solicitous to perform the more painful, but not less gracious, task of marking their respect for his character by a liberal grant to his surviving relatives.'

Mr. Whitbread, one of the constant mouth-pieces of the Opposition, said: "It was impossible to add anything to the impression already made by what had fallen from both sides of the House; but having been a marked and determined political antagonist of Mr. Perceval, he was anxious to express his entire concurrence in the vote. Of the private virtues of the deceased minister it was unnecessary to say anything. No one could deny them. But amongst his public virtues there was one which he could not help holding up to the imitation of the House, and of posterity. That was the great control of temper which he possessed, and united with the firmest perseverance in his views and objects. Beyond the door of that House he (Mr. Whitbread) had never carried any feelings of political animosity towards him. It was impossible that he could." Here Mr. Whitbread's voice was quite overpowered by his feelings, and he sat down amidst the melancholy applauses of all present.

It would be an error to estimate Mr. Perceval's public character or merits as a minister from the excited feelings of the House under the circumstances of his death. Neither would it be fair to give full credit to the savage radicalism of Cobbett or the stinging censure of Sir W. Napier. Both these bitter penmen were slaves to party bias as much as any of the political leaders they so liberally denounce. Posterity looks not to extreme factionaries for historic truth. Demosthenes and Cicero present distorted portraits of Philip and Antony, and Macaulay exaggerates the weak points of Marlborough. We read and are charmed with the fiery eloquence, the graceful periods, and the glowing imagery; but conviction tells us that this seductive compound conveys no just reflection of truth. Napier describes Mr. Perceval, the minister, thus: "Narrow, harsh, factious, and illiberal in everything relating to public matters, this man's career was one of unmixed evil. His bigotry taught him to oppress Ireland, but his religion did not deter him from

passing a law to prevent the introduction of medicines into France during a pestilence. He lived by faction; he had neither the wisdom to support nor the manliness to put an end to the war in the Peninsula ; and his crooked, contemptible policy was shown by withholding what was necessary to sustain the contest, and throwing on the General the responsibility of failure."

This paragraph drew from Mr. Dudley Montagu Perceval a pamphlet in defence of his father, to which the historian replied by a challenge to mortal combat; which being declined, a profusion of ink, well seasoned with gall, was shed on both sides. The Napiers were ever ready to handle pen or pistol, as occasion required; thus resembling the first followers of Mahomet, who brandished in one hand the Koran, in the other a scimitar, shouting aloud, "Receive or die!" Mr. Perceval, jun., said to Sir W. Napier, "The good name of my father is the only inheritance he left to his children." Whereupon Sir W. Napier retorted, "I find that during his life, the minister, Perceval, had salaries to the amount of about £8,000 a-year, and the reversion of a sinecure, worth about £12,000 more, then enjoyed by his brother, Lord Arden. And also I find that after his death, his family received a grant of £50,000, and £3,000 a-year from the public money."

Cobbett, in his "History of George IV." sketches Mr. Perceval as follows: "But there now came amongst them a man who soon surpassed all the rest in power as well as in impudence and insolence towards the people. This was that Spencer Perceval, of whose signal death we shall have to speak by-and-by. This man, a sharp lawyer, had been inured from his first days at the bar to the carrying on of State prosecutions-a sort of understrapper to the attorneysgeneral in London, and frequently their deputy in the counties. was a short, spare, pale-faced, hard, keen, sour-looking man, with a voice well suited to the rest, with words in abundance at his command, with the industry of a laborious, drudging attorney, with no knowledge of the great interests of the nation, foreign or domestic, but with a thorough knowledge of those means by which

He

power is obtained and preserved in England, and with no troublesome scruples as to the employment of those means."

Again, writing of Mr. Perceval's unpopularity, he says:-"Upon the news of the death of Perceval arriving at Nottingham, at Leicester, at Truro, and, indeed, all over the country, demonstrations of joy were shown by the ringing of bells, the making of bonfires, and the like; and at Nottingham particularly, soldiers were called out to disperse the people upon the occasion." Cobbett happened to be a prisoner in Newgate at the time of Bellingham's execution. This is his version of what took place :"With regard to the fact of the offender going out of the world amidst the blessings of the people, I, the author of this history, can vouch for its truth, having been an eye and ear witness of the awful and most memorable scene, standing, as I did, at the window of that prison into which I had been put in consequence of a prosecution ordered by this very Perceval. The crowd was assembled in the open space before me. I saw the anxious looks, I saw the half horrified countenances, I saw the mournful tears run down, and I heard the anxious blessings. The nation was growing heartily tired of the war; it despaired of seeing an end put to it without utter ruin to the country. The expenditure had reached an amount that frightened even loan-mongers and stock-jobbers, and a blow had been given to people's confidence by Perceval's recent acts, which had proclaimed to the whole world the fact of the depreciation of the paper money. These things made even the pretended exclusively loyal, secretly rejoice at his death."

There is much in all this which is very shocking, if true; and more so if false or coloured up to fiction by personal enmity. But the sources from which the above quotations are taken are not the most likely to give a true rendering of the acts or principles of the minister they impugn. We might as reasonably look for an impartial biography of Pitt, Lord Derby, or Disraeli, at the hands of

the Brights, Cobdens, and Roebucks of the present day.

Judged fairly, Mr. Perceval may be pronounced a thoroughly honest minister according to his convictions, possessing wonderful industry, but with no grand scope of genius or conception; well-meaning and conscientious, but yielding to long-cherished prejudices. Who does not, in some degree, labour under the last-named influence? And prejudice is more closely connected with enthusiasm than many may at first suppose. Dr. Johnson said he loved a good hater. Such earnestness was likely to bear fruit. Mr. Perceval was a first-rate man of business, and also a scholar of profound erudition; in one branch of learning, too, which appears extraordinary, when we consider how completely his time was occupied during a life which only extended over fifty years, nearly the last half of which was occupied in the public service. The late Duke of Sussex, it is well known, accumulated a splendid library,* unrivalled in Bibles and theological treatises. What is still more singular, he read his books. His shelves at Kensington Palace contained a complete collection of the early Fathers, which he took great pleasure in perusing. "I imbibed this taste," he said to a friend who related the anecdote to the writer of this notice, "from Mr. Perceval, who had them all at his fingers' ends, and I lit my little farthing candle at the blaze of his resplendent chandelier."

The lucubrations of the Fathers are quite as heavy and extensive as the series of Byzantine historians. They comprise more ponderous tomes, despite the conflagration of the Alexandrian library under the Caliph Omar, than a student of intense perseverance could labour through in many years, with nothing else to disturb his time or attention. Strange as it may sound to the uninitiated, they abound in fragments and passages from the Greek dramatists, not to be found elsewhere. But they are also of superior value as corroborative evidences of Gospel truth, dealing with none but canonical books, and proving their genuineness from the dawn of Christian revelation.

In