administration; although I must own that I think no small part of the praise belongs to the personal clemency and kindliness of George the First and George the Second. On the whole, Walpole appears to me to have been a man of many useful and some great qualities; who faithfully served his country, but who never forgot his own family; and who rose partly by the frailties of others, as well as by merits of his own. With every allowance for the "evil days and evil tongues" amongst which his lot had fallen, it is impossible not to own that his character wants something of moral elevation. Name him in the same sentence with a Chatham, and who will not feel the contrast? The mind of Chatham bears the lineaments of a higher nature; and the very sound of his name carries with it something lofty and august. Of Walpole, on the other hand, the defects-nay, perhaps, even the merits-have in them something low and common. No enthusiasm was ever felt for his person; none was ever kindled by his memory. No man ever inquired where his remains are laid, or went to pay a homage of reverence at his tomb. Between him and Chatham there is the same difference as between success and glory!'-pp. 401-409.

It must be felt that in this branch of the art, the delineation of character, there is, after all, much uncertainty. An author may often, insensibly perhaps, draw more from his imagination than from the slender materials which have been transmitted to him. Individual character appears dimly through the mists of time, erroneously through the second-hand descriptions of partial or prejudiced contemporaries. The nicer shades of character, like the diversity of feature, depend upon differences too subtle, and the perception of them upon sympathies too fine and delicate, to admit of their being rendered with perfect fidelity through such a medium. One slight expression, one glance of the eye, a smile or a frown, may reveal to a close and acute observer motives and qualities which shall elude the most elaborate investigation of the biographer. Of the nicer distinctions of character, even with the advantages we enjoy in our day from the multiplicity of channels of public and private information, much must still be lost, and even in the general outline there is always some risk that there may be mistake. But while the delineation of individual character necessarily becomes more liable to error by the progress of time, there is another, and a yet higher department of his art, in which that very advance affords to the historian a wider and more extended field of observation, and places within his grasp a fuller command of his subject. His means of judging of persons may be diminished, but his means of estimating the tendency of measures and importance of events are infinitely increased. He can trace the effect to the cause, compare the result with the intention, and mark the prevailing direction of national progress, through the ebbs and flows, the partial fluctuations of its course.

This province, which he enters upon with the advantage of enlarged experience, and a knowledge of the issues and consequences of things, is incomparably the most elevated in its character, and the most practical and important in its application. Whether there was most of hypocrisy or fanaticism in the stern faith of Cromwell, are speculations for the curious inquirer which admit of no certain solution; but in tracing the rise and course of the sour sect of the Independents, till they produce the reflux towards irreligion and licentiousness after the Restoration, we deal with facts which admit of no dispute, and extract a lesson applicable to all times.

The interest of the period embraced in this work is the stronger, that within the present reign we seem, either for better or for worse, to have taken a fresh departure. We are entering upon a new course, and the epoch from the reign of Anne to the death of George IV. appears to form a complete division of our history, which we can now contemplate from its commencement to its close. There is a perpetual interest in the comparison, in observing what we have retained, lost, and acquired, in noting the points of resemblance and of difference in the beginning and at the termination of this important century. The spirited sketch which Lord Mahon gives us of the composition of the two Houses of Parliament in 1713, affords an apt illustration of the instructive nature of this sort of retrospect

'The scope of this work appears to me to impose the necessity, and the period of a general election to afford the occasion, for my giving some details on the composition of both Houses at this period.

'First, then, of the House of Lords. It comprised, at this period, one Prince of the Blood Royal, the Electoral Prince of Hanover, under the title of Duke of Cambridge; twenty-two other Dukes, two Marquesses, sixty-four Earls, ten Viscounts, and sixty-seven Barons. These, with twenty-six Spiritual and sixteen Scotch Representative Peers, made up a total of 207; several of whom, however, as Roman Catholics, could take no part in public business. In comparing these numbers with those at the accession of William the Fourth, we find them, at this latter period, amount to 390, including four Spiritual and twenty-eight Temporal Representative Peers from Ireland-an increase, certainly, not at all more than commensurate with the improvement of properties and the increase of population. In fact, the proportion between the Peers and the population will be found nearly the same at both periods. Were such limits to be outstepped in any very great degree, the result could not fail to be felt injuriously by the landed interest, as withdrawing considerable proprietors from the representation of the counties, and throwing that representation into inferior hands.

'Of the 207 Peerages which existed at the accession of George the First, not more than fifty-two remained unaltered at the death of George the Fourth. But the rest were by no means all extinctions. Many appear changed only from promotions in rank-as, for example, the Earls of Exeter and Salisbury; and, on the other hand, several are continued in collateral branches, and under lower but more ancient titles, as was the case, for instance, with the Dukedom and Earldom of Shrewsbury. It may not be undeserving of notice as a singularity, that though, in 1714, the body of Peers was so much smaller than in 1830, a greater number of them held the rank of Dukes.

'The House of Commons then, and throughout that century, consisted of 558 members; 513 being sent from England, and 45 from Scotland. It is well worthy of observation, how large a number of the family interests and local ties which still exist, or, at least, which existed before Lord Grey's administration, were in force at this early period. We find, in this Parliament, a Drake returned for Amersham, a Grimston for St. Alban's, a Whitmore for Bridgnorth, a Musgrave for Carlisle, a Cholmondeley for Cheshire, a Bathurst for Cirencester, a Bankes for Corffe Castle, a Lowther for Cumberland, a Wynn for Denbigh, a Mundy for Derby, a Foley for Droitwich, and another Foley for Hereford, a Hervey for Bury St. Edmund's, a Mostyn for Flint, an Eliot for St. Germain's, a Berkeley for Gloucestershire, a Brownlow for Grantham, an A'Court for Heytesbury, Lord Hinchinbrook for Huntingdon, Sir Edward Knatchbull for Kent, a Sibthorp for Lincoln, a Walpole for Lynn, a Wentworth for Malton, a Bruce for Marlborough, a Vaughan for Merioneth, Thomas Cartwright for Northamptonshire, a Fitzwilliam for Peterborough, an Edgcombe for Plympton, a Fleetwood for Preston, a Cocks for Reigate, a Vernon for Stafford, a Cecil for Stamford, a Dowdeswell for Tewkesbury, a Greville for Warwick, and a Forester for Wenlock. These hereditary seats in Parliament, combining in some degree the permanence of peerages with the popularity of electionsthese feelings of mutual kindness, which bound together our wealthy gentry and their poorer neighbours, and brought them into frequent and friendly intercourse these bulwarks against any sudden and overwhelming tide of popular delusion appear to me to have been one of the main causes of the good working of our ancient constitution, and, still more, of its long duration. Thanks, in great measure, to them, the constitution of England might long be compared to its country, smooth yet not uniform, diversified yet not rugged, equally removed from the impracticable heights of democracy or the dead level of despotism!'vol. i. pp. 62-65.

The mere enumeration of names in the preceding paragraph affords perhaps a clearer insight into the structure and nature of the British constitution than half De Lolme could furnish. The places cited are not for the most part small or nomination boroughs; they have almost all survived the Reform Bill, and under the new system of election they still have in the majority of cases preserved their connexion with the families thus hereditarily united with the representation. There can be little dispute that they assimilate in character to peerages, and will always operate as an addition to the aristocratic element in our government.

Those who are fa

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miliar with the feelings and impressions of the upper classes of our finely-shaded society will often have had occasion to remark the different degree of estimation in which these seats were held, and the greater personal importance which they conferred. The small nomination borough, in which a stranger, a junior branch of the family, a useful adherent of the party, might be placed, was regarded as a convenient appendage, but the member for it found that, except he brought the irresistible claim of superior parliamentary talents, he occupied a far lower place in the scale. The wealthy merchant or the active lawyer, who by the assiduous cultivation of local influence obtained the representation of some important and populous place, had reflected upon him a greater share of consideration;-but the ephemeral and merely personal nature of such an interest, depending upon a thousand accidents, liable to be overturned by the caprice of a popular constituency, or the intrigues of a demagogue, and contingent upon the health - of one who had probably advanced far on the road of life before he obtained the prize, still detracted from its value. But the member of the lower house, who by the influence of large landed property, of local influence, of antiquity of family, of prescriptive title, was in possession of a preponderating and permanent interest in a county or considerable borough, an interest not transferable like the nomination borough, enjoyed a distinction in political and social intercourse scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of the peerage. Such a commoner, in fact, is identified with the nobility in his interests, habits, modes of life, early prejudices, and opinions.

It was by such diversities in the composition of the House of Commons itself, that the mixed character of our government was really preserved. The abstract theory of the constitution, of three estates in which the monarchical, the aristocratic, and the democratic elements were each separately and distinctly embodied, was a mere Utopian chimera, which never did exist, nor could have endured. But it is not the less true that the end was obtained of a government containing a large proportion of each of these ingredients, though by a less apparent and more artificial distribution. The House of Commons itself contained a large infusion both of the popular and aristocratic spirit, but the latter, no doubt, preponderated, not by the indirect influence of the peerage, but by the prevailing sentiments of its own members. The late M. Dumont once observed, 'It is absurd to talk of your English House of Commons as a pure representation of the people; it is no such thing, but it is the first legislative assembly in the world; and take care, if you ever attempt to make it the former, that you do not destroy it as the latter.' The political constitution

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of England was in perfect harmony with the whole nature of its social system, which was an open aristocracy, full of an infinity of shades and gradations, and containing a thousand avenues of advancement, so that the whole community was imbued with the spirit of emulation and the pursuit of distinction, while the jealousy of superior rank was disarmed by the feeling that its elevation was not inaccessible. The changes which the Reform Bill has worked in this branch of the constitution are not exclusively of a popular nature. By sweeping away the small boroughs, it has destroyed many of the channels through which moneyed men and acquired fortunes obtained a footing in political society. On the other hand, the increase of the county representation, the division of counties, and the franchise of tenants at will, have a tendency to augment the number of those permanent and hereditary interests which are in the possession of the territorial aristocracy. And in the progress of a little time, when the ferment, already so visibly on the decline, has disappeared, when the new constituencies have found their level, and when properties have been enlarged, or exchanged, with a view to obtaining additional influence in these districts, it is probable that the representation of counties will be centred still more exclusively in a few hands. This was pleaded at the time as a counterbalance to the strong democratic tendencies of other parts of the bill. It was a species of compensation which never won our approval. The old proportion of these aristocratic seats was beneficial, as giving ballast and stability to the whole, but we cannot regard with favour the large increase of them at the sacrifice of those smaller and more generally accessible places which served practically as a corrective to their confined and exclusive character.

The present volume closes with the rejection of the Peerage Bill introduced by Stanhope and Sunderland in the year 1719. for the purpose of limiting the number of peers and controlling the power of creation in the crown-which suggests to Lord Mahon some very just and striking remarks upon the spirit and tendency of such an enactment, as well as upon the nature of the institution itself. The arguments alleged at that period in favour of the measure, were rather of a popular character. The prerogative of the crown, when the arbitrary maxims of the Stuarts were fresh in the recollections of all, and were still asserted by a numerous party, was the great object of national jealousy. An abuse of the power of creating peers, but a few years before had actually been committed by an unprincipled ministry, for the express purpose of controlling the independence of the House of Lords, and rendering it a passive tool in the hands of the executive. Whatever might have been the real designs of its authors,