all care; his brow was never clouded, even in the severest public trials; and joy, and hope, and confidence, beamed from his countenance in every crisis of difficulty and danger. 'He was a most affectionate, indulgent, and benevolent friend, and so easy of access that all his acquaintance, in any embarrassment, would rather resort to him for advice than to any person who might be supposed to have more leisure. His heart was always at leisure to receive the communications of his friends, and always open to give the best advice in the most gentle and plea sant manner. It is a melancholy but a grateful task to pay this tribute to the memory of my departed friend. "Aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit" or the character which I have endeavoured to draw is not less just and true than it is amiable and excellent; and I cannot resist the conclusion that a pure and clear conscience must have been the original source of such uniform cheerfulness and gaiety of spirit. The truth which I have asserted I possessed ample means of knowing. From the year 1783 to 1797 I lived in habits of the most confidential friendship with Mr. Pitt. In the year 1797 I was appointed Governor-General of India, and in the month of September in that year I went to Walmer Castle to meet Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas, and to receive my last instructions. I found Mr. Pitt in the highest spirits, entertaining officers and country gentlemen with his usual hospitality. Amongst others, Admiral Duncan was his constant and favourite guest. His fleet was then in the Downs, preparing for the memorable victory of Camperdown. The admiral was a lively and jovial companion, and seemed to be quite delighted with Mr. Pitt's society. I embarked for India early in the month of November, 1797, and I returned to England in January, 1806. Not wishing to state anything beyond my own personal knowledge, I will not attempt to relate the history of Mr. Pitt's social habits during the period of my absence; but I cannot believe that, during that time, the whole frame of his magnificent mind had been so broken and disjointed, that he could not endure the temporary loss of power, nor reconcile himself to that retirement, and to those recreations, which were his relief from the labour of official business, and his consolation in the hour of political solicitude and care. But I know that the first summer after his resignation was passed with Mr. Addington at Wimbledon, and that soon afterwards Mr. Pitt was closely occupied at Walmer Castle in forming a corps of volunteer cavalry, living with his officers, and passing the greater part of his time on horseback, under the firm expectation of a French invasion. This does not well agree with the story which represents him wrapped in sullen seclusion, sunk sunk in despondency, shunning all society, and yet unable to relieve the gloom of solitude by any mental resource. On my arrival in England in January, 1806, Mr. Pitt was at Bath; I wrote to him, and I received from him a very kind invitation to meet him at Putney Hill. It may interest you to see this, one of the latest letters Mr. Pitt ever wrote, and I therefore subjoin a copy. I met him accordingly, in the second week in January, and I was received by him with his usual kindness and good humour. His spirits appeared to be as high as I had ever seen them, and his understanding quite as vigorous and clear. ⚫ Amongst other topics, he told me with great kindness and feeling that, since he had seen me, he had been happy to become acquainted with my brother Arthur, of whom he spoke in the warmest terins of commendation. He said, "I never met any military officer with whom it was so satisfactory to converse. He states every difficulty before he undertakes any service; but none after he has undertaken it." 'But, notwithstanding Mr. Pitt's kindness and cheerfulness, I saw that the hand of death was fixed upon him. This melancholy truth was not known nor believed by either his friends or opponents. In the number of the latter, to my deep affliction, I found my highly respected and esteemed friend Lord Grenville, and I collected that measures of the utmost hostility to Mr. Pitt were to be proposed in both Houses at the meeting of Parliament. I warned Lord Grenville of Mr. Pitt's approaching death. He received the fatal intelligence with the utmost feeling, in an agony of tears, and immediately determined that all hostility in Parliament should be suspended. Mr. Pitt's death soon followed.† If any additional evidence were required of the excellence of his social character, it would be found abundantly in the deep sorrow of a most numerous class of independent, honest, and sincerely attached friends, who wept over the loss of his benevolent and affectionate temper and disposition, with a degree of heartfelt grief, Putney Hill, Sunday, January 12th, 1806. My dear Wellesley,-On my arrival here last night, I received, with inexpressible pleasure, your most friendly and affectionate letter. If I was not strongly advised to keep out of London till I have acquired a little more strength, I would have come up immediately for the purpose of seeing you at the first possible moment. As it is, I am afraid I must trust to your goodness to give me the satisfaction of seeing you here, the first hour you can spare for that purpose. If you can without inconvenience make it about the middle of the day (in English style, between two and four) it would suit me rather better than any other time; but none can be inconvenient. 'I am recovering rather slowly from a series of stomach complaints, followed by severe attacks of gout, but I believe I am now in the way of real amendment. Ever, most truly and affectionately yours, W. PITT.' + Parliament met on the 21st, Mr. Pitt died on the 23rd of January, 1806. which no political sentiment could produce. Many of these were assembled at the sad ceremony of his funeral; with them I paid the last offices to his honoured memory. We attended him to Westminster Abbey. There the grave of his illustrious father was opened to receive him, and we saw his remains deposited on the coffin of his venerated parent. What grave contains such a father and such a son? What sepulchre embosoms the remains of so much human excellence and glory? 6 Always yours, faithfully and sincerely, ART. IX.-Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula. (Article Third.) SINCE the publication of our last Number, the fifth volume of Colonel Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula has appeared; and amongst the articles prefixed to it, there is one which is headed Answer to some Attacks in the Quarterly Review.' We purpose to expose hereafter the flippancy, the want of temper, and, above all, the want of candour-to use no less courteous expression - by which Colonel Napier's ‘Answer' is characterised; but in the mean while we shall steadily proceed with our examination of the original work, which we fear will not be at all more palatable to Colonel Napier than our previous observations appear to have been. He is, we find, not an exception to the general rule, that those who are the most profuse of censure towards others, are always the most sore under anything like freedom of comment upon themselves. But as freedom of comment is a privilege which we cannot part with, Colonel Napier must perforce bear with our exercise of it; while we shall deal with him as fairly as if he had been well-bred and well-founded in his reclamation-and-until the time arrives for examining his pretence at an answer-suppose, as he may, by and by, perhaps, himself wish, that it never had been written. Colonel Napier's second volume begins as follows: The effect produced in England, by the unfortunate issue of Sir John Moore's campaign, was not in proportion with the importance of the subject. The people, trained to party politics, and possessed of no real power to rebuke the folly of the cabinet, regarded both disasters and triumphs with factious rather than with national feelings, and it was alike easy to draw their attention from affairs of weight or to fix it upon matters of little moment.'-vol. ii. p. 1. It is easy to trace in these few lines that general and indiscriminating discontentment with whatever does not harmonize with his own prejudices and passions, which contributes so much to disqualify disqualify Colonel Napier for writing history. He is exceedingly dissatisfied that the folly of the British cabinet' was not rebuked -he laments the supposed want of power in the people to administer such a rebuke—and yet he reproaches the people with being wholly unqualified for that office, being at once factious and frivolous, absorbed by party politics, and destitute of patriotism in their feelings and in their opinions. In the page following, he proceeds to condemn the parliament as he has already condemned the people. 'It is true that the misfortunes of the campaign were by many orators, in both houses of parliament, treated with great warmth, but the discussions were chiefly remarkable as examples of astute eloquence without any knowledge of facts.'—p. 2. It will occur, we suspect, to some of the readers of Colonel Napier's work, that 'orators in both houses of parliament' are not the only cultivators of astute eloquence unaccompanied by an accurate knowledge of facts. Having given vent to his dissatisfaction with the ministers, with the people, and with the parliament, Colonel Napier proceeds next to make us aware that the allies of Britain were also very little suited to his taste. While the dearest interests of the nation were thus treated in parliament, the ardour of the English people was somewhat abated; yet the Spanish cause, so rightful in itself, was still popular, and a treaty was concluded with the supreme junta by which the contracting powers bound themselves to make common cause against France, and to agree to no peace except by common consent. But the ministers, although professing unbounded confidence in the result of the struggle, already looked upon the Peninsula as a secondary object; for the warlike preparations of Austria, and the reputation of the archduke Charles, whose talents were foolishly said to exceed Napoleon's, had awakened the dormant spirit of coalitions; and it was more agreeable to the aristocratic feelings of the English cabinet, that the French should be defeated by a monarch in Germany, than by a plebeian insurrection in Spain. The obscure intrigues of the Princess of Tour and Taxis, and the secret societies on the continent, emanating as they did from patrician sources, excited the sympathy of the ministers, engaged their attention, and nourished those distempered feelings which made them see only weakness and disaffection in France, when throughout that mighty empire few desired and none dared to oppose the emperor's wishes; when even secret discontent was confined to some royalist chiefs and splenetic republicans, whose influence was never felt until after Napoleon had suffered the direst reverses.'-p. 3. If the British ministers had unbounded confidence, as Colonel Napier states, in the success of the struggle in Spain, that very confidence, if well founded, would have fully justified their mak ing ing the struggle which was about to commence in Germany their primary object. But how can Colonel Napier pretend that ministers made the cause of the Peninsula a secondary object,' when he has just told us that they had signed a treaty not to accept peace but by joint consent? Such a stipulation is the highest of all guarantees, and proves that the Spanish cause was not made a secondary object,' but was identified, as far as it could be identified, with the cause of Britain. The most effectual aid, as we shall find Colonel Napier himself presently acknowledging, was afforded to Spain by the preparations of Austria, whilst, at the same time, England continued to send troops, stores, and equipments into the Peninsula, and the sentiments of the English people concurred most fully with the policy of the ministers in thus closely connecting them with a cause so rightful in itself.' But Colonel Napier would have us believe that it was not to sustain a rightful cause in Spain that the English cabinet saw with satisfaction the warlike preparations of Austria, it was, according to our author, because their aristocratic feelings' led them to desire that the French should be defeated by a monarch in Germany' rather than by a plebeian insurrection in Spain!' And this aristocratic feeling, generating such absurdities, is made a charge by Colonel Napier against a cabinet which he has before represented as being too much dazzled, in common with the whole British nation, by the efforts of the Spanish people; and as having forgot, or felt disinclined to analyse, the real causes of this apparently magnanimous exertion.'-(Vol. i. p. 37.) 6 6 To have awakened the dormant spirit of coalitions' is another of the crimes which the British ministers are charged with in the passage above quoted; as if it would have been a proof of wisdom to have abstained from forming a combination of those states of Europe, which still retained some degree of independence and magnanimity, to resist the ambition of a conqueror who had already effected a coalition of the French empire, the kingdom of Italy, the confederation of the Rhine, the Swiss cantons, the duchy of Warsaw, the dependent states of Holland and Naples, and who forced the populations of all these countries into the field through the medium of the CONSCRIPTION.'-(Col. Napier, vol. i. p. 5.) Where was Colonel Napier's sympathy for the plebeian insurrection-where his antipathy to coalitions-when Napoleon was leaguing himself with the autocrat of Russia, that he might be undisturbed in his endeavours to crush the insurgent Spaniards 'to atoms'—and when the English ministers were blamed by our author himself for not being duped into the coalition of these two despots? |