hant mob accompanying them indicate terror? Did the demands of
the parliament or the insolence of their language show it?' So he
proceeds through all the well-worn arguments; and 'therefore it is,' he
concludes, 'that I give my vote to the Earl of Clarendon, because he
gave his support to the falling cause of monarchy; because he stood by
his church and his king; because he adopted the part which loyalty,
reason, and moderation combined to dictate.... Poverty, banishment, and
disgrace he endured without a murmur; he still adhered to the cause of
justice, he still denounced the advocates of rebellion, and if he failed
in his reward in life, oh, sir, let us not deny it to him after death.
In him, sir, I admire the sound philosopher, the rigid moralist, the
upright statesman, the candid historian.... In Hampden I see the
splendour of patriotic bravery obscured by the darkness of rebellion,
and the faculties by which he might have been a real hero and real
martyr, prostituted in the cause,' and so on, with all the promise of
the _os magna soniturum_, of which time was to prove the resources so
inexhaustible. On one great man he passed a final judgment that years
did not change:--'Debate on Sir R. Walpole: Hallam, Gaskell, Pickering,
and Doyle spoke. Voted for him. Last time, when I was almost entirely
ignorant of the subject, against him. There were sundry considerable
blots, but nothing to overbalance or to spoil the great merit of being
the bulwark of the protestant succession, his commercial measures, and
in general his pacific policy.'[28]

ETON MISCELLANY

As for the _Eton Miscellany_, which was meant to follow earlier attempts
in the same line, the best-natured critic cannot honestly count it
dazzling. Such things rarely are; for youth, though the most adorable of
our human stages, cannot yet have knowledge or practice enough, whether
in life or books, to make either good prose or stirring verse, unless by
a miracle of genius, and even that inspiration is but occasional. The
_Microcosm_ (1786-87) and the _Etonian_ (1818), with such hands as
Canning and Frere, Moultrie and Praed, were well enough. The newcomer
was a long way behind these in the freshness, brilliance, daring, by
which only such juvenile performances can either please or interest.
George Selwyn and Gladstone were joint editors, and each provided pretty
copious effusions. 'I cannot keep my temper,' he wrote afterwards in his
d