have perhaps been too much underrated. The man who could not only sustain a prolonged conversation with such men as Fox and Johnson, but create a favourable impression on their minds of his mental resources and information, could not be a weak man.

Charles Townshend.

BORN A. D. 1725.-DIED A. D. 1767.

CHARLES, second son of the third Viscount Townshend, was born on the 29th of August, 1725. He entered parliament as member for Yarmouth in 1747, and continued to represent that place till 1761 when he was elected for Harwich.

In 1756 he was appointed a member of the privy council; and on the accession of George III. became secretary at war in the administration which drove Pitt from office. In 1765 he was appointed chancellor of the exchequer and paymaster-general; and, in 1766, a lord of the treasury. This able but unsteady minister was cut off during the recess of parliament in 1767, by putrid fever, at the very moment that his great abilities were beginning to command the attention of parliament. He is now chiefly known by Burke's sketch of him in his famous speech on American taxation:

"Before this splendid orb"-said the orator, alluding to Chatham"had entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and for his hour became lord of the ascendant. This light, too, is passed and set for ever! I speak of Charles Townshend, officially the re-producer of this fatal scheme,-American taxation; whom I cannot even now remember without some degree of sensibility. In truth, he was the delight and ornament of this house, and the charm of every private society which he honoured with his presence. Perhaps there never arose in this country, nor in any country, a man of more pointed and finished wit, and, where his passions were not concerned, of a more refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment. If he had not so great a stock, as some have had who flourished formerly, of knowledge long treasured up, he knew better by far than any man I ever was acquainted with, how to bring together, within a short time, all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that side of the question he supported. He stated his matter skilfully and powerfully: he particularly excelled in a most luminous explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument was neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He hit the house just between wind and water; and not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, he was never more tedious, or more earnest, than the pre-conceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required, with whom he was always in perfect unison. He conformed exactly to the temper of the house; and he seemed to guide, because he was always sure to follow it. Many of my hearers, who never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend, cannot know what a ferment he was able to excite in every thing, by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings; for failings he had undoubtedly. But he had no failings which were not owing to

a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame, a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshipped that goddess wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favourite habitation,-in her chosen temple, the house of commons. That fear of displeasing those who ought most to be pleased, betrayed him sometimes into the other extreme. He had voted, and in the year 1765, had been an advocate, for the stamp act. He therefore attended at the private meeting in which resolutions leading to its repeal were settled; and he would have spoken for that measure too, if illness had not prevented him. The very next session, as the fashion of this world passeth away, the repeal began to be in as bad odour as the stamp act had been before. To conform to the temper which began to prevail, and to prevail mostly among those most in power, he declared that revenue must be had out of America. Instantly he was tied down to his engagements, and the whole body of courtiers drove him onward. Here this extraordinary man, then chancellor of the exchequer, found himself in great straits: to please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. However, he attempted it. He was truly the child of the house. He never thought, did, or said any thing, but with a view to you. He every day adapted himself to your disposition, and adjusted himself before it, as at a looking-glass. He had observed that several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had formerly rendered themselves considerable in this house by one method alone. The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one to whom a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain than he received delight in the clouds of it which daily rose around him from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for contradictory honours; and his great aim was to make those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in any thing else."

Manners, Marquess of Granby.

BORN A. D. 1721.—DIED a. D. 1770.

THIS nobleman was the heir-apparent of John Manners, third duke of Rutland, by Bridget, daughter and heir of Sutton, second and last Lord Lexington. He was educated at Eton, and at Trinity college, Cambridge; and entered parliament, at an early age, for the town of Grantham. In 1745 he raised a regiment of infantry, and accompanied the duke of Cumberland into Scotland. On the 4th of May1755, he received a major-general's commission; and in February, 1759, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, and sent out to Germany as second in command to Lord George Sackville.

After the battle of Minden, he was highly complimented by Prince Ferdinand at the expense of Lord George; and on the disgrace of the latter officer, as related in our sketch of him, the marquess was appointed to succeed him in his military command. It is well-known that these two noblemen were never cordial friends; but the evidence which the marquess gave on Lord George's trial was highly honourable to

himself, and generous to his rival. "He showed," says Lord Orford, in his memoirs of the reign of George II., “ an honourable and compassionate tenderness; so far from exaggerating the minutest circumstance, he palliated or suppressed whatever might load the prisoner, and seemed to study nothing but how to avoid appearing a party against him. So inseparable in his bosom were valour and good nature." In the battles of Warburg and Phillinghausen the marquess reaped fresh laurels. "Towards the end of the war," says an anonymous writer who had served under him, "when the army was so situated that, if a rising ground on the left had been taken possession of by the French, it might have been attended by the worst consequences, and when the generals destined to lead a corps to occupy it, declared the service impracticable,-Lord Granby arose from a sick-bed in the middle of the night, assumed the command of the corps, marched with a fever upon him in an inclement season, took possession of the post, and secured the army." "My Lord Granby's generosity," adds the same writer, "knows no bounds. Often have I seen his generous hand stretched out to supply the wants of the needy soldier; nor did the meanest follower of the camp go hungry from his door. His house was open equally to British and foreigners; his table was hospitality itself; and his generous, open countenance gave a hearty welcome to all his guests."

In 1760, during his absence with the army, he was appointed a member of the privy council. In 1763 he was constituted master-general of the ordnance; and in 1766, commander-in-chief of the army. He died suddenly of an attack of gout in the stomach, on the 20th of October, 1770.

His lordship's merits appear on the whole to have been overestimated by his contemporaries. His courage was much less questionable than his military talents. Soon after his investment with the command-inchief, he was selected by Junius for the subject of his terrible invective. "If," said his masked assailant, "it be generosity to accumulate in his own person and family a number of lucrative employments, -to provide, at the public expense, for every creature that bears the name of Manners,—and, neglecting the merit and services of the rest of the army, to heap promotions on his favourites and dependants, the present commander-in-chief is the most generous man alive." And again : "If the discipline of the army be in any degree preserved, what thanks are due to a man whose cares, notoriously confined to filling up vacancies, have degraded the office of commander-in-chief into a broker of commissions ?" Of this attack the marquess himself took no notice, but Sir William Draper addressed a letter to the printer of the 'Public Advertiser,' in his lordship's defence, which, however, had the effect of drawing Junius forward to fresh and more violent invective. He insisted that the army had been grossly neglected; and though he acquitted the marquess of the baseness of selling commissions, he again asserted that his military cares had never extended beyond the disposal of vacancies; adding that, in his distribution of them, he had consulted nothing but parliamentary interest, or the gratification of his immediate dependants. "Without disputing Lord Granby's courage," he said in his letter to Sir William Draper, "we are yet to learn in what article of military knowledge, nature has been so very liberal to his mind. If you have served with him, you ought to have pointed out some in

stances of able disposition and well-concerted enterprise, which might fairly be attributed to his capacity as a general. You say that he has acquired nothing but honour in the field. Is the ordnance nothing? Are the Blues nothing? Is the command of the army, with all the patronage annexed to it, nothing? Where he got these nothings I know not; but you at least ought to have told us where he deserved them."

Charles Yorke.

BORN A. D. 1723.-DIED A. D. 1770.

THE honourable Charles Yorke, second son of Lord-chancellor Hardwicke, by Mary Cocks, niece of Lord Somers, was born 10th January, 1723. He received his education under Dr Newcomb at Hackney, whence he removed to Cambridge, and was admitted of Bennet college the 13th June, 1739, under the tuition of Mr Francis Aylmer. Here he pursued his studies for some years with unremitting attention, and then entered himself of Lincoln's inn, where he was called to the bar. His application and eloquence soon recommended him to the notice of the profession, and early produced him a considerable share of business. On the alarm of a designed invasion from France in 1743, he composed and published a tract on the law of treason, entitled, Some Considerations on the Law of Forfeiture for High Treason; occasioned by a clause in the late Act for making it treason to correspond with the Pretender's sons, or any of their agents,' &c. 8vo. This volume was afterwards republished in 1746 and 1748 with improvements.

He had been, in 1747, appointed, together with his brother John, joint clerk of the crown in Chancery, and soon after he became attorney-general to the princess of Wales. In 1747 he was chosen member for Ryegate,— -a borough he continued ever after to represent. On the 3d of July, 1751, he succeeded Mr Joddrell as solicitor to the East India company; and continuing to advance in the profession, on the 6th November, 1756, was appointed solicitor-general, which post he held until the 27th December, 1761, when he was promoted to that of attorney-general.

He had now arrived at that situation, the next step from which is generally to the highest honour and elevation the law affords; but the change of ministry obliged him, 2d November, 1763, to resign his post. At the same time he took his seat outside of the bar; but this measure being attended with some inconvenience to the practitioners, he accepted a patent of precedence to take place of all after the attorney-general. Early in 1770 Lord Camden resigned the great seal; and on the 17th of January, Mr Yorke was prevailed upon reluctantly to become his successor, with the title of Lord Morden, Baron Morden, in the county of Cambridge. He survived this appointment but a few days, dying before the patent for his peerage was completed.

Mr Yorke was twice married. By his first wife, Catharine, daughter of the Rev. Dr William Freeman of Hammells, in the county of Hertford, who died, July 10, 1759, he had one son, who became earl of Hardwicke. Besides some of the Athenian letters printed in his bro

ther's collection, Mr Yorke proved the truth of Mr Hawkins Browne's observation,―

They err who think the muses not allied
To Themis.'

Three poems of singular taste and delicacy, by Mr Yorke, are to be found in Nichols's Collection of Poems,' vol. vi. p. 297.

John, Duke of Bedford.

BORN A. D. 1710.-DIED A. D. 1771.

THIS nobleman was born on the 30th of September, 1710. In 1744 he was added to the list of privy counsellors, and next year made lordlieutenant of Bedfordshire. In what was at the time called 'the Broadbottom ministry,' from its professing to be composed of all parties, the duke of Bedford was first lord of the admiralty; and, in 1748, he was appointed secretary of state on the resignation of the earl of Chesterfield. On the dismissal of Lord Sandwich, the duke resigned, and his place was filled by Lord Holdernesse. In 1756, on the elevation of Pitt to the premiership, the duke of Bedford was appointed to the chief government of Ireland. In the new ministry of 1763 the office of president of the council, vacant by the death of Lord Grenville, was given to the duke of Bedford; whose influence was so great in the government that this ministry came to be generally distinguished as the duke of Bedford's ministry.

In the session of 1765, the ministers, in the language of Junius, "having endeavoured to exclude the dowager (princess of Wales) out of the regency bill, the earl of Bute determined to dismiss them. Upon this the duke of Bedford demanded an audience of the king,-reproached him in plain terms with duplicity, baseness, falsehood, treachery, and hypocrisy, repeatedly gave him the lie,-and left him in strong convulsions.' At this crisis the king made unsuccessful overtures to Pitt. Horace Walpole writing to Lord Hertford, under date 20th August, 1765, says: "Words cannot paint the confusion into which every thing is thrown. The four ministers,-I mean the duke of Bedford, Grenville, and the two secretaries,―acquainted their master yesterday that they adhere to one another, and shall all resign to-morrow, and perhaps must be recalled on Wednesday." On the 24th he writes: "On Wednesday the ministers dictated their terms; you will not expect much moderation, and, accordingly, there was not a grain."

The duke died on the 15th of January, 1771. He is accused by Junius of having outraged the royal dignity with peremptory conditions, and then condescended to the humility of soliciting an interview with his sovereign; of mixing with jockeys, gamesters, blasphemers, gladiators, and buffoons; of openly avowing, in a court of justice, the sale of a borough, the purchase-money of which, it is added in a note, he was compelled to refund; of being the little tyrant of a little corporation; and of having received private compensation for sacrificing public interests while ambassador to the court of France. "Your friends will ask," continues the anonymous libeller "Whither shall this unhappy old