of opposition, designated him a Whig. But no man less bowed to partisanship, no man more clearly washed the stains of faction from his hands, no man was further from the insanity of revolution. With gentle, but manly firmness, he repelled popularity; from the moment when it demanded his principles as its purchase. With generous, but indignant scorn, he raised up his voice equally against the insidious zeal which would substitute an affected love of country for patriotism; and the insurrectionary rage which would cast off the mild dominion of England, for the licence of democracy at home. He finally experienced the fate of all men of honour thrown into the midst of faction. His directness was a tacit reproach to its obliquity; as his simple honour was felt to be a libel on its ostentatious hypocrisy. He had been elected by public acclamation, to the command of the Irish Volunteers, a self-raised army of 100,000 men. He had conducted this powerful and perilous force through an anxious time, without collision with the government, or with the people. But, when French principles began to infest its ranks, he remonstrated; the remonstrance was retorted in a threat of the loss of his popularity; he embraced the alternative of a man of honour, and resigned. But the resignation was fatal to his threaten

ers.

When he laid the staff out of his hands, he laid down with it the credit of the Volunteers. They lost the national confidence from that moment. Rude and violent agitators first usurped the power, then divided it, and then quarrelled for the division. The glaring evil

of the bayonet drawn for political objects, startled the common sense of the country, and drove it to take refuge with the minister. The National army, which had been raised amid the shouts of the nation, was now

cashiered by its universal outcry. The agitators went down among the common wreck; and, in the universal swell and uproar of the popular mind, the fame and virtues of the venerable commander of the Volunteers, alone floated undiminished to the shore.

But, if for one quality alone, the name of this nobleman ought to be held in memory. Perhaps no other public individual of his day extended such prompt and honourable protection to men of ability, in their advancement in the various ways of life. He had two boroughs at his command in the Irish House of Commons, and in all the venality which so daringly distinguished partisanship in that House, no one ever heard of the sale of the boroughs of Lord Charlemont. He applied his influence to the high-minded purpose of introducing men of talents into the Legislature.

An accidental intercourse with Burke, chiefly in consequence of the character which he derived from the treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful; induced this nobleman to serve his interests, by a connexion with the Secretary for Ireland, so well known by the name of single-speech Hamilton.

Hamilton's character is a problem to this hour. A single effort of eloquence had placed him among the hopes of the British senate. He never repeated it. Its reputation, and the friendship of Lord Halifax,

then President of the Board of Trade, made him a member of the Board in 1756. But Hamilton still continued silent. In four years after, he was made Secretary for Ireland, on the appointment of his noble friend as Lord Lieutenant. In the Irish House, the necessities of his situation, as Prime Minister of the Viceroyalty, overcame his nervousness, and he spoke, on several occasions, with effect. But, on his return to the English Parliament, his powers were again shut up; and, by a strange pusillanimity, a tenderness of oratorical repute, unworthy of the member of an English public assembly; during the remainder of his life, his voice was never heard. Yet, probably no man led a more anxious and self-condemning life. During this period, public distinction, and distinction peculiarly by eloquence, seems to have never left his thoughts. He compiled, he wrote, he made commonplaces of rhetoric, he was perpetually preparing for the grand explosion, to which he was never to lay the train. He saw, and we may well suppose with what bitter stings to his vanity, the contemporaries whose talents he had scorned, hastening on in the path which he longed yet feared to tread, and snatching the laurels that had once hung down, soliciting his hand. He saw a new generation start up while he pondered, enter upon contests whose magnitude rendered all the past trivial, and display powers which threw the mere rhetorician hopelessly into the shade. Still he continued criticising, preparing for the great effort that was never to be made, and calculating on

the fame which he had already suffered finally to escape; until he sank out of the remembrance of society, and dwindled into the grave. Literary history has seldom afforded an example of self-opinion so completely its own punisher; his extravagant sense of the merit of a single effort, strangled every effort to come; he was stifled in his own fame; his vanity was suicidal.

With a superior of this order, jealous, anxious, and severe, it was impossible that Burke's open temperament, and gallant dependence on his own powers, should long cordially agree. At the end of two years, he suddenly abandoned the private secretaryship; to which he declared that Hamilton, in the spirit of tyranny, had annexed degrading conditions; and in 1763 returned indignantly to England, to take the chances of beginning the world again.

CHAPTER II

Burke appointed Private Secretary to Rockingham-Member for Wendover-His first Speech-Chatham's Ministry-Picture of Party.

BUT the world on which he now fixed his eyes, wore a different aspect from the humble and cheerless scene which he had so long contemplated in his closet. His Irish Secretaryship had made him feel his faculties for public life; it had thrown him on those waves which might waft him on to the most brilliant fortune. It had invigorated every muscle of his mind by the practical labours of office. Those two years, toilsome as they were in the passing, and painful in the recollection, had made him a statesman! He was thenceforward marked with the stamp of public life. We hear no more day-dreams of melancholy independence in America. From this moment, he was committed to the cause in England. He buckled on his golden armour, and entered the lists for life, within the realm which no man more contributed to adorn and to save.

Within two years after his return from Ireland, he commenced this career. In 1765, the Marquis of