There is something touching in the idea of a struggle against such men having been maintained by a youth of twenty-three. It must, indeed, have been a marvelous sight to mark that young minister, with his plumes thus scattering on the Parliamentary gale, rise from the Treasury bench to do battle against his puissant foes. His form was tall, thin, and stately; his eyes blue, but bright with pride and intelligence; and on his wide brow, and in his disdainful air, were legibly written that proud and lofty scorn which had deeply struck its root in his imperial mind. Facing the Opposition with a glance of stern indignation, he gravely rebuked the untimely levity of the sage champion of oppressed India, and declared that he could not approve of the indiscretion which so unseasonably ran away with good sense and sober judgment. Then he chilled the spirit of the defiant author of the “School for Scandal,” by a contemptuous allusion to his theatrical pursuits, than which, perhaps, no thrust would have been more likely to tell with the gifted, but graceless and eccentric, senator’s patrician coadjutors. And ere his enemies had recovered from their surprise at a stroke, which the extreme and peculiar difficulty of his situation alone could justify, he turned indignantly upon the eminent rival of his life, branded him with sarcastic reprobation, and defended his noble colleague in another place from the strictures passed upon him. Then rising, for a time, above party strife and personal considerations, he denounced the coalition which was being formed as an event stretching to a point of political apostasy, that not only astonished so young a man as he was, but amazed and confounded the most veteran observers of the human heart; and he exclaimed with glowing eloquence and fervent patriotism, “If this baneful alliance is not already formed, if this ill-omened marriage is not already solemnized, I know a just and lawful impediment; and, in the name of the public safety, I here forbid the bans.” His high spirit sustained him in all attacks; and he delivered one of his most splendid orations at this period. But all his efforts were in vain; the Shelburne ministry had been weak from its formation; and it fell, after a brief but not inglorious tenure of power, during which Pitt had been gratified with the opportunity of proving his capacity for administration, and the power to defend what he did. Indeed, so clearly had his talent for government been shown, that the king was desirous that he should himself undertake the duties of prime-minister; but feeling that the strength of the party to which he belonged was as yet unequal to sustain him in the fierce struggle which, in such a case, would inevitably have ensued, he wisely refrained from grasping prematurely at a prize so flattering and fascinating to young ambition. However, it came into his hands much sooner than he could have contemplated. Having declined to lend his support to the