his defects. And it is true that the same unstately love for wit-the same light facility for satire-the same imprudent levity of conduct, that involuntarily lowered our estimate of his graver abilities-involuntarily led us to excuse his graver errors. We at one time blame the statesman for being too much the child-at another we pardon the veteran politician in the same humour in which we would forgive the spoiled and high-spirited schoolboy.

Mr. Canning, indeed, was always young. The head of the sixth form at Eton-squibbing "the doctor," as Mr. Addington was called; fighting with Lord Castlereagh; cutting jokes on Lord Nugent; flatly contradicting Lord Brougham; swaggering over the Holy Alliance; he was in perpetual personal quarrels-one of the reasons which created for him so much personal interest during the whole of his parliamentary career. Yet out of those quarrels he nearly always came glorious and victoriousdefying his enemies, cheered by his friends-never sinking into an ordinary man,-though not a perfect one.

No imaginative artist, fresh from studying his career, would sit down to paint this minister with the broad and deep forehead-the stern compressed lip-the deep, thoughtful, concentrated air of Napoleon Bonaparte. As little would the idea of his eloquence or ambition call to our recollection the swart and iron features-the bold and haughty dignity of Strafford. We cannot fancy in his eye the volume depth of Richelieu's-the volcanic flash of Mirabeau's the offended majesty of Chatham's. Sketching him from our fancy, it would be as a few still living remember him, with a visage rather marked by humour and intelligence than by meditation or sternness; with something of the petulant mingling in its expression with the proud; with much of the playful overruling the profound. His nature, in short, exhibited more of the genial fancy and the quick irritability of the poet who captivates and inflames an audience, than of the inflexible will of the dictator who puts his foot on a nation's neck, or of the fiery passions of the tribune who rouses a people against its oppressors.

Still, Mr. Canning, such as he was, will remain one of the most brilliant and striking personages in our historical annals. As a statesman, the latter passages of his life cannot be too deeply studied; as an orator, his speeches will always be models of their kind; and as a man, there was something so graceful, so fascinating, so spirited in his bearing, that even when we condemn his faults, we cannot avoid feeling affection for his memory, and a sympathetic admiration for his genius.

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

PART I.

Family.-Birth.-Formation of character.-Education at Harrow and Oxford.-Entry into Parliament.-Line adopted there.-Style of speaking. Becomes Secretary of Colonies.-Secretary for Ireland.Language on the Catholic question.-Returned as member for the University of Oxford.—Resigned his post in Ireland.

Ι.

THE family of the Peels belonged to the class of yeomanry, which in England, from the earliest times, was well known and reputed, forming a sort of intermediate link between the gentry and the commonalty, as the gentry formed an intermediate link between the great barons and the burghers or wealthy traders. The yeoman was proud of belonging to the yeomanry, and if you traced back the descent of a yeoman's family, you found it frequently the issue of the younger branch of some noble or gentle house. For some generations this family of Peel had at its head men of industry and energy, who were respected by their own class, and appeared to be gradually rising into another. The grandfather of the great Sir Robert inherited a small estate of about one hundred pounds a year, called Peel's Fold, which is still in the family. He received a fair education at a grammar-school, and married (1747) into a gentleman's family (Haworth, of Lower Darwen).

Beginning life as a farmer of his little property, he undertook, at the time that the cotton manufacture

began to develop itself in Lancashire, the business of trader and printer.

The original practice had been to send up the fabricated article to Paris, where it was printed and sent back into this country for sale. Mr. Peel started a calico printing manufactory, first in Lancashire and afterwards in Staffordshire, and his success was the result of the conviction-that "a man could always. succeed if he only put his will into the endeavour," a maxim which he often repeated in his later days, when as a stately old gentleman he walked with a long gold-headed cane, and wore the clothes fashionable for moderate people in the days of Dr. Johnson.

The first Sir Robert Peel was a third son. Enterprising and ambitious, he left his father's establishment, and became a junior partner in a manufactory carried on at Bury by a relation, Mr. Haworth, and his future father-in-law, Mr. Yates. His industry, his genius, soon gave him the lead in the mangement of this business, and made it prosperous. By perseverance, talent, economy, and marrying a wealthy heiress-Miss Yates, the daughter of his senior partner-he had amassed a considerable fortune at the age of forty.

He then began to turn his mind to politics, published a pamphlet on the National Debt, made the acquaintance of Mr. Pitt, and got returned to Parliament (1790) for Tamworth, where he had acquired a landed property, which the rest of his life was passed in increasing. He was a Church and King politician in that excitable time, and his firm contributed no less than ten thousand pounds in 1797 to the voluntary subscriptions for the support of the war. So wealthy and loyal a personage was readily created a baronet in 1800.

His celebrated son was born in 1788, two years before he himself entered public life, and on this son he at once fixed his hopes of giving an historical lustre to the name which he had already invested with credit and respectability.

II.

It was the age of great political passions, and of violent personal political antipathies and partialities. The early elevation of Mr. Pitt from the position of a briefless barrister to that of prime minister had given a general idea to the fathers of young men of promise and ability that their sons might become prime ministers too. The wealthy and ambitious manufacturer soon determined, then, that his boy, who was thought to give precocious proofs of talent, should become First Lord of the Treasury. He did not merely bring him up to take a distinguished part in politics, which might happen to be a high position in opposition or office, he brought him up especially for a high official position. It was to office, it was to power, that the boy who was to be the politician was taught to aspire; and as the impressions we acquire in early life settle so deeply and imperceptibly into our minds as to become akin to instincts, so politics became instinctively connected from childhood in the mind of the future statesman with office; and he got into the habit of looking at all questions in the point of view in which they are seen from an official position; a circumstance which it is necessary to remember.

To say nothing of the anecdotes which are told in his family of the early manifestations which Mr. Peel gave of more than ordinary ability, he was not less. distinguished at Harrow as a student for his classical studies, than he was as a boy for the regularity of his conduct. I remember that my tutor, Mark Drury, who, some years previous to my becoming his pupil, had Peel in the same position, preserved many of his exercises; and on one occasion brought some of them down from a shelf, in order to show me with what terseness and clearness my predecessor expressed himself, both in Latin and English.

Lord Byron says: "Peel, the orator and statesman that was, or is, or is to be, was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove, in public