"They went to the Chief Magistrate, Sir Richard Ford; who attached so much importance to the communication, that the three were at once ushered into the presence of Pitt and his colleagues, assembled with Macdonald and Scott, the Attorney and Solicitor-General. The singular history was duly narrated in detail; the arguments carried on by the young Mentor, the misgivings of the Republican, and then the details of the impending danger. The countenance of Pitt was turned with interest on the young lawyer, who seemed not only to share that horror of revolutionary movements with which he was himself so strongly imbued, but who had so gallantly acted upon it. 'What was your motive, young gentleman,' he inquired, 'for thus entering the shop?' 'I, Sir,' answered young Ward, 'am not long returned from France, and have there seen in practice what sounds so fine in theory.'" Though, according to report, Pitt was not the man to overlook rising talent or lose sight of a useful adherent, eight years elapsed before much came of this singular introduction; during which the young barrister published two books or pamphlets on the Laws of Nations, married a sister of Lady Mulgrave, and was slowly working his way at the bar. In 1802, Pitt, in a stiff enough letter, offered Mr. Ward a seat for Cockermouth, one of the Lowther boroughs; and when he returned to power, his protégé became Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, (his brother-in-law, Lord Mulgrave, being Principal Secretary,) _after_ he had published a pamphlet in justification of Pitt's highhanded seizure of the Spanish treasure-ships. Of course he went out on the accession of All the Talents after Pitt's death; and came in again on their expulsion, as a Lord of the Admiralty, still under Lord Mulgrave. In 1812, he was moved to the Ordnance, as "Clerk." In 1823, he quitted office, withdrew from Parliament, and began novel-writing as an amusement, at fifty-eight. He died in 1846, in his eighty-second year; having lived long enough to see his son, the present Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, Secretary to the Admiralty under a Whig Ministry. He was thrice married, and each time advantageously. His first wife, as we have seen, was a sister-in-law of Lord Mulgrave; the second, whom he wedded at the age of sixty-three, was the widow of Mr. Plumer of Gilston Park, which became his through the marriage; his third alliance, when he was nearly seventy, gave him the advantage of a jointure of 1,000l. per annum allowance as guardian, and a couple of mansions. His writings would lead to the notion that Robert Ward was everything tender and amiable; and so he might be as long as he was pleased; but he would seem to have had a quiet implacability, that was offended on slight grounds, and obdurate in displeasure. He quarreled with his son on account of his politics: he received some slight from