mention of his name in the following passage not only produced its effect at the moment, but, as connected with literary anecdote, will make the passage itself long memorable. Politics are of

the day, but Literature is of all time—and, though it was in the power of the orator, in his brief moment of triumph, to throw a lustre over the historian by a passing epithet,* the name of the latter will, at the long run, pay back the honour with interest. Having reprobated the violence and perfidy of the Governor-General, in forcing the Nabob to plunder his own relatives and friends, he adds ;

"I do say, that if you search the history of the world, you will not find an act of tyranny and fraud to surpass this; if you read all past histories, peruse the Annals of Tacitus, read the luminous page of Gibbon, and all the ancient or modern writers that have searched into the depravity of former ages to draw a lesson for the present, you will not find an act of treacherous, deliberate, cool cruelty that could exceed this."

On being asked by some honest brother Whig, at the conclusion of the Speech, how he came to

* Gibbon himself thought it an event worthy of record in his Memoirs. "Before my departure from England (he says), I was present at the august spectacle of Mr. Hastings's trial in Westminster Hall. It is not my province to absolve or condemn the Governor of India; but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause; nor could I hear without emotion the personal compliment which he paid me in the presence of the British nation. From this display of genius, which blazed four successive days," etc. etc.

compliment Gibbon with the epithet “luminous,” Sheridan answered, in a half whisper, "I said 'voluminous.""

It is well known that the simile of the vulture and the lamb, which occurs in the address of Rolla to the Peruvians, had been previously employed by Mr. Sheridan, in this Speech; and it showed a degree of indifference to criticism,-which criticism, it must be owned, not unfrequently deserves, to reproduce before the public an image, so notorious both from its application and its success. But, called upon, as he was, to levy, for the use of that Drama, a hasty conscription of phrases and images, all of a certain altitude and pomp, this veteran simile, he thought, might be pressed into the service among the rest. The passage of the Speech in which it occurs is left imperfect in the Report:

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This is the character of all the protection ever afforded to the allies of Britain under the government of Mr.Hastings. They send their troops to drain the produce of industry, to seize all the treasures, wealth, and prosperity of the country, and then they call it Protection! it is the protection of the vulture to the lamb. ✶ ✶ .”1

The following is his celebrated delineation of Filial Affection, to which reference is more frequently made than to any other part of the Speech; —though the gross inaccuracy of the printed Report has done its utmost to belie the reputation

of the original passage, or rather has substituted a changeling to inherit its fame.

"When I see in many of these letters the infirmities of age made a subject of mockery and ridicule; when I see the feelings of a son treated by Mr. Middleton as puerile and contemptible; when I see an order given from Mr. Hastings to harden that son's heart, to choke the struggling nature in his bosom; when I see them pointing to the son's name and to his standard, while marching to oppress the mother, as to a banner that gives dignity, that gives a holy sanction and a reverence to their enterprise; when I see and hear these things done

when I hear them brought into three deliberate Defences set up against the Charges of the Commonsmy Lords, I own I grow puzzled and confounded, and almost begin to doubt whether, where such a defence can be offered, it may not be tolerated.

“And yet, my Lords, how can I support the claim of filial love by argument—much less the affection of a son to a mother-where love loses its awe, and veneration is mixed with tenderness? What can I say upon such a subject, what can I do but repeat the ready truths which, with the quick impulse of the mind, must spring to the lips of every man on such a theme? Filial Love! the morality of instinct, the sacrament of nature and duty, or rather let me say, it is miscalled a duty, for it flows from the heart without effort,and is its delight, its indulgence, its enjoyment. It is guided not by the slow dictates of reason; it awaits not encouragement from reflection or from thought; it asks no aid of memory; it is an innate, but active, consciousness of having been the object of a thousand tender solicitudes, a thou

sand waking watchful cares, of meek anxiety and patient sacrifices, unremarked and unrequited by the object. It is a gratitude founded upon a conviction of obligations, not remembered; but the more binding because not remembered, because conferred before the tender reason could acknowledge, or the infant memory record them

a gratitude and affection, which no circumstances should subdue, and which few can strengthen; a gratitude, in which even injury from the object, though it may blend regret, should never breed resentment; an affection which can be increased only by the decay of those to whom we owe it, and which is then most fervent when the tremulous voice of age, resistless in its feebleness, enquires for the natural protector of its cold decline.

"If these are the general sentiments of man, what must be their depravity, what must be their degeneracy, who can blot out and erase from the bosom the virtue that is deepest rooted in the human heart, and twined within the cords of life itself aliens from nature, apostates from humanity! And yet, if there is a crime more fell, more foul—if there is any thing worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother it is to see a deliberate, reasoning instigator and abettor to the deed:this it is that shocks, disgusts, and appals the mind more than the other to view, not a wilful parricide, but a parricide by compulsion, a miserable wretch, not actuated by the stubborn evils of his own worthless heart, not driven by the fury of his own distracted brain, but lending his sacrilegious hand, without any malice of his own, to answer the abandoned purposes of the human fiends that have subdued his will! To condemn crimes like these, we need not talk of laws or of human

rules their foulness, their deformity does not depend upon local constitutions, upon human institutes or religious creeds : they are crimes and the persons who perpetuate them are monsters who violate the primitive condition, upon which the earth was given to man-they are guilty by the general verdict of hu

man kind."

In some of the sarcasms we are reminded of the quaint contrasts of his dramatic style. Thus :—

"I must also do credit to them whenever I see any thing like lenity in Mr. Middleton or his agent : —they do seem to admit here, that it was not worth while to commit a massacre for the discount of a small note of hand, and to put two thousand women and children to death, in order to procure prompt payment.”

Of the length to which the language of crimination was carried, as well by Mr. Sheridan as by Mr. Burke, one example, out of many, will suffice. It cannot fail, however, to be remarked that, while the denunciations and invectives of Burke are filled throughout with a passionate earnestness, which leaves no doubt as to the sincerity of the hate and anger professed by him,-in Sheridan, whose nature was of a much gentler cast, the vehemence is evidently more in the words than in the feeling, the tone of indignation is theatrical and assumed, and the brightness of the flash seems to be more considered than the destructiveness of the fire :

"It is this circumstance of deliberation and con