weight, for fear of overdoing the mark, he throws it into the wrong scale. He is a person of equally feeble understanding and passions. He has some notion of what is right, just enough to hinder him from pursuing his own interest: he has selfish and worldly prudence enough, not to let him embark in any bold or decided measure for the advancement of truth and justice. He is afraid of his own conscience, which will not let him lend his unqualified support to arbitrary measures; he stands in awe of the opinion of the world, which will not let him express his opposition to those measures with warmth and effect. His politics are a strange mixture of cross-purposes. He is wedded to forms and appearances, impeded by every petty obstacle and pretext of difficulty, more tenacious of the means than the end-anxious to secure all suffrages, by which he secures nonehampered not only by the ties of friendship to his actual associates, but to all those that he thinks may become so; and unwilling to offer arguments to convince the reason of his opponents lest he should offend their prejudices, by shewing them how much they are in the wrong; "letting I dare not wait upon I would, like the poor cat in the adage;" stickling for the letter of the Constitution, with the affectation of a prude, and abandoning its principles with the effrontery of a prostitute to any shabby Coalition he can patch up with its deadly enemies. This is very pitiful work; and, I believe, the public with me are tolerably sick of the character. At the same time, he

hurls up his cap with a foolish face of wonder and incredulity at the restoration of the Bourbons, and affects to chuckle with secret satisfaction over the last act of the Revolution, which reduced him to perfect insignificance. We need not wonder at the results, when it comes to the push between parties so differently constituted and unequally matched. We have seen what those results are. I cannot do justice to the picture, but I find it done to my hands in those prophetic lines of Pope, where he describes the last Triumph of Corruption :

"But 'tis the fall degrades her to a whore :
Let greatness own her, and she's mean no more.
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess;
Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless :
In golden chains the willing world she draws,
And her's the Gospel is, and her's the Laws;
Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,
And sees pale virtue carted in her stead.
Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal car,
Old England's genius, rough with many a scar,
Dragg'd in the dust! his arms hang idly round,
His flag inverted trails along the ground;
Our youth, all liveried o'er with foreign gold,
Before her dance, behind her crawl the old!
See thronging millions to the Pagod run,
And offer country, parent, wife, or son!
Hear her black trumpet thro' the land proclaim,
That not to be corrupted is the shame.

In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in power,
'Tis avarice all, ambition is no more!
See all our nobles begging to be slaves!
See all our fools aspiring to be knaves!

All, all look up with reverential awe

At crimes that 'scape' or triumph o'er the law; While truth, worth, wisdom daily they decry: 'Nothing is sacred now but villainy.'

Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)

Shew there was one who held it in disdain."

POLITICAL ESSAYS, &c.

THE MARQUIS WELLESLEY.

"And such other gambol faculties he hath, as shew a weak mind, and an able body."

April 13, 1813.

THE Marquis Wellesley's opening speech on India affairs was chiefly remarkable for its length, and the manner in which it was delivered. This nobleman seems to have formed himself on those lines in Pope:

"All hail him victor in both gifts of song,

"Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long."

He aspires with infinite alacrity to the character of a great orator; and, if we were disposed to take the will for the deed, we should give him full credit for it. We confess, those of his speeches which we have heard, appear to us prodigies of physical prowess and intellectual imbecility. The ardour of his natural temperament, stimulating and irritating the ordinary faculties of his mind, the exuberance of his animal spirits, contending with the barrenness of his genius, produce a degree of dull vivacity, of pointed insignificance, and impotent energy, which is without any paralle] but itself. It is curious, though somewhat painful, to see this lively little lord always in the full career of his subject, and never advancing a jot the nearer; seeming to utter volumes in every

B

word, and yet saying nothing; retaining the same unabated vehemence of voice and action without any thing to excite it; still keeping alive the promise and the expectation of genius without once satisfying it—soaring into mediocrity with adventurous enthusiasm, harrowed up by some plain matter-of-fact, writhing with agony under a truism, and launching a common-place with all the fury of a thunderbolt !*

MR. SOUTHEY, POET LAUREAT.

Sept. 18, 1813.

THE laurel is at length destined, unexpectedly, to circle the brows of this gentleman, where it will look almost like a civic crown. The patriot and the poet (two venerable names, which we should wish never to see disunited) is said to owe his intended elevation to the intercession of Mr. Croker, to whom, it will be recollected, he has dedicated his Life of Lord Nelson, with an appropriate motto in the title-page, from the poem of Ulm and Trafalgar. Mr. Croker having applied to the Regent in favour of his friend, the Prince is understood to have given his ready assent, observing, that Mr. Southey's efforts in the Spanish cause alone, rendered him highly worthy of the situation. As Mr. Croker, however, was taking his leave, he was met by Lord

*The above criticism first appeared in the Courier newspaper, and was copied the next day in the Chronicle with the following remarks:-" The treasury journals complain of the harsh treatment shewn to ministers, let us see how they treat their opponents. If the following does not come from the poetical pen of the Admiralty Croaker, it is a close imitation of his style."

'Strange that such difference should be

"Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee!'"

Whether it was from the fear of this supposed formidable critic, the noble Marquis ceased from this time nightly to "fillip the ears of his auditors with a three-man beetle!"