LORD THURLOW. With all his faults and shortcomings there was that in Thurlow which overawed and daunted his contemporaries, and of which the impression is not wholly lost even on posterity. It was a saying of Mr. Fox, that no man ever yet was so wise as Thurlow looked. His countenance was fraught with sense; his aspect stately and commanding; his brow broad, massy, and armed with terrors like that of the Olympian Jove, to which indeed it was often compared. His voice loud, sonorous, and as rolling thunder in the distance, augmented the effect of his fierce and terrible invective. Few indeed were they who did not quail before his frown; fewer still who would abide his onset in debate. Perhaps no modern English statesman, in the House of Lords at least, was ever so much dreaded. In parliament, as at the bar, his speeches were home thrusts, conveying the strongest arguments or keenest reproofs in the plainest and clearest words. His enemies might accuse his style of being coarse, and sometimes even ungrammatical, but they could never deny its energy or its effect. In private life Thurlow was remarkable for his thorough knowledge of the Greek and Latin writers; and no less for his skill in argument and brilliant powers of conversation. While yet at the bar, Dr. Johnson said of him to Boswell: "I honor Thurlow, sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow; he fairly puts his mind to yours." And after he became Chancellor, the same high authority added: "I would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow. When I am to meet him, I should wish to know a day before." Unless with ladies, his manner was always uncouth, and his voice a constant growl. But beneath that rugged rind there appears to have lurked much warmth of affection and kindliness of heart. Many acts of generous aid and unsolicited bounty are recorded of him. Men of learning and merit seldom needed any other recommendation to his favor. Thus, on reading Horsley’s "Letters to Dr. Priestly," he at once obtained for the author a stall at Gloucester, saying—what I earnestly wish all other Chancellors had borne in mind—"that those who supported the Church should be supported by it." Nevertheless his temper, even when in some measure sobered down by age, was always liable to violent and unreasonable starts of passion. It is related by a gentleman who dined with him at Brighton only a few months before his death—for I must ever hold that great characters are best portrayed by little circumstances—that a plateful of peaches being brought in, the ex-Chancellor, incensed at their ill appearance, ordered the window to be opened, and not only the peaches but the whole desert to be thrown out! EDMUND BURKE.