than when translating from the great Liberator of Greece. So universal is the language of the heart in all ages. Upon the works of Demosthenes, therefore, he urged the youthful scholar to bestow all his diligence; to take him for his model; and, neglecting the more refined sophistries and poetical imagery of Cicero, to practise his genius in the sterner exercises of simplicity and truth. Not that this system of Rhetoric was to be elaborated with greater ease than the flowery style of the Latin School. He was never to speak without ample preparation, nor, if possible, without committing the whole harangue to memory. Lord Brougham, must in this instance, be supposed to have given advice which he did not always follow. No person, who beheld him in the House of Commons during the morning of his strength, when his arrows rattled against the golden shield of Canning, could believe for a moment that those brilliant dashes of fiery sarcasm and invective were sharpened under the lamp. Yet it may, perhaps, be objected, that this very fluency was the result of practice; that his memory, trained in many conflicts, was always ready to supply him with new weapons.

From whatever cause the defect originates, Mr. Macaulay, it is well known, hardly ever succeeded in a reply. He seems to want what Mr. Moore has so happily called the art of thinking upon his

legs. There are men, whose eloquence is far more copious than their reading, and who never shine so much as when they are surprised into a speech. Among these, the late member for Leeds was certainly not found. With his literary and political style, if I may so distinguish them, every reader of the Debates, and the Edinburgh Review, is sufficiently acquainted. His articles on Dryden, Milton, and Macchiavelli, contain some splendid specimens of declamatory rhetoric. But for grace and facility, for a touching truth and fervour of manner, I prefer some of his early essays in Knight's Quarterly Magazine. His eloquence, after all, whispers more of Tully, than of his Grecian Master; every page declares the toil lavished upon its embellishment. It glitters with barbaric pearl and gold; the diction is rich and varied, though too highly wrought and artificial, and continually forcing a conviction upon the mind, that the thoughts are inferior to the setting; that the grapes would be of a finer flavour, if the vine were boldly pruned. These remarks are hazarded only in reference to his later and more finished productions. The specimens of a student's oratory at Cambridge, are not to be judged by so high a standard. The Union,a word requiring no explanation to any member of the University-reached an elevation in those days, which it is not likely soon to recover. Macaulay,

with his flashes of vigorous imagination; Praed, with his graceful irony and poetical fancy; and many others, whose names live in the memory of their companions, imparted an unusual charm to its meetings. It concerns not the reader to know how far my political creed differs from Mr. Macaulay's; yet I cannot refrain from observing, that the character of Strafford is too severely delineated; and that while rendering to Milton the honour due to the purest intentions of patriotism, we ought not to forget the injury which his mistaken opinions have inflicted, or how many designs of most hurtful tendency to the welfare of the state, have been sheltered under the shield of that lustrous name.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

"OF all the remarkable characters of English history, Cromwell has, I think, met with the most unmeasured judgments. He has been viewed only through the glass of powerful prejudice, and his mental aspect has darkened into terror, or relaxed into beauty, according to the feelings of the beholder. He has been the delight and the scourge,

the glory and the disgrace of the world. Voltaire pronounced him an usurper worthy to reign; Mazarine called him a fortunate fool; Clarendon stigmatized him as a brave, bad man; South saw in him a lively copy of Jeroboam. By one party he was regarded as the Champion of liberty, making a passage for the people of God through the armies of the enemy and the principalities of darkness; by the other, as a master of hypocrisy, a bigoted enthusiast, an evil angel of the Apostacy. The voice of hatred has deepened over his ashes. Calumny, Sir, possesses in an uncommon degree, the property of adhesion; the longer it remains, the harder it becomes; until, in the course of time, the colour of the moral countenance, the very shape and expression of the features, are incrusted and defaced by this leprous pollution. I stand not here, Sir, to night, as the advocate, or the panegyrist of that melancholy domestic tragedy, which was presented before this afflicted nation in that tempestuous season. But, Sir, I would askwas there no provocation, no exaction; no insult to the dignity of man; no invasion of the sanctity of a Briton's fireside! Sir, the grave of Hampden has a voice; let it answer for me! Tyranny had dashed its mailed hand upon the mouth of every freeman; the life-blood of the laws was drained out by unnumbered wounds. Despotism had up

lifted its standard; the hearts of men failed for fear. At this dark and dreary period, all eyes turned to the star of Cromwell, which then began to show itself above the horizon. By many of the most eminent men, of an age fruitful in the highest qualities of the intellect, he was hailed as the servant of Providence, chosen to conduct the agitated kingdom into a happy and honourable

repose.

"Milton regarded him as the tutelar divinity of the national freedom, as the incorruptible Priest of a new Hierarchy; a chieftain, who was to rule the empire by his wisdom, to recall the popular mind to a severer and purer discipline, to vanquish and trample to death under his feet every pleasure and temptation; to bear himself, in short, as one whose meditations were sanctified and ennobled by a peculiar intercourse with his Maker. His first exploits he declared had been against himself; his first victories over his own appetite. Thus had he from his youth been knitting an armour for his soul; and thus enthusiastically did one of the brightest Intellects of the age welcome the dawn of what he thought would shine into a glorious morning*. No wonder that Cromwell disappointed such ardent expectations. Never was the founder of a political dynasty placed in a situation of more imminent

* See Milton's Defensio pro Populo Anglicano.