wer of Pitt lay in his cold, calculating intellect, but
the instrument that made manifest this intellect was his deep, resonant,
perfectly controlled voice.

Pitt never married, and according to the biting phrase of Fox, all he
knew of love was a description of it he got from the Iliad. That is to
say, he was separated from it about three thousand years. This is a
trifle too severe, for when twenty-one years of age he met the daughter
of Necker at Paris--she who was to give the world of society a thrill as
Madame de Stael. And if the gossips are right it was not the fault of
Pitt that a love-match did not follow. But the woman gauged the man, and
she saw that love to him would be merely an incident, not a consuming
passion, and she was not the woman to write a book on Farthest North.
She dallied with the young man a day, and then sent him about his
business, exasperated and perplexed. He could strike fire with men as
flint strikes on steel, but women were outside his realm.

Yet he followed the career of Madame de Stael, and never managed to
quite get her out of his life. Once, in his later years, he referred to
her as that "cold and trifling daughter of France's greatest financier."
He admired the father more than he loved the daughter.

For twenty-four years Pitt piloted England's Ship of State. There were
constant head-winds, and now and again shifting gales of fierce
opposition, and all the time a fat captain to pacify and appease. This
captain was stupid, sly, obstinate and insane by turns, and to run the
ship and still allow the captain to believe that he was in command was
the problem that confronted Pitt. And that he succeeded as well as any
living man could, there is no doubt.

During the reign of Pitt, England lost the American Colonies. This was
not a defeat for England: it was Destiny. England preserved her
independence by cutting the cable that bound her to us.

The life of Pitt was a search for power--to love, wealth and fame he was
indifferent.

He was able to manage successfully the finances of a nation, but his own
were left in a sorry muddle: at his death it took forty thousand pounds
to cause him to be worth nothing. His debts were paid by the nation. And
this indifference to his own affairs was put forth at the time as proof
of his probity and excellence. We think now that it marked his
limitations. His income for twenty years preceding his death was about
fifty thousand dollars a year. One hou