early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the
pious passion with which he attached himself to all my
connections,--with what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in
courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt,
just as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion. I
partook, indeed, of this honor with several of the first and best and
ablest in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with none of them; and I am
sure, that, if, to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total
annihilation of every trace of honor and virtue in it, things had taken
a different turn from what they did. I should have attended him to the
quarter-deck with no less good-will and more pride, though with far
other feelings, than I partook of the general flow of national joy that
attended the justice that was done to his virtue.

Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which loves to diffuse
itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years we live in
retrospect alone; and, wholly unfitted for the society of vigorous life,
we enjoy, the best balm to all wounds, the consolation of friendship, in
those only whom we have lost forever. Feeling the loss of Lord Keppel at
all times, at no time did I feel it so much as on the first day when I
was attacked in the House of Lords.

Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen in its place, and,
with a mild, parental reprehension to his nephew, the Duke of Bedford,
he would have told him that the favor of that gracious prince who had
honored his virtues with the government of the navy of Great Britain,
and with a seat in the hereditary great council of his kingdom, was not
undeservedly shown to the friend of the best portion of his life, and
his faithful companion and counsellor under his rudest trials. He would
have told him, that, to whomever else these reproaches might be
becoming, they were not decorous in his near kindred. He would have told
him, that, when men in that rank lose decorum, they lose everything.

On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel. But the public loss of him in
this awful crisis!--I speak from much knowledge of the person: he never
would have listened to any compromise with the rabble rout of this
_sans-culotterie_ of France. His goodness of heart, his reason, his
taste, his public duty, his principles, his prejudices, would have
repelled him forever from all connection with that horrid medley of
madness, vice, impiety, and