own inconsistency. The very circumstances which made the separation of the colonies inevitable, made it to him altogether insupportable. The dismemberment of the Empire seemed to him less ruinous and humiliating, when produced by domestic dissensions, than when produced by foreign interference. His blood boiled at the degradation of his country. Whatever lowered her among the nations of the earth, he felt as a personal outrage to himself. And the feeling was natural. He had made her so great. He had been so proud of her; and she had been so proud of him. He remembered how, more than twenty years before, in a day of gloom and dismay, when her possessions were torn from her, when her flag was dishonoured, she had called on him to save her. He remembered the sudden and glorious change which his energy had wrought, the long series of triumphs, the days of thanksgiving, the nights of illumination. Fired by such recollections, he determined to separate himself from those who advised that the independence of the colonies should be acknowledged. That he was in error, will scarcely, we think, be disputed by his warmest admirers. Indeed, the treaty by which, a few years later, the republic of the United States was recognised, was the work of his most attached adherents and of his favourite son. The Duke of Richmond had given notice of an address to the throne, against the further prosecution of hostilities with America. Chatham had, during some time, absented himself from Parliament, in consequence of his growing infirmities. He determined to appear in his place on this occasion, and to declare that his opinions were decidedly at variance with those of the Rockingham party. He was in a state of great excitement. His medical attendants were uneasy, and strongly advised him to calm himself, and to remain at home. But he was not to be controlled. His son William, and his son-in-law Lord Mahon, accompanied him to Westminster. He rested himself in the Chancellor's room till the debate commenced, and then, leaning on his two young relations, limped to his seat. The slightest particulars of that day were remembered, and have been carefully recorded. He bowed, it was remarked, with great courtliness to those peers who rose to make way for him and his supporters. His crutch was in his hand. He wore, as was his fashion, a rich velvet coat. His legs were swathed in flannel. His wig was so large, and his face so emaciated, that none of his features could be discerned except the high curve of nose, and his eyes, which still retained a gleam of the old fire. When the Duke of Richmond had spoken, Chatham rose. For some time his voice was inaudible. At length his tones Lecame distinct and his action animated. Here and there his hearers caught a thought or an expression which reminded them of William Pitt. But it was clear that he was not himself. He lost the thread of his discourse, hesitated, repeated the same words several times, and was so confused, that in speaking of the Act of Settlement, he could not recall the name of the Electress Sophia. The House listened in solemn silence, and with the aspect of profound respect and compassion. The stillness was so deep that the dropping of a handkerchief would have been heard. The Duke of Richmond replied with great tenderness and courtesy; but, while he spoke, the old man was observed to be restless and irritable, The Duke sat down. Chatham stood up again, pressed his hand on his breast, and sank down in an apoplectic fit. Three or four lords who sat near him caught him in his fall. The House broke up in confusion. The dying man was carried to the residence of one of the officers of Parliament, and was so far restored as to be able to bear a journey to Hayes. At Hayes, after lingering a few weeks, he expired in his seventieth year. His bed was watched to the last, with anxious tenderness, by his wife and children; and he well deserved their care. Too often haughty and wayward to others, to them he had been almost effeminately kind. He had through life been dreaded by his political opponents, and regarded with more awe than love even by his political associates. But no fear seems to have mingled with the affection which his fondness, constantly overflowing in a thousand endearing forms, had inspired in the little circle at Hayes. Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both Houses of Parliament, ten personal adherents. Half the public men of the age had been estranged from him by his errors, and the other half by the exertions which he had made to repair his errors. His last speech had been an attack at once on the policy pursued by the government, and on the policy recommended by the opposi tion. But death at once restored him to his old place in the affection of his country. Who could hear unmoved of the fall of that which had been so great, and which had stood so long? The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honours, led forth to the senate-house by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. Detraction was overawed. The voice even of just and temperate censure was mute. Nothing was remembered but the lofty genius, the unsullied probity, the undisputed services, of him who was no more. For once, all parties were agreed. A public funeral, a public monument, were eagerly voted. The debts of the deceased were paid. A provision was made for his family. The city of London requested that the remains of the great man whom she had so long loved and honoured might rest under the dome of her magnificent cathedral. But the petition came too late. Every thing was already prepared for the interment in Westminster Abbey. Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing posthumous honours to Chatham, his corpse was attended to the grave almost exclusively by opponents of the government. The banner of the lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Barré, attended by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham. Burke, Savile, and Dunning upheld the pall. Lord Camden was conspicuous in the procession. The chief mourner was young William Pitt. After the lapse of more than twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and perilous, his own shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the same pomp, in the same consecrated mould. Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the Church, in a spot which has ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other end of the same transept has long been to poets. Mansfield rests there, and the second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and Canning, and Wilberforce. In no other Cemetery do so many great citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those venerable graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and from above, his own effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and to hurl defiance at her foes. The generation which reared that memorial of him has disappeared. The time has come when the rash and indiscriminate judgments which his contemporaries passed on his character may be calmly revised by history. And history, while, for the warning of vehement, high, and daring natures, she notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce, that, among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid name. No. CLXIII. will be published in January. NOTE. NOTE to the Article, in No. CLX., on Tucker's Life of In reviewing this work we, as illustrative of the peculiar and characteristic manner in which Lord St Vincent was sometimes wont to convey a rebuke to an officer with whose conduct he was displeased, extracted an anecdote, in substance as follows:- A certain Rear-Admiral, in command of the in-shore squadron, who had been directed to watch the French fleet, in a bay on the French coast, made some representation to the Chief as to the obstacles presented by the shoaliness of the coast; upon which, the old Admiral, in order to show the groundlessness of that representation, led the main body of the fleet within the RearAdmiral's squadron, sailed round him, and out again. We had, from circumstances, been led to think, that this Rear-Admiral, whose name Mr Tucker did not think fit, in reciting the anecdote, to insert, was the late Honourable George Berkeley, one of four Rear-Admirals in the fleet; and we accordingly named him as the Rear-Admiral alluded to. We have lately been informed, on adequate authority, that our conjecture was wholly groundless; and we therefore feel ourselves in fairness bound to acknowledge, and to apologise for the mistake into which we had fallen, and which we rather unwarily committed to the press. ERRATA in No. CLXI. Page 229, line 25, for "This good and heroic Prince," read "The good and heroic Louis IX." -254, line 5 from bottom, for "the level of his speech," read "the level of his opinion." -258, line 10, for "distorting, perhaps in the attempt to revive them," read "distorting inevitably, in the attempt to revive them." 269, line 3, for "the almost brotherly love," read "the love." INDEX. A Abyssinia-British Embassy to the Christian Court of Shoa, in, 43— their ferocity in war kept up by a barbarous point of honour, 56— Aden, port of, description of, 43-its former importance, and present Ethiopic Ancient Church, present condition of, 61-the usual accom- VOL. LXXX. NO. CLXII. 2 Q |