cerity of some of these eloquent writers, when they are professing to deplore it. We apprehend that persons desperately set on being fine writers, have a different mode from other men of estimating the loss of heroes and patriots; nor is there any doubt on earth that we have a very considerable number of persons in England, whose strongest emotion, on entering Westminster Abbey, and approaching the spot where Fox's remains are deposited, would arise from the complacent recollection of the splendid paragraphs they had been moved to indite by the event that consigned him to the dust. And if, on the spot, this self-gratulation should yield by degrees to more gloomy sentiments, the fair probability is, that one of the most prevailing of these sentiments would arise from the consideration, that there is no chance of such another opportunity of shining. These observations may appear of a cynical cast, but we are nevertheless confident of the concurring judgment of every discerning person who shall deliberately read through the whole of this selection; for along with a considerable share of very intelligent and reasonable authorship, there is a noble quantity of elaborate bombastic extravagance, vain artifice of diction, and affectation of philosophic development; precisely the right sort of composition to prove the writers devoid of any real sorrow for the mournful event, and most specifically fitted to become ridiculous, when forcing itself, with a singularly unlucky perversity, into a contrast with the simplicity and strength of Fox's eloquence. In any place that allowed room, it might be both amusing and beneficial to make a formal exhibition of this contrast; in our page it will be enough to quote a few short specimens of a kind of eloquence, to which it ought to be confessed even by Mr. Fox's warmest admirers that his genius would never have mounted, nor dared to aspire. It is proper to premise, that the learned Editor's impartiality has admitted several pieces in which Fox's praises are given under the bias of hostile party spirit.

The oratorical extravagance that scorns the just rules

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of rhetoric, can seldom be contented with itself till it has also offered some insult to those of religion. In the present collection it is very remarkable, however, that the newspaper and magazine panegyrists have in a good measure avoided this sin, and left it to be committed almost exclusively by the reverend writers. Thus we have one preacher of religion calling Fox's eloquence divine," and saying that he predicted the consequences of the political measures adopted at a particular crisis with a precision little short of inspiration ;" another averring that, as to prescience, "his mind seemed to brighten with a ray of divinity;" another ascribing "boundless stretch of thought," and still another declaring that "the comprehension of his mind was almost unlimited," and apostrophising the Deity in the following

terms:

"Gracious God! we bend in submission to thy will: we acknowledge thine infinite wisdom, and we adore thy righteous though inscrutable dispensations; but, when the little passions of the present day are extinct and forgotten, remote generations shall lament that it was thy pleasure to take away from thy favoured land, in the very moment when he was most required, this efficient instrument of thy benevolence; and shall reverently ask of thee why thine economy has only once, in a long succession of ages, imparted to an individual of our species so powerful a genius to design, and so ardent a desire to accomplish the purposes of good."-p. 148.

This address to the Almighty does really appear to us like a very broad hint to him that he must now, in assisting our nation, do as well as he can with inferior means; having unaccountably deprived himself of the very best instrument he ever had for the purpose. It at least strangely forgets, in the divine presence, how absolutely the efficiency of all means depends on the divine will. We say nothing of the injudiciousness and extravagance of thus assuming, in an address to the Being who knows all men, that a particular English senator was colossally superior, in genius and benevolence, to the whole human race for "a long succession of ages;" and representing that "remote generations" will be almost moved to expostulate with the Supreme Governor on account of

this senator having died at so premature an age as fifty-nine.

The impiety of attributing without ceremony the deliverance and safety of nations, not only in general to mere human agency, but also specifically to this or the other individual, prevails in this collection in about the same degree as in the general course of conversation. One instance, however, occurs of remonstrance against this notion in the latter shape, and we are tempted to quote it as containing a wonder; for while transferring dependence for national salvation from individual men to the general spirit of the people, it does nevertheless actually seem to recognize in passing, that there exists something greater than man.

"But, profound as our grief is, and deeply as our sensibility is wounded, we must say, we were never of the number of those who imagined that the ruin or the salvation of the country depended on Mr. Fox, Mr. Pitt, or any other man, however elevated in rank, or distinguished by talents -but, under Providence, to the public spirit of the people themselves. Of this opinion we remain; and much as we wished for the life, and deeply as we deplore the death, of this transcendently great man, we fear not for our country. Those on whose conduct her welfare depends still live, and will continue to live so long as the waves shall encircle her shores. Kings, heroes, and statesmen-Edwards, Henries, Marlboroughs, Nelsons, Pitts, and Foxes, from time to time flourish and disappear-the people never die! Then let them know their own dignity-let them depend on their own virtue-let them endeavour, let them deserve, to be free and invincible-and till their sea can be dried up, and their rocks crumbled, they shall never be conquered or enslaved."

Though certainly not sorry to learn that there is such a thing as Providence, that is, we suppose, the government of the Deity, we may be allowed to entertain some little doubt and fear, whether, under that government, such shouts of self-idolatry, such explosions of pride and presumption, are the best omens of ultimate triumph. It is not so long since, but that we can remember sentiments and language very much in this strain being circulated among the Austrian people and armies, a little after the battle of Esslingen,-we should rather say, a little before the battle of Wagram.

In entering on the perusal of a large assemblage of characters of Fox, most of them from the opening sen

tences, avowedly encomiastic, it was inevitable to anticipate for the writers a considerable degree of difficulty in combining a language of almost unbroken eulogy on the character, with the language of reverential respect to religious and moral principles. This respect, we were to take it as a matter of course, would at any rate be sacredly maintained by the Christian Ministers who appeared among the writers. We shall bring together a few short extracts, to show, that, if it is not too flattering an estimate of the religious and moral sentiments of the British people, laic and ecclesiastic, to take this selection as the standard, we have good reason to contrast ourselves so complacently with the infidels across the Channel.

*

Moral and religious principles are more distinctly adverted to, in connexion with Fox's character, in a piece to which the editor has prefixed, we suppose on sufficient authority, the name of the "Rev. Robert Fellowes," than in any part of the collection. In a literary point of view, also, the paper is remarkable, as displaying one of the most violent quarrels with unkind Minerva that we have ever witnessed. From beginning to end it is a furious effort to be grand, to be profound, to be comprehensive, to be imperial, to be oracular, and all so exactly in Fox's own simple manner,-as witness abundance of sentences like these: "The heart of Mr. Fox was tenanted by none of those squalid forms which appear to have fixed their dwelling in that of Mr. Pitt;' "as the opinions which Mr. Fox maintained were founded on the basis of justice and of truth, they partook of the sanctity and eternity of moral obligation;" "his was an ambition of a noble kind-it was never forsaken by justice, and it mounted even to the heavens on the wing of humanity." But it is only on account of the reverend writer's austere notions of morality and religion that we notice this paper more particularly than the others.

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Many who have no religion themselves, or in whom the varnish of exterior decorum is employed as a substitute for virtue, have often vented their slanders on the vices of Mr. Fox. But, of those vices which are of the most unsocial and malignant cast, we do not believe that one

can fairly be laid to his charge. The impetuous ardour of his temperament, and the restless activity of his mind, which, in whatever was the object of pursuit, never stagnated in indifference, often made him pass the limits of discretion. But the frigid calculations of mercantile prudence seem to be suited only to ordinary minds. The mind of Mr. Fox was not of that class."—p. 169.

Does the reverend writer also preach that, provided men have an "impetuous ardour of temperament," the difference between virtue and vice is for their sakes reduced by the Divine Lawgiver to a point of discretion? Does he expressly teach the young men who are destroying themselves in the bagnio and the gambling-house, that their proper answer to the admonitions of their distressed parents or other friends is, "that the calculations. of mercantile prudence are suited only to ordinary minds?" It is curious to think what an outcry of affected horror there would have been, if any of the clergymen distinguished by the term evangelical had let such a passage appear under his name. It is followed, in the way of challenge to the hypocrites or the puritans, with an ostentatious enumeration of the bad things of which Mr. Fox was not guilty; just as if it were the grossest illiberality to censure any character till it is stained and loaded with every vice of which human nature is capable. The passage bearing a reference to religion runs thus:

"Though Mr. Fox was no formal religionist, yet the essence of religion which centres in charity was the predominant sensation of his heart. If religion consists in doing to others as we would they should do to us, if it have any connexion with a holy endeavour to preserve peace on earth and good will among men (and what Christian will deny this?) then we will venture to say, that Mr. Fox, who never made any show of religion, was, in fact, one of the most religious men of the age. The great object of his political life was to prevent the havoc of war, and preserve the world in peace."—p. 171.

With respect to these sentences we have only to say, that we cannot wish to reduce a reverend subscriber to the thirty-nine" Articles of Religion" to any awkward necessity of plainly declaring whether he thinks a belief of the truth, that is, of the divine origin, of Christianity, is at all of the " essence" of a religious character.

All this is suffered to pass, by the reverend Philo