great general and able politician, that consequence was certain. After having combated and subdued the foes of that country which had chosen him to be its ruler, he became master of their territories, and controller of their power. Where is the monarch who, having acquired them by conquest, would not have retained them? Let Russia, Austria, and Prussia, who parcelled out Poland and massacred her inhabitants in cold blood, answer that question. Let Britain, whom Cowper, in his Task, thus solemnly interrogates, "Is India free, and does she wear her plum'd Yes, let her who endeavoured to enslave her colonies, who, when France chose to change her form of government, and to follow the example of England in beheading her monarch, hurled the torch of discord over Europe, when she might have extended the olive branch, let her also answer the appeal to her consciousness. They must be strangely ignorant of human nature who do not know that there are a thousand would-be Cæsars for one Cincinnatus,-for one Washington. You ask me "what Lord Orford, who was so tired of sterling kings and princes, would have said to these new-plated kings and queens?"The reply is obvious, that he would have laughed at, and ridiculed those whose absurd plans enabled Buonaparte, like the rulers of ancient Rome, to make and unmake kings at his pleasure. Lord Orford cast too observant and equal an eye upon the human race not to know that almost every man whom the folly of others has invested with a degree of power fatal to the subjugated, will retain that power, and use it at his pleasure. Alas! my friend, why is there so much erroneous judgment amongst even wise and good people ?-Why ? but because we so seldom put ourselves in the place of those whose conduct we arraign; because we have one rule for our enemies, another for ourselves. Some good might possibly arise from endeavouring to conciliate a victorious foe; but it is evident that nothing but mischief can result from abusing him. It is more magnanimous as well as more politic, to govern ourselves by the axiom of one of the philosophers. "So conduct yourself towards your enemy, as that he may one day become your friend." As to Mr Pitt, there is a short, simple, and infallible test of the virtue or vice of his administration. Lord Bacon has given it when he says, "A minister who has long possessed absolute power must be pronounced good or bad by a comparison of the state and situation of the country when he came to the helm, and when he left it." We made peace with America in 1783. The unjust and foolish warfare, whose injustice and whose folly Mr Pitt had so eloquently anathematized in the senate, had left us with a vast and startling debt; but we had no dread of any rival power. Secure on the lap of restoring peace, and with our alliance courted by all the surrounding nations, Mr Pitt found us when we resigned ourselves to his protection; and with our revived commerce, flourishing more and more beneath the shade of the olive. Perceiving, as he must, the blessings that peace was regaining for us, he early panted to exchange them for the curses of war, in a quarrel with Spain about a barren and useless territory. He was happily unsuccessful in that sanguinary attempt. Would to God he had been so also in the second!—After obstinately persevering in unsuccessful warfare through fourteen years, he dies, and leaves us with the national debt trebled, every port in Europe shut against us, our internal trade perishing by bankruptcies, owing to that arrested intercourse, and the consequent impossibility of being paid by those European cities to which our merchants had sent their goods; our taxes more than trebled; our shores menaced with invasion; our opportunities of making a safe peace all gone by!-and how stands Mr Pitt's administration the test of the philosopher? The tree is known by its fruits. Strange that any one should mistake the apples of the manchineal for the bread tree! He has died too late. The wiser part of the present ministry are in the situation of skilful physicians, called to a patient whose disease has been rendered mortal by a desperate empiric. Remember me to Mr Mallet, and to all who form his domestic circle. You are now the serene sun of that little sphere. Ah! shall I ever again bask in its rays? I wish to Heaven you would say yes to that apprehensive question, and soon make my house your diurnally rising and setting horizon. Health, and the ring of Fortunatus, would ensure to me the pleasure of frequent conversations with you, but as I possess neither, my sole resource is this cold, white vehicle, for the conveyance of our mutual sentiments. Adieu! LETTER XLVI. REV. ROBERT FELLOWES. Lichfield, May 31, 1806. THANK you, dear Sir, for your obliging letter, and for the candid manner in which you receive the requested criticisms on your poetic volume. Far be from me all pretence to infallibility concerning what I may believe essential to the power and elegance of the Parnassian science; and surely you and I would not, on farther examination, be found to differ so widely as you seem to suppose we do. Your dislike to a pompous diction, where the ideas are not proportionably elevated, cannot be stronger than mine. You add the word artificial to pompous. If by that word you mean finically laboured, I agree with you; but if you apply it in its literal sense, viz. a diction carefully polished by attention to elegance and harmony,-if that is to be condemned, the learned have been in a long error respecting the blankverse of Milton, and the rhyme of Pope, Prior, Gray, and Mason. Those authors brought all |