Harsh was his manner, and his brow austere;
His garb and living, simple and severe :
He cared not for the splendour of a throne,
Wisely contented with its power alone;
More feared than hated-loved by few, or none.
He was a regicide:-but of his crime
The very daring held a port sublime;
A sad and strange solemnity, whose sorrow
Almost the semblance did of justice borrow,
And from its stern designer drew a tear-
Leave we to heaven, how false, or how sincere.

He was a tyrant but his tyranny
Was covered with a brave simplicity,
Keeping at distance envy :-and he made
His England honoured, dreaded, and obeyed.
And so remained she, till a ribald king
Sold her to France for wine and wassailing.

He was a mere usurper :-yet his state
Rather from others' folly took its date
Than his own foresight. Men may truly say,
A crown beneath his footstep kenneled lay
To woo his special wearing :-even as chance
Threw it before his dwarfish ape in France,
Whose meaner spirit deemed a subject globe
Less glory than a trained and broidered robe.
But Cromwell felt a nobler triumphing,
To vanquish kings, than be himself a king.
No princely cradle rocked him :—yet, had birth
Set him among the throned ones of the earth :
Their proudest had not held a firmer place,
Though some have sate, perhaps, with easier grace.

He ruled but by the law :-yet less of right
Than power he reckoned :-an arch-hypocrite,
Whose prayer was policy. How few would dare
To pray like him, whose policy was prayer!

The pied and painted courtiers-debauched men,
Whom his rude plainness pleased not-triumphed, when
Death overtook his day of victory :-

And others deemed such anniversary

Fit consummation of that earthly glory,

Which sounded at the tomb his complete story.

EARL GREY.

To describe what a Minister ought to be, is, perhaps, to link together a set of incompatible and unattainable qualities which have never yet existed in one man ;-to suppose a congregation of antagonist faculties, many of them rare in themselves, but all still rarer in their combination; a galaxy of lights which have never yet appeared in one visible Hemisphere. If, in order to describe the beau ideal of a Minister, we are to say, that he must be at once wise and adventurous; cautious and ardent; speculative and practical; with the power to generalize, yet of minute knowledge; patriotic and national, and yet dispassionate and philosophical; intimately acquainted with the wants and wishes of the people, and yet no slave to popularity or to the popular voice;—at once political economist and moralist; warrior and diplomatist; patriot and citizen of the world-if to describe a Minister, we are to say this,-the reply we shall obtain will be that of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, to to his friend Imlac, "Thou hast now proved it impossible that there should be a Poet,"-putting Minister in the place of Bard. And yet some such description as this, must he who will draw the outline of a great Minister, at all risks, delineate; nor when he comes to apply his outline to actual or existing examples will his difficulties be lessened. He will find many great Ministers" (so called) who, devoid of the supposed requisites have been made great by the force of circumstances, aiding the talents and temperament which they possessed; and he will find Ministers not great, who, putting external circumstances out of the question, were endued with most of the qualifications apparently requisite for their admirably filling up the character.

Earl Grey is the second son of Sir Charles, subsequently Lord Grey, the first Peer of that title, to which the second son succeeded, the elder brother having died in infancy. He was born in 1764, and was educated at Eton, together with Whitbread and others, with whom he acted during a great part of the period of his long, varied, and ultimately extraordinary career. From his parents he inherited talent, strong pas. sions, courage, and a landed estate, great and sufficient, if not splendid and inexhaustible. His character, subsequent events and his own innate resources have shaped, elevated, and confirmed.

His early years afforded a signal proof at once of the impetuosity and strength of his temperament. It is known that, led astray by the privileged seductions to which the youth of every titled man of fortune is exposed, he gamed, and lost to an immense amount.

He, in short, became the dupe of those legitimate sharpers, and coro. neted and ermined swindlers, who have, in modern times, been the curse and disgrace of this country. And here the peculiar spirit of the man shewed itself: he paid the debt instantaneously, and with breathless haste-but gamed no more. The bitter draught of corruption, which, to weaker stamina, would have been an opiate and a poison, was to him a true corrective; and, perhaps, to this circumstance, some portion of his youthful hatred to flagrant vice and rank corruption, in the garb of Usage, may be attributed. Whilst yet a very young man, he became a Member of Parliament for his native county, and his pre-eminent talents soon shewed themselves. On the arena of the House of Commons, besides his political opponents, Pitt, Burke, Canning, and Windham, he had-still more dangerous and difficult rivalry-to match his talents

with those of Fox, Sheridan, Tierney, and Whitbread. To speak either in opposition to, or in competition with men like these, was a trial than which few can be imagined to be harder; and yet, to a certain extent, Grey succeeded, and became an eminent debater in Parliament. Less hollow than Burke, less flippant than Canning, less abrupt than Fox, less pompous than Pitt, less gaudy than Sheridan, less downright than Whitbread, less Quixotic than Windham, he often opposed with success talents more solid than specious to intellects which certainly dealt less in the substantial than the shining; no mean praise, looking at the fashion of appreciating oratory at that period: and to say that the real feeling and sterling English sense of Charles Grey occasionally turned the scale against the glittering superficies and keenly polished points of his competitors, is to say no more than the obvious import of expression conveys. It was at this brilliant period of his public life, that, in concert with some of the other members of the Society of the Friends of the People, (a Political Union of that day,) amongst whom are said to have been Tierney, and James Losh, the well-known barrister of Newcastle, he drew up the immortal petition, in which he offered to prove, by evidence at the bar of the House of Commons, the manifold corruptions of that Assembly. On the accession of Fox to short-lived power, he played a subordinate part during the life of that Minister; and the long obnubilation of the Whig party, which followed the death of Fox, is the unhappiest interval of Lord Grey's otherwise not unfortunate Political life. The Union of his name with that of the shallow, pompous, insincere, grasping sinecurist, Grenville, was altogether ill-omened. No good could come of it. No good did come of it. They had no hold on public sympathy; and when baffled by the intrigues or machinations of a Perceval or a Liverpool, the people were perfectly apathetic. The circumstances of their opposition to Government were, for some years, if possible, even more unfortunate and depressing than were the consequences of their coalition. At this period, Lord Grey seemed either to be doomed to a retirement, which every one felt was neither in accordance with his character nor his destiny, or to a publicity which no circumstance that seemed within the scope of possibility could render auspicious. He was to rusticate in the seclusion of Howick, or to come to Parliament to oppose a Ministry who appeared to be actually standing in the breach, and repulsing the enemy with such arms and devices as chance threw in their way. He was to be nothing, or else to be the wet blanket of a spirit of policy which the very desperation of events seemed to sanctify; the cold-blooded and Quaker-like protester against a war, which, though begun in wickedness and impolicy, its very hopelessness rendered popular in the eyes of Englishmen—the war against Napoleon. The unexpected result of that war was more unfortunate for the popularity of the Whig party than was its spirited and energetic continuance. It gave the lie to their prophesies; it called their courage into question; it insulted their policy; and finally broke down much of that prestige which had hitherto invested them with the characters of patriots and men of a single-minded and firm policy.

From this period, however, of its apparent triumph, may plainly be dated the wane of Toryism; and all the subsequent acts of Lord Grey have proved that he saw this with the eyes of a politician, inasmuch as they have, up to the time of his accession to power, been replete with good sense, caution, and propriety.

In the year, 1819, Mr. Peel sealed the ultimate fate of Toryism by his

undying Bill; and it is curious that, with the exception of the Bank Directors, the only men of note, in Parliament or out of it, who seem either to have known or even suspected what its effects would be, were Lords Grey and Radnor, the Messrs. Attwood and Mr. Cobbett. That Lord Grey knew nothing of the minutia of the question, he himself confessed; but his strong mind seems to have revolted instinctively from the pert and shallow, though plausible sophistries under the influence of which that ultimately "blessed" measure (for it produced Reform) was carried; and, without actively opposing it, he disclaimed and washed his hands of the business. That he was right here in the midst of mistake, blindness, overweening confidence, and all the sins that beset the sciolist, may probably be attributed to his knowing less, and not more, of the science of Political Economy than those about him. He was not to be caught by sophistries for which he had never felt the slightest affection, nor misled by deceptious generalities nor ill-founded deductions, in none of which he had ever for a moment believed; nor could his strong reason avoid seeing, that to make a sweeping change in the monetary system of a country the most artificial that the world has yet seen, and created under circumstances the most extra-ordinary, was a matter involving more considerations than were apparent to him who was rash enough to say that the question in itself was "so plain as not to deserve half an hour's consideration by the House (!)." Lord Grey was, to be sure, no Political Economist; but an assertion like this was, on that very account, calculated to startle him the more. He dissented; and escaped that eternity of ridicule to which the shallow partisans of that greatest of all stupidities, practical or theoretical, are irrevocably doomed; and which will hold up the name of Peel as a laughing-stock for ages, when even the English language shall have ceased to be spoken, the miserable insect being now effectually enshrined in the amber of his own Bill.

Shortly after this period, the paralysis which seemed to have affected English domestic politics struck the Premier himself, Lord Liverpool; and the brief administration of Canning succeeded. The accession of this man to power was the signal for the adhesion of every insincere, talkative, and worthless pseudo-liberal in the kingdom; and here again, Lord Grey's dignified penetration displayed itself. He flatly and at once refused to have anything to do with the charlatan; and appears to have regarded his flippant abilities, and dubious character, with utter scorn and contempt. The blow was a deadly one. The speech in which the disclaimer was contained, broke down the irritable rhetorician; who seemed absolutely to die in a fit of angry disappointment and mortified vanity; and, like "a butterfly broken upon the wheel," disappeared from the harlequinade in which he played the leading part, leaving the reins of Government to a far different hand. The iron rule of Wellington which succeeded, seemed to many to be the establishment for ever of Toryism in this country. It was, on the contrary, the proximate cause of its downfal.

The passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill for ever destroyed the influence of Peel and Wellington, with the bigots of their party; and perhaps for the first time in England, broke up that union which always exists between, and is, in reality, the great strength of factions based upon corruption, and seeking no ends but their own. In this affair, the Whigs, with Lord Grey at their head, wisely gave the Ministry powerful and unequivocal support; and when, a year after, the distress occasioned by

the carrying into full effect Peel's Bill, by the final extinction of bank notes under five pounds, and the universal and determined demand for Reform drove the Duke of Wellington from power, they succeeded to office, in possession of a popularity seldom attained by any administration; a dangerous popularity for a Whig Ministry, entailing, as it did, upon them, if they meant to preserve it, the necessity of fulfilling to the uttermost the sanguine and ardent expectations of the people.

Their first step was a fortunate one. The Reform Bill was, beyond a doubt, over-estimated by the people, who had seen too little of reform to be good judges of the fabric; and this mistake kept the popularity of Ministers increasing throughout the arduous struggle for its attainment. The savage and infuriate opposition of the Tory faction contributed also to confirm the delusion. "What they so detested," it was argued, "must be good indeed ;" and no one called the soundness of the syllogism in question. Since the country has witnessed its results, however, it has become more cool; and when admiration of a measure begins to ebb, the admiration for the authors of the measure retrogrades in a corresponding ratio. That this is at present the case with the Ministry of Earl Grey, is certain; and the character of their leader renders it too probable that their high estimation, in the popular eye, will continue to decline,

The fatal defect in the character of Earl Grey, and in that of many of his colleagues, is not want of talent, but want of knowledge. He has lived long in a secluded and aristocratic retirement, associating with none who were likely to give him the information most valuable to a Minister; that is, of the real state of the country which he is called upon to govern. Neither conversant with modern statistics, nor with political economy, he is unable to search into and discover for himself the actual nature and urgency of the causes which are now agitating the body politic from top to bottom. It is not improbable that he does not really see the true reasons why his predecessor was so suddenly overturned, and he himself made Minister. It is certain, that most of his "Order" have not the remotest conception of these causes; and if, of the few who have, there be one amongst his colleagues, it will be the better for his Ministry, precisely in the ratio in which that colleague is listened to. That Mr. Stanley is not the man, let Earl Grey be sure. To a man, however, like Earl Grey, who has not, nor ever had, any real knowledge of the monetary concerns of the country, nor of the state of commerce, manufactures, navigation, nor even agriculture, as connected with that monetary system, it is difficult to shew that the time has now come when all the resources of these branches of industry can no longer contend against the overwhelming pressure of the present taxes. It is most difficult to convince a mind unused to such details, that, since the Bill of Peel came into complete operation, the weight of the debt and other imposts is rapidly driving one portion of the nation into a state of absolute destitution, and depriving the rest, save those who live upon the taxes, less rapidly, but not less surely, of such property as they possess. Lord Grey cannot but know that the country is in distress and difficulty; but the extent of desperation to which the country is reduced, it is more than probable he does not know; and, not knowing it, cannot conceive the immense sacrifices and changes requisite to remedy that state. Unaware that his situation is totally and altogether without precedent, as an English Minister, he will, unhappily, on every emergency, look to prece