Protestant ascendancy, "last ditch and last guinea" class of politicians to which the elder Sir Robert Peel belonged. He had, in fact, obtained (1797) his baronetcy-the first step on the road of titled distinctions leading to the peerage which he was sanguine his son, if not himself, would reach-by the munificent subscription of £10,000 to the Patriotic Fund, set on foot to aid the Government in carrying on the war with vigour and resolution; and other services in a like spirit, such as the raising and organizing the Bury Volunteers, to which gallant corps Master Robert Peel, when about thirteen years old, was introduced in the full uniform of a lieutenant, unattached, by his exulting father, the colonel, in a spirited speech, which was received with great applausethe more fervently hearty, perhaps, that the peroration consisted essentially of an invitation to dine, as the guests of the orator, at the principal inn, immediately after the arduous duties of the field were concluded. Robert Peel was entrusted with the toast of "No Surrender!" which appears to have had reference, in this instance, to the negotiations which ended in the truce of Amiens, and acquitted himself in a way that elicited a tornado of approbation, huskily joined in by the gratified father, who could only ejaculate brokenly, in reply to the numerous hand-shaking congratulations of his friends, "Yes, yes-thank you-thank you-an English boy-an English boy-to the backbone, you may depend."

Practical Sir Robert had long before this clearly discerned, with those shrewd eyes of his-limited and earthward as their range might be the immense power which the ability to address public assemblies effectively confers, in this country, on its possessor, and had anxiously cultivated that faculty in his son from a very early age; not by causing him to acquire merely declamatory skill in recitation which is taught at every principal school, is easily acquired if no physical disqualification exist, and is of very slight world-service. Sir Robert personally exercised his son in marking the points and pith of a speech or discourse; made him repeat, in his own language, the substance of what he had heard; and, when differing from the argument that had been used, reply to it parenthetically as he went on; accustoming him, in short, to think upon his legs, and give facile, unlaboured expression to his thoughts as they arose naturally in his mind. This practice commenced by Sir Robert engaging the boy attentively to mark the Sunday morning's sermon, as much as possible, mentally, and making notes only on the sequence of the discourse and argument, which he had afterwards to repeat, recomposing the sermon, and delivering it, with appropriate emphasis and action, whilst standing before his father in the library, or, in fine weather, in a retired part of the grounds of Chamber Hall. To this admirable discipline for an ambitious orator, the late Sir Robert Peel was no doubt much indebted for the remarkable ease and grace of his manner and attitude, as well as for the astonishing readiness and facility of his replies, in which not the slightest opening presented by a previous adverse orator was forgotten or left unassailed by the brilliant arrows of an argumentative acumen never surpassed, and but seldom equalled.

The invincible attachment to truth, to which the Duke of Welling

ton (himself one of the truthfullest of men) bore such emphatic testimony in the House of Lords, a few days after the untimely death of his right honourable friend and colleague ("My Lords, in the whole course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence"), characterised in an equal degree young Robert Peel, not merely in disdainful avoidance of expressing falsehood, but in open, voluntary confession of any wrong, neglect, or error of which he might have been guilty. The rapidity and ease with which he mastered the mechanics of education, grammar, arithmetic, languages, &c., gave earnest of the success he subsequently achieved at Harrow and Oxford; and it may be mentioned, as a proof of the young man's native sagacity and clear-sightedness in detecting the true character of social cobwebs, however speciously coloured, to which he was not authoritatively blinded, so to speak, by filial affection and reverence, that Mr. Robert Owen, who was upon somewhat intimate terms with his father, arising from similarity of views to a certain trifling extent with regard to infant labour in factories, whilst entertaining a favourable opinion of the Baronet's general sagacity, formed a decidedly low estimate of the intellectual capacity of his eldest son. It would have been strange had he not done so, since it could hardly be possible that some gleams of the keen intellect which, when only partially freed from parental and educational mystification, tore the pompous fallacies of parliamentary currency-doctors to shreds and tatters, should not have revealed to the dullest, least observant eyes, its irreconcilable antagonism with the feeble anility of a mind which had discovered a panacea for all human ills, in the governments of the earth driving its inhabitants into communistic parallelograms, and banishing Faith from the world. Robert Peel at Harrow has been partially depicted by his form-fellow Lord Byron, who, in remarking upon Peel, the orator and statesman that is, or is to be, of whom they all, master and scholars, had great hopes," admits that the said Peel was his lordship's superior as a scholar, equal to him as a declaimer, but in general information inferior to the noble lord-an assertion which, viewed by the light of the subsequent careers of the Peer and Commoner, seems about as vain-glorious a selftrumpeting as one often meets with. His lordship's condescendent air, too, when writing of such a man, is not a little amusing, and was, perhaps, unconsciously influenced by the habitual tone which in those days was held by the scions of hereditary nobility with regard to the offspring of the cotton parvenus who were beginning to settle down upon ancient seats of learning like a cloud. This exclusive haughtiness of feeling was early marked and understood by Robert Peel, and gradually induced in him the cold, unfamiliar, almost repellant reservedness of manner, forbidding familiarity, which, first adopted as a defensive expedient, grew at last to a habit never put off in his intercourse with official colleagues, especially when of a higher social rank than his own, and only entirely thrown aside when in the presence of his family, of a tried and close friend like the Duke of Wellington, or when offering a helping hand, accompanied by kindliest words, to the struggling or unfortunate child of genius. From Harrow, Robert Peel went to the University of

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Oxford, where he distanced all competitors, though amongst them were Mr. Gilbert, afterwards Vice-chancellor of the University; Hampden, since Regius Professor of Divinity; and Archbishop Whately; obtaining when he took his degree, double first-class honours, first in classics, and first in mathematics, the only time in the history of the University that such a triumph had been achieved.

The political party then dominant were not unobservant of the brilliant promise manifested by " Pitt the younger," as Robert Peel, in consequence of his father's garrulous indiscretions, confidentially, as we have seen, communicated in later life to the House of Commons, began to be called in certain coteries. He would, they saw, bring genius, eloquence, industry, fresh enthusiasm, to a cause seldom more in need of such aids; and care was taken to bind him by influences which have almost irresistible potency over generous natures, to the chariot-wheels of the Tory and Orange parties. He was returned, immediately he was eligible to sit in Parliament, for the borough of Cashel; his first speech-an eloquent and prophetic denunciation of Buonaparte, by the way-was uproariously applauded by the habitués of the Treasury benches, and more substantially rewarded by the offer of the under-secretaryship of the colonies, by the minister, Mr. Perceval, which he accepted, not long afterwards exchanging it for the chief secretaryship of Ireland, whose Orange magnates courted, flattered, fêted, toasted the young official in the most extravagant fashion. Orange Peel they delighted to call him; and even his squeamish prudishness, as it was deemed, in refusing to participate in the orgies of Dublin Castle, was excused in consideration of his presumedly intractable and unswerving adherence to the good old constitutional creed symbolized in the shibboleth of "the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of King William III., by whom these islands were happily rescued from popery, slavery, brass money, and wooden shoes.”

It was at this period of Robert Peel's life that his somewhat ludicrous quarrel with Mr. O'Connell occurred. The great agitator, who had taken in high dudgeon some expressions uttered by the Irish secretary in the House of Commons, retorted by saying, that the raw, red-headed stripling, squeezed out of the workings of a cotton factory, known as Orange Peel, would not have dared utter to his, Mr. O'Connell's face, what he had stated in the safe security of the House of Commons. This imputation upon his courage, the youthful secretary replied to by a challenge, which was accepted by Mr. O'Connell; but that gentleman's wife having received a hint of what was going on, caused her husband to be arrested and bound over to keep the peace towards all the king's lieges in Ireland. It was next arranged, at Mr. Peel's instance, that the duel should take place out of the country, and the Irish secretary passed safely over to Ostend for that purpose. Mr. O'Connell was not so fortunate. He journeyed by way of London, and when he arrived there, was arrested by a warrant from Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough, and bound over to keep the peace towards everybody, at all times, and in all places. It was in reference to this duel manqué, that Lord Norbury delivered himself of a once much-quoted jest. "I am afraid, my lord," said Mr. O'Connell, who was arguing a matter of importance in one of the four

courts before that judge, who appeared purposely inattentive,-"I am afraid your lordship does not apprehend me." "Oh yes, quite so!" quickly rejoined the judge, in bitter jest; "and indeed nobody is more easily apprehended than Mr. O'Connell, when he wishes to be !"

An opportunity of forging and riveting the final link which should bind young Peel for ever to the school of politics in which he had been sedulously trained, soon occurred, and was easily seized upon with that view. The representation of the University of Oxford became vacant, and although Mr. Canning's long services on the same side would seem to have entitled him to the prize-one which he had always ardently coveted-his claims were, in some sort, contemptuously ignored by the chiefs of the party in favour of Robert Peel, upon whom the honour, entirely unsolicited, was conferred by acclamation.

There was no longer any apprehension felt that this young and vigorous champion-sprung from the people, and certain to be more effective, therefore, in defending exclusive privilege-would ever suffer himself to be seduced into the deceitful paths of moderation and liberality, and for some time the harmony of the ranks of intolerance was undisturbed. Gradually, however, the astute and keen-eyed of the party began to see that their leader and champion worked uneasily in the glittering fetters by which he had been bound, and which, as the world knows, were at last, and one by one, cast off and trampled beneath his feet-personal eminence and power-patronage almost without limit the leadership of a great and triumphant party, and finally the Premiership of Great Britain! Death surprised him, not, it may be said, untimely, for his public life-task closed with that, his last and greatest immolation of self, to what the dictates of an unquailing patriotism proclaimed to be his duty, and he expired amidst the yet frantic Babel-hubbub with which the crowning act of his political existence had been received; a brief, unworthy clamour, long since rebuked into silence by the myriad voices of a nation in grateful repetition of the magnificent epitaph which history has indelibly inscribed upon the stainless monumental memory of Robert Peel ;-" He has left a name which will be ever remembered with expressions of good-will in the abodes of those of his countrymen whose lot it is to labour and earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because no longer leavened by a sense of injustice."

THE wose firm rectitude and superhuman sagacity were the

HE opinion which now appears to be generally entertained of a

theme but a few years since of so many eloquent tongues and pens, may perhaps be the true one-t -that Louis Philippe, after all, was a man without convictions; who held that to be right which promised to be successful; whose vaunted wisdom was at best an agile adroitness in dealing with or eluding present and ordinary circumstances, and utterly without elevation to foresee an adverse and formidable future, or energy to grapple with it when it came; but a prince born in the purple, and reared in the go-cart of a spurious liberalism, contemned by the loyalty of his country because of his restless proximity to a throne already shaken by the democracy upon whose shoulders alone he could hope to reach it, and instinctively distrusted by that democracy for the same reason, and who, moreover, had the misfortune to be educated by the sentimental Madame de Genlis, after the mode suggested by Rousseau's "Emile," should be excused and forgiven much. It may be that a prince of great originality and vigour of intellect and strength of purpose, might have obtained firm footing amidst the shifting sands by which the heir of Egalité was environed, upon the strong piles of his own resolute will; but this was utterly beyond the power of a mind like that of Louis Philippe: flexile, ready, adaptive, keen but not farreaching, quick-witted but not wise, such a man so placed must almost needs have been alternately the weed and foam of the vexed ocean of circumstances upon which he was cast-never wholly engulfed, and borrowing ephemeral elevation and brightness from the motion of the capricious elements by which he was alike sustained and controlled. To have issued triumphant or blameless from such a position required either a hero or a saint; and as Louis Philippe, although by no means deficient