husband, to lament deeply the want of a more intimate acquaintance with her as Lady Temple. Enough appears in the mention occasionally made of her by Temple, and his correspondents to show that she enjoyed his full confidence. It is one of the advantages which a politician possesses who is honest and firm in his principles, and has no intrigue in his disposition, that he can freely communicate with an intelligent wife, upon matters which are necessarily of the greatest importance to himself, and that he can tell her of his own deeds and thoughts upon public affairs without corrupting her mind or conveying to it misgivings as to his own rectitude. An upright man with a sensible and good wife, has a second conscience, less easy than the other to be cajoled or disregarded. The following notice of Lady Temple is in the additions to Lady Gifford's manuscript :- - She was a very extraordinary woman, as well as a good wife, of whom nothing more need be said to her advantage, than that she was not only much esteemed by his friends and acquaintances, some of whom were persons of the greatest figure, but valued and distinguished by such good judges of true merit as King William and Queen Mary, with whom she had the honour to keep a constant correspondence, being justly admired for her fine style and delicate turn of wit and good sense in writing letters; and whom (the Queen) she outlived about a month, the deep affliction for her Majesty's deplorable death having hastened her own.

"We do not hear of any intercourse between Temple and the other literary men of his age. Probably his employments and residence abroad had connected him almost exclusively with politicians, until so late a period of his life, that now that he had forsworn politics, and devoted himself to his library and his garden-he had no opportunity of diverting the course of his acquaintance. John Evelyn was only a few years older than Temple, and had in common with him a love of books and plants, neutrality in the revolution, and retirement in Surrey; but there was no intimacy, apparently no acquaintance, between

these eminent

men. Had Evelyn, indeed, been at Temple's side when he wrote upon ancient and modern learning, the Fellow of the Royal Society might have taught him to pay greater respect to the discoveries of Newton and Harvey.

"An anecdote without date, and without reference to authority, is related

are swans.

"Lord Dartmouth, whose annotations, upon Burnet's History of his Own Times, have lately brought him before the public, appears to have been in his youth familiarly acquainted with Sir William Temple; the only anecdote which he gives us, evinces the freedom with which the old diplomatist conversed with young men, (for Dartmouth was at the time only 26 years old,) as well as his appreci6 When ation of republican writers. Sidney's large book upon government,' 'came out in the says Lord Dartmouth, reign of King William, Sir William Temple asked me if I had seen it: I told him I had read it all over; he could not help admiring at my patience, but desired to know what I had thought of it: I said it seemed to me wrote with a design to Sir William destroy all government. Temple answered, that it was for want of knowing the author; for there was one passage in it which explained the whole, which was this: If there be any such thing as divine right, it must be where one man is better qualified to govern another than he is to govern himself; such a person seems by God and nature designed to govern the other for his benefit and happiness. Now, I that knew him very well can assure you that he looked upon himself to be that very man so qualified to govern the rest of mankind.'

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Temple's personal intercourse with

Algernon Sidney was chiefly in their early life. In the reign of Charles the Second he was very guarded in his conference with so obnoxious and dangerous a man; and so far as we can judge from Sidney's letters at the time of the council scheme, no intimacy had been renewed between these two persons, whose characters greatly differed, during that period, when conciliation of popular leaders was the momentary feeling of the court."

This conversation with Lord Dartmouth, which the date of the publication of the discourse upon government fixes in the year 1698, is the last recorded occurrence in the life of Sir William Temple.

To the memoirs of her brother which Lady Gifford wrote was affixed "a character" describing him as he was in 1690, about the 63d year of his age. Some of the most interesting parts of this sketch are now for the first time published. After describing his person and his lively wit and humour in conversation, she adds:

"He never seemed busy in his greatest employments, and was such a lover of liberty, that I remember when he was young, and his fortunes low, to have heard him say he would not be obliged, for five hundred a year, to step over a gutter that was in the street before his door. He hated the servitude of courts; said he could never serve for wages, nor be busy (as one is so often there) to no purpose, and never was willing to enter upon any employment but that of a public minister. He was a great lover of music, seldom without it in his family; fond of pictures and statues, as far as his fortune would reach; sensible extremely to good air and good smells, which gave him so great an aversion to the town that he once passed five years at Sheen without seeing it. The entertainments of his life were the conversation of his friends, and scenes he had made pleasant about him in his garden and house; riding and walking were the exercises he was most pleased with after he had given over tennis; and when he was disabled from these two by the gout, passed much of his time in airing in his coach, that was not spent in his closet.

"He had been a passionate lover, was a kind husband, and a kind and indulgent father, a good master, and the best friend in world and the most constant; and knowing himself to be

so, was impatient of the least suspicion or jealousy from those he loved; often reflected his own happiness in a wife that was pleased to see him so, and in return was easy to consent to anything she liked. He was ever tied to the memory of those he had once loved and esteemed; wounded to the heart by grief upon the many losses of his children and friends, till recovered by reason and philosophy, and that perfect resignation to Almighty God which he thought so absolutely a part of our duty upon these sad occasions of his saying His holy name be praised! His will be done!" "With this warmth in his kindness, he was not without strong aversions, so as to be uneasy at the first sight of some he disliked, and impatient of their conversation; apt to warm in disputes and expostulatious, which made him hate the

one and avoid the other, which he used to say might sometimes do well between lovers, but never between friends. He turned his conversation to what was more easy and pleasant, especially at table, where he said ill humour ought never to come, and that those who could not leave it behind for the time, ought to stay away with it.

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He never ate abroad when he could

avoid it, and at home of as little as he thought fit for his company, always of the plainest meats, but the best chosen, and commonly dining himself of the first dish, or whatever stood next him; and said he was made for a farmer and not a courtier, and understood being a shepherd and a gardener better than an ambassador. If he was ever inclined to excess, it was in fruits, which by his care and application he was always furnished with the best of from his own garden. He loved the taste of good wines, and those best that were least kind to him, and drank them constantly, though never above three or four glasses: thought life not worth the care many were at to preserve it, and that 'twas not what we ate or drank, but excess in either that was dangerous."

"He naturally loved play, and very deep too, without any application, and by reckoning his losses several years found himself every one of them so considerable a loser he resolved to give it quite up.

"He lived healthful till forty-two, then began to be troubled with rheums upon his teeth and eyes, which he attributed to the air of Holland; and which ended when he was forty-seven in the

infectedwith foreign idioms, is agreeable and interesting. That mixture of vanity which appears in his works is rather a recommendation to them. By means of it we enter into acquaintance with the character of the author, full of honor, and humanity, and fancy that we are engaged, not in the perusal of a book but in conversation with a companion. He adds, that of all the considerable writers of the age of Charles the Second, he was almost the only one who kept himself altogether unpolluted by that inundation of vice and licentiousness which overwhelmed the nation.

IT was when the exultation of the people knew no bounds, at the recovery of what they deemed their constitutional rights, that Mr. Flood first suggested any doubts respecting the completeness of the measures proposed for the entire security of the national independence. They were, therefore, in no temper to listen to him with the patient attention that would be necessary to enable them to do justice to his argument; and he stood, we believe, almost alone when he first suggested any grave doubts respecting the reasonableness of that tumultuary gratitude with which the repeal of the 6th of George the First was regarded. He was looked upon as a querulous and disaffected man, who felt envious of the rich harvest of popularity which Grattan was at that time reaping for his patriotic labours. His long secession from the ranks of opposition caused him to be regarded with suspicion and resentment by many who had formerly been amongst the warmest of his friends; and his

sudden defection from the ranks of government, and decided readoption of a popular line of action, excited, in the highest degree, the ire of the partizans of administration; and the extraordinary measure was had recourse to of striking his name off the list of the privy council, after he had voluntarily surrendered his place. At the present crisis, the ministerial and the opposition parties were united; and each expressed and exhibited towards him a portion of that rancour and bitterness which it was but natural that they should feel; the one, because they conceived his bearing to be seditious and revolutionary; the other, because they conceived him to be actuated by an unworthy jealousy of Mr. Grattan, and an equally unworthy ingratitude for British generosity, as well as distrust of British honor.

The Irish are a mercurial and imaginative people; and it is not surprising that the hallucinations of Grattan's splendid eloquence should, at such a season, have exerted a magical influ

ence over their minds. But Dugald Stewart has remarked, that, from the days of Joannes Scotus, they have always been a people by whom logical reasoning has been held in high esteem; and the specimens which they were now about to receive of Mr. Flood's powers in that particular, were well calculated to extort their admiration. Circumstances, also, aided the orator in producing the effect which he desired, and satisfied many that there was a foundation in fact for the doubts which were at first thought so preposterous and captious. Lord Mansfield, in the King's Bench in England, hesitated not to adjudicate upon a writ of error which had been sent from this country previously to the late arrangement; as he was obliged, he said, to adhere to the ancient usage of his court, and he knew of no statute which abrogated that usage. "This business," Mr. Hardy tells us, "of mere accident, (for it was evident that no writ of error could again be sent there from Ireland,) threw the country again into a flame; and a casual judicial proceeding was magnified into national perfidy, and more than Carthaginian breach of faith and compact." Thus, a reaction set in in favor of Flood, at the very moment when his popularity seemed extinct for ever. His foresight was applauded; his sagacity was admired; his early services were gratefully remembered; his recent sacrifices were cordially appreciated; and people in general seemed desirous of atoning for the unworthy suspicions which they had entertained of him, by every demonstration of the most enthusiastic respect and affection. It is not our object to inquire who was right or who was wrong, in a matter which can no longer interest the practical statesman; but it may be generally observed, that the differences between Flood and Grattan upon this subject, may be explained, without imputing unworthy motives to either, by the differences in their mental constitution. The one viewed the question through the medium of intellect; the other through the medium of imagination. Grattan clearly saw that a great acquisition had been made; and that, in the nature of things, that acquisition could not be resumed, and would not be relinquished. He assumed, we VOL. VIII.

think, too much, when he maintained that, in accepting the constitution of 1782, the Irish parliament but reasserted its original independence. Flood was not less persuaded than Grattan of the great importance of what had been gained; but his penetrating intellect led him to look narrowly to the foundation on which it was built; and he did so with a gaze undazzled by the glory by which it was surrounded. The very value which he set upon the recent acquisitions, only made him the more solicitous that they should be placed upon a lasting basis; and his eagerness for legal security, led him, we think, into a forgetfulness of that constitutional security which the measures in question carried within themselves, and by which any more formal recognition of them might well be thought to be superseded. They were but the developments of the national growth, which could, no longer be "let or hindered" by the monopolizing spirit of the British legislature; and however the prudent statesman might be led to fear that the notions of national independence might be pushed too far, he might be excused for thinking that they would be pushed far enough; and that the time had gone by when any retrogression of the spirit of liberty should be seriously apprehended. When the rising power of the Commons is the procuring cause of any augmentation of the privileges of the people, while that power continues to rise, such augmentation may be considered secure; and he must have been but an unprofitable student of the signs of the times, who could gravely maintain that reprisals may be made by the crown upon that very increasing influence by which its own legitimate authority is endangered. It is true, the case was somewhat different in 1782; as we had to fear not merely the regal, but the democratic part of the British legislature; inasmuch as our free trade might be supposed as great an object of jealousy to the one, as our free constitution to the other. Still neither could be resumed without the certainty of convulsions that would have torn the empire asunder. It was clear that the partizans of provincial government had succumbed to the champions of national independence. The

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