APPENDIX.

I.

SEVERAL of the Sketches contained in this volume have already appeared in print, but as parts scattered throughout other and much larger works.* But great additions have been here made to some of them: as George III.; Lord Chatham; Mr. Perceval; Mr. Canning; Mr. Windham; while the following are entirely new Lords North; Mansfield; Thurlow; Loughborough; Lord Chief Justice Gibbs; Sir Wm. Grant; Franklin; Joseph II.; Catherine II.; Gustavus III.; and the Remarks on Party.

II.

THE kindness of a most accomplished and venerable person, the ornament of a former age, and fortunately still preserved to enlighten the present, has permitted the insertion of the following interesting note:

"A circumstance attended Lord Chatham's eloquent invective against our employment of the Indians in the American war, which we have not handed down to us along with it, but which could hardly fail to be noticed at the time. The very

* Four only of the shorter Sketches are taken from the late work, in four volumes, intituled "Lord Brougham's Speeches," which contains a great many others.

same thing had been done in the former war, carried on in Canada by his authority and under his own immediate superintendence; the French had arrayed a tribe of these savage warriors against us, and we, without scruple, arrayed another against them. This he thought fit to deny in the most positive manner, although the ministers offered to produce documents written by himself that proved it, from among the papers at the Secretary's office. A warm debate ensued, and at length Lord Amherst, the General who had commanded our troops in that Canadian war, was so loudly appealed to on all sides, that it compelled him to rise, and, most unwillingly, (for he greatly respected Lord Chatham,) falter out a few words; enough however to acknowledge the fact—a fact admitted generally and even assumed by the opposition lords who spoke afterwards. They seemed to lay the question quietly by as far as it concerned Lord Chatham's veracity, and only insisted upon the difference between the two wars, the one foreign, the other civil; arguing also, that we might have been under some necessity of using retaliation, since the French certainly first began the practice so justly abhorred. The Annual Register for 1777 states, that Mr. Burke took the same course in the House of Commons.

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Upon hearing what had passed in the House of Lords, Lord Bute exclaimed with astonishment- Did Pitt really deny it? Why, I have letters of his still by me, singing lo Paans over the advantages we gained through our Indian allies.' Could what he thus said have been untrue, when it was almost a soliloquy spoken rather before than to his wife and daughters, the only persons present? The letters he mentioned were probably neither official nor confidential, but such common notes as might pass between him and Lord Chatham while still upon a footing of some intimacy.

"It must be observed, that in 1777 Lord Bute had long withdrawn from all political connexions, lived in great retirement, and had no intercourse whatever with the people then in power."

III.

THE following very interesting letter is from the youngest and only surviving daughter of Lord North. All comment upon its merits or its value is superfluous :

"MY DEAR LORD BROUGHAM,

"You mentioned to me the other night, your intention of writing the character of my father, to be placed among some other characters of the statesmen of the last century, that you are preparing for the press, and at the same time stated the difficulty of describing a man of whom you had had no personal knowledge. This conversation has induced me to cast back my mind to the days of my childhood and early youth, that I may give you such impressions of my father's private life, as those recollections will afford.

"Lord North was born in April 1733; he was educated at Eton school, and then at Trinity College, Oxford; and he completed his academical studies with the reputation of being a very accomplished and elegant classical scholar. He then passed three years upon the Continent, residing successively in Germany, Italy and France, and acquiring the languages of those countries, particularly of the last. He spoke French with great fluency and correctness; this acquirement, together with the observations he had made upon the men and manners of the countries he had visited, gave him what Madame de Staël called l'Esprit Européen, and enabled him to be as agreeable a man in Paris, Naples and Vienna, as he was in London. Among the lighter accomplishments he acquired upon the Continent, was that of dancing; I have been told that he danced the most graceful minuet of any young man of his day; this I must own surprised me, who remember him only with a corpulent heavy figure, the movements of which were rendered more awkward and were impeded by his extreme nearsightedness before he became totally blind. In his youth, however, his figure was slight and slim; his face was always

plain, but agreeable, owing to its habitual expression of cheerfulness and good humour; though it gave no indication of the brightness of his understanding.

"Soon after his return to England, at the age of twentythree, he was married to Miss Speck, of Whitelackington Park, Somersetshire, a girl of sixteen: she was plain in her person, but had excellent good sense; and was blessed with singular mildness and placidity of temper. She was also not deficient in humour, and her conversational powers were by no means contemptible; but she, like the rest of the world, delighted in her husband's conversation, and being by nature shy and indolent, was contented to be a happy listener during his life, and after his death her spirits were too much broken down for her to care what she was. Whether they had been in love with each other when they married I don't know, but I am sure there never was a more happy union than theirs during the thirty-six years that it lasted. I never saw an unkind look, or heard an unkind word pass between them; his affectionate attachment to her was as unabated, as her love and admiration of him.

*

"Lord North came into office first, as one of the Lords of the Treasury, I believe, about the year 1763, and in 1765 he was appointed as one of the Joint Pay-masters. In 1769 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and some years after First Lord of the Treasury. He never would allow us to call him Prime Minister, saying, there was no such thing in the British Constitution. He continued in office thirteen years during the three last he was most anxious to

An anecdote is related of his Paymastership which will paint, though in homely colours, his habitual good humour. He was somewhat disappointed at finding he had a colleague, who was to divide the emoluments of the office, which was then chiefly prized for its large perquisites. The day he took possession of the official house, a dog had dirtied the hall, and Lord North, ringing for the servant, told him to be sure, in clearing the nastiness away, that he took half of it to his colleague, as it was a perquisite of the Joint office.-EDITOR.