strengthened his political connections. He was equally a man of pleasure and business, formed for social and convivial intercourse; of an unruffled temper, and frank disposition. No statesman acquired more adherents, not merely from political motives, but swayed by his agreeable manners, and attached to him by personal friendship, which he fully merited by his zeal in promoting their interests. He is justly characterized, even by Lord Chesterfield," as having no fixed principles of religion or morality, and as too unwary in ridiculing and exposing them." As a parliamentary orator, he was occasionally hesitating and perplexed; but, when warmed with his subject, he spoke with an animation and rapidity which appeared more striking from his former hesitation. His speeches were not crowded with flowers of rhetoric, or distinguished by brilliancy of diction; but were replete with sterling sense and sound argument. He was quick in reply, keen in repartee, and skilful in discerning the temper of the house. He wrote without effort or affectation; his public dispatches were manly and perspicuous, and his private letters easy and animated. Though of an ambitious spirit, he regarded money as a principal object, and power only as a secondary concern. He was an excellent husband, a most indulgent father, a kind master, a courteous neighbour, and one whose charities demonstrated that he possessed in abundance the milk of human kindness.-Such is said to have been the character of lord Holland, which is here introduced as a prelude to some account of his more illustrious son. It may therefore suffice to add, that in 1756 he resigned the office of secretary at war to Mr. Pitt, and in the following year was appointed paymaster of the forces, which he retained until the commencement of the present reign; his conduct in this office was attended with some degree of obloquy; in one instance, at least, grossly overcharged. For having accumulated a considerable fortune by the perquisites of office, and the interest of money in hand, he was styled in one of the addresses of the city of London," the defaulter of unaccounted millions." On May 6, 1762, his lady was created baroness Holland; and on April 16, 1763, he himself was created a peer by the title of lord Holland, baron Holland, of Foxley, in the county of Wilts. In the latter part of his life he amused himself by building, at a vast expence, a fantastic villa at Kingsgate, near Margate. His lordship was also a lord

of the privy-council, and clerk of the Pells, in Ireland, granted him for his own life and that of his two sons. Lord Holland died at Holland-house, near Kensington, July 1, 1774, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, leaving three sons, Stephen, his successor; Charles James, the subject of the next article; and Henry Edward, a general in the army. Stephen, second lord Holland, survived his father but a few months, dying Dec. 26, 1774, and was succeeded by Henry Richard, the present peer.'

We

FOX (CHARLES JAMES), one of the most illustrious statesmen of modern times, the second son of the preceding lord Holland, was born Jan. 13, O.S. 1748. have already noticed that lord Holland was an indulgent father, and it has been said that his partiality to this son was carried to an unwarrantable length. That his father might have been incited by parental affection, a feeling of which few men can judge but for themselves, by the early discovery he made of his son's talents, to indulge him in the caprices of youth, is not improbable; but that this indulgence was not excessive, may with equal probability be inferred from the future conduct of Mr. Fox, which retained no traces of the "spoiled child," and none of the haughty insolence of one to whom inferiors and servants have been ordered to pay obsequious obedience. Nor was his education neglected. At Eton, where he had Dr. Barnard for his master, he distinguished himself by some elegant exercises, which are to be found in the "Mus Etonenses," and at Hertford college, Oxford, where he studied under the tutorage of Dr. Newcome, afterwards primate of Ireland, his proficiency in classical and polite literature must have been equal to that of any of his contemporaries. The fund indeed of classical learning which he accumulated both at Eton and Oxford was such as to remain inexhausted during the whole of his busy and eventful political career; and while it proved to the last a source of elegant amusement in his leisure hours, it enabled him to rank with some of the most eminent scholars of his time. This we may affirm on the authority of Dr. Warton, with whom he frequently and keenly contested at the literary club, and on that of a recent publication of his letters to Gilbert Wakefield, with whom he corresponded on subjects of classical taste and criticism.

■ Sir E. Brydges's edition of Collins's Peerage.-Coxe's Life of Walpole.

From Oxford, where, as was the custom with young men intended for public life, he did not remain long enough to accumulate degrees, he repaired to the continent. In his travels it is said that he acquired more of the polish of foreign intercourse than those who knew him only in his latter days could have believed, and returned a fashionable young man, noted for a foppish gaiety of dress and manner, from which he soon passed into the opposite extreme. As his father intended him to rise in the political world, he procured him a seat for the borough of Midhurst, in 1768, before he had attained the legal age; a circumstance which, if known, appears to have been then overlooked. Two years afterwards, his father's interest procured him the office of one of the lords commissioners of the admiralty; but in May 1772, he resigned that situation, and in January 1773, was nominated a commissioner of the treasury. At this time it cannot be denied that his. political opinions were in unison with those of his father, who was accounted a tory, and were adverse to the turbulent proceedings of the city of London, which at this time was deluded by the specious pretences to patriotism displayed by the celebrated Wilkes. It was in particular Mr. Fox's opinion, in allusion to the public meetings held by the supporters of "Wilkes and liberty," that "the voice of the people was only to be heard in the house of commons." That he held, however, some of the opinions by which his future life was guided, appears from his speech in favour of religious liberty, when sir William Meredith introduced a bill to give relief from subscription to the thirty-nine articles; and perhaps other instances may be found in which his natural ingenuousness of mind, and openness of character, burst through the trammels of party; and although it must be allowed that the cause he now supported was not that which he afterwards espoused, it may be doubted whether he was not even at this time, when a mere subaltern in the ministerial rauks, more unrestrained in his sentiments than at some memorable periods of his subsequent life.

After having displayed his talents to the greatest advantage in favour of the minister for about six years, the latter (lord North) procured his dismissal from office in a manner not the most gracious, and which, if it did not leave in Mr. Fox's mind some portion of resentment, he must have been greatly superior to the infirmities of our nature,

a pre-eminence which he never arrogated. It is said, that on Feb. 19, 1774, while he was actually engaged in conversation with the minister on other subjects in the house of commons, he received the following laconic note by the hands of one of the messengers of the house :

"His Majesty has thought proper to order a new commission of Treasury to be made out, in which I do not see your name. NORTH."

This event was not occasioned by any opposition on the part of Mr. Fox to lord North's measures, but to a difference of opinion as to the best mode of carrying them into effect, and that in an instance of comparatively small importance. This was a question respecting the committal of Mr. H. S. Woodfall, the printer of the Public Advertiser, who had been brought to the bar of the house for inserting a letter supposed to have been written by the rev. J. Horne, afterwards J. Horne Tooke, in which most unjustifiable liberties had been taken with the character of the speaker, sir Fletcher Norton, with a coarse virulence of language peculiar to Tooke. Mr. Woodfall having given up the author, and thrown himself on the mercy of the house, it was moved by Mr. Herbert that he should be committed to the custody of the serjeant at arms. Mr. Fox, at that period a zealous advocate for the privileges of the house, declared that the punishment was not suffi ciently severe, and moved "that he be committed to Newgate, as the only proper place to which offenders should be sent; though hints," he said, "had been thrown out that the sheriff's would not admit him." To this lord North replied, that he was very sorry that hints had been thrown out of what the sheriff's would or would not do; he hoped there were no persons who would dispute the power of that house; he therefore moved that the printer be committed to the Gate-house, as he thought it imprudent to force themselves into a contest with the city; but Mr. Herbert carried his motion in opposition both to lord North and Mr. Fox, by a majority of 152 to 68, to the great displeasure of lord North, who asserted that it was entirely owing to the interference of Mr. Fox, that he was left in à minority.

To this trifling dispute, we are left to refer the whole of Mr. Fox's subsequent conduct, and as he appears to have immediately commenced hostilities with the minister and his friends, it has been recorded, as peculiarly fortu

nate for him, that he had no occasion to degrade his consistency by opposing any of the measures he had formerly supported, in detail at least; and that a new era of political hostility had just commenced on which he could enter with all the apparent earnestness of honest conviction. This, we need scarcely add, originated in the dispute between Great Britain and her American colonies. During the whole of this period, and of the war which followed, Mr. Fox spoke and voted in direct opposition to the ministerial system, which ended at last in the separation of the colonies from the mother state. It was now that Mr. Fox's talents appeared in their fullest lustre, and that he took the foremost rank among the speakers of the house, although it could at that time, and in his own party, boast of a Burke, a Barré, and a Dunning.

At the general election in 1780, Mr. Fox became candidate for the city of Westminster, in which, after a violent contest, he succeeded, though opposed, as we are told, by the formidable interest of the Newcastle family, and by the whole influence of the crown. Being now the representative of a great city, it is added, "he appeared in parliament in a more dignified capacity, and acquired a considerable increase of consequence to his political character. In himself he was still the same: he now necessarily lived and acted in the bosom of his constituents; his easiness of access, his pleasant social spirit, his friendly disposition and conciliating manners, which appeared in all he said, and the good temper which predominated in all he did, were qualities that rendered him the friend and acquaintance, as well as the representative, of those who sent him into parliament; his superior talents, and their powerful and frequent application to popular purposes, made him best known among political men, and gave him a just claim to the title so long applied to him, of The man of the people."" Notwithstanding all this, it might not be difficult to prove that Mr. Fox was upon the whole no great gainer by representing a city in which the arts of popularity, even when most honestly practised, are no security for its continuance; and indeed the time was not far distant when he had to experience the fatal effects of preferring a seat, which the purest virtues only can neither obtain nor preserve, and in contesting which, corruption on one side must be opposed by corruption on the other.