words and gesture are but the sign of language, after all; and without oral .communication, the mind cannot possibly be fully exercised and cultivated. This difficulty is, to all appearance, insuperable; but men have risen up, from time to time, who saw that though the deaf and dumb can never be brought to an equality of cultivation with those who have the full use of speech, much is gained by giving them spoken as well as written language; and Dr. Watson was the man who gave the deaf and dumb more power in this direction than any preceding teacher. Bulwer, the chirosophist, opened up the track in England in the seventeenth century; and his work, dated 1648, plainly shows that he taught articulate speech, as well as the written and hand language. Wallis followed, being a contemporary of Bulwer, and anxious to engross the merit which belonged truly to him. Dr. Wallis· had great merit; but he is proved not to have been a discoverer. Articulate speech had been found attainable for the born deaf previously in Spain, and subsequently in Holland, where Dr. Amman published his method in full; and during the eighteenth century, Germany and France followed. Henry Baker taught various deaf and dumb persons to speak; but he bound them over not to reveal his method; and, though he half promised Dr. Johnson to make it known, he never did so. Thomas Braidwood began his career in 1760, at Edinburgh, and carried to some extent the practice of articulate speech among his pupils. When he removed to London, in 1783, Dr. Watson studied and worked at his institution, and made up his mind to devote himself to the education of that unfortunate class, of whom there are not fewer than 13,000 in our islands; and in his eyes the practice of articulate speech was indispensable to the attainment of such cultivation as could be afforded. For five-and-forty years he laboured at his benevolent task, and he carried the capability of speech much higher than any predecessor. În regard to the general run of his pupils, an authority declares: 'Some of the pupils articulate not unpleasantly; their reading is monotonous, but their animation in ordinary conversations, especially on subjects of interest to them, gives a species of natural tone and emphasis to what they say.' This,

great as it is, is not all. A few days before Dr. Watson's death one of his private pupils was called to the bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Here were tidings for a good man to receive on his death-bed! The days of miracles will never be over while human benevolence is unexhausted; and here we have, for a sign of our own times, a good man soothed to his rest by the blessings of the dumb. Dr. Watson died on the 23rd of November 1829, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

It is not a purely melancholy task to make up this account of our national losses. In the presence of great deeds, the doers fade into shadows even during their life, except to the few to whom they are dear for other reasons than their deeds. The shadowy form is dissolved by death, and we strain our eyes to catch the last trace, and sigh when it is gone; but the substance remains in the deeds done, and yet more in the immortal ideal of the

man.

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

William IV.-King's Message-Regency Question-Manners of the Commons-Prorogation-Dissolution Sympathy with France-Mr. Brougham-Yorkshire Election-New House-Death of Mr. Huskisson-O'Connell and the Viceroy-Repeal of the Union-Rickburning-Anxieties of Parties-Opening of the Session-The Duke's Declaration-Alderman Key's Panic-Change of Ministry.

THE valetudinarian king was gone, with his moods and caprices; and with him went all the considerations of expediency which had determined the political conduct of the year, on every side. It was not now necessary to have the most peremptory man in the empire to hold its first office, for the purpose of keeping its sovereign in order. There was no longer an incessant appeal to the generosity of the three bodies in opposition to abstain from joining to throw out the ministry. There need no longer be a mere show of transacting business, while in reality nothing was done-through the mechanical character of the administration on the one hand, and the desultory forbearance of the opposition on the other. It was no longer necessary that the country should be without a government in fact, while the nation was kindling and stirring under the news from France, which became more interesting every day. There was now a king who did not shut himself up with his discontents and his flatterers, but who walked in London streets with his umbrella under his arm, and gave a frank and sailor-like greeting to all old acquaintances, whoever they might be. There was no longer a king who regarded every contravention of his prejudices as a personal injury; but one who sincerely and kindly desired the welfare of his people, without any regard to his personal feelings. He gave an immediate

and strong proof of this by continuing the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues in power, notwithstanding a well-understood personal disinclination, and from the pure desire not to unsettle public affairs till the national will should have shown itself in the elections. He had not been many days on the throne, when he took the opportunity, at some public collation, of proposing the Duke of Wellington's health, and declaring, in a manner more well-meant than dignified, that it was a mistake to suppose that he had any ill-feeling-any feeling but of entire confidence in his good friend, the Duke of Wellington. A steady man, of determined will, he certainly did require as head of his government, as every British sovereign must, in days when sovereigns have little power, and scanty means of knowledge of the national mind and needs; and in this case, the sovereign was at no time a man of ability, and often liable to attacks of incapacitating illness; and he was sixty-five years of age; but he was honest, unselfish, and earnestly desirous to do his duty well; so that the steadiness of his prime-minister was required, not to control him, but to inform, and guide, and aid him in the fulfilment of his function. There was in no direction any necessity for the Wellington ministry to remain in power, unless by the wish of the nation; and what the desire of the nation was, the elections would soon show.

The late king had died on the 26th of June. On the 29th, William IV. sent down his first message to parliament-just after the unhappy King of France had addressed his last words to his people, and while the elections were proving that he had lost all. King William's message, after adverting to the loss sustained by himself and the nation, declared his opinion that the sooner the necessary new elections took place the better, and recommended the Commons to make provision, without delay, for the maintenance of the public service during the interval between the close of the present session and the meeting of the new parliament.

This was very well, as far as it went; but it struck everybody on the instant that there was an enormous omission. The king was childless; and the Princess

Victoria, who was to succeed him, if he died without heirs, was only eleven years old. Without express provision, there is no recognition by the law of the minority of a sovereign; and if the king should die before the new parliament met, this child would be sovereign without control, unless some provision were made for a regency. Something must be done about this, many members of both Houses and of all parties said; but they took a day to consider how they should proceed. On this first day, they spoke merely on that part of the message which related to the death of the late king-the Duke of Wellington's motion. in reply being seconded by Lord Grey, and Sir Robert Peel's by Mr. Brougham. All was thus far civility and harmony; a civility and harmony which endured for that day only.

On the 30th, Lord Grey in the one House, and Lord Althorp in the other, moved for the delay of a day in replying to the message in the understood hope that the king would send down a request to parliament to consider the subject of a regency. The grounds on which the ministers resisted this proposition were such as now excite astonishment. They talked of the excellence of the king's health, of 'not indulging in such gloomy forebodings,' of this not being a matter of pressing necessity, and of its being so important in its nature that it should be left for the deliberation of a new parliament, instead of being brought forward when the minds of members were occupied with their approaching election conflicts; the fact remaining clear to all men's minds, that by an overturn of the king's carriage, or a fall of his horse, or the slipping of his foot, or an attack of illness, the country might be plunged into inextricable difficulty, from which the legislation of a day or two now might save it. The Dukes of Newcastle and Richmond, Lords Wellesley and Londonderry, and even Lord Eldon, voted with Lord Grey, though the duke had said that he should regard a defeat as the signal for the dissolution of the ministry. The ministry, however, obtained a majority of forty-four in the House of Peers, and of forty-six in the Commons. The general conviction resulting from this affair was that all compromise was now over; that the duke was laying