self, that Romilly inherited from his ancestors, and with him, it was carried out with an uniform steadiness of principle, that was not only unseduced, but even unsolicited, both by the ordinary attractions and by the more elegant and refined pleasures and amusements of youth. It is possible, in the mixed weakness and strength of our nature, that there are great and noble qualities, whose existence in the same mind seem to be incompatible with each other; and that those sterner virtues, such as the poet describes,

"That sit like falcons cowering o'er their nest,"

cannot well reside

"With all the gentler morals, such as play

Around life's cultured walks, and charm the way."

Be that as it may it has been said that there was in the character of Sir S. Romilly a want of flexibility, and allowance to the manners and conduct of those who had been educated under a looser discipline, and a code of morals less perfect than his own and this may have been the case; but this fault, if not compensated, was surely somewhat to be excused, when it was to be seen accompanied by an inflexible severity of judgment towards himself,† by an undeviating perseverance in the path of duty, and by a life adorned by the utmost purity of private feeling and public honour; by a warm desire, as shown in his public acts, to defend the rights, to improve the condition, and to increase the happiness of his fellow-creatures; while, like all statesmen of high character and principle, but even in a greater degree than usual, he had an equal contempt for the breath of popular favour, and the undue solicitations of regal and ministerial influence. This honourable feeling is thus expressed in his own words: "I had rather leave to my children, only a name connected with measures which tend to increase the happiness or to assuage the evil of any portion of my fellow subjects, than the proudest title which the Crown has to bestow, or the amplest possessions which the long enjoyment of the most lucrative offices could enable me to acquire."‡ It was, we think, by this high standard that he was judged and approved; and that he gained and preserved the esteem of the first men of his age. In splendour of abilities, in variety and extent of learning, even in depth of legal attainment, in political knowledge, in parliamentary eloquence, he was surpassed by more than a few; of theological acquirements, as a study employed on the noblest subjects that can exercise the mind or regulate the

* Speaking of his grandfather, Sir S. Romilly says, "he educated his sons to useful trades, and he was contented at his death to leave them, instead of his original patrimony, no other inheritance than the habits of industry he had given them, the example of his own virtuous life, an hereditary detestation of tyranny and injustice, and an ardent zeal in the cause of civil and religious freedom," &c. See vol. iii. p. 26. + "And Justice, to herself severe." Gray's Ode to Adversity.

See vol. iii. p. 25. On the part taken by Romilly on the conduct of the Duke of York, Sir J. Mackintosh, in a letter, Oct. 15, 1809, says, "I envy Romilly neither his fortune nor his fame, though I am likely to be poor and obscure enough; but I do envy him so noble an opportunity of proving his disinterestedness. If his character had been in the slightest degree that of a demagogue, his conduct might have been ambiguous, but, with his habit, it can be considered only as a sacrifice of the highest objects of ambition to the mere dictates of conscience. I speak so, because, though I trust he will not lose the great seal, yet I am sure he considered himself as sacrificing it; and to view it in any other light, would be to rob him of the fame which he deserves," &c. See vol. ii. p. 270

feelings and principles of our nature, he had none; and his religious opinions were such as we would rather altogether pass over* than discuss; but he possessed a singular combination of those qualities, guarded by a calmness of judgment and steadiness of opinion, which ensure to their owner the esteem and approbation of his fellow-creatures, which remove, almost without difficulty, the obstacles that obstruct the road to professional eminence, and which may be said even to command success. have thrown out these impressions of our own, from a somewhat rapid perusal of the work before us; but, as we profess ourselves incapable of so transfusing the spirit and truth of the narrative into a few pages, as to present our readers with a faithful likeness of the original, we shall refer them to the work itself: no one, we are certain, can read it honestly and attentively without benefit; but those in particular will do well to study assiduously the method of life which is there drawn by the pen of the original, and to cultivate the virtues that surround it, who are endeavouring to attain the honours and success with which it was crowned. In the meantime, we shall now turn from the contemplation of the author himself to another portion of the work, and present to our readers, in the shape of extracts, a view of the opinions which Sir S. Romilly formed, and the characters he drew, of his illustrious contemporaries. It will form, we think, no unpleasing gallery of private and political sketches ; some of them, seldom noticed by the public eye; others presented with lineaments that had been scarcely observed; nothing done in pique or caprice; no random or chance strokes of the pencil-and if all are not equally impressed with the force or fidelity of the portrait, they will recollect that the human mind is an instrument, the different passions and qualities of which are constantly appearing and disappearing, playing and shifting, and changing their form and colour, and intermingling and fading partially from view, according to the circumstances in which they are placed, the point from which they are viewed, and the medium through which they pass. To be sagacious in observing, and faithful in recording, is what we have a right to require of the moral painter of his race; and in him who has drawn the following portraits of his friends and his competitors, and those whom he met in the walks of public life, these qualities are surely in no wise deficient.

*The following seems to us somewhat strange language, coming as it does, from a divine of the Church of England, distinguished for his learned acquirements: "Dear Sir, I do not know whether our religious creed may in all points be similar, but we do agree upon those great points to which the belief of all doctrines whatsoever ought to be subservient; and this agreement, founded as it is upon an honest use of our understandings, and directed to the happiness of our fellow creatures, will make both of us equally acceptable in the sight of that Deity, who is the ruler of all events, and searcher of all hearts." See letter from Dr. S. Parr to Sir S. Romilly, vol. iii. p. 314. Sir S. Romilly himself, in his fictitious letters to C. (vol. iii. p. 374.) in which he expresses his own designs and views if he was Lord Chancellor, thus mentions the principles on which his ecclesiastical patronage would have been bestowed, "In the church, to consider those as best qualified to advance the interests of true religion, and of the state, who entertain the most liberal opinions; not those who consider the religious order as a kind of corporation, as a profession which has its own particular interests to consult, and between which and the society there should be kept up, as it were, a perpetual struggle." Upon this principle we think some late appointments have been made; but, if we may judge of the possessors, by their acts, we should say, as the Venetian did, who, praying to the Virgin Mary to help him to mount his mule, over to the other side, crying out" Per ma fede, la Virgine e troppo graciosa !"

Let us commence with his early acquaintance with his friend DUMONT,

"During this residence at Geneva, I formed a friendship with a young man, about my own age, of the name of Dumont, who was then studying for the church, and was soon after admitted one of its ministers. Roget, who had been long acquainted with him, had spoke to each of us in such favourable terms of each other, that we were desirous of becoming friends before we met, and a personal acquaintance, improved by a little tour we made together to the Glaciers of Savoy, and round the Lake of Geneva, by the Tête Noire, Martigny, Bex, and Vevay, was soon matured into a very intimate and firm friendship, which remains to this day, increased and strengthened by the number of years during which it has lasted. His vigorous understanding, his extensive knowledge, and his splendid eloquence, qualified him to have acted the noblest part in public life; while the brilliancy of his wit, the cheerfulness of his humour, and the charms of his conversation, have made him the delight of every private society in which he has lived; but his most valuable qualities are, his strict integrity, his zeal to serve those to whom he is attached, and his most affectionate disposition."

D'ALEMBERT, DIDEROT." I saw at Paris a great variety of persons, artists, advocates, and authors. Among these were D'Alembert and Diderot, the most celebrated of all the writers then remain

ing in France. D'Alembert was in a very infirm state of health, and not disposed to enter much into conversation, with a person so shy, and so unused to society as I was. Diderot, on the contrary, was all warmth and eagerness, and talked to me with as little reserve as if I had been long and intimately acquainted with him. Rousseau, politics and religion were the principal topics of his conversation. The Confessions of Rousseau were at that time expected shortly to appear; and it was manifest, from the bitterness with which Diderot spoke of the work and of its author, that he dreaded its appearance. On the subject of religion he made no disguise, or rather he was ostentatious of a total disbelief in the existence of God. He talked very eagerly on politics, and inveighed with great warmth against the tyranny of the French government. He told me that he had long meditated a work on the death of Charles the First; that he had studied the trial of that prince; and that his intention was to have tried him over again, and have sent him to the scaffold, if he had found him guilty; but that he had at last relinquished his de

signs. In England he would have executed it, but he had not the courage to do so in France. D'Alembert, as I observed, was more cautious; he contented himself with observing, what an effect philosophy had in his own time produced on the minds of the people. The birth of the Dauphin afforded him an example. He was old enough, he said, to remember when such an event had made the whole nation drunk with joy, but now, they regarded with greater indifference the birth of another master."

JOHN BAYNES." There was a young man of my own age, a student, and an inhabitant of Gray's Inn, with whom I, about this time, formed a great degree of intimacy. His great talents, and his learning as a classical scholar, as an English antiquary, and as a profound lawyer, must, if he had lived, have raised him to very great eminence in his profession: though his honest and independent spirit would probably to him have barred all access to its highest offices. This was John Baynes. He was a native of the West Riding of Yorkshire; had received his early education at Richmond, in that county, and had afterwards very much distinguished himself, both in mathematics and in the classics, in the University of Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Trinity College. A man more high spirited, more generous, more humane, more disposed to protect the public against the oppression of the powerful and the great, never adorned the annals of England. His premature death, which happened five or six years after the time I am speaking of, I have always considered as a great public loss. To our profession particularly, the loss of such a man, and in such a state of the profession as that in which it happened, was the greatest it could suffer. The intimacy which I formed with this excellent man soon ripened into the firmest friendship. We prosecuted our studies together; we communicated to each other, and compared the notes which we took during our attendance in the courts. We used to meet at night at each other's chamber, to read some of the classics, particularly Tacitus, in whom we both took great delight; and we formed a little society, to which we admitted only two other persons, Holroyd and Christian, for arguing points of law upon questions which we suggested to each other."

"In the summer of 1787, I suffered an irreparable loss by the death of my most excellent friend Baynes. I had engaged to pass a part of the vacation with him at his father's, in the neighbourhood of

Skipton, Yorkshire, and we were to have set out immediately upon my return from the circuit; but upon the circuit I received the news of his illness, of the alarms which were entertained for him, and his death. He had been applying himself to study with unusual assiduity; his business as a special pleader under the bar had much increased, and he had undergone extraordinary fatigues in it; and during all this, he had determined to live with a very unusual degree of abstemiousness. He was attacked by a putrid fever, which baffled all the efforts of medicine, and in a very short time brought him to the grave. His loss was one of the greatest

misfortunes which at that time could have
befallen me, and it was a source of great
affliction to me; but I shall ever account
it one of the most fortunate occurrences
in my prosperous life, that for six years
before he died I enjoyed his warm and
generous friendship. In death he bore
testimony of his affection to me, for he
appointed me the executor of his will, and
he left me a valuable part of his library,
all his classics, and all his books upon law
and legal antiquities. His friend Dr. Parr,
at the instance of his father, wrote an in-
scription for his tomb, which is very hap-
pily characteristic of him." *

We add the following extract from a letter from Dr. Parr, as the account in the present volumes is the first full and authentic one which we have received of the deceased, who was previously known to us only by a few of his poetical translations, and by his general reputation.

He

"J.Baynes was born at Skipton, in Yorkshire, where his father was a prosperous attorney. He was a member of Trinity College, and at a time of life unusually early, he gained the highest, or nearly the highest honours, mathematical and classical. had great ardour of mind, great singleness of heart, great variety of research. He was an antiquary, as well as a scholar. He was for a time suspected of having written the celebrated Epistle to Sir Wm. Chambers. He disclaimed the authorship, but confessed that he superintended the press. He had a very fine commanding person; the tones of his voice were impressive; his dress was at all times becoming; his manner was unaffected, yet dignified. He was now and then fond of paradoxes, and would defend them reso

RAYNAL." At Lausanne I met with the Abbé Raynal; but I saw him with no admiration either of his talents or his character. Having read the eloquent passages in his works with delight, I had formed the highest expectations of him; but those expectations were sadly disappointed. I was filled at this time with horror at West India slavery, and at the slave trade, and Raynal's Philosophical History of the Two Indies had served to

lutely, when they had all the properties of
improbability, and even absurdity. He
was a steady advocate for civil and reli-
gious liberty. J. Baynes was perhaps the
most intimate friend Sir S. Romilly had
in early life, and in consequence of their
connexion my own acquaintance at War-
wick with Sir Samuel began at some as-
sizes or sessions. Sir Samuel spoke of
him with affection and admiration, and
doubtless, if he had lived, he would have
been a bright luminary in the literature
and politics of England. He had not been
called to the bar, but practised at Gray's
Inn;
I believe, as a conveyancer.
died, to my sorrow, of a fever, and his
resignation at the approach of death was
worthy of his intellectual, moral, and re-
ligious excellences," &c.

He

enliven these sentiments; but when I came
to talk on these subjects with him, he ap-
peared to me so cold and indifferent about
them, that I conceived a very unfavourable
opinion of him. His conversation was cer-
tainly so inferior to his celebrated work,
as to give much countenance to the report,
which has been very common, that the
most splendid passages in it were not his
own." +

*See also vol. i. p. 334, in a letter from Mr. Wilberforce, Aug. 20, 1787: "I loved and valued poor Baynes more almost than I was warranted to do by the length of our acquaintance, or the time we had spent together; and, excepting one or two persons only, there is scarce any man living to whose future public services I looked forward with such good hope as I did to his. An understanding so solid as his, with such unaffected simplicity and honesty of heart, are indeed rarely to be met with in our days, and are a greater national loss than can well be estimated."

+Such we believe to be the admitted opinion of the French critics. We are unfortunately at a distance from our books at the present time, or we could have given a tolerably accurate account of the opinions prevalent in French literature on the subject; but we think Holbach and Diderot were supposed to have assisted him.-Rev.

2

Sad Perhaps among all the characters which Sir J. Romilly observed and examined, there is none which will be of more general interest, or excite a more extended curiosity, than that of the once celebrated Mirabeau ; and we shall therefore extract the more essential parts of it.