seemed to him weak. It would be incorrect to leave the impression that these severe courses of study were not intermingled with studies in English literature, rhetoric, and history. We are told that “he had the finest passages of Shakespeare by heart,” that “he read the best historians with care,” that “his favorite models of prose style were Middleton’s Life of Cicero, and the historical writings of Bolingbroke,” and that “on the advice of his father, for the sake of a copious diction, he made a careful study of the sermons of Dr. Barrow.” Making all due allowance for the exaggerative enthusiasm of biographers, we are still forced to the belief that no other person ever entered Parliament with acquirements and qualifications for a great career equal on the whole to those of the younger Pitt. The expectations formed of him were not disappointed. It has frequently happened that members of Parliament have attained to great and influential careers after the most signal failures as speakers in their early efforts. But no such failure awaited Pitt. He entered the House of Commons in 1781, at the age of twenty-two, and became a member of the opposition to Lord North, under the leadership of Burke and Fox. His first speech was in reply to Lord Nugent on the subject of economic reform, a matter that had been brought forward by Burke. Pitt had been asked to speak on the question; but, although he had hesitated in giving his answer, he had determined not to participate in the debate. His answer, however, was misunderstood, and therefore at the close of a speech by Lord Nugent, he was vociferously called upon by the Whig members of the House. Though taken by surprise, he finally yielded and with perfect self-possession began what was probably the most successful _first_ speech ever given in the House of Commons. Unfortunately it was not reported and has not been preserved. But contemporaneous accounts of the impression it made are abundant. Not only was it received with enthusiastic applause from every part of the House; but Burke greeted him with the declaration that he was “not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.” When some one remarked that Pitt promised to be one of the first speakers ever heard in Parliament, Fox replied, “He is so already.” This was at the proudest era of British eloquence, and when Pitt was but twenty-two.