"When I see," said Mr. Sheridan, "in many of these letters, the infirmities of age made a subject of mockery and ridicule; when I see the feelings of a son treated by Mr. Middleton as puerile and contemptible; when I see an order given from Mr. Hastings to harden that son's heart, and to choke the struggles of nature in his bosom; when I see them pointing to the son's name, and to his standard, while marching to oppress the mother, as to a banner that gives dignity, that gives a holy sanction and a reverence to their enterprise-when I see and hear these things done-when I hear them brought into three deliberate defences set up against the charges of the Commons-my lords, I own I grow puzzled and confounded, and almost begin to doubt whether, where such a defence can be offered, it may not be tolerated. And yet, my lords, how can I support the claim of filial love by argu

ment ? What can I say on such a subject? What can I do, but repeat the ready truths which, with the quick impulse of the mind, must spring to the lips of every man on such a theme!

their patriotism and keep aloof from temptation; but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless knew not, in the course of their lives, what it was to have a shilling of their own.' And in saying this he wept." Byron adds, "I have more than once heard him say, that he never had a shilling of his own.' To be sure, he contrived to extract a good many of other people's."

The only forensic speeches in the collection are those of Lord Erskine; and they form no inconsiderable portion of

the volume which contains them. His defence of Captain

Baillie for a libel on the Earl of Sandwich, then first lord of the Admiralty, delivered November 24, 1778, soon after his being called to the bar, stamped him at once as one of the most fearless aud effective law-orators of the day, while his celebrated speech as counsel for Lord George Gordon, on his trial for high treason, 5th February, 1781, showed him to be immeasurably superior to all his contemporaries at the bar. No man excelled more in the art of addressing a jury. He knew how to sway their every feeling, and to

this kind has been declared to be his speech in defence of John Stockdale, a bookseller of London, tried on an ex officio information filed by the Attorney-General, for having published Mr. Logan's pamphlet, already referred to, in defence of Warren Hastings. His displays of rhetorical power, in defence of the various parties charged with high treason in the state prosecutions of 1794, particularly his speech in defence of Thomas Hardy, are lasting monuments of his genius. These orations of Erskine ought to form the study of all who expect to attain distinction as pleaders at the bar of courts of law.

"Filial piety!-it is the primal bond of society; it is that instinctive principle, which, panting for its proper good, soothes, unbidden, each sense and sensibility of man! It now quivers on every lip!-it now beams from every eye!-it is an emanation of that gratitude, which, softening under the sense of recollected good, is eager to own the vast, countless debt it ne'er, alas! can pay, for so many long years of unceasing solicitudes, honourable self-denials, life-preserving cares-it is that part of our practice where duty drops its awe-where reverence refines into love! It asks no aid of memory-it needs not the deduc-command their strictest attention. His finest oration of tions of reason!-pre-existing, paramount over all, whether law, or human rule, few arguments can increase and none can diminish it!--it is the sacrament of our nature-not only the duty, but the indulgence of man-it is his first great privilege-it is amongst his last most endearing delights!-it causes the bosom to glow with reverberated love!--it requites the visitations of nature, and returns the blessings that have been received!--it fires emotion into vital principle!-it renders habituated instinct into a master-passion-sways all the sweetest energies of manhangs over each vicissitude of all that must pass away-aids the melancholy virtues, in their last sad tasks of life, to cheer the languors of decrepitude and age-explores the thought--elucidates the aching eye-and breathes sweet consolation even in the awful moment of dissolution! If these are the general sentiments of man, what must be their depravity-what must be their degeneracy-who can blot out and erase from the bosom the virtue that is most deeply rooted in the human heart, and twined within the chords of life itself? Aliens from nature, apostates from humanity! And yet, if there be a crime more fell, more foul-if there be anything worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother, it is that of a deliberate instigator and abettor to the deed. This it is that shocks, disgusts, and appals the mind more than the other; to view, not a wilful parricide, but a parricide by compulsion-a miserable wretch, not actuated by the stubborn evils of his own worthless heart, not driven by the fury of his own distracted brain, but lending his sacrilegious hand, without any malice of his own, to answer the abandoned purposes of the human fiends that have subdued his will! To condemn crimes like these, we need not talk of laws, or of human rules; their foulness, their deformity does not depend on local constitutions, on human institutes, or religious creeds; they are crimes, and the persons who perpetrate them are monsters, who violate the primitive condition on which the earth was given to man. They are guilty by the general verdict of

human kind."

Alas! poor Sherry! With all his brilliant powers of eloquence, he used to affirm that he seldom spoke to his own satisfaction until he had taken a couple of bottles of port wine. Byron relates the following affecting instance of what may be called Sheridan's colloquial eloquence :—— "Once," said his lordship, "I saw Sheridan cry, after a splendid dinner. I had the honour of sitting next him. The occasion of his tears was some observation or other upon the subject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting office, and keeping to their principles. Sheridan turned round-Sir, it is easy for my Lord G., or Earl G., or Marquis B., or Lord H., with thousands upon thousands ayear, some of it either presently derived, or inherited in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of

To Burke's speeches, noble specimens of eloquence as they are, we can make but brief allusion. His principal orations were delivered on East Indian affairs, and in the case of Warren Hastings, with the management of the prosecution of whom he was entrusted. Great, as a writer, he was equally great as a speaker. From the laboured details in which he indulged, however, his speeches in the house were sometimes very tedious, and even tiresome. "Ask any well-informed public character," said General || Fitzpatrick, "who is the best-informed man in Parliament, and the answer will certainly be Burke; inquire who is the most eloquent, or the most witty, and the reply will be Burke; then ask who is the most tiresome, and the response will still be Burke-most certainly, Burke."

Fox's speeches form of themselves a body of oratory un equalled in any language. From the close of the year 1770, to the beginning of 1806, he spoke on almost every subject of national importance that came before the House of Commons, while he had a seat in Parliament. His orations, particularly those which he delivered, as leader of the opposition, on the introduction of his own India Bill, and on that of his great rival Pitt, on the Westminster Scrutiny, the Regency Bill, the Libel Bill, the trial of Hastings, on the abolition of the slave trade, and on the motion for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, as well as his several powerful and earnest appeals to Parliament in favour of preserving peace with France, are finished specimens of eloquence, unmatched for strength of reasoning, acuteness of argument, and energy of language.

As an extemporary speaker, on questions arising sud. denly and unexpectedly in the course of a debate, he was

great. On these he would speak for an hour sometimes, || of the feelings and emotions of the heart, and the keen with consummate ability and astonishing ease and fluency. anatomization of human nature, as it is exhibited by the Sir James Mackintosh describes Fox as "the most De- men and women of the nineteenth century, living without mosthenean speaker since the days of Demosthenes." || feudal recollections or heraldic associations of any kind, ho "His speeches," says Sheridan, "were among the finest falls short of many contemporary novelists. examples of argumentation-abounding in pointed observations and just conclusions, clothed in forcible expression, and delivered with manly boldness. The leading characteristic of his oratory was a ready, and, as it were, an intuitive power of analysis, which he possessed beyond any man now living; and it would not exceed the truth, perhaps, if it were added, equal to any man that has ever lived." Godwin likens the impetuosity of his eloquence to "the current of the river Rhone-nothing could arrest its course." His utterance, from the rush of his ideas,|| and the vehemence of his style, was often rapid and unpleasing, which, with all his natural gifts, prevented him from being a very persuasive speaker. His orations, nevertheless, read well. Although the fire and energy of the living orator are wanting, the glowing and eloquent words with which he moved his hearers and gained the admiration and wonder of his contemporaries, remain to delight, instruct, and enlighten still.

The period of time embraced within the circle of the contents of these two volumes is one of the most important and exciting in the history of Great Britain. Many of the questions discussed had the most momentous bearing not only on the welfare of this country, but on the fate of millions of our fellow-men, while the names of the speakers are the greatest that can be found, during the same cra, in the rolls of the orators of any nation. All this gives an interest and a value to the publication which, added to the intrinsic beauty and freshness of the contents, must render it successful, as it makes it unique in modern literature. The third volume is to comprise the Parliamentary speeches of William Pitt, the great rival of Fox, and one worthy of being his rival, and will form an appropriate addition to the series.

He has of late produced several fictions of a more domestic and social nature-mere novels, in short, devoted to the delineation of modern society, without anything of the historical in their composition. "Beauchamp, or the Error," is one of these; and few productions of its kind, of recent publication, are so interesting and attractive. In all that relates to the description of manners and incident, and to the discrimination of character, it is complete as a first-class novel. Adventure follows adventure, and event succeeds event, till the denouement in the third volume, with wonderful rapidity; and the author's invention, appears, in this respect, as usual, to be inexhaustible. The style of "Beauchamp'' is lively and agreeable. There is no straining for effect-all goes smoothly on; and yet the work is as effective throughout as the reader might reasonably expect from the well-known skill and ability of the author.

The plot and composition of the story are admirably managed. The principal personage, at the outset passing under the name of Beauchamp, turns out to be a Viscount Len ham, whose youthful indiscretion in allowing himself to be in-. veigled into an irregular Scotch marriage with an artful and abandoned, but beautiful and accomplished young woman, named Charlotte Hay, forms "the Error" on which the story principally moves. Being on a visit to a relation in Scotland, an old maiden lady of the name of Moreton, on his twenty-first birth-day, a party was given to celebrate the event. By the aid of a cousin of his, a certain Captain Moreton, a great scoundrel, who had squandered away his estate, and who appears throughout the second and third volumes as the master-villain of the work, Miss Hay was enabled to carry her design into effect. She lived with Miss Moreton as something between a friend and companion, and on the night of the party was particularly pleasing and attractive. Poor Beauchamp was induced to drink a great deal, and some romping sport being proposed, he was called upon Beauchamp: or, the Error. By G. P. R. James, Esq., to choose a wife for the afternoon. He was told it was the author of "The Smuggler," "Darnley," 'Richelieu,' custom of the country on such occasions, and he readily &c. 3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. yielded to the suggestion. He chose Miss Hay, acknowMR. JAMES ought to be styled the many-volumed. His ledged her before witnesses as his wife, and the next mornindustry and indefatigability are unequalled. He has pub-ing he found himself married. IIe immediately quitted lished more novels and romances than any author of the day, and there is no end to his productions. They would furnish of themselves a good circulating library; and when we say circulating, we mean that they would really be read. His works, indeed, are finished with so much artistic skill, and he has so much ingenuity and knowledge of what ought to constitute a good novel, that whatever he publishes is always sure to be asked for. It would take a lifetime, however, to read all his works. The list is so extensive that we wonder if he remembers all the names himself, or if he can repeat them in their order without book. He would be a very extraordinary man if he could.

the house of his relative, and returned in all haste to England. His father, to whom ho communicated the whole circumstances of the base transaction, took the best legal advice in the matter that he could find, and found his son entangled past recal; but in consideration of a promise on the woman's part never to molest him or take his name, one thousand pounds per annum was settled upon her. On coming to the title, Lord Lenham, to escape from the consequences of his early error, travelled abroad, and spent some time in India. At the period when the story opens, he is residing quietly, under the assumed name of Beauchamp, at the little inn in the retired village of Tarning

He began with historical novels, induced thereto, doubt-ham, "somewhere in the west of England," as it is someless, by the great success of Sir Walter Scott. For cir- what widely described. Ilis object was, not so much concumstantiality of detail, description of incident, or crowd- cealment from his persecutor, Charlotte Hay, and her paraing together of events, as well as contrivance of situations mour, his cousin, Captain Moreton, for he did not know and dilemmas, and the painting of costume and all the exter- that they were at that very time in his near neighbournal accessories of his subject, he has, probably, no equal at hood, but to purchase the Moreton estate, which his proflithe present day; but in intensity of passion, the depicting || gate cousin had dissipated in extravagance and debauchery,

and which had fallen into the hands of a rascally lawyer of the name of Wharton, who figures pretty prominently throughout the story. The Viscount falls in love with the daughter of a Sir John Slingsby, a gentleman of estate in the neighbourhood; and, in the belief that Charlotte Hay is dead-to which she had artfully administered by not claiming her annuity for years, and by causing her effects in Paris to be sold off as those of the late Charlotte Hay, Lady Lenham"-he marries her. On turning from the altar, however, with his bride, he is confronted by this his first wife, and threatened with a trial for bigamy, &c. The production of documents, however, by a Widow Lamb, a poor Scotchwoman in the neigbourhood, proving Charlotte Hay's previous marriage to a Scotch minister, Mrs. Lamb's cousin, from whom she had eloped with Captain Moreton, and who was alive at the time of the pretented marriage with the young Lenham, very materially alters the complexion of the case. The catastrophe that ensues is terrible. The disappointed and abandoned woman, rendered desperate by the failure of all her plans, goes back to the inn, and straightway cuts the throat of Captain Moreton, her guilty companion, as he lies asleep on a sofa, and then throws herself over the window, and is taken up dead!

An at

There is, besides all this, no lack of incident. tempt at the abduction of a Miss Clifford, a young lady of beauty and fortune, which both Beauchamp and a highspirited, brave, and generous-hearted young officer of the name of Ned Hayward, who is one of the principal personages in the story, are instrumental in frustrating, begins the series. Then there are two or three attempts at shooting, and one at drowning; a duel, a fire, and a wellworked-up scene with lawyers and bailiffs, when Sir John Slingsby, through the villanous contrivances of Wharton, the lawyer, is arrested for debt, from which he is relieved by Mr. Hayward and Lord Lenham.

The characters are well drawn; one or two of them, such as Billy Lamb, the little humpbacked potboy of Tarningham Inn, and Stephen Gimlet, alias Wolf, the poacher, and afterwards gamekeeper at Slingsby Park, have some original features in them. The story has its honest attorney in the person of Mr. Bacon, as well as its villanous one in that of Mr. Wharton. Sir John Slingsby is a jolly old veteran, who likes to enjoy himself and make everybody comfortable about him. His daughter, and his niece, Miss Clifford, who becomes the wife of Hayward, are favourable specimens of young English ladies of their rank in life. A blackguard of the name of Henry Wittingham, the son of a retired merchant, who becomes the great man of the village, and a justice of the peace, plays no inconsiderable part in the adventures and incidents that form the plot. He it is who is the grand mover in the attempted abduction of Miss Clifford; for which, and for his extravagance and evil courses, he is disowned and disinherited by his father. By the aid of an indulgent housekeeper, however, on the night of his father's death, he searches for and burns the will, and quietly takes possession. Soon after, he gives a dinner to some of his friends, but finds a difficulty in swallowing wine, and a sort of contraction of the throat, and a general shudder throughout his frame, in attempting to drink any liquid. He had been bit by the gamekeeper's dog some time before, when, with Captain Moreton, he had made an attack upon him, and the result is, that he dies of hydrophobia.

From the brief description we have attempted, it will be seen that the story is a good one, and well told.

We re

"VERITAS" is but the one title of this remarkable production. Its second title is explanatory-namely, "Being the biography of a poet, in which is pour trayed the manners of those among whom he moved, with incidental descriptions of sense and scenery, forming a text-book on many matters of importance concerning the world we live in." Who this poet is we, at least, can be at no loss to know, as we here recognise one or two passages, incorporated in the poem, which have already appeared in our own pages, with the poet's name.

The idea is a good one, and it has been worked out deftly and well. The author is no new hand, and, when he likes, he can throw off a poem or a song, the latter, espeWe admire the cially, of a very superior kind, indeed. fervour of his genius, the boldness of his conceptions, and, in this particular poem, the pungency of his satire. "Veritas" is one of the most original pieces that has appeared of late years as an entire poem. It contains passages of great beauty and power, and is, above all, a readable and instructive production. In some respects it is unequal in its tone, as well as in its flights; but this, the preface says, was intended, "as it does not represent one feature in life, but many; and as life is unequal, so must the writing be”— a very original reason certainly for the author's digressions, and occasional lapses from the lofty and sublime down to the free and familiar.

Truth is the object of the poem, and the truth is stated boldly, and at the same time with good discretion. There is much sound sense in many of the author's reflections, which is a thing oftener found, like truth, at the bottom of a draw-well than in the insipid productions of most of the minor poets of the day.

We shall give a specimen or two to prove that " Veritas" is deserving of our good opinion. The poet relates his vicissitudes in life in strong and vigorous language, and shows his disappointments in trade, and the misfortunes he sustained in different situations into which he was thrown by circumstances; though they had never made his spirit quail, or deprived it of one iota of his characteristic cheerfulness.

"Never exposed his sorrows when with men,

But felt, alone, and soothed him with his pen;
Dress'd in the evening for some route or ball,
And was the merriest fellow of them all!"

He was born, he tells us, in the spring of the year, and this season of buds and blossoms, and promise and hope, calls forth the following sweet little bit of pure nature and concise description :

"But for his heat, and poesy, and heart,
And music, unadorn'd by teacher's art-
No marvel that he early learnt to sing,
He came into the world in joyous spring;
Not when exhausted nature dies away,
And falling leaves foretel the year's decay;
Not in the sweet effulgence and the bloom
Of shrubs and flowers and blossoms in perfume;
But after dreary winter had just fled,
And nature rises fresh, as from the dead!
"Tis also at this time the happy thrush
First opes its tuneful carols on the bush.

standard Scotch poets, now in course of publication by Messrs. Fullarton and Co., ought to be in every Scotsman's library. The works are carefully reprinted from the best editions, and are furnished with biographies, and explanatory notes, besides being illustrated by portraits and other appropriate engravings.

The present collection of Ramsay's works is taken from the edition of Mr. George Chalmers, published by Cadell and

Of truth, the object, and indeed the inspiration of his Davies, in 2 vols. 8vo, in 1800, with the addition of one or

mind, his human feelings, were employed to bend him to their will; but all in vain long was he kept in prisonstarved-then tempted by all the promised luxuries that could tempt a starving man; but still his firmness failed him not. The last hope to subdue him was my mother; they had not long been married; she loved my father as her life; his life was naught to him, compared to the love he felt for her; bu his conviction in regard to the great TRUTH was mightier than all his worldly hopes. Now came the last, the fatal scene. It was enacted in that place of fire, of torture, and of blood, Smithfield. There stood the pulpit, from which naught but charity and peace to all mankind should ever flow, but now erected to sanction the tortures of earthly flames, and to send to flames eternal, were it in the power of man to do so, the upright soul of one who merely differed in outward form of worship of that God whom he and his accusers both knelt before, and called all-merciful. When all else had failed to shake my poor father in this dreadful moment of earthly trial, what did the miscalled holy fiends do then? they brought his wife, my mother soon to be, the idol of his heart, the bliss or anguish of his every thought-they brought her to him while fastened to the stake-they forced her on her knees to pray of him to save his life by renouncing what they called his damning heresy; and when this last, this horrid attempt to subdue affrighted nature failed, they placed a burning brand within her grasp, and then by force compelled the wife to fire the fatal pile that was to consume in tortures her heart's adored-her husband. I have been told that at the first trial, the very faggots seemed, as by miracle, to refuse to burn; but the monster who had the welcome work in charge soon subdued their obstinacy, by guiding her hand to those substances the most inflammable; the smoke ascended; the flames at last burst forth; and amidst the cries of agony of a dying father, and the shrieks of a mother maddened by her anguish, I was untimely lorn!"

The following topic is, perhaps, more congenial than heresy to the novelist's business in this instance. Mr. Hewet was a prosperous merchant, and Lord Mayor. Osborne, his confidential clerk, but a miserable lover, with innumerable opportunities of stating his case, had nearly lost the lady to the heir of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was more active in this kind of work.

The defeat of the young Earl and the success of Osborne arose more from the activity in his cause of other parties, and especially of the young lady herself, than any measures of his own. The marriage was at last celebrated, and that of two of their dependants, on the Christmas eve follow

ling, when we come by an explanation of "lambs' wool.” How fearfully the Saxons have corrupted Gaelic names

and customs:

"Now the delicious lambs' wool' was handed round. As many of our readers, particularly the gentler kind, may not be aware of the mysteries of lambs' wool, we will explain how this exquisite beverage is concocted; anumber of apples are tied to the end of a number of strings, and are then hung up to roast before a blazing fire; under each apple stands a tankard of ripe delicious ale, well seasoned with sugar, spice. |and nutmeg. When the apples are done thoroughly, they drop from the strings, and having fallen into the ale, it is then ready for drinking. The real name is supposed to have been la mas ubhal, that is, the day of the apple fruit, but being pronounced lamasool, our English tongue soon corrupted it to lambs' wool.

"After some few dozens of the tankards of lambs' wool had passed from lip to lip, the merriment increased prodigiously, and a general dance took place. Even the merchant and his Alyce were not permitted to decline joining in this part of the delights of a Christmas-eve. Nor di Edward and Anne refuse; but the happiest and merriest couple there was Flora and her newly-made husband."

The historical statement at the close proves that the descendants of the merchant's daughter lost nothing in point of honour by her preference of the plebeian shopman to the aristocratic lord:

"Now we feel quite convinced, although our gentle readers do not like to ask the question, that the setting down the number of children they had will be a piece of informa tion not at all unacceptable; well then, they had five, two sons and three daughters. Hewet Osborne, one of the sons, was knighted by the Earl of Essex during the war in Ireland; the other son's name was Edward, who never married. Two of the daughters' names were Anne and Alyce; the name of the third we have not been able to discover. The great-grandson of our hero was Sir Thomas Osborne, who was raised to the peerage by King Charles the Second, as Viscount Latimer and Baron Kiveton; he next was created Earl of Danby, then Marquis of Carmarthen, and on May 4, 1694, became the first Duke of Leeds. The present Duke of Leeds is a lineal descendant of our Edward of Old Loudon Bridge."

The volume is more useful reading, and more amusing, than the great majority of those whereby people kill time at watering-places in the months of June and July; and so it should have a preference with many who want to know how that object may be best accomplished.

PRINCE RUPERT AND THE CAVALIERS.*

MR. WARBURTON's fame rests on "The Crescent the block, and his relative Cromwell to the realities and the Cross"-a work that required different || of a throne, Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers form powers and a different turn of mind from those ne- a dangerous topic. The ground is also beaten down cessary to constitute a good historian. The duties by many travellers, but so it was with the eastern of the traveller who means to tell the world his ex- lands over which the author of "The Crescent and periences, especially if his journey be in a land the Cross" literally journeyed, and we always recur where the dead are immensely more numerous than to the book with sincere pleasure. the living-where the tombs incalculably exceed the dwellings of mankind—include a knowledge of historical facts, and some enthusiasm for old historical associations. The latter quality threw round "The Crescent and the Cross" a powerful charm. The traveller's heart was in his journey, and warmed || at the old distinguished places, and those remembrances that they called up. He casts the spirit of|| the place and the hour into his pages, and transfuses some part of his own enthusiasm to his readers. These qualities do not suffice to make a good historian; and in times when a party in England seek|| to revive again the feelings which led Charles to

In the history of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, Mr. Warburton, as we shall show before the conclusion of our notice, endeavours to hold a middle course between extreme parties. He neither entirely condemns nor absolutely vindicates either of the two great parties who, having wrapped Eng. land in a civil war, produced, out of native blood shed on its fields unsparingly, the unwritten constitution of the land that has stood many changes and shocks from then till now, without, for more than a century, again requiring the remedy of a home war.

The author deals candidly with all English par

In 3 vols. By Eliot Warburton. London: Richard Bentley.