e the power of words and phrases, and that peculiar constitution
of human affairs in their present state, which so eminently favors this
power.

Such appears to us to be the prime minister of Great Britain, whether we
consider him as a statesman or as an orator. The same character betrays
itself in his private life; the same coldness to realities, and to all
whose excellence relates to reality. He has patronized no science, he
has raised no man of genius from obscurity; he counts no one prime work
of God among his friends. From the same source he has no attachment to
female society, no fondness for children, no perceptions of beauty in
natural scenery; but he is fond of convivial indulgences, of that
stimulation, which, keeping up the glow of self-importance and the sense
of internal power, gives feelings without the mediation of ideas.

These are the elements of his mind; the accidents of his fortune, the
circumstances that enabled such a mind to acquire and retain such a
power, would form a subject of a philosophical history, and that, too,
of no scanty size. We can scarcely furnish the chapter of contents to a
work, which would comprise subjects so important and delicate, as the
causes of the diffusion and intensity of secret influence; the machinery
and state intrigue of marriages; the overbalance of the commercial
interest; the panic of property struck by the late revolution; the
short-sightedness of the careful; the carelessness of the fat-sighted;
and all those many and various events which have given to a decorous
profession of religion, and a seemliness of private morals, such an
unwonted weight in the attainment and preservation of public power. We
are unable to determine whether it be more consolatary or humiliating to
human nature, that so many complexities of event, situation, character,
age, and country, should be necessary in order to the production of a
Mr. Pitt.

[From Household Words.]

IGNORANCE OF THE ENGLISH.

The lamentable deficiency of the commonest rudiments of education, which
still exists among the humbler classes of the nation, is never so darkly
apparent as when we compare their condition with that of people of
similar rank in other countries. When we do so, we find that England
stands the lowest in the scale of what truly must be looked upon as
_Civilization_; for she provides fewer means for promoting it than any
of her neighbors. With us, education is a commodity to be traffi