tions, and from almost unlimited wealth, was his inheritance. It was his misfortune to be the son of a thoroughly corrupt man, who, in the spirit of Lord Chesterfield, was so unnaturally wicked as to take pains to introduce this favorite son, at an early age, to the dissipation of the German Spa and to the beastly pleasures of gay life in Paris.

This detestable and universally detested father was Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and one of the youngest sons of Stephen Fox, the founder of the Holland family. Stephen Fox was born in obscurity. But owing to his uncommon force of character, to the friendship of a nobleman who conceived a strong liking for him, and to a series of singularly fortunate events, he rose from the humble position of choir-boy in Salisbury Cathedral to the rank of staff officer in the army of the unfortunate King Charles I. After the final defeat of the cavaliers, Stephen Fox followed young Prince Charles to France, where he rendered the uncrowned wanderer very essential and valuable services. For these he was liberally rewarded by his royal master after the Restoration. He soon rolled in wealth, which, Evelyn says, "was honestly got, and unenvied." His administrative abilities must have been superior, and his principles, though not positively corrupt, somewhat facile; since, as Mr. Trevelyan observes, in his recent life of Fox, "he was a favorite with twelve successive Parliaments and with four monarchies."

Henry Fox, one of his younger sons, inherited much of his ability, but neither his honesty nor his patriotism. He was covetous, even to rapacity, ambitious of place and preferment, utterly lacking in self-respect, unfaithful to his political friends, and ready to sacrifice the advantage of the State to his own interests. His peerage, with the title of Lord Holland, was the price paid him by Lord Bute for securing, through bribery and intimidation, a majority of the House of Commons in favor of the "Peace of Paris." For this vile service he had been promised an earldom, but was compelled to be content with a barony. When reproaching Lord Bute for this breach of faith, the latter said it was only "a pious fraud." Fox quickly and wittily retorted, "I perceive the fraud, my lord, but not the piety."

Such, in his political life, was the father of Charles J. Fox.

career.

"There was no limit,"

In his domestic circle, however, he was another, and, in some respects, a far better, man. "There was no limit," says Trevelyan, "to the attachment he inspired and the happiness he spread around him. . . . His home presented a beautiful picture of undoubting and undoubted affection." But even in that affection he betrayed the absence of that "just distinction between right and wrong" which had proved the bane of his political "The notion of making any body of whom he was fond uncomfortable, for the sake of so very doubtful an end as the attainment of self-control, was altogether foreign to his creed and his disposition." Hence, though he was, as he confesses, "immoderately fond" of his son Charles, (who was born January 24, 1749,) yet because of his childish precocity, abounding good humor and piquant pertness, he made no attempt to correct the engaging little fellow's faults. "Never mind," said he to his wife, when she spoke somewhat anxiously one day about the boy's passionate temper, "he is a very sensible little fellow and will learn to cure himself."

This reply was characteristic of his general method of dealing with Charles. "Let nothing be done to break his spirit; the world will do that business fast enough," said this foolishly fond father. Acting on this theory, he became such a slave to the young child's whims, that when the willful fellow declared one day that he would destroy a watch which had fallen into his hands, Lord Holland replied, "Well, if you must, I suppose you must."

When Charles was seven years old his too-indulgent father permitted him to decide whether he would stay at home or go to school. If he chose going to school, would he go to an aristocratic academy at Wandsworth, or to the more public school at Eton? The boy chose the former, attended it eighteen months, and then resolved to go to Eton. There his brilliant abilities, his "sagacity," his "fascinating and masterful character," won the admiration of his teachers and the good-will of his fellow-pupils. Trevelyan says of him, when fourteen years old: "Never was there a more gracious child, more rich in promise, more prone to good."

At that critical moment in a child's life Lord Holland took his promising boy to Germany and France. There, with unnatural disregard for the claims of morality and decency, he

taught him his first lessons in those expensive vices which af terward stained his private life, subjected him to many pecuniary embarrassments, and circumscribed his usefulness to society. But despite his father's vile pandering to his lower nature, the lad's intellectual aspirations were stronger than his love for the pleasures of Paris. Hence, after four months, he wished to return to Eton. There, though much given to sociality and questionable amusements, he was a diligent student, gained distinction for school-boy eloquence, and displayed the germs of those great qualities of mind which subsequently led Burke to call him "the greatest debater the world ever saw."

In 1764 Fox left for Oxford. Here he found the gentlemen commoners, with whom he associated, indifferent to college studies, but enthusiastic in their pursuit of the pleasures of "high life." Fox joined heartily in their card parties and other amusements; yet not so fully as to prevent him from being a hard reader, an earnest student of mathematics and of the classics. These studies were magnets to his active intellect, and pursuing them, as he did, for their own sake, he won the distinction of being almost the only really diligent student in his class. Writing of his college studies after the close of the first year, Trevelyan says: "Three more years of such a life would have fortified his character and molded his tastes; would have preserved him from untold evil, and quadrupled his influence as a statesman. But every thing the poor fellow tried to do for himself was undone by the fatal caprice of his father."

That caprice led Lord Holland to interrupt his son's studies by taking him to Paris in 1765; to remove him from college in the spring of 1766; to keep him traveling on the continent until he procured him a seat in the House of Commons in 1768. While on his travels in Italy and France, Fox led a double life. Having unlimited supplies of money, being associated with Lord Carlisle, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Uvedale Price, three wealthy young men of his own age, whose names, like his own, caused the doors of courts and palaces to be opened for their entertainment, it was not surprising that young Fox with his friends plunged deeply into the follies and sins of fashionable circles. Lord John Russell says of his life at this period, that it was "thoughtless, idle, and licentious; FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXIV.-45

his letters treat of private theatricals, of low amours, and of the distinctions and promotions of his friends."

But if his life had its sensuous it had also its intellectual side. If the seeds of sensuality sown during his boyhood by his father's guilty hand produced a rank crop of vices, his nobler intellect occasionally asserted its power over his pas sions, put a measure of restraint on his devotion to low pursuits, and stimulated him to acquire the Italian language, and to study with enthusiasm the treasures of Italian literature. It rarely happens that a young man can be both profligate and studious. When sensuous passions rule they are imperious, and are apt to extend their empire until it includes both body and mind. But there was something so regal in the mind of Fox that it was able to protect itself against the absolute domination of the sensuous side of his nature. In spite of the latter it would seek food suited to his demands. And it did this with a degree of energy which enabled Fox to make himself master of whatever subject he chose to study. He had the power, in a very exceptional measure, of throwing the entire force of his mind into whatever he undertook, whether it was to play a game of chess, to return a tennis ball, or to feast on the beauties of Dante or Ariosto. In all things it was his motto "to labor at excellence." Hence his attainments were acquired, not by a genius that absorbed knowledge without effort, but by genius which on occasions followed the wise man's precept, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." He confessed this when, to an admiring friend who asked him the secret of his skill at tennis, he replied, "I am a very painstaking man."

In the spring of 1768, when Fox was only nineteen years old, Lord Holland purchased a seat in Parliament for his favorite boy, and called him away from the dissipations of Paris to the equally corrupt associations of high life in London. Those pessimists who fancy our own age and country to be wallowing in the lowest deeps of social and political corruption, should review their studies of English society as it was when Charles Fox appeared in the House of Commons as the representative of the pocket borough of Midhurst. Our own times are, no doubt, sufficiently wicked to awaken the anxieties of the moralist and patriot. But they are pure when com

pared with those of Fox. His was an age disfigured in its aristocracy by every vice but hypocrisy; for it made no attempt to conceal but rather gloried in its vices. Gaming, racing, betting, place-hunting, venality, servility, extravagance, licentiousness, drunkenness, bribery, and dishonesty were almost universal in the fashionable circles to which young Fox, in virtue of his father's immense wealth and high connections, had free access. What could be expected after his continental experiences, but that he should seize on these pleasures of the town with avidity? That he did so we have too abundant testimony. Lord John Russell, writing of the beginning of his political career, says: "It is to be lamented that during this period of his life Mr. Fox entered deeply, almost madly, into the pursuit of gaming." Lord Egremont afterward suspected that he was the dupe of foul play. Be that as it might, he borrowed to such an extent that the purchase of the annuities he had granted cost his foud and indulgent father no less a sum than £140,000.

The same authority affirms that, as late as 1783, George III. looked upon him as a dissolute and unprincipled man "in whom he could place no confidence;" and that after his release "from the forced industry of office he fell back into licentious habits and idle dissipation." Horace Walpole also said: "Fox was dissolute, dissipated, idle beyond measure."

That these moral stains spotted the character of so distinguished a friend of constitutional freedom is, as Lord Russell observes, "to be lamented." It is also matter of regret that during the first five years of his public life Fox gave the influence of his great abilities, not to the friends of parliamentary liberty, but to the supporters of the Crown in its persistent efforts to govern by royal prerogative through a servile ministry and a venal majority in the House of ComThe demoralizing effect of this policy sometimes made itself apparent even to its narrow-minded though wellmeaning author, George III. Hence, when speaking to an ex-governor of Gibraltar of the fact that he, as governor, had corresponded with no less than five Secretaries of State, the king observed: "This trade of politics is a rascally business. It is a trade for a scoundrel and not for a gentleman."

mons.