among well informed people, who take an interest in the politics and literature of their age and country. It is not only full of details respecting the grand events-the wars-the alliances the parliamentary debates-the ministerial changesthe opposition struggles; but of anecdotes respecting the principal personages who appear in the field, whose character, whose talents, views, and connections are minutely and with intelligence described. The author is a man who has acted a part in the scene which he delineates, and is well qualified for the task which he has set himself. Profound political views he leaves, as not within his sphere: but the outside of the political machine he had an opportunity of observing from a near station during many years, and with its visible movements, and the hands which directed them, he is evidently well acquainted. How the common mass of well informed people in Ireland felt, and how they acted, may therefore be learned from this book with no common accuracy. Nor is this, at the present eventful moment in the history of the British people, a knowledge of small importance. If the closer and darker machinations of the intriguing few, and the sublimer views of the real philosophers, if any such were in the scene, seldom enter much into the delineations or inferences of Mr. Hardy, still what he exhibits, is the ground-work upon which both the selfish and the philanthropic had to erect their schemes.

Lord Charlemont was a first rate nobleman, rather than a first rate man of talents. He had a love of toleration, and a cultivated mind. He wrote well, and even elegantly. His understanding was, to a considerable degree, emancipated from the prejudices which govern the weak and ill instructed, and which, from their general operation, frequently retain too strong a hold upon minds of more than ordinary force and cultivation. Lord Charlemont was a man of principle in the truest and most uncommon sense of the word. He loved his country better than himself. What his mind suggested to him for the good of his country he pursued; and no prospect of reward or benefit to himself, in gratifying the powerful by a sacrifice of his convictions, led him to desist in the pursuit. He did more. preserved his understanding free from conquest. In the path of corruption it is a very common case to make a surrender of the understanding first; after which the training of the conscience is a task comparatively easy. Present to a man an act of baseness or corruption in which he is desired to participate. At first his mind revolts, and he refuses his sanction. Yet it would have been extremely favourable to his interests, had he heartily joined with those who were so able to serve him. He begins, therefore, by listening to the doctrine," that government, as such, ought to be supported; that the community is disposed to

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disaffection; that the mass of mankind must be governed by terror." If his interests, on the other hand, are united with a party in opposition, he attends to the doctrine, "that in order to any good, men must act in conjunction; if they would act in conjunction, they must make concessions to one another; if a man is satisfied with his party upon the whole, he ought to give up his judgment to theirs on particular occasions; by dissenting from his party, a politician sacrifices himself, without doing any good to his country, &c." By these convenient doctrines, a man gives up his understanding to a ministry in the one case, to a party in opposition in the other, and there is no act of subservience to the designs of either, however base, for which he is not prepared by such a surrender. The understanding is satisfied that it is good to follow, and the conscience is guided by the understanding. Interest, conscience, and understanding act in unison; there is no schism,-no heretical division; the hierarchy of the microcosm, man, is tranquil and catholic, without a single unwelcome dissentient to disturb its unity and repose.

It is by a process similar to this, that most people become true ministerialists, or true party-men. Lord Charlemont, however, by a good fortune rather uncommon in his rank of life, resisted this manufactory operation. He kept his understanding in his own power: he looked at the affairs of his country with his own eyes: without caring what a ministry, or what a set of opposition leaders might chuse to see, he asked himself what was actually before him he trusted to his own judgment for his own conclusions; and though he took an active share in public business, was a living proof, that it is at any rate possible for a man, in a certain rank of life, to have a veritable love for good government, a disinterested wish to benefit his country.

Lord Charlemont was born in Dublin, on the 18th of August, 1728. His education was not good, and how his taste for literature was acquired, it is not very easy to trace. He went abroad in the autumn of 1746; and had the resolution to place himself for a year as a pupil in the academy at Turin. He was at Turin, while David Hume the historian was there in the capa city of secretary to Sir John Sinclair, the British Plenipotentiary. The literary reputation of Hume, was not lost upon his lordship, whose rank, on the other hand, and we may add, whose acquirements and dispositions engaged the attention of the philosopher. An intimacy was formed between them, which lasted for life.

Lord Charlemont tells us one thing respecting Hume, which we have not learned from any other quarter; to wit, that he was, in a private way, abundantly solicitous to gain prose

lytes. Accordingly, he made various and earnest trials upon the young nobleman; but without success: for his lordship seems to have been one of those superstitious persons, who regard religion as the strongest bond of society, as indispensabiv necessary for curbing the unruly passions of man, as exactly suited to his moral wants, and as supplying the only preparation for an eternal state. He thus describes Hume's appearance.

Nature, I believe, never formed any man more unlike his real character, than David Hume. The powers of phisiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skilful, in that science, pretend to discover the smallest trace of the faculties of his mind, in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. His eyes, vacant and spiritless, and the corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating Alderman, than of a refined philosopher. His speech, in English, was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable; so that wisdom, most certainly, never disguised herself before in so uncouth a garb. Though now near fifty years old, he was healthy and strong; but his health and strength, far from being advantageous to his figure, instead of manly comeliness, had only the appearance of rusticity. His wearing an uniform added greatly to his natural awkwardness, for he wore it like grocer of the trained bands. Sinclair was a Lieutenant-general, and was sent to the courts of Vienna and Turin, as a military envoy, to see that their quota of troops was furnished by the Austrians and Piedmontese. It was, therefore, thought necessary that his secretary should appear to be an officer, and Hume was accordingly disguised in scarlet.' p. 8.

There is a curious testimony which Lord Charlemont drew from the lips of Hume, respecting Rousseau's state of mind in regard to religion, which we shall present in his lordship's own words.

When first they arrived together from France, happening to meet with Hume in the park, I wished him joy of his pleasing connexion, and particularly hinted, that I was convinced he must be perfectly happy in his new friend, as their sentiments were, I believed, nearly similar. Why no, man,' said he, in that you are mistaken; Rousseau is not what you think him; he has a hankering after the Bible, and, indeed, is little better than a Christian, in a way of his own.' p. 120.

It is pretty generally known, that, from a certain combinanation of circumstances, Hume became, in Paris, an object of prodigious curiosity and admiration. His person, mien, and manners, did not much qualify him to shine in frivolous society. However, he was for a time the idol' of the brilliant circle of Paris. The following reflections of Lord Charlemont, who was an eye witness, are valuable.

Hume's fashion at Paris, when he was there as Secretary to Lord Hertford, was truly ridiculous; and nothing ever marked, in a more

striking manner, the whimsical genius of the French. No man, from his manners, was surely less formed for their society, or less likely to meet with their approbation; but that flimsy philosophy which pervades, and deadens even their most licentious novels, was then the folly of the day.

At the

Free thinking and English frocks were the fashion, and the Angloma nie was the ton du pais. Lord Holland, though far better calculated than Hume to please in France, was also an instance of this singular predilection. Being about this time on a visit to Paris, the French concluded, that an Englishman of his reputation must be a philosopher, and must be admired. It was customary with him to doze after dinner, and one day, at a great entertainment, he happened to fall asleep: Le voilà !' says a Marquis, pulling his neighbour by the sleeve; Le voilà, qui pense !' _But the madness for Hume was far more singular and extravagant. From what has been already said of him, it is apparent that his conversation to strangers, and particularly to Frenchmen, could be little delightful, and still more particularly, one would suppose, to French women. And yet no lady's toilette was complete without Hume's attendance. opera, his broad, unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux jolis minois. The ladies in France give the ton, and the ton was deism; a species of philosophy ill suited to the softer sex, in whose delicate frame weakness is interesting, and timidity a charm. But the women in France were deists, as with us they were charioteers. The tenets of the new philosophy were à porteè de tout le monde, and the perusal of a wanton novel, such, for example, as Therese Philosophe, was amply sufficient to render any fine gentleman, or any fine lady, an accomplished, nay, a learned deist. How my friend Hume was able to endure the encounter of these French female Titans I know not. In England, either his philosophic pride, or his conviction that infidelity was ill suited to women, made him perfectly averse from the initiation of ladies into the mysteries of his doctrine.' pp. 121, 122.

Lord Charlemont was as little of a convert to Hume's slavish principles in politics, as he was to his sceptical principles in religion. When his history of the House of Stuart was published, the great Lord Chatham, with that warm sensibility to the interests of liberty which so honourably distinguished him, thought it of sufficient importance to reprobate the doctrines of Hume, by name, in the House of Lords. It is interesting to hear what Hume said upon this ocasion.

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· Nothing ever gave Hume more real vexation, than the strictures made upon his history in the House of Lords, by the great Lord Chatham. Soon after that speech I met Hume, and ironically wished him joy of the high honour that had been done him. Zounds, man,' said he, with more peevishness than I had ever seen him express, he's a Goth! he's a Vandal!' Indeed, his history is as dangerous in politics, as his essays are in religion; and it is somewhat extraordinary, that the same man who labours to free the mind from what he supposes religious prejudices, should as zealously endeavour to shackle it with the servile ideas of despotism, pp. 122, 123.

The book before us contains a curious and interesting account, by Lord Charlemont, of a visit he paid to Montesquieu; and one of the most striking descriptions we have ever met with of a storm at sea. But we must detain ourselves no longer with the private history of this nobleman. Ireland now claims our regard; and touching upon Irish affairs is launching into the ocean. So many things press for statement, and elucidation, and our limits permit us to meddle with so few, that we hardly know either how to begin or how to end. Lord Charlemont returned from his travels about the year 1755, and began to take a share in Irish politics.

Ireland, since its submission to the crown of England, had been governed, or rather misgoverned, in a supposed subservience to the interests of the more powerful country, but in a way which in reality was just as little favourable to the interests of the one country as to those of the other. When the Reformation, that event of unparalled importance, occurred, the fruits which naturally sprang from the manner in which Ireland had been dealt with, immediately appeared. The light and knowledge which in England and in Scotland had very generally prepared the minds of men for casting away the chains which popery fastened round them, had, through negligence or oppression, been unable to make their way into Ireland. No exchange of good offices had taken place, which might have created a sympathy, independently of reason, between the people of Ireland, and those of the governing country, whom the people of Ireland would in such a case have been proud to follow. There was rather an antipathy, from the recollection of injury, and a blind adherence to ancient practice and belief; that propensity to reverence what their ancestors reverenced, which so commonly governs those in whom reason is too weak to obtain an ascendancy. From these causes it unfortunately happened, unfortunately in all senses of the word, that when England and Scotland threw off the yoke of papal superstition, the Irish were not prepared for so important an innovation. They adhered to the ancient religion. A new distinction was thus created between the two orders of men, and a distinction pregnant with calamities.

At that time the influence of a bad religion, which had long corrupted the minds of men-the ignorance of many centuries of darkness, which the revival of letters had done little more than begun to dispel-and the sterner passions, which rule with peculiar force in ignorant and benighted minds, stimulated the professors of religion to hate one another, on the score of any diversity of opinion. Each denomination of