On entering the House, he was in the habit of stalking along to the Treasury bench with a severe aspect and a scornful air, scarcely acknowledging the presence of even his most intimate friends and devoted adherents. When he rose to speak every tongue was hushed; his tones were lofty and arrogant; his sentences rolled forth fluently, and swelled with delightful harmony; and every word was heard with amazing distinctness. His speech delivered in 1791, on the slave-trade, is stated to have been the finest effort of his oratorical faculties; and his unreported war-speech, in 1803, was so surprisingly excellent that Fox, in replying, said that the orators of antiquity would have heard it with admiration, probably with envy. He had the power of speaking with the utmost clearness, though when the process of mystification was necessary no one could perform it with more skill or effect. That eloquence of which Lord Chatham had been too often the slave seems to have been completely under the control of his favorite son. In private life Pitt was, as has been already stated, amiable in disposition, buoyant in spirits, and warm in friendship. He was not insensible to the charms of female grace, but office was “the pride of his heart and the pleasure of his life.” When a match between him and Mademoiselle Necker was proposed by her father, he is said to have answered, half jestingly, that he was already wedded to his country. The schemes of Pitt for raising Great Britain to a state of high material prosperity were frustrated by the outbreak of the French Revolution, whose causes appear to have baffled the comprehension of the most sagacious, and whose consequences defied the foresight of the most prophetic. His entrance upon official life had been signalized by a treaty of peace, and his policy was founded on its maintenance; but he was urged by his new allies, who followed Burke and Windham, to support the war against France, and thus gratify the propensity of “an old and haughty nation, proud in arms.” The philosophy of Burke threw a halo around ancient institutions, and Pitt formed the great league for their defense. The spirit of Englishmen was roused; they clamored for war; and forthwith that long, terrible, and momentous contest, which was brought to a glorious close on the field of Waterloo, was entered upon.