Week pass'd after week, till, by weekly succession, His weakly condition was past all expression.

In six months his acquaintance began much to doubt him;

For his skin like a lady's loose gown, hung about him! So he sent for a doctor, and cried, like a ninny, "I've lost many pounds-make me well-there's a guinea.

The Doctor look'd wise::-"A slow fever," he said: Prescrib'd sudorifics-and going to bed."Sudorifics in bed!" exclaimed Will," are humbugs! I've enough of them there, without paying for drugs!" Will kick'd out the Doctor:-but, when ill, indeed, E'en dismissing the Doctor, don't always succeed; So, calling his host, he said-" Sir, do you know, I'm the fat Single Gentleman, six months ago? "Look ye, landlord, I think," argued Will, with a grin,

"That with honest intentions you first took me in: But from the first night-and to say it I'm boldI've been so very hot, that I'm sure I've caught cold!" Quoth the landlord,-" Till now I ne'er had a dis

pute;

I've let lodgings ten years,-I'm a baker to boot;
In airing your sheets, Sir, my wife is no sloven;
And your bed is immediately over my oven."

"The oven!!!" says Will;-says the host, "Why, this passion?

In that excellent bed died three people of fashion! Why so crusty, good Sir?"-" Żounds!" cried Will in a taking,

"Who would not be crusty, with half a year's baking?"

Will paid for his rooms;-cried the host, with a sneer, "Well, I see you've been going away half-a-year," "Friend, we cant well agree;-Yet no quarrel" Will said;

"But I'd rather not perish, while you make your

bread!"

CHARACTER OF MR. PITT, EARL OF

CHATHAM,

GRATTAN.

The secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty, and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardour, and enlightened by prophecy. The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness reached him; but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and to decide. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents; his

eloquence was an æra in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he like Townsend, forever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

FROM LORD BYRON'S CHILDE HAROLD. CANTO IV.

Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead,

Adorner of the ruin, comforter

And only healer when the heart hath bled-
Time! the correcter where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love,-sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,
Which never loses tho' it doth defer-
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift

My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate,

Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years-tho' few-yet full of fate:-
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne

Good, and reserved my pride against the hate Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn This iron in my soul in vain-shall they not mourn?

And thou, who never yet of human wrong
Lost the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!
Here where the ancient paid thee homage long-
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution-just,

Had it but been from hands less near-in this
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
Dost thou not hear my heart?-Awake thou shalt
and must.

It is not that I may not have incurr'd
For my ancestral faults or mine the wound
I bleed withal, and had it been conferr'd
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound;
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground;
To thee I do devote it-thou shalt take

The vengeance which shall yet be sought and found,
Which if I have not taken for the sake-

But let that pass-I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake.

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now
I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
But in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Tho' I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!

That curse shall be forgiveness.-Have I not-
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it Heaven!-
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
And only not to desperation driven,

Because not altogether of such clay

As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy

Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few,
And subtler venom of reptile crew,

The Janus glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain: My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, And my frame perish even in conquering pain, But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire; Something unearthly, which they deem not of, Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.