here it
shall end"--he paused, and fixing his eyes above, with a solemnity of
expression which I had not expected in the stern and hard-lined
countenance, "or who shall live to see its close--who shall tell?"

"We have been waiting," said he, "for this intelligence from week to
week, with the fullest expectation that it would come; and yet, when
it has come, it strikes like a thunderclap. This is the third night
that I have sat in this hovel, at this table, unable to go to rest,
and looking for the despatch from hour to hour.--You see, sir, that
our life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is so
apt to give us credit. It is like the life of my own hills--the
higher the sheiling stands, the more it gets of the blast."

I do not give the name of this remarkable man. He was a Scot, and
possessed of all the best characteristics of his country. I had heard
him in Parliament, where he was the most powerful second of the most
powerful first that England had seen. But if all men were inferior to
the prime minister in majesty and fulness of conception, the man to
whom I now listened had no superior in readiness of retort, in
aptness of illustration--that mixture of sport and satire, of easy
jest and subtle sarcasm, which forms the happiest talent for the
miscellaneous uses of debate. If Pitt moved forward like the armed
man of chivalry, or rather like the main body of the battle--for
never man was more entitled to the appellation of a "host in
himself"--never were front, flanks, and rear of the host covered by a
more rapid, quick-witted, and indefatigable auxiliary. He was a man
of family, and brought with him into public life, not the manners of
a menial of office, but the bearing of a gentleman. Birth and blood
were in his bold and manly countenance; and I could have felt no
difficulty in conceiving him, if his course had followed his nature,
the chieftain on his hills, at the head of his gallant retainers,
pursuing the wild sports of his romantic region; or in some foreign
land, gathering the laurels which the Scotch soldier has so often and
so proudly added to the honours of the empire.

He was perfectly familiar with the great question of the time, and
saw the full bearings of my intelligence with admirable sagacity;
pointed out the inevitable results of suffering France to take upon
herself the arbitration of Europe, and gave new and powerful views of
the higher relation in which England was to stand, a