up to look on the success of the present designs as infallible. Every meeting-house which the populace demolished, every little drunken riot which happened, served to confirm them in these sanguine expectations: and there was hardly one amongst them who would lose the air of contributing by his intrigues to the Restoration, which he took it for granted would be brought about without him in a very few weeks.

"Care and hope sat on every busy Irish face. Those who could write and read had letters to show, and those who had not arrived to this pitch of erudition had their secrets to whisper. No sex was excluded from this ministry. Fanny Oglethorp, whom you must have seen in England, kept her corner in it, and Oliver Trant was the great wheel of our machine."

The writers in support of Walpole :

"The reasons I have given for mentioning these writers ought to excuse me for it, at least to you; and even to you I shall say very little more about them. The flowers they gather at Billingsgate, to adorn and entwine their productions, shall be passed over by me without any reflection. They assume the privilege of watermen and oyster-women. Let them enjoy it in that good company, and exclusively of all other persons. They cause no scandal; they give no offence; they raise no sentiment but contempt in the breasts of those they attack; and it is to be hoped, for the honour of those whom they would be thought to defend, that they raise, by this low and dirty practice, no other sentiment in them. But there is another part of their proceeding, which may be attributed by malicious people to you, and which deserves for that reason alone some place in this dedication, as it might be some motive to the writing of it. When such authors grow scurrilous, it would be highly unjust to impute their scurrility to any prompter; because they have in themselves all that is necessary to constitute a scold,-ill manners, impudence, a foul mouth, and a fouler heart. But when they menace, they rise a note higher. They cannot do this in their own names. Men may be apt to conclude, therefore, that they do in the name, as they affect to do it on the behalf, of the person, in whose cause they desire to be thought retained."

Importance of early historical education :

"The temper of the mind is formed, and a certain turn given to our ways of thinking; in a word, the seeds of that moral

character, which cannot wholly alter the character, but may correct the evil and improve the good that is in it, or do the very contrary, are sown betimes, and much sooner than is commonly supposed. It is equally certain, that we shall gather or not gather experience, be the better or worse for this experience, when we come into the world and mingle amongst mankind, according to the temper of mind and the turn of thought that we have acquired beforehand, and bring along with us. They will tincture all our future acquisitions; so that the very same experience, which secures the judgment of one man, or excites him to virtue, shall lead another into error, or plunge him into vice. From hence it follows, that the study of history has in this respect a double advantage. If experience alone can make us perfect in our parts, experience cannot begin to teach them till we are actually on the stage: whereas, by a previous application to this study, we con them over at least, before we appear there: we are not quite unprepared ; we learn our parts sooner; and we learn them better."

I have quoted more largely from Bolingbroke than I otherwise should have done, on account of the general neglect with which his works are now treated. It is indeed neither to be wondered at nor to be lamented, that, taking them as a whole, they are now seldom read. Their subject-matter causes this. Generally speaking, when Bolingbroke is not irreligious, he is unfairly attacking Walpole, or dishonestly defending the peace of Utrecht. But as rhetorical exercises, his works are invaluable; and, to adopt again the remark of Lord Chesterfield, "the Englishman who is wholly unacquainted with Bolingbroke, is very imperfectly acquainted with the power and beauty of his own language." (Life by Mallet, prefixed to his Works. Lord Mahon's History. Cyclopædia.)

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Knight's

SIR WILLIAM WYNDHAM.

THIS eminent leader of a powerful parliamentary party against Sir Robert Walpole, was descended from an ancient Norfolk family, which possessed the lands of Wymondham in that county from a very early period. He was the grandson of Sir William Wyndham, on whom Charles the Second conferred a baronetcy. He was born in 1687; he received his education at Eton, and at

Christ-church, Oxford. On leaving the university he spent some years in travelling abroad. Soon after his return to England he was chosen knight of the shire for Somerset, and sat as such in the three last parliaments of Queen Anne, and in all the subsequent parliaments, until his death. Bolingbroke's friendship procured for him, in 1710, the post of Secretary-at-War. In 1713 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Wyndham was an ardent and an almost undisguised Jacobite; and entered accordingly into all Bolingbroke's schemes to keep out the Hanoverian dynasty. But there is this wide difference between the two statesmen, that Wyndham, however mistaken, was sincere in the line of politics which he adopted.

Lord Bolingbroke's influence over Wyndham was discreditably manifested in the resemblance between the two friends as to irregularity in morals, and want of religious principle. It was, however, only in Sir William's earlier years that the latter weakness was exhibited by him. As he grew older he grew wiser. Lord Mahon says "In early life Wyndham was guilty of a failing which reason and reflection afterwards corrected, he thought and spoke with levity on sacred subjects. One instance of this kind I am inclined to mention, on account of the admirable answer which he received from Bishop Atterbury; an answer not easily to be matched, as a most ready and forcible, yet mild and polished reproof. In 1715 they were dining with a party at the Duke of Ormond's, at Richmond. The conversation turning on prayers, Wyndham said, that the shortest prayer he had ever heard of was the prayer of a common soldier, just before the battle of Blenheim :-O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!' This story was followed by a general laugh. But the Bishop of Rochester, then first joining in the conversation, and addressing himself to Wyndham, said, with his usual grace and gentleness of manner, 'Your prayer, Sir William, is indeed very short, but I remember another as short, but a much better, offered up likewise by a poor soldier in the same circumstances: "O God, if in the day of battle I forget thee, do thou not forget me!"-The whole company sat silent and abashed."

This anecdote, as Lord Mahon mentions, is found in the writings of Dr. King, who was himself one of the party.

On the accession of King George the First, Wyndham kept his place in parliament, and strenuously defended his old friends

and colleagues on their impeachment. On the breaking out of Mar's rebellion in 1715, Sir William was apprehended and sent to the Tower, but he was afterwards set at liberty without a trial. After this period he still pursued his career of opposition to the Whig ministers and was the acknowledged head of the high Tory party. He died in 1740, being then only fifty-three years old; and for nearly half that period he had been a leading member of the House of Commons. We possess no specimens of Wyndham's oratory sufficient to enable us to form a sure estimate of it: but we may be at least certain that he, who was for years classed with Pulteney as "the two Consuls of the Opposition," and who was recognised by Walpole as a formidable antagonist, must have been gifted with considerable powers of eloquence, and must have acquired no mean skill as a debater. "In my opinion," says Speaker Onslow, "Sir William Wyndham was the most made for a great man of any one that I have known in this age. Every thing about him seemed great. There was no inconsistency in his composition; all the parts of his character suited and helped one another." (Cunningham's Biography.-Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. iii.)

LORD TOWNSHEND.

CHARLES VISCOUNT TOWNSHEND, the eldest son of Horatio, first Viscount Townshend, was born on the 10th of March, 1674. He was at Eton with the Walpoles and other Etonians of celebrity in after-life, as already mentioned in preceding memoirs. He took his seat in the House of Peers on attaining his majority, and became successively Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Norfolk,a Commissioner for treating of an Union with Scotland,-Captain Yeoman of Queen Anne's Guard,-a Privy Councillor,-and one of the plenipotentiaries for negotiating a peace with France in 1709. His colleague on this occasion was the Duke of Marlborough. Townshend remained at the Hague as English Ambassador to the States-General; and, by the recommendation of several of the leading men in Holland, he became favourably known by the Elector of Hanover, afterwards George the First.

On his return home, after the expulsion of the Whigs from office by Harley, Mrs. Masham, and Bolingbroke, Townshend continued

firm to the Whig cause, and, by a marriage with Sir Robert Walpole's sister, made still closer the friendship already subsisting between them as old schoolfellows and county neighbours.

On the accession of George the First, whose confidence Townshend had previously obtained, he was nominated one of the Lords Justices to whom the government was confided until the King's arrival. On the 14th of September, 1714, he was made Chief Secretary of State, and took the lead in administration until the latter end of 1716, when, in consequence of differences as to the King's Hanoverian policy, he resigned his seals of office. He was, however, soon restored to power. In June, 1720, he became President of the Council, and was appointed one of the Lords Justices during the King's visit to Hanover. Shortly afterwards he resumed his office of Chief Secretary of State, and in May, 1723, accompanied George the First to his Electorate.

The death of Stanhope and the disgrace of Sunderland at length left Townshend and his brother-in-law, Walpole, without any formidable competitors, and their political supremacy was for some time untroubled. In July, 1724, Townshend was made a Knight of the Garter. In 1727 he again accompanied George the First to the Continent, and was present at that monarch's decease.

He continued in office after the accession of George the Second, until May 1730, when a violent personal quarrel occurred between him and Walpole, which ended in Townshend's resignation. Lord Mahon says of him, "He left office with a most unblemished character, and, what is still more uncommon, a most patriotic moderation. Had he gone into opposition, or even steered a neutral course, he must have caused great embarrassment and difficulty to his triumphant rival; but he must thereby also have thwarted a policy of which he approved, and hindered measures which he wished to see adopted. In spite, therefore, of the most flattering advances from the Opposition, who were prepared to receive him with open arms, he nobly resolved to retire altogether from public life. He withdrew to his paternal seat at Bainham, where he passed the eight remaining years of his life in well-earned leisure or in agricultural improvements. It is to him that England, and more especially his native county of Norfolk, owes the introduction and cultivation of the turnip from Germany. He resisted all solicitations to re-enter public life, nor would even consent to visit London. Once, when Chesterfield had embarked in full opposition