a life of excess. In that
hour, I gave him the regrets which belonged to the tie of blood. I
forgot his selfishness, and forgave his alienation. I thought of him
only as the remembered playfellow of my early days; and could say in
heart--"Alas, my brother!" The landscape before me at last sank into
night; and with feelings darkened like it, yet calm and still, I saw
the closing of a day which, painful as was the cause, yet called me to
new duties, gave me a stronger hold upon society, and placed me in
that position which I fully believe to combine more of the true
materials of happiness and honour than any other on earth--that of an
opulent English nobleman.

My brother, dying childless, had devolved the family estates to me,
disburdened of the results of his prodigality; but I had still much to
occupy me, in restoring them from the neglect of years. The life of
the member of government was now to alternate with the life of the
country gentleman; and my transfer to the House of Peers gave me the
comparative leisure, essential to the fulfilment of the large and
liberal duties which belong to the English landholder. To cheer the
country life by rational hospitality; to make friends of those whom
nature had made dependents; to sustain those laws which had turned
England into a garden; and to protect that "bold peasantry," who ought
to be the pride, as they are the strength of their country; to excite
the country gentlemen to the scientific study of the noblest of all
arts, as it was the first, the cultivation of the soil; to maintain
among that gallant race a high sense of their purposes, their powers,
and their position; to invigorate the principles which had made them
the surest defenders of the throne in its day of adversity; and to fix
in their minds by example, more effectual than precept, a solemn
fidelity to the faith and to the freedom of their forefathers:--these
were the objects which I proposed to myself, and which the loftiest
intellect, or the amplest opulence, might be well employed in
attempting to fulfil.

Those objects had been placed before England, from the day when the
light of the Reformation broke through the darkness of a thousand
years, and her brow was first designed for the diadem. By those she
was made the universal protector of Europe, in its day of fugitive
princes and falling thrones; and by those alone will be erected round
her, if she shall remain true to her allegiance, a wall of fire, i