taining that the little gentleman did positively feel such a desire, and was not disposed to give it up, said, "Well, if you must, I suppose you must;" and the watch was smashed. Another time, having been promised that he should see a portion of a wall pulled down, and the demolition having taken place while he was absent, and a new portion supplied, the latter itself was pulled down, in order that the father's promise might be kept, and the boy not disappointed. The keeping of the promise was excellent, and the wall well sacrificed; but not so the watch; and much less the guineas with which his father is absolutely said to have tempted him to the gaming table, out of a foolish desire to see the boy employed like himself. Habits ensued which became alarming to the old gamester himself, and which impeded the rise, injured the reputation, and finally

nullified that supremacy on the part of the son, which was borne away from him by the inferior but more decorous nature of Pitt.

Fox was a great lesson as to what is good and what is bad in fatherly indulgence. All that was good in him it made better; all that was bad it made worse. And it would have made it worse still, had not the good luckily preponderated, and thus made the best at last even of the bad. Charles was to have his way as a child; so he smashed watches. He was to have his way as a youth; so he gambled and was dissolute. He was to have his way as a man; so he must be in parliament, and get power, and vote as his father did, on the Tory side, because his father had indulged him, and he must indulge his father.

But his father died, and then the love

of sincerity which had been taught the youth as a bravery and a predominance, was encouraged to break forth by the galling of his political trammels; and though he could not refuse his passions their indulgence, till friends rescued him from insolvency, and thus piqued his gratitude into amendment, that very circumstance tended to show that he added strength and largeness of heart to his father's softness; for the spoilt child and reckless gamester, though he never could become the ruling power in a state which had got into the hands of mere conventional decorums (for his brief occupations of office are to be counted as nothing), finally settled down as the representative of a nobler age that was coming, and was the charm. in private of all who admired simplicity of manners, and the perfection of good

sense.

Apart from this love of truth, we do not take him, in any respect, to have been profound, or to have seen beyond the next generation. In none of his departures from conventionalities, practical or theoretical, did he incline to go beyond the warrant of the liberality of the day. His love of truth itself, perhaps, was none the worse for his indolence. He found it easiest as well as noblest to take to its broad, straight road. Not that the reputation of truth is to suffer on that account. It only shows how good it is for temperaments of all kinds. His oratory was very effective, from its vehemence and sincerity; yet nobody now reads it. His "History of James the Second" in spite of his reputation as the greatest master of the subject, was a general disappointment. His reading, though far from being of a narrow description, lay chiefly in the middle

dle classes of literature, and leaned to style and manners rather than to any power beyond them.

What was greatest in Charles Fox was his freedom from all nonsense, pettiness, and pretention. He could by no means admit that greater was smaller, or the rights of the American or French nations inferior to those of their princes. He envied no man his good qualities; felt under no necessity of considering his dignity with young or old; thought humanity at large superior to any particular forms of it; and in becoming its representative in circles which would have conceded such a privilege to none but a man of birth, enabled them to feel how charming it was, and thus became the most cherished head of a party, that ever, perhaps, existed. An excess of this geniality of nature, on the wrong side of it, when he was young, had