hawk on the ground, and raising the war-cry of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control, where it is vain to look for affection.

"These reflections are the only antidotes to those anathemas of superhuman eloquence which have lately shaken these walls that surround us; but which it unaccountably falls to my province, whether I will or no, a little to stem the torrent of, by reminding you that you have a mighty sway in Asia which cannot be maintained by the finer sympathies of life, or the practice of its charities and affections. What will they do for you when surrounded by two hundred thousand men with artillery, cavalry, and elephants, calling upon you for their dominions which you have robbed them of? Justice may, no doubt, in such a case forbid the levying of a fine to pay a revolting soldiery; a treaty may stand in the way of increasing a tribute to keep up the very existence of the government; and delicacy for women may forbid all entrance into a zenana for money, whatever may be the necessity for taking it. All these things must ever be occurring. But under the pressure of such constant difficulties, so dangerous to national honour, it might be better perhaps to think of effectually securing it altogether, by recalling our troops and merchants, and abandoning our Oriental empire. Until this be done, neither religion nor philosophy can be pressed very far into the aid of reformation and punishment. If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all comparison more numerous and extended than herself, and gives commission to her Viceroys to govern them, with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently

their revenues; with what colour of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders: adverting to the exact measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and complaining only of the excess as the immorality; considering her authority as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of man?

"Such a proceeding, Gentlemen, begets serious reflections. It would be better perhaps for the masters and the servants of all such governments to join in supplication, that the great Author of violated humanity may not confound them together in one common judgment."

These speeches, on constructive treason, and on subjects relating to the liberty of the press, fill four octavo volumes. A fifth was subsequently published, containing speeches on miscellaneous subjects; among which those in behalf of Hadfield and for Mr. Bingham are especially worthy of attention. The latter is one of the most affecting appeals to the feelings ever uttered. Hadfield is notorious for having discharged a pistol at George III. in Drury Lane Theatre. He was a soldier, who had been dreadfully wounded in the head, and other parts of the body; and no doubt could be entertained but that he was of unsound mind. Whether his insanity was of such a nature, that it could be pleaded in excuse for an attempt to murder, was a harder question to decide; and the speech in his behalf, besides many passages of much power and pathos, contains a masterly exposition of the principles by which a court of law should be guided in examining the moral responsibility of a person labouring under alienation of mind. Hadfield, we need hardly say, was acquitted

No life of Lord Erskine has yet been written on a scale calculated to do justice to the subject. The fullest which we have seen is contained in the 'Lives of British Lawyers,' in Lardner's Cyclopædia: there is also a scanty memoir in the Annual Biography and Obituary, from which the facts contained in this sketch are principally derived.

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FLAXMAN

IT was not till the time of Banks and Flaxman that the English school had produced any notable specimens of the lofty and heroic style in sculpture. Wilton, Bacon, and Nollekens, were respectable in their line, which was nearly confined to allegorical monuments and busts. Roubilliac, though eminently unclassical, possessed a superior style of art, and has executed some works which for strength and liveliness of expression may challenge competition in this or any other country. But the attainments and genius of the two first-mentioned artists were of a different and a loftier class. Those, however, who trace the history of the lives of Flaxman and Banks, will find, that whatever they achieved in the higher departments of sculpture, was due solely to their ardent pursuit of excellence, almost unaided by that patron

age, which, in this country, has been so liberally bestowed on other branches of the fine arts.

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The heroic beauty and noble proportions of the Mourning Achilles fully establish the claim of Banks to a high rank as a poetic sculptor: this fine work of art, however, remained for years in plaster during his life, and after his death was presented to the British Gallery, where it now stands in the hall, as a warning," observes Mr. Allan Cunningham, "to all sculptors who enter, that works of classic fancy find slender encouragement here!" With respect to Flaxman, in an early period of his professional career, he executed the outline illustrations of Homer, Æschylus, and Dante, which at once established his fame; and yet, during a long life, no single patron called upon him to embody in marble any one of these lofty conceptions, the very existence of which forms the chief glory of the English school of poetic design.

The progress of sculpture in this country has been very recently traced by Mr. Allan Cunningham, in his amusing Memoirs of British Sculptors.' Of these, the last, and most interesting, is that of Flaxman, from the spirited and amusing pages of which, together with the memoir prefixed to the Lectures on Sculpture, this short account has been chiefly extracted.

John Flaxman, the second son of a moulder of figures, who kept a shop in the Strand for the sale of plaster casts, was born in 1755. Like most who have been eminent as artists, he early manifested a taste for drawing. As soon as he could hold a pencil, he took delight in copying whatever he saw, and at an age when most children are engrossed with childish sports, he had read many books, and had begun to trace upon paper the lineaments and actions of those heroes who had engaged his fancy. Numerous