pleasure he experienced from indulging speculations of the benefits which his country might derive from the realising of such or such a hope. But notwithstanding all my admiration of Mr. Pitt's extraordinary powers, and still more, with the deepest and most assured conviction of his public spirit and patriotism, I cannot but think that even his uncommon excellencies were not without some alloy of human infirmity. In particular he appeared to me to be defective in his knowledge of human nature, or that from some cause or other he was less sagacious than might have been expected from his superior talents, in his estimate of future events, and sometimes in his judgment of character. This might probably arise in part from his naturally sanguine temper, which in estimating future contingencies might lead him to assign too little weight to those probabilities which were opposed to his ultimate conclusion. But if I must be honest in delineating Mr. Pitt's character and qualities, I must also confess that in considering their practical influence on the fortunes of his country, I have sometimes been almost ready to believe that powers far inferior to his, under the direction of a mind equally sincere and equally warm in its zeal for the public good, might have been the instrument of conferring far greater benefits on his country. His great qualities, under the impulse and guidance of true religion, would probably have been the means of obtaining for his country much greater temporal blessings, together with others of a far higher order, and more durable effects. The circumstances of the period at which he first came into the situation of Prime Minister were such as almost to invest him with absolute power. All his faculties then possessed the bloom of youthful beauty as well as the full vigour of maturer age: his mind was ardent, his principles were pure, his patriotism warm, his mind as yet altogether unsullied by habitually associating with men of worldly ways of thinking and acting, in short, with a class which may be not unfitly termed trading politicians; this is a class with which perhaps no one, however originally pure, can habitually associate, especially in the hours of friendly intercourse and of social recreation, without contracting insensibly more or less defilement. No one who had not been an eye-witness could conceive the ascendency which Mr. Pitt then possessed over the House of Commons, and if he had then generously adopted the resolution to govern his country by _principle_ rather than by _influence_, it was a resolution which he could then have carried into execution with success, and the full effects of which, both on the national character, interests, and happiness, it is scarcely possible perhaps to estimate; but it would be a curious and no unprofitable speculation to trace the probable effects which would have resulted from the assumption of this high moral tone, in