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to the offensive expressions treasured up against him, and all the more easily remembered because of the epigrams in which he had embalmed them, might be seen from the way he himself would refer to them, as if not wishing they should be forgotten. When some phrase of his, long after it was first used, seemed to invite attack, and a great cheer followed, as if he had unwittingly fallen into the scrape, he stopped and added, "Why, I said it on purpose!" or, as he pronounced it, "a purpose;" for no man more delighted in the old pronunciation, as well as the pure Saxon idiom of our language, which yet he could enrich and dignify with the importations of classical phraseology.

From what has been said of Mr. Windham's manner of speaking, as well as of his variously embellished mind, it will readily be supposed that in society he was destined to shine almost without a rival. His manners were the most polished, and noble, and courteous, without the least approach to pride, or affectation, or condescension; his spirits were, in advanced life, so gay, that he was always younger than the youngest of his company; his relish of conversation was such, that, after lingering to the latest moment, he joined whatever party a sultry evening (or morning, as it might chance to prove) tempted to haunt the streets before retiring to rest. How often have we accompanied him to the door of his own mansion, and then been at

tended by him to our own, while the streets rang with the peals of his hearty merriment, or echoed the accents of his refined and universal wit! But his conversation, or grave, or gay, or argumentative, or discursive, whether sifting a difficult subject, or painting an interesting character, or pursuing a merely playful fancy, or lively to very drollery, or pensive and pathetic, or losing itself in the clouds of metaphysics, or vexed with paradox, or plain and homely, and all but commonplace, was that which, to be understood, must have been listened to; and, while over the whole was flung a veil of unrent classical elegance, through no crevice, had there been any, would ever an unkind or ill-conditioned sentiment have found entrance!

"Scilicet omne sacrum mors importuna profanat,
Omnibus obscuras injicit ille manus-
Ossa quieta precor, tutâ requiescite in urnâ ;
Et sit humus cineri non onerosa tuo!"*

* Relentless death each purer form profanes,

Round all that's fair his dismal arms he throws-
Light lie the earth that shrouds thy loved remains,
And softly slumbering may they taste repose!

MR. DUNDAS.

If we turn from those whose common principles and party connexion ranged them against Mr. Pitt, to the only effectual supporter whom he could rely upon as a colleague on the Treasury Bench, we shall certainly find ourselves contemplating a personage of very inferior pretensions, although one whose powers were of the most useful description. Mr. Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, had no claim whatever to those higher places among the orators of his age, which were naturally filled by the great men whom we have been describing; nor indeed could he be deemed inter oratorum numerum at all. He was a plain, business-like speaker ; a man of every-day talents in the House; a clear, easy, fluent, and, from much practice, as well as strong and natural sense, a skilful debater; successful in profiting by an adversary's mistakes; distinct in opening a plan and defending a Ministerial proposition; capable of producing even a great effect upon his not unwilling audience by his broad and coarse appeals to popular prejudices, and his confident statements of facts-those statements

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which, Sir Francis Burdett once happily observed, men fall into through an inveterate habit of official assertion." In his various offices no one was more useful. He was an admirable man of business; and those professional habits which he had brought from the bar (where he practised long enough for a youth of his fortunate family to reach the highest official place) were not more serviceable to him in making his speeches perspicuous, and his reasoning logical, than they were in disciplining his mind to the drudgery of the desk, and helping him to systematise, as well as to direct, the machinery of his department. After quitting the profession of the law, to which, indeed, he had for some of the later years of Lord North's Administration only nominally belonged, and leaving also the office of Lord Advocate, which he retained for several years after, he successively filled the place of Minister for India, for the Home and War Departments, and for Naval Affairs. But it was in the first of these capacities, while at the head of the India Board, and while Chairman of the Committee of the Commons upon India, that his great capacity for affairs shone chiefly forth; and that he gave solid and long-continued proof of an indefatigable industry, which neither the distractions of debate in Parliament, nor the convivial habits of the man and of the times, ever could interrupt or relax. His celebrated Reports upon all the complicated

questions of our Asiatic policy, although they may not stand a comparison with some of Mr. Burke's in the profundity and enlargement of general views, any more than their style can be compared with his, are nevertheless performances of the greatest merit, and repositories of information upon that vast subject, unrivalled for clearness and extent. They, together with Lord Wellesley's Despatches, form the sources from which the bulk of all the knowledge possessed upon Indian matters is to be derived by the statesmen of the present day.

If in his official departments, and in the contests of Parliament, Mr. Dundas rendered able service, and possessed great weight, it was in Scotland, his native country, whose language he spoke, and whose whole affairs he directed, that his power and his authority chiefly prevailed. Before the reform in our representation and our municipal institutions, the undisturbed possession of patronage by a leading member of the Government was very sure to carry along with it a paramount influence, both over the representatives of this ancient kingdom and over their constituents. Why the submission to men in high place, and endowed with the power of conferring many favours, should have been so much more absolute in the northern than in the southern parts of our island, it would be needless to inquire. Whether it arose from the old feudal habits of the nation, or from its poverty,

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