sented with manners aukward, unnatural, and affected.

28. PHILIP YORKE, EARL OF HARDWICKE, was born on December the 1st, 1690, at Dover, in Kent. After a classical education under Mr. Morland, of Bethnal Green, he commenced the study of the law in the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1714.

He became early distinguished for his profes sional abilities, and in 1718 obtained a seat in parliament for Lewes, in Sussex. The succeeding year he was promoted to the office of solicitorgeneral; and from this period his advancement in official consequence and dignities was unusually rapid. He was made attorney-general in 1723-4; lord chief justice of the king's bench in 1733; shortly afterwards a baron of the kingdom, with the title of Lord Hardwicke Baron of Hardwicke, in the county of Gloucester; on the death of Lord Talbot in 1736-7, lord high-chancellor; and, finally, in 1754, an earl of Great Britain, with the titles of Viscount Royston and Earl of Hardwicke.

The character of Lord Hardwicke is, in every point in which it can be viewed, equally amiable and great. As a lawyer, a judge, and a statesman, he conferred the highest benefits on his

country by his talents, integrity, and impartiality. He revered and protected, with unshaken firmness, the liberties and constitution of his country, supporting with one hand the just prerogatives of the crown, and with the other arresting any encroachment on the rights of the subject. As an orator, his eloquence was clear, graceful, and harmonious, his diction impressive and select, and his arguments succinct, perspicuously arranged, and pointed.

In private and domestic life, his piety, his benevolence, and engaging manners, secured him the warmest affections of those who enjoyed his intimacy; and from the salutary controul which he had long acquired over his appetites and passions, he possessed a tranquillity and evenness of mind which no circumstances could shake, and which, though naturally of a delicate constitution, preserved his health and spirits nearly unimpaired to the age of 73. At this period he was attacked with a dysenteric complaint, and, after some months of suffering, which were endured with the utmost patience and resignation, he submitted with cheerfulness to the common lot of mortality on March the 6th, 1764. During his lordship's last illness, his friend, Dr. John Green, bishop of Lincoln, wrote the following affec

tionate lines; suggested by the visibly approaching fate of this accomplished Peer.

O still let Envy rear her head,
To hiss at Hardwicke's name,
Let Slander still her venom spread,
To taint his spotless name;

Can Envy there infix a sting,
Whose harmless wound will last?
To him can real mischief spring
From Slander's baneful blast?

A day will come, that day I fear,
When Envy's crest shall fall,

When Slander's tongue shall mute appear,
Or cease to pour its gall;

When every mouth his name shall boast,

And every heart revere :

That fatal day I dread the most;

That day is much too near.

Lord Hardwicke was, at an early period of life, a contributor to the Spectator. It is affirmed, on the authority of Dr. Thomas Birch, that he was the author of two numbers in this work; only one of his compositions, however, can now be ascertained, and this is a letter on Travelling, in N° 364, signed Philip Homebred. From its date, which is April the 28th, 1712, it must have been written when our author was but twenty-two years of age; a circumstance which, were it ne

cessary, should disarm the rigour of criticism. It is, however, if not remarkable for originality or depth of thought, a sensible and entertaining production, not deficient in humour, and in its style easy and perspicuous.

The subject had been previously noticed by Addison in the Tatler N° 93, and since by Swift, by Chesterfield, and by Hurd. The sound judgment and literary acquisitions which are necessary to render a tour upon the continent useful and ornamental, are seldom to be met with in very early life; and the ridiculous custom, which prevailed at the era of this letter, and through the greater part of the century in which it was written, of sending raw and half educated young men to France and Italy, was productive of nothing but vice and folly, of consummate foppery, and of the worst species of pedantry, the affectation of foreign forms and manners. "Among the many impertinencies," observes Swift, "that superficial young men bring with them from abroad, this bigotry of forms is one of the principal, and more predominant than the rest; who look them not only as if they were matters capable of admitting of choice, but even as points of importance, and are therefore zealous upon all occasions to introduce and propagate the new forms and fashions they have brought back with them;

upon

so that, usually speaking, the worst bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad *.

29. WILLIAM FLEETWOOD, a prelate of great learning and piety, was born in the year 1656 ; and having received a good education at Eton school, was elected to King's-college, in the university of Cambridge. He took orders about the period of the Revolution; was shortly afterwards appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary; and, through the interest of Dr. Godolphin, vice-provost of Eton, he was made fellow of that college, and rector of St. Austin's, London.

The celebrity which, in this situation, Mr. Fleetwood acquired as a preacher, soon led to further preferment; he was, in a short time after his establishment in the metropolis, chosen lecturer of St. Dunstan's, in Fleet-street; and, just previous to the decease of King William, he was nominated to a canonry of Windsor.

A strong inclination for literary retirement induced Mr. Fleetwood, in the year 1705, to resign his living and lectureship, and to retire to a small rectory which he possessed near Eton. Here, while immersed in the study of history and antiquities, he was unexpectedly, and with*Swift's Works, vol. x. p. 220, 221.