sailant, of
an administration on these very heads. He often did their work more
effectually than all their artificial training enabled them to do it.
His acute research, and his peculiar sources of information, roused
the vigilance of all the public offices of the country. Since his time,
there has been more care in preparing official returns, and in arranging
the public correspondence placed on the table of the House of Commons.

When one remembered that in this room, not three years ago, he was
trying to find a lawyer who would make a speech for him in Parliament,
it was curious to remember that no one in the period had probably
addressed the House of Commons oftener. Though his manner, which was
daily improving, was not felicitous in the House, the authority of his
intellect, his knowledge, and his character, made him one of the great
personages of debate; but with the country who only read his speeches
he ranked high as an orator. It is only those who have had occasion
critically to read and examine the long series of his speeches who can
be conscious of their considerable merits. The information is always
full and often fresh, the scope large, the argument close, and the
style, though simple, never bald, but vigorous, idiomatic, and often
picturesque. He had not credit for this in his day, but the passages
which have been quoted in this sketch will prove the justness of this
criticism. As a speaker and writer, his principal need was condensation.
He could not bear that anything should remain untold. He was deficient
in taste, but he had fervour of feeling, and was by no means void of
imagination.

The writer, in his frequent communications with him of faithful and
unbounded confidence, was often reminded of the character by Mr. Burke
of my Lord Keppell.

The labours of Lord George Bentinck had been supernatural, and one ought
perhaps to have felt then that it was impossible they could be continued
on such a scale of exhaustion; but no friend could control his eager
life in this respect; he obeyed the law of his vehement and fiery
nature, being one of those men who in whatever they undertake know no
medium, but will 'succeed or die.'

But why talk here and now of death! He goes to his native county and his
father's proud domain, to breathe the air of his boyhood and move amid
the parks and meads of his youth. Every breeze will bear health, and the
sight of every hallowed haunt will stimulate his pulse. He is sca