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stood, their views of his character. While, therefore, we are compelled to think that he has often lowered himself in these memoirs, by the complaints alluded to, we cannot but feel, at the same time, that it would be savage and wicked to magnify such weaknesses into something hateful and detestable, and to make them form the most prominent features in the picture of his character. Alas for poor human nature, if it is to be thus judged! It is not fitting that we should be blind to the failings of great men; but we ought not to look on them through a magnifying-glass,—nor yet should the eye rest long upon them, when there is close at hand so much of a far different complexion, that may be judged of with approbation, reverence, and love.

It is from such feelings and views that we are little disposed to occupy our pages with discussion of the Bishop's political principles and conduct. He was, we most confidently believe, a sincere lover of freedom, and had at heart a sound regard for the glory and religion of his country. But, on the subject of politics, his opinions were far from being so liberal, as, in the simplicity of his nature, he often vaunted them to be; and we fear that a searching eye, and an intolerant spirit, could point out not a few instances in which, with all his much-boasted independence, consistency, and liberality, he did, like a mere ordinary politician, sacrifice, or shew a willingness to sacrifice, those rare and extraordinary virtues. We now speak chiefly to them who have read his book; and we are sure, that to them who have not, it would afford no pleasure to see presented before them in detail the melancholy proofs of the unconsciousness of human frailty. Suffice it to say, that the Bishop of Landaff, a Whig, and a man of first-rate talents, absolutely held, as an article of his faith, that it was morally and physically impossible that a Tory could be a man either of virtue or capacity. Liberal as he was, perhaps even to a fault, in his religious opinions, his nature seemed to undergo a change when it came into contact with party politics; and were he to be tried by his words, we could not but often esteem him, in these, a senseless and intolerant bigot. A Unitarian, a Socinian, nay, a Deist, might, if moral and intelligent men, meet with his respect; but a Tory! stood beyond the pale of his liberality, and a difference of faith in politics was sufficient ground for his sentence of excommunication. Yet most true it is, that he himself, at more than one period of his life, exhibited no disinclination to adopt this very heresy; and that he did not consider it unworthy of him, who held a loftier and purer faith, to solicit ferment from a minister whom he seems personally to have disliked, and whose measures he pretended almost uniformly to condemn. Nay, farther—his enlightened and liberal Whig—this hater of all corruption—this stern and inflexible patriot, who held that all private predilections ought ever to be sacrificed to the duty which a great statesman owes to his country,—he complains, frets, and waxes wroth at Mr Pitt for not elevating him to a higher See, on account of certain services said to have been performed for him during his election at Cambridge! We are nowhere told what those mighty services were; but it matters not; and nothing, surely, could be less dignified, less patriotic, less allied to those virtues which are said to be comprehended within that somewhat indefinite term, Whiggism, than boldly to accuse, before posterity, the Prime Minister of a free country, of having forgotten private benefits in the elevation of public men. The Bishop somewhere talks of the little and revengeful nature of Mr Pitt; words without meaning, and disgraceful only to him from whose paltry passions they sprung. His whole conduct, indeed, towards that great man, is either unintelligible, or to be understood only upon grounds little creditable to the Bishop. He seems to have felt at times his immeasurable inferiority of talent to the Son of Chatham, and an unwilling admiration of his unsullied integrity and lofty ambition. He was not unwilling—he was even desirous of accepting favours at his hands; he sometimes paid court to him, with a flattery as inefficient as the abuse with which he has endeavoured to blacken his imperishable name. But he seems soon to have felt that there were small hopes of promotion from that quarter; and he at last came to regard Mr Pitt with a feeling, rather oddly compounded, of admiration, fear, dislike, anger, and involuntary respect.