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lic at pleasure, and has got into a scrape on that account with the public and with the reporters, is one of those I wished most to hear, especially as he can only be heard and not read, the reporters having formed a league not to report his speeches. "Il est juste

Qu'on soit puni par où l'on a péché."

This is no insignificant retaliation on Mr. Windham, who liked as well as any one to see his speeches appear to advantage in the newspapers; and is said more than once to have revised the report made of them before printing.

Mr. Windham is nearly the last survivor of a certain class of statesmen who have adorned the British senate during this reign. Fox, Burke, and Pitt were men of talents and characters totally different from each other; and Mr. Windham, one of the great luminaries of this bright constellation, is different from the other three. They however all began, or were, for some early part of their political life, in the opposition; they were more or less reformers. Two of them aimed at giving to Parliament a more popular base, and more purely representative; none, however, acted upon these principles when in power; and all, with the exception of Mr. Fox, renounced the faith of their youth openly. I am inclined not to think favourably either of a young man, who has little ardour for what is called liberty, or of a man of maturer age, who has much of it; but Mr. Pitt seems to have changed before the requisite age. The dreadful results of the French struggle for liberty, which Mr. Burke's imagination, at least as much as his wisdom, anticipated, carried him to the opposite extreme; and, towards the end of his life, he

seemed to see no safety for mankind, but in absolute power. Had he lived to this day, he would have found that the patriotic French were much of the same mind with him; but this spoiled child of genius, constant to his antipathies alone, would probably have fled to liberty back again, as the regicides receded from it. Mr. Fox had the merit of consistency; he always was a friend of temperate liberty; opposed constantly the encroachments of ministerial power; always was a good whig. He seems to me, however, to have thought too well of the French revolution, and to have feared too little its influence in England, as his opponent, Pitt, feared it too much, or feigned to fear it. During the short duration of Fox's power, he did little for what he deemed liberty; and seemed as little disposed as his predecessors to sacrifice to peace, after declaiming so long against war. It might indeed be want of power, rather than of sincerity. His eloquence appears to have been the genuine English eloquence; simple, direct, and vigorous, rather than subtle and ornamented. In the heat of debate, his voice was apt to become sharp and disagreeable. It is strange, that, knowing so well how to speak, this great man did not write better. The fragment of history published after his death, is remarkable for a sort of laborious simplicity; and its morality seems liberal to laxity. I was surprised to find his diplomatic correspondence with M. Talleyrand was not written in very good French.

Pitt, the reverse of Fox in every thing, had more art and logic, a choice of expressions never equalled, and the most poignant irony, without the persuasive eloquence of his great opponent. Burke was all imagination; but, judging particularly from what he wrote on the French revolution, an un

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governable imagination, the liveliness and exuberance of which might dazzle and delight, but proved little, and did not convince. His learning and wit gave his conversation a peculiar charm; yet, at a certain period of his parliamentary life, it was observed, that the benches of the House became empty whenever he spoke, and he was called, from that circumstance, the dinner-bell. Possibly the delight attending the exercise of imagination and wit, is greater and more lasting for the actor, than those acted upon.

The last living of these great men, Mr. Windham, is less unlike Burke than either of the others, with a simpler style of eloquence, and an imagination more under command; his ideas, however, appear full as eccentric, and more paradoxical. He likes to cut his way through the opinions and principles of the rest of the world, provided they are modern opinions and principles, for his innovations consist in changing nothing, and his originality in doing what was always done. He whose object is only resistance, may indeed attain it equally, whether he swims faster than the stream, or stands against it, and lets it pass by him. The following bon mot is given to Mr. Sheridan: The generality of men, said he, see only two sides to a question, but Mr. Windham contrives to find always a third, and then pairs off with himself.

The reporters are persons employed by the editors of newspapers, to take notes of the principal speeches in Parliament. They were seated behind me in the gallery, and I took advantage of the opportunity to observe their mode of proceeding. Far from setting down all that is said, they only take notes, to appearance very carelessly, one word in a hundred, to mark the leading points. It

is difficult to understand how they can afterwards give the connected speeches we see in the papers, out of such slender materials, and with so little time to prepare them;-the speeches of the night, spoken, perhaps, at two or three o'clock in the morning, or later, being served up to the luxurious inhabitants of this capital at their breakfast the same morning. What a life! One of these reporters, named Woodfall, who is dead, was able, without any notes, and entirely from memory, to write, on his return from the House, all that had been said worth repeating. They are crowded in the gallery, with the rest of the people, writing on their knees, in a constrained attitude, laughing and whispering jokes among themselves about the solemn business going forward below, and often praying that such or such tiresome speakers may have done soon, and sit down again.

The exclamation hear! hear! hear! so often mentioned in the reports of speeches in the newspapers, surprised me much, the effect being quite different from what I expected. A modest, genteel hear! hear! is first heard from one or two voices,

others join,-more and more,-crescendo,—till at last a wild, tumultuous, and discordant noise pervades the whole house, resembling very nearly that of a flock of frightened geese; rising and falling, ending and beginning again, as the member happens to say any thing remarkable.

Judging from the reputed taciturnity of this nation, it might be supposed that the gravity of a legislative assembly would be more particularly observable in the British Senate; instead of which, it is the merriest place that ever was. These le

gislators seem perpetually on the watch for a joke; and if it can be introduced in the most serious de

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bate, it succeeds so much the better. Some of the members, Mr. Sheridan for instance, are such complete masters of the senatorial risibility, that, by a significant word, or expression of countenance, they can, when they please, put their honourable colleagues in good humour. English taciturnity is not proof against a sally of wit, and still less, perhaps, against a stroke of buffoonery, called here humour. I have been told that the French have no humour. Without bringing in Moliere to confute this, I thought it sufficient to produce "Les Battus payent l'Amende," which happened to be by me; and I trust no Englishman who reads it will say we have no humour. I am ready to grant, that, in general, we do not descend quite so low. The French are trifling and decorous, the English grave and farcical.

Considering the growing importance of public opinion, of that modern tribunal, which governments are obliged to consult now-a-days, and before whom the most despotic think fit to justify their measures, paying it the compliment of imposing upon it; considering again the influence a daily communication of the debates in Parliament has on this public opinion, and that, but for the report of speeches, they would be unknown to the nation at large, or even would not exist such as they are, being intended for the people full as much as for the House,-it is very natural to feel a considerable degree of surprise at finding the persons employed in collecting this all-important. communication, taking on their knees, and by stealth, the notes which are to feed the political appetite and legitimate curiosity of an enlightened public. Instead of an alimentary organ, Mr. Wind