ever displayed true dignity of character, nor real
greatness of soul. He seemed to have no fixed principles of action; and
to have loved contest more than victory. Wherever there was strife,
there you might surely expect to meet St. John; and his public career
almost justifies the inference, that apostacy (if indeed a man who has
no principles can be called an apostate) would have seemed to him, after
his defeat, a moderate price for permission to appear again in the
lists. But as he had always coveted power with an insatiable avidity, he
never could rest long enough to acquire it. On the stormy sea of public
life, he was for ever struggling to be on the topmost wave; but the
waves receded as fast as he advanced; and fate seemed to have destined
him to waste his life in fruitless efforts and as fruitless changes.

In early life he sought distinction by his debaucheries; and from the
accounts of his biographer, it would seem, that he succeeded in becoming
the most daring profligate in London. Tired of the excess of
dissipation, he attempted the career of politics, and found his way into
Parliament under the auspices of the whigs. When politics failed, he put
on the mask of a metaphysician. Tired of that costume, he next attempted
to play the farmer. Dissatisfied with farming, he wrote political
pamphlets. Still discontented with his condition in the world, he strove
to undermine the basis of religion.

He began public life as a whig; but as the tories were in the ascendant,
he rapidly ripened into a tory; he ended his political career by
deserting the tories and avowing the doctrines of staunch and
uncompromising whigs. He tried libertinism, married life, politics,
power, exile, restoration, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the
city, the country, foreign travel, study, authorship, metaphysics,
infidelity, farming, treason, submission, dereliction,--but ennui held
him with a firm grasp all the while, and it was only in the grave that
he ceased from troubling.

To an observer who peruses his writings with this view of his character,
many of his expressions of wise indifference and calm resignation, have
even a ludicrous aspect. The truth breaks forth from all his attempts at
disguise. The philosopher's robes could not hide the stately wrecks of
his political passions. They say, that round Vesuvius, the lava of
former eruptions has so entirely resolved itself into soil, that
vineyards thrive on the black ruins of