r,
carried on the scheme of his education with unbroken uniformity. His
first political connections were with the Reformers, but those who
accuse him of sympathizing or coalescing with their intemperate or
visionary plans, misunderstand his character, and are ignorant of the
historical facts. Imaginary situations in an imaginary state of things
rise up in minds that possess a power and facility in combining images.
Mr. Pitt's ambition was conversant with old situations in the old state
of things, which furnish nothing to the imagination, though much to the
wishes. In his endeavors to realize his father's plan of reform, he was
probably as sincere as a being, who had derived so little knowledge from
actual impressions, could be. But his sincerity had no living root of
affection; while it was propped up by his love of praise and immediate
power, so long it stood erect and no longer. He became a member of the
Parliament--supported the popular opinions, and in a few years, by the
influence of the popular party, was placed in that high and awful rank
in which he now is. The fortunes of his country, we had almost said, the
fates of the world, were placed in his wardship--we sink in prostration
before the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, when we reflect in
whose wardship the fates of the world were placed!

The influencer of his country and of his species was a young man, the
creature of another's predetermination, sheltered and weather-fended
from all the elements of experience; a young man, whose feet had never
wandered; whose very eye had never turned to the right or to the left;
whose whole track had been as curveless as the motion of a fascinated
reptile! It was a young man, whose heart was solitary, because he had
existed always amidst objects of futurity, and whose imagination, too,
was unpopulous, because those objects of hope, to which his habitual
wishes had transferred, and as it were _projected_, his existence, were
all familiar and long established objects! A plant sown and reared in a
hot-house, for whom the very air that surrounded him, had been regulated
by the thermometer of previous purpose; to whom the light of nature had
penetrated only through glasses and covers; who had had the sun without
the breeze; whom no storm had shaken; on whom no rain had pattered; on
whom the dews of heaven had not fallen! A being, who had had no feelings
connected with man or nature, no spontaneous impulses, no unbiased a