advertisements, jostling the names of crowned heads and

ambassadors, figured as the Author of the Traveller.' Pleasanter are the anecdotes which tell of his love for the young, and anxiety to have them for his readers. It was matter of pride to one with as gentle a spirit and a heart as wise as his own, the late Charles Lamb, to remember that the old woman who taught him his letters, had in her own school girl days been patted on the head by Goldsmith. Visiting where she stayed one day, he found her reading the Poems for Young Ladies, praised her fondness for poetry, and sent her his own poem to encourage it. The son of Hoole, Ariosto's translator, remembered a similar incident in his father's house. Other amusing traits might be added, strongly resembling these. Booksellers would get him to recommend books, misguiding him as to the grounds of recommendation; and when everybody was laughing at the exaggerated accounts of Patagonians nine feet high, brought home by Commodore Byron's party, Goldsmith earnestly protested that he had talked with the carpenter of the commodore's ship (a' sensible, understanding man, and I believe extremely 'faithful'), and by him had been assured, in the most solemn manner, of the truth of the relation. Nor was it altogether romance, though the honest carpenter made the most of what he had seen.

The eleventh year of Goldsmith's London struggle was now coming to a close, amid strange excitement and change. What Garrick had reported of the ministry in

the summer was in the main correct. Though it had not broken to pieces, the king had exploded it; and there was Pitt and a new arrangement.' The word was not ill chosen. Changes of ministry were now brought about without the conflict of principles or party, and by no better means than might be used for 'arrangement' of the royal bedchamber. Lord Rockingham had hardly taken office when the Duke of Cumberland's death left him defenceless against palace intrigues; and their busy fomentors, the king's friends' whom Burke has gibbetted in his Thoughts on Discontents, very speedily destroyed him. His Stamp Act repeal bill, his America trading bill, his resolution against General Warrants, and his Seizure of Papers' bill, were the signal for royal favour to every creeping placeman who opposed them; and on the failure of the latter bill Grafton threw up his office, saying Pitt alone could save them. Pitt's fame as well as peace would have profited, had he consented to do that. But against his better self, the king's appeals had enlisted his pride; and he had not strength, amid failing health, to conquer the impulse of vanity. He alone of all men, he was told, could rally the people, reunite the nobles, and save the throne; he alone, the king wrote to him, could 'destroy all party distinctions, and restore that subor'dination to government which alone can preserve that 'inestimable blessing, liberty, from degenerating into 'licentiousness.' A wise thing, if it could have been accomplished; but a thing that was never even seriously

intended. It is to be kept in view, throughout this miserable conflict, that the system of which George the Third and Lord Bute were the inventors and Bubb Dodington the apostle, was no alliance of the throne with the people, but subordination of everything, including the great houses, to the throne: that for party, the king would have substituted prerogative; for faction, despotism; for occasional corruption of the house of commons, its entire extinction as an independent house; and, for the partial evils of a system which bound men firmly together for general public purposes, though it strengthened them sometimes for particular selfish ends, the universal treachery and falsehood of a band of reptile parasites, acknowledging no allegiance but at the palace and no service but the king's. No man better than Pitt should have known this; yet in an evil hour he consented to be prime minister, and to name himself Earl of Chatham. Rockingham retired, with hands as clean as when he entered office; without having bribed to get power, or intrigued to keep it; without asking for honour, place, or pension, for any of his friends; and with that phalanx of friends unbroken. He was then, and for some years later, the only minister since the king's accession, with whom Bute had not secretly tampered, or whom the favourite had publicly opposed; and the one great fault of his administration had sprung from a pedantry of honour. He thought that, in taxing America, the legislature had committed an act of impolicy and wrong; but he could not bring himself to think that that

legislative power of the empire was not supreme over the colonies within its rule, and that it was not able to tax America, as to commit any other as mad injustice. Surely, however, the very act to repeal the wrong acknowledged sufficiently the power to commit it; and to superadd a declaration of the power, was to invite its future reassertion. It might be true; but it was galling, and not necessary. It was, in the same breath, an assertion of strength with a confession of weakness; and unwisely halted half-way between conciliation and a threat. Nor did anything so much as this give George Grenville his future strength in opposition, when, with his dogged yet solid and vigorous eloquence, he continued to maintain that there was no middle course between enforcing submission or acknowledging independence. Upon this question therefore it had been that the great Chief Justice Pratt, who enjoyed Pitt's chosen confidence, and whom Rockingham had on that ground singled out for elevation to an earldom, used the privilege so generously given, resolutely to oppose the giver. The example was one, on the part of both minister and opponent, by which Pitt might of late have profited; but his noble nature had become clouded for a time. To many proffers from Lord Rockingham to serve with him, to accept him even as a leader, the only answer vouchsafed by Pitt had been a studied slight; and the only return made by Chatham was an attempt to separate the party from its chief. This was steadily resisted. Savile, Dowdeswell, Lord John

Cavendish, the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Portland, Fitzherbert, and Charles Yorke (Burke could only refuse future office, he had none to resign), persisted in resigning office; and the only important members of the late administration who remained, were the two whom Cumberland had induced to join it, General Conway (with whom William Burke remained as under secretary) and the Duke of Grafton. With these, though strongly opposed in views as well as temper, were now associated two men of remarkable talents, personal adherents of Chatham; Lord Camden as Chancellor, and Lord Shelburne as a Secretary of State: the latter a young but not untried statesman; nor alone distinguished for political ability, but also for such rare tastes and original independence of character, that men of science and letters, such men as even Goldsmith, had come to regard him as a friend. The next ingredient in the strange compound was Charles Townshend, at once perhaps the cleverest and certainly the most dangerous man in the whole kingdom. He was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the lead of the house of commons. His opinions no man knew; they were simply the opinions of the house of commons. He had with equal ability advocated every possible opinion; as the majority had with equal impartiality voted. Burke called him the child of the house; and said he never thought, did, or spoke anything, but with a view to it: that he adapted himself to its disposition every day, and adjusted himself before it as a looking glass. Certainly no man, for his brief reign, was