ity of its course, as we saw it
eclipsing the old luminaries in succession; until it touched our orbit,
and visited us in conflagration.

It was said that Pitt died of a broken heart, in despair of the prospects
of England. The defeat of Austerlitz was pronounced his death-blow. What
thoughts may cluster round the sleepless pillow, who shall tell? But no
man knew England better; none had a bolder faith in her perseverance and
principle; none had more broadly laid the foundations of victory in
national honour. I shall never be driven into the belief that William Pitt
despaired of his country.

He died in the vigour of his genius, in the proudest struggle of the
empire, in the midst of the deepest trial which for a thousand years had
demanded all the faculties of England. Yet, what man within human
recollection had lived so long, if we are to reckon life not by the
calendar but by triumphs? What minister of England, what minister of
Europe, but himself, was the head of his government for three-and-twenty
years? What man had attained so high an European rank? What mind had
influenced so large an extent of European interests? What name was so
instinctively pronounced by every nation, as the first among mankind? To
have earned distinctions like these, was to have obtained all that time
could give. Not half a century in years, Pitt's true age was patriarchal.

I was now but a spectator. My connexion with public life was broken off.
Every name with which I had been associated was swept away; and I stood
like a man flung from ship-wreck upon a shore, where every face which he
met was that of a stranger. I was still in Parliament, but I felt a
loathing for public exertions. From habit, I had almost identified office
with the memorable men whom I had seen governing so long; and the new
faces, the new declamation, and the new principles, which the ministerial
change brought before me nightly, startled my feelings even less as new
than as incongruous. I admitted the ability, the occasional intelligence,
and perhaps even the patriotism of the cabinet; but in those reveries,
(the natural refuge from a long debate,) memory so often peopled the
Treasury Bench with the forms of Pitt and his distinguished coadjutors,
and so completely filled my ear with his sonorous periods and high-toned
principles, that when I was roused to the reality, I felt as those who
have seen some great performer in one of Shakspeare's characters, until no
exc