Durham induced the commander of the Queen's forces in the Upper Province to forego all thoughts of hanging the rebels he had captured, and to proclaim a general amnesty. The chief difficulty still remainedas to what was to be done with the ringleaders of the revolt, confined in Montreal prison. To try them, unless the juries were corruptly packed, was simply to afford them the triumph of an acquittal. Lord Durham thought it better to avail himself of a petition sent him by the prisoners themselves, pleading guilty, and placing themselves at his lordship's discretion in order, as they said, to avoid the risk and agitation of a trial in the still feverish and unsettled state of the country. On the anniversary of Her Majesty's coronation, an ordinance appeared proclaiming a general amnesty to all political offenders, with the exception of the eight prisoners that had pleaded guilty, who were to be transported to Bermuda: others who had fled, would be liable, the document stated, to the punishment of death if they returned. As soon as this technically illegal but just and merciful ordinance reached England, great was the outcry amongst the lawyers. Lord Brougham led the attack, and displayed a virulence which the Duke of Wellington felt it necessary to reprove. The noble and learned lord's bill, declaratory of the illegality of the ordinance, was carried by a considerable majority; and the cabinet, although certain of adequate support in the Commons, sacrificed the lord high commissioner to the resentments of his political and personal enemies. Lord Durham thus relentlessly assailed, and shamefully abandoned, returned at once to England his health gave way beneath the slights and insults to which he had been exposed, and living only long enough to instruct his successor, Mr Poulett Thompson (Lord Sydenham), in the plans he had conceived for the better government of the Canadas, he expired at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, on the 28th of July 1840. No thinking person will assume that Lord Brougham acted in this matter from any other motive than that of a strong sense of public duty; and imperious indeed must that sense of duty have been, to compel him to appear to those who could not appreciate, or did not believe in the painfulness of the sacrifice, in the light of a man seeking to gratify private malice under the mask of public patriotism.

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The opinions of Lord Brougham relative to the operation of the cornlaws, and the causes of the agricultural distress which since 1815 has periodically visited this country, were not at one time, as we have seen, very enlightened ones. Much to his credit he speedily, out of office, became wiser upon the subject, and he addressed the House of Lords several times very eloquently in furtherance of the repeal of the corn-duties. The motions with which he concluded his speeches were all of course negatived without a division. The question in the meantime had fallen into the hands of the more practical and energetic of the two Houses; the pressure from without daily increased in power and intensity; the wisest statesman of his time yielded to it; and the measure of 1846 was the result. It seemed strange that Lord Brougham, who had so strenuously insisted upon the necessity of rescinding the obnoxious duties, should rise in his place-now that so desirable a repeal, according to his own shewing, was about to be carried-and vehemently abuse the Anti-Corn Law League; declare that it was unconstitutional-all but unlawful; and that he never had yielded, and never would yield to any pressure from without.'

According to newspaper morals, no man was to deprecate the employment of what he conceived to be unconstitutional means, since it had chanced to answer a good purpose. The surprise of the Earl of Radnor was of course extreme; and Lord Brougham's reply, when reminded of the means by which Catholic emancipation and the Reform Bill had been carried, must have greatly increased his astonishment. Those measures, Catholic emancipation especially, had been passed by the pure force of eloquence and reason, not by any pressure from without, which was altogether a despicable and unclean thing. Lord Brougham, however, both spoke and voted for the repeal of the corn-duties. Two years afterwards he spoke and voted against the change in the navigation laws, for what reason consistent with his previous approval of the change in the commercial policy of the country we do not profess to comprehend.

Let us pass lightly over the remaining pages of the public life of this unquestionably highly-gifted and extraordinary man-especially we will not dwell upon his speeches and writings on the late French Revolution, and the superlative virtue and grandeur of Louis-Philippe's government. The parliamentary session of 1850 was also anything but a satisfactory one to the noble lord's admirers. Passing by his lordship's strangely-diverse speeches and motions relative to the Great Exhibition, what shall we say to his passionate deprecation of any interference with the discipline of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge? 'I hope,' said he, 'that no Germanic proceedings, and no German discipline will be introduced into our ancient and hitherto flourishing universities.' This was clearly aimed at the extension, through Prince Albert's influence, of the curriculum of the university of Cambridge to the inclusion of modern languages and useful sciences. The report that the place at the Board of Green Cloth, vacant by the death of Sir Thomas Marrable, was not to be filled up, greatly excited his ire; he beheld in it the commencement of a diabolical courtplan for lowering the aristocracy, by depriving them of the snug salaries constitutionally pertaining to boards of green cloth. 'If any person,' exclaimed Lord Brougham-' if any person should have said—as was said to his late lamented Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, by whom it was received with the reprobation which the phantasy, the foreign phantasy deserved that the time had come for lowering the English aristocracy; if any one should have had the folly, the presumption so to speak, whoever they might be, must know now that parliament is resolved not to lower the English aristocracy. And the English aristocracy would be lowered if such things were allowed to pass as he knew were now passing —namely, that a lady of the highest rank, connected with the families of dukes and marquises by the nearest ties, was reduced to the humiliating necessity of advertising for necessary support.'

His lordship was also grievously amazed at the audacity of a committee of the House of Commons who dared to recommend the House to make large reductions in the salaries of ambassadors and of various judicial officers-especially of Masters in Chancery. Lord Brougham said the scanty emoluments of those learned persons were meddled with by thoroughly ignorant men, in order that the ruin of our home-service should keep pace with that of our foreign affairs.' 'Friend Bright' retorted in the Commons, that the ex-Chancellor had written to the

chairman of the committee, tendering himself for examination, in order to enlighten them on the subject of their deliberations, and that the committee had unanimously declined the favour, on the ground that it was not at all probable his lordship could offer any suggestion or communicate any information of the slightest value.' Lord Brougham has been always a stanch advocate for the dignity and pre-eminence of law courts and judges; he holds, spite of the general experience of this as well as other countries, that the liberties of the subject are safer under the ægis of legal tribunals than of parliaments. This notion or prejudice it was which governed his conduct on the 'privilege' question-a notion or prejudice which out of Westminster Hall is not happily very widely entertained.

Lord Brougham was married in 1819 to the widow of John Spalding, Esq., and the niece of the Lords Auckland and Henley. Two children, daughters, have been born to him: the first, Eleanor Sarah, died in infancy; the second, Eleanor Louisa, died on the 30th of November 1839. His lordship's mother died on the last day of the same year, the 31st of December 1839.

His lordship, except during the sitting of parliament, resides chiefly at Cannes, in the south of France, where he has built a château, embedded in orange-groves, and led to by a long avenue of fruit-trees. His residence and expenditure have, according to Mr Baillie Cochrane, greatly benefited the neighbourhood, where he is much liked and respected. This choice of a residence abroad, this 'foreign phantasy,' to quote his lordship's words. has, there can be no doubt, increased the disfavour with which he has been of late years regarded. This disfavour is said to have been painfully manifested by the want of public sympathy on a recent occasion when. Lord Brougham announced that the state of his health rendered it probable that he was then in his place in the House of Lords for the last time. But Lord Brougham could not expect to fill the mind of the nation for so long a period to the exclusion of every other subject. Men's thoughts were at the time concentrated on other topics, and there was nothing practical or urgent enough in the misgivings of an invalid to recall them. Such was not the case when it was reported some years before that he was dead. Then was political enmity disarmed; then were even cliques forgotten; then was the Man judged of apart from the turmoil of polemics that had so long hissed around him; and then did the press and the people declare with one voice that a noble and mighty spirit had departed from among us. It is now said that Lord Brougham's health is improving; and we may fairly indulge a hope, that a long, calm evening may yet remain to him which, if wanting the fervid brilliancy of his day of life, may glow with a more équable and genial light, and be rendered subservient to the unselfish aims of a wise and pure ambition.

THOMAS MOORE.

THOMAS MOORE, a man of brilliant gifts and large acquirements, if not an inspired poet, was born on the 28th of May 1780, in Augier Street, Dublin, where his father carried on a respectable business as a grocer and spirit-dealer. Both his parents were strict Roman Catholics, and he of course was educated in the same faith; at that time under the ban not only of penal statutes, but of influential opinion both in Great Britain and Ireland. Thus humble and unpromising were the birth and early prospects of an author who-thanks to the possession of great popular talent, very industriously cultivated and exercised, together with considerable tact and prudence, and pleasing social accomplishments-won for himself not only the general fame which ordinarily attends the successful display of genius, but the especial sympathy and admiration of his countrymen and fellow religionists, and the smiles and patronage of a large and powerful section of the English aristocracy, at whose tables and in whose drawing-rooms his sparkling wit and melodious patriotism rendered him an ever-welcome guest. Few men, indeed, have passed more pleasantly through the world than Thomas Moore. His day of life was one continual sunshine, just sufficiently tempered and shaded by passing clouds-' mere crumpling of the rose-leaves''-as to soften and enhance its general gaiety and brightness. With its evening thick shadows came-the crushing loss of children--and the gray-haired poet, pressed by his heavy grief, has turned in his latter years from the gay vanities of brilliant society, and sought peace and consolation in seclusion, and the zealous observance of the precepts and discipline of the church to which he is, not only from early training and association, but by temperament and turn of mind, devotedly attached.

As a child, Moore was, we are told, remarkable for personal beauty, and might have sat, says a writer not over-friendly to him, 'as Cupid for a picture.' This early promise was not fulfilled. Sir Walter Scott, speaking of him in 1825, says: 'He is a little, very little man-less, I think, than Lewis, whom he resembles: his countenance is plain, but very animated when speaking or singing.' The lowness of his stature was a sore subject with Moore-almost as much, and as absurdly so, as the malformation of his foot was with Lord Byron. Leigh Hunt, in a work published between twenty and thirty years ago, gives the following detailed portrait of the Irish poet:-'His forehead is bony and full of character, with bumps of

wit large and radiant enough to transport a phrenologist; his eyes are as dark and fine as you would wish to see under a set of vine-leaves; his mouth, generous and good-humoured, with dimples; "his nose, sensual and prominent, and at the same time the reverse of aquiline: there is a very peculiar characteristic in it—as if it were looking forward to and scenting a feast or an orchard." The face, upon the whole, is Irish, not unruffled by care and passion, but festivity is the predominant expression.' In Mr Hunt's autobiography, not long since published, this portrait is repeated, with the exception of the words we have enclosed within double inverted commas struck out possibly from a lately-awakened sense of their injustice; and it is added that his (Moore's) manner was as bright as his talk was full of the wish to please and be pleased.' To these testimonials as to the personal appearance and manners of Thomas Moore we can only add that of Mr Joseph Atkinson, one of the poet's most intimate and attached friends. This gentleman, when speaking to an acquaintance of the author of the 'Melodies,' said that to him 'Moore always seemed an infant sporting on the bosom of Venus.' This somewhat perplexing idea of the mature author of the songs under discussion was no doubt suggested by the speaker's recollections of his friend's childhood.

Whatever the personal graces or defects of Mr Moore, it is quite certain at all events that he early exhibited considerable mental power and imitative faculty. He was placed when very young with Mr Samuel Whyte, who kept a respectable school in Grafton Street, Dublin. This was the Mr Whyte who attempted to educate Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and pronounced him to be an incorrigible dunce'a verdict in which at the time the mother of the future author of the 'School for Scandal' fully concurred. Mr Whyte, it seems, delighted in private theatricals, and his labours in this mode of diffusing entertaining knowledge were, it appears, a good deal patronised by the Dublin aristocracy. Master Moore was his 'show-actor,' and played frequently at Lady Borrowes's private theatre. On one occasion the printed bills announced An Epilogue-A Squeeze at St Paul's, by Master Moore,' in which he is said to have been very successful. These theatricals were attended by several members of the ducal family of Leinster, the Latouches of Dublin, with many other Irish notabilities; and it was probably here that Moore contracted the taste for aristocratic society which afterwards became a passion with him.

The obstinate exclusion of the Catholics from the common rights of citizenship naturally excited violent and growing discontent amongst that body of religionists; and Thomas Moore's parents, albeit prudent, wary folk, were, like thousands of other naturally sensible and pacific people, carried away for a moment by the tremendous outburst of the French Revolution. The meteor-blaze which suddenly leaped forth and dazzled the astonished world seemed a light from Heaven to the oppressed nations of Europe; and in Ireland especially it was hailed as the dawn of a great deliverance by millions whom an unwise legislation had alienated and almost maddened. Young Moore, when little more than twelve years of age, sat upon his father's knee at a great banquet in Dublin, where the toast-May the breezes from France fan our Irish oak into verdure!' was received with a frantic vehemence which, child as he was, left an impression upon him that did not pass away with many years. The Day-star of