucky tricks of his play-fellows, who, he says, in the language of David, "compassed him about like bees," he converted into a prayer the prophetic imprecation of the Psalmist "In the name of the Lord I will destroy them." The mind in which devotional feelings and bad passions were thus strongly knit together, was consigned in early youth, to the culture of the master of the grammar-school of St. Mary de Crypt, in his native city; and there were given the first auspices of his future eminence. He studied the English dramatic writers, and represented their female characters with applause; and when the mayor and aldermen were to be harangued by one of the scholars, the embryo field-preacher was selected to extol the merits, and to gratify the tastes of their worships. His erratic propensities were deyeloped almost as soon as his powers of elocution. Wearied with the studies of the grammarschool, he extorted his mother's reluctan consent to return to the tavern; and there, he says, "I put on my blue apron and my snuffers, washed mops, cleaned rooms, and, in one word, became professed and common drawer for nigh a year and a half." The tapster was, of course, occasionally tipsy, and always in request; but as even the flow of the tap may not be perennial, he found leisure to compose sermons, and stole from the night some hours for the study of the Bible.

At the Bell Inn there dwelt a sister-in-law of Whitfield's, with whom it was his fortune or his fault to quarrel; and to sooth his troubled spirit he "would retire and weep before the Lord, as Hagar when flying from Sarah." From the presence of this Sarah he accordingly fled to Bristol, and betook himself to the study of Thomas à Kempis; but returning once more to Gloucester, exchanged divinity for the drama, and then abandoned the dramatists for his long neglected school-books. For now had opened a prospect inviting him to the worthy use of those talents which might otherwise have been consumed in sordid occupations, or in some obscure and fruitless efforts to assert his native superiority to other men. Intelligence had reached his mother that admission might be obtained at Pembroke College, Oxford, for her capricious and thoughtful boy; and the intuitive wisdom of a mother's love assured her that through this avenue he might advance to distinction, if not to fortune. A few more oscillations between dissolute tastes and heavenward desires, and the youth finally gained the mastery over his lower appetites. From his seventeenth year to his dying day he lived amongst imbittered enemies and jealous friends, without a stain on his reputation.

In 1731 the gates of Pembroke College had