distinction the talents or abilities, whatever they might be, with which Providence had endowed him."

Occasionally happy thoughts, sparkling allusions, and playful raillery enliven his dullest speeches, but it would be the height of injustice to quote them, for they are so incorporated with the rest of the matter that they would lose all their value were they to be extracted and placed alone before the reader's eye. When the session terminated, which it did amidst the complaints of Sheridan of the procrastination of public business, the Parliament was dissolved; he hastened down to Stafford and secured his election, but not without difficulty and expense. He then returned to London to lend his aid to Charles Fox, who stood for Westminster. Here he had to meet one of the most unflinching politicians of the day, Horne Tooke. No one dared to express his sentiments more freely, no one had more sarcastic power; no man better understood the art of carrying with him the working classes and the humbler orders of society. Ready in wit, quick in apprehension, his sallies, his repartees, neither delicate nor fashioned to any but those he addressed, were listened to with delight. As a candidate for Westminster, no one but the great and good Sir Francis Burdett better knew his supporters. It was understood that Sheridan had been anxious to try his power in Westminster, and in a letter from Mrs. Sheridan to him, whilst on his canvass at Stafford, this passage occurs: "I am half sorry you have anything to do with them, and more than ever regret you did not stand for Westminster with Charles."

Horne Tooke, instead of finding a proposer and seconder, boldly came forward and put himself in nomination; and -saying that the two candidates

should have been ashamed to have sat and heard such ill-deserved praise bestowed upon them by their respective proposers and seconders-offered himself. He told the crowd that, as so many of these fine qualities and virtues had never done them the least good, they might as well now choose a candidate without them."

Various are the sallies which are recorded as marking the sarcastic vein of the man, but there was one so personal to Sheridan that he never forgave it, and, although at one period some degree of intimacy had existed between them, it ceased. Charles Fox, who was seldom listened to with patience by the surrounding crowd, left the hustings, while Sheridan, whose good-humoured stories and lively wit were rather in favour, remained. Tooke observed upon this, "that it was usual with the quack doctor, when he quitted the stage, to leave his jack-pudding behind him." His ready answer to a partisan of Charles Fox has been recorded; who, addressing him, said, "Well, Mr. Tooke, as this is Monday, you are sure to have all the blackguards with you." "I am delighted to hear it, sir," was the reply, "more especially when it comes from such good authority." Sheridan found himself quite unequal to cope with his virulent antagonist; the personalities, the invectives he had to encounter were not at all to his taste. He winced under the merciless infliction of the scourge; he felt how much more potent was his adversary, and was not sorry when Tooke was defeated.

The first session of the new Parliament saw Sheridan an active opponent of the administration. Little, however, is worthy of notice, except the still further widening of the breach between Burke on the one side

and Fox and Sheridan on the other. Mr. Burke's work, "Reflections on the French Revolution,” had attracted the deepest attention; it had produced an effect upon the followers of the Whig school, though the great leaders remained unchanged and unchangeable. The party was nearly broken up. The spirit of loyalty which was maintained throughout the work, overpowered, in many instances, the newly-awakened feeling for liberty. The doctrines of equality, of fraternisation, had alarmed the privileged classes; and they hailed the book as the manifesto of those who loved royalty, and would uphold the church in opposition to that which they so much dreaded. On the 6th of May, the House of Commons was witness to an unequalled display of passion on one side, and tenderness on another. Burke, with violence and impetuosity, severed the ties of friendship that so long had bound the two great men together. Burke's warning voice against the danger of trying new theories, his wish to cherish the British constitution, and to save it from the influence of French philosophy, passed by unheeded; but when Fox whispered that there would be no loss of friendship, Burke repudiated the idea: "Yes, there was a loss of friendship; he knew the price of his conduct; he had done his duty at the price of his friend-their friendship was at an end." Here Fox betrayed an amiable weakness; tears coursed each other down his cheek as he rose to reply. The House was visibly affected; not a sound was heard. It was felt that men of noble nature, long deeply attached, were torn from each other by a high sense of honour, by a sacred feeling of duty, and the love of their native land. Although the greater part of those with whom Sheridan usually acted saw without

apprehension the commencement of the conflict in France, there was one master-spirit of the age who feared danger in the struggle, and left the old companions of his political views. Burke, with whom Sheridan had lived on terms of intimacy, who had fought the battle against Hastings so nobly with him, who had cheered him on, and who had received him fainting in his arms, after his great effort in the House of Lords, from the earliest moment expressed his dissent from his former friend, and by his writings and speeches attempted to counteract his opinions. On the 9th of February came on the discussion on the Army Estimates; the session had been opened on the 1st of February, and as early as the 5th Mr. Fox had taken an opportunity, whilst discussing the reduction of the army, to observe that the army in Paris had, by its refusal to obey the court, set a glorious example, and shown that men by becoming soldiers had not ceased to be citizens; and therefore one of his great objections to a standing army had been removed. Mr. Burke, after some eloquently expressed compliments on Mr. Fox, deprecated the effects which such language was likely to produce; and said "that so strongly was he opposed to any the least tendency towards the means of introducing a democracy like that of the French, as well as to the end itself, that, much as it would afflict him if such a thing should be attempted, and that any friend of his should concur in such measures-he was far, very far, from believing they could- he would abandon his best friends, and join with his worst enemies to oppose either the means or the end." This declaration called forth from Fox one of the most beautiful eulogiums ever pronounced by one friend upon

another. After stating the value he placed upon his friendship, he thus spoke of the splendid powers of that great orator: "If he were to put all the political information which he had learned from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and in affairs, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right honourable friend's instruction and conversation were placed in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference." Burke was evidently pleased with these explanations, and rose to express his satisfaction; but Sheridan was not so easily acted upon. He uttered "some warm compliments to Mr. Burke's general principles; but said that he could not conceive how it was possible for a person of such principles, or for any man who valued our own constitution and revered the Revolution that obtained it for us, to unite with such feelings an indignant and unqualified abhorrence of all the proceedings of the patriotic party in France.

"He conceived theirs to be as just a Revolution as our own, proceeding upon as sound a principle and a greater provocation. He vehemently defended the general views and conduct of the National Assembly. He could not even understand what was meant by the charge against them of having overturned the laws, the justice, and the revenues of their country. What were their laws? The arbitrary mandates of capricious despotism. What their justice? The partial adjudications of venal magistrates. What their revenues? National bankruptcy. This he thought the fundamental error of the right honourable gentleman's argument, that he accused the National Assembly of creating the evils which they had found existing in