closing years of his life constituted not the least honorable and praiseworthy part of his long and checkered career. Unseduced by the solicitings of an eager ambition, he seemed anxious to forget the animosities of his earlier years, and gave to many of the measures of Lord John Russell's administration an honest and manly support. He continued to be assailed with bitter sarcasms and stinging invective by Lord George Bentinck, Mr. D'Israeli, and the other leaders of the Protectionist party in Parliament, and by partisan writers in the Quarterly Review and other Tory journals. But he steadily rose in the estimation of those who had no recent grievances to avenge. "After his fall from power," says Mr. Macaulay, one of the most active, as he was certainly the most brilliant of his antagonists, "a cordial reconciliation took place between us: I admired the wisdom, the moderation, the disinterested patriotism, which he invariably showed during the last and best years of his life; I lamented his untimely death, as both a public and a private calamity; and I earnestly wished that the sharp words which had been exchanged between us might be forgotten." His last speech in Parliament was delivered on the 28th of June, 1850, in opposition to Mr. Roebuck's famous motion approving of the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston. It is certain that Sir Robert did not desire the overthrow of the government; but thinking that Lord Aberdeen had been unjustly assailed, he felt bound to defend him and to oppose the motion. The debate lasted all night; and it was once more by the light of the rising sun that Sir Robert Peel walked home from the scene of his earlier and his later triumphs for the last time. He took a few hours of needed rest, and then went forth to the discharge of new duties, as one of the commissioners intrusted with making the preliminary arrangements for the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the latter part of the day, he rode out on horseback for his accustomed exercise, and whilst proceeding slowly up Constitution Hill, his horse suddenly shied, and threw him violently over his head. He fell with his face downward, and when raised from the ground, he fainted before a carriage could be procured. When he reached his residence, he walked into the house alone, but fainted again in the hall. He was carried into the nearest apartment; and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he was removed from the sofa where he was first placed to an hydraulic bed in the same room, the diningroom where he had so often welcomed his friends. There he breathed his last, after three days of intense suffering, but little alleviated by the watchful care of the attending physicians and surgeons. For it must be observed that this great statesman, who had stood undismayed in the midst of the fiercest political strife, when friends and followers were forsaking him, charging him with treachery and duplicity, and ascribing to him the vilest of motives, was keenly sensitive to physical pain. He would not permit his attendants to make a thorough examination of his injuries; an attempt to reduce a fracture of the collar-bone had to be given up, in consequence of the suffering which it occasioned; and it was only after his death that it was ascertained that one of his ribs was broken, causing a congestion of the lungs. During his sufferings he was frequently delirious, and the presence of his wife and children increased his excitement so much, that they were not allowed to remain in the room. On Tuesday, the 2d of July, it became apparent that his sufferings must soon terminate. His old friend, the Bishop of Gibraltar, was sent for, and his family were again admitted to the bedside of the dying man. A faintly breathed "God bless you!" showed that he recognized them, as he sank into unconsciousness. Shortly after, two other friends, Lord Hardinge and Sir James Graham, whose names had often been on his lips in his moments of delirium, arrived, and remained with him until his death. At nine minutes after eleven at night, he breathed his last, in presence of these two friends, his son-in-law, three of his brothers, three of his sons, and his physicians. Lady Peel's emotion was so great that she had been led from the room some time before his last hour came. His death caused a deep sense of loss in Parliament and throughout the country. In the House of Commons, Lord John Russell offered, on behalf of the government, a public funeral, such as had been given to the younger Pitt. The offer was declined, in accordance with the often repeated wishes of the deceased statesman; and on the 9th of July, in a drenching rain and a thick fog, his mortal remains were borne across the fields from Drayton Manor to the parish church, followed by his family, his principal political friends, his servants, and his tenants. The funeral service was read by the Bishop of Gibraltar, in the presence of a numerous multitude, who had gathered from Tamworth and the neighboring towns to pay the last tribute of respect to one of the greatest statesmen of the nineteenth century. Three days later, Lord John Russell proposed that a monument should be erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, and the motion was immediately adopted. One other mark of respect the government were desirous of showing for his memory by raising Lady Peel to the peerage, as had been done in the case of Mr. Canning's widow. But the honor was declined, in consequence of a special request of Sir Robert Peel, that no member of his family should accept any title or public reward for the services which he might have rendered to the state. Other testimonies of respect were shown elsewhere. In London, Edinburgh, and the great manufacturing towns, public meetings were held, and measures were taken for the erection of monuments and statues. The most remarkable demonstration of gratitude and respect, however, was a penny subscription for the erection of a Poor Man's National Monument, which it was proposed should bear these words from his speech on retiring from office in June, 1846 : "It may be, that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice." The character of Sir Robert Peel has been drawn by various writers and speakers, and from entirely different points of view. But by no one has it been more justly appreciated than it has been by M. Guizot. Brought into frequent intercourse and contact with him, both in public and in private relations, and unbiassed on the one hand by party fellowship, or on the other hand by party hostility, he has sketched the great outlines of his character with a few masterly touches. "He was a great and honest servant of the state," the French historian remarks, "proud with a sort of humility, and desiring to shine with no brilliancy extrinsic to his natural sphere; devoted to his country without any craving for reward, heedless of fixed principles or longstanding political combinations, anxious at all times to ascertain what was demanded by the public interest, and ready to carry it into effect without caring either for parties and their rules of conduct, or for his own acts and words; severing himself from the past without cynical indifference, braving the future without adventurous boldness, solely swayed by the desire to meet the necessities of the present, and to do himself honor by delivering his country from peril or embarrassment. He was thus in turn a Conservative and Reformer, a Tory, a Whig, and almost a Radical; popular and unpopular; using his strength with equal ardor, sometimes in making an obstinate resistance, sometimes in yielding concessions which were perhaps excessive; more wise than provident, more courageous than firm, but always sincere, patriotic, and marvellously adapted, in a period of transition like ours, to conduct the government of modern society as it has become." There is, indeed, much that is strangely inconsistent in the character of this remarkable man, and that demands a large charity in judging of his life. He had opposed Mr. Horner's resolutions for the resumption of specie payments by the Bank of England; yet, in 1819, he introduced and carried a similar measure. He had steadfastly opposed Catholic emancipation, and so violent had been his opposition to this measure as to merit for him the designation of " spokesman to the intolerant faction," which Sir James Mackintosh once gave him. Yet, in 1829, he brought forward and advocated the Roman Catholic Relief Bill as a government measure. had been the constant and ardent supporter of the Corn Laws; yet, in 1846, he headed a successful movement for their entire abolition. He had been a Tory of the strictest sect; yet his last votes in Parliament were given in support of Whig measures. Such and so marvellous were the changes in his political career. But, through the whole of it, we recognize an honest purpose and a resolute will, gradually overcoming the pernicious influences of his education and his early associations. He Though he had attained the highest honors at the University, he afterwards aspired to no literary distinction. Conscious that the true bent of his mind was towards a political life, he gave to the prompt and efficient discharge of its various duties all his intellectual strength and ability. Still he was not unmindful of the claims of literature upon a statesman and a politician. As a minister, he was a liberal patron of men of letters, both among his political friends and his opponents. When he took office in 1834, one of his first acts was to propose the elevation of Southey to a baronetcy, and to proffer his services in promoting the ecclesiastical preferment of the poet's son-in-law. And the same wise and liberal policy in the encouragement of literary men guided him in his second administration. He possessed a large and wellselected library; and his acquaintance with general literature was extensive, though it was overshadowed by his marvellous familiarity with political history and social economy. He was a lover of painting and sculpture; but he had little knowledge of music, and apparently little pleasure in listening to it. In a word, he had the cultivated tastes of a welleducated English gentleman, without ostentation and without pedantry. His habits were temperate and regular; and his private character was stained by no vices. Cold and reserved in his manners, he did not make many personal friends; but the few with whom he was intimate were devotedly attached to him, and allowed no change in his opinions to weaken their regard for him. ART. VII.1. Shakespeare. Von G. G. GERVINUS. 4 Bde. 2. Shakespeare als Protestant, Politiker, Psycholg, und Dichter. 4. Hamlet. Zwei Vorträge, gehalten im Verein für Kunst und |