viour winning on the hearts of others; and fo fenfible of their misery, that the wounds of fortune feem not inflicted on them, but on yourself. You are fo ready to redress, that you almoft prevent their wishes, and always exceed their expectations: as if what was yours, was not your own, and not given you to poffefs, but to bestow on wanting merit. But this is a topic which I must cast in shades, left I offend your modefty, which is fo far from being oftentatious of the good you do, that it blushes even to have it known: and therefore I muft leave you to the fatisfaction and teftimony of your own confcience, which though it be a filent panegyric, is yet the beft.

You are fo eafy of accefs, that Poplicola was not more, whofe doors were opened on the outside to save the people even the common civility of afking entrance; where all were equally admitted; where nothing that was reasonable was denied; where misfortune was a powerful recommendation, and where (I can scarce forbear faying) that want itself was a powerful media→ tor, and was next to merit.

The hiftory of Peru affures us, that their Incas, above all their titles, efteemed that the higheft, which called them Lovers of the poor: a name more glorious than the Felix, Pius, and Auguftus of the Roman emperors; which were epithets of flattery, deserved by few of them; and not running in a blood like the perpetual gentleness, and inherent goodness of the Ormond Family.

Gold, as it is the pureft, fo it is the fofteft, and most ductile of all metals: iron, which is the hardest, gathers ruft, corrodes itself; and is therefore fubject to corruption: it was never intended for coins and medals, or to bear faces and the infcriptions of the great. Indeed it is fit for armour, to bear off infults, and preserve the wearer in the day of battle: but the danger once repelled, it is laid afide by the brave, as a garment too rough for civil conversation: a necessary guard in war, but too harsh and cumbersome in peace, and which keeps off the embraces of a more humane life.

For this reafon, my lord, though you have courage in an heroical degree, yet I afcribe it to you, but as your fecond attribute: mercy, beneficence, and com-paffion, claim precedence, as they are firft in the divinc nature. An intrepid courage, which is inherent in your Grace, is at beft but a holiday kind of virtue, to be feldom exercised, and never but in cafes of neceffity: affability, mildnefs, tenderness, and a word, which I would fain bring back to its original fignification of virtue, I mean Good-nature, are of daily ufe: they are the bread of mankind, and staff of life: neither fighs, nor tears, nor groans, nor curfes of the vanquished, follow acts of compaffion, and of charity: but a fincere pleasure and ferenity of mind, in him who performs an action of mercy, which cannot fuffer the misfortunes of another, without redrefs; left they fhould. bring a kind of contagion along with them, and pollute the happiness which he enjoys.

Yet

Yet fince the perverfe tempers of mankind, fince oppreffion on one fide, and ambition on the other, are fometimes the unavoidable occafions of war; that courage, that magnanimity, and refolution, which is born with you, cannot be too much commended: and here it grieves me that I am scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on many of your actions: but αιδέομαι Τρώας is an expreffion which Tully often used, when he would do what he dares not, and fears the cenfure of the Ro

mans.

I have fometimes been forced to amplify on others; but here, where the subject is so fruitful that the harvest overcomes the reaper, I am shortened by my chain, and can only fee what is forbidden me to reach: fince it is not permitted me to commend you according to the extent of my wishes, and much less is it in my power to make my commendations equal to your merits. Yet, in this frugality of your praises, there are some things which I cannot omit, without detracting from your character. You have fo formed your own education as enables you to pay the debt you owe your country; or, more properly fpeaking, both your countries: becaufe you were born, I may almost say in purple, at the castle of Dublin, when your grandfather was lordlieutenant, and have fince been bred in the court of England.

If this addrefs had been in verfe, I might have called you, as Claudian calls Mercury. "Numen commune, "gemino faciens commercia mundo." The better to fatisfy this double obligation, you have early cultivated

the genius you have to arms, that when the service of Britain or Ireland fhall require your courage and your conduct, you may exert them both to the benefit of either country. You began in the cabinet what you afterwards practifed in the camp; and thus both Lucullus and Cæfar (to omit a crowd of fhining Romans) formed themselves to war by the ftudy of hiftory, and by the examples of the greateft captains, both of Greece and Italy, before their time. I name those two commanders in particular, because they were better read in chronicle than any of the Roman leaders; and that Lucullus in particular, having only the theory of war from books, was thought fit, without practice, to be fent into the field, against the most formidable enemy of Rome. Tully indeed was called the learned conful in derifion; but then he was not born a foldier: his head was turned another way: when he read the Tacticks, he was thinking on the bar, which was his field of battle. The knowledge of warfare is thrown away on a general who dares not make ufe of what he knows. I commend it only in a man of courage and refolution; in him it will direct his martial spirit; and teach him the way to the best victories, which are those that are leaft bloody, and which, though atchieved by the hand, are managed by the head. Science diftinguishes a man of honour from one of those athletic brutes whom undeservedly we call heroes. Curfed be the poet, who first honoured with that name a mere Ajax, a man-killing ideot. The Ulyffes of Ovid upbraids his ignorance, that he understood not the fhield

for

for which he pleaded: there were engraven on it, plans of cities, and maps of countries, which Ajax could not comprehend, but looked on them as ftupidly as his fellow-beaft the lion. But, on the other fide, your Grace has given yourself the education of his rival: you have studied every fpot of ground in Flanders, which for these ten years past has been the scene of battles and of fieges. No wonder if you performed your part with fuch applause on a theatre which you underftood fo well.

If I defigned this for a poetical encomium, it were eafy to enlarge on fo copious a fubject; but, confining myself to the severity of truth, and to what is becoming me to say, I must not only pass over many inftances of your military skill, but also thofe of your affiduous diligence in the war: and of your perfonal bravery, attended with an ardent thirft of honour; a long train of generofity; profufenefs of doing good; a foul unfatisfied with all it has done; and an unextinguifhed defire of doing more. But all this is matter for your own hiftorians; I am, as Virgil fays, "Spatiis exclufus iniquis."

Yet, not to be wholly filent of all your charities, I must stay a little on one action, which preferred the relief of others to the confideration of yourself. When, in the battle of Landen, your heat of courage (a fault only pardonable to your youth) had tranfported you fo far before your friends, that they were unable to follow, much lefs to fuccour you; when you were not only dangerously, but in all appearance mortally wound

ed,