improvement; and in a sincerity which made no concessions to their vanity, while its delicate and gentle expression endeared him still more to those who were worthy of his friendship. Neither his constitution, nor his habits of reflection, admitted of strong emotions: he scarcely knew anger, or any of the violent passions; and perhaps, in considering the mild stoicism of his character, the self-command which never degenerated into selfishness, we are not mistaken in fancying some resemblance between him and Marcus Aurelius. He would at least, in other times, have surely chosen the philosophy of the Porch; but with all the beneficence and kindliness which only the best disciples of that school seem to have evinced.' Mr. Hallam's discriminating panegyric cannot have a more apposite illustration than the letter addressed to Mr. Horner at the period to which we have alluded:: you 'Edinburgh, 27th March, 1816. 'My dear Horner,-For a long while past I have been anxious to write to you upon a subject on which I cannot enter without some embarrassment. Our views and sentiments upon politics have been growing wider and wider apart for the last two years, and though such differences between friends must be expected in the course of life, and mutually indulged, yet any material error in politics threatens to detract so much from your high character, and so much from the good which your talents and virtuous intentions may produce to the country, that I cannot refrain from telling you I think you are in the wrong, and how I think have come to be so. That you think me equally in the wrong, follows of course; and you are of course amply prepared with a defence against any argument I should offer against the opinions you have entertained respecting the characters, measures, and events of the grand story we have witnessed. Such discussion could only have the effect of calling up your habitual trains of thought, and those warm feelings which they have produced, and which in turn have done so much to produce them. I shall therefore address you in another way, and venture to place my authority in the balance against yours; with all respect for your more extensive and accurate knowledge upon political matters, your closer intercourse with men and things, and your daily and hourly reflections upon them; yet trusting on my side to the calmness of the station from which I am allowed to look on, to my freedom from the keenness of party warfare, and to the constant exercise of a judgment which my friends allow to be tolerably candid on other subjects, and for which, on the present, I can see no source of bias, except what might have disposed me to lean too much towards your side-I will tell you plainly my opinion of the state of your mind, and leave it to any weight that I may have with you to bring that opinion under your serious considera tion in some quiet hour. 'It seems to me, then, that, from your habitual antipathy and active zeal against the members of our present government, and your warm attachment to friends with whom every private, as well as public, feeling has made it almost a religion to agree, your favour and aversion have been extended to every person and event, according to their connexion with, or opposition to, the one party or the other. Thence has arisen the indulgent tenderness towards Buonaparte and his adherents,a tenderness which always increased, not so much, I believe, with the decline of their fortunes, as with the swelling triumph of their enemies: thence the ready suspicion of meanness, treachery, and selfishness in the Allies-the angry censure of every step that did not accord with the most high-minded notions of political morality, and the insensibility to a generosity and rectitude in the great outlines of their conduct, to which the history of the world affords few parallels: thence the asperity against the Bourbon family, whose weakness and bigotry were for ever dwelt upon, while the difficulties of their situation were forgotten, and what was humane and liberal in their policy overlooked: thence the apprehensions of a revival of a superstitious reverence for royalty—while it was not considered that the restoration of the old dynasty was connected with the deliverance of Europe from the threatening evils of a military despotism of the most profligate character-and that with respect to France, the weakness of the executive power favoured the growth of civil liberty at home, while it promised security to her neighbours. The prevalence of such partial views in your mind may in some degree be ascribed to certain noble sentiments which the circumstances of the times made you cherish in early youth, an admiration for talent and energy of character, and the wish to see those only who possess them at the head of affairs, a hatred for the corruptions of superannuated governments, and bright hopes for mankind from their overthrow, an abhorrence of the crafty domineering of priests, and a scorn of the ignorance, the incapacity, and the low vices, so often occurring in the families of princes, when the line has long been seated quietly on the throne. But the main source of bias is the constant society of your party friends in London. I can conceive no situation more seducing to the mind than to be going on among a set of men-most of whom are united in the harmony of friendship and social enjoyment-all extolling the talents and principles of each otherall ardent for the same objects, though each impelled by a various mixture of private and public motives-all anxious to detect, to communicate, and to enlarge upon whatever is to the disadvantage of their adversaries, and to keep out of sight whatever presents itself in their favour-all vieing with each other, not only in every public debate, but at every dinner, and in every morning walk, to magnify the partial views to which each by himself is naturally led. Most men, when long actuated by any keen interest in their private affairs, are liable to bias; how much more must this be the case when a number of minds are re-acting upon each other in the strenuous prosecution of a common cause, when there is the mutual support of each other's authority, no reference to opinion beyond the limits of the party, and the proud notion that the good of the country depends mainly on the practical adoption of their own principles? Look around, among all you have ever known, and name me a man whose judgment you would have said beforehand could remain firm and right under such warping influence. And how seldom in history do we find an active associate of any sect or party retaining a tolerable degree of candour! candour! Such reflections should make you occasionally suspect yourself—as well as those of your party friends on whose understandings and integrity you place the strongest reliance. It was a striking lesson to remark last year and the year before the unprejudiced judgment and language of the Whigs, who were at a distance from the struggle between the parties, when compared with the sentiments of those who were engaged in it; and on the former side of this contrast I am happy to place Jeffrey, J. Murray, Dugald Stewart, Mr. Wilson, Mr. J. Clerk, Lord Minto, and Hallam. Perhaps your consciousness of a high spirit of independence makes you too little on your guard against the influence of those around you. There are many cases in which I could trust to the candour of your judgment; but not so when certain strong feelings are connected with the point in question. Above all, I could not trust you where your affections are involved; for that warmth of heart and steadiness of attachment, which are such charms in your character, must then interfere, and I have observed them to do so. 6 I wish that your party friends were more aware of the light in which their temper and conduct appear to many people, who, with no strong feeling either for or against ministers, are anxious for the best interests of their country and of mankind. Men thus disposed, and with various degrees of intelligence, are, I imagine, pretty numerously scattered throughout the island; and these are the men whose approbation they must be ambitious of, if their motives are pure, and whose support, if they are prudent, they must be eager to gain. During the last two years they would have often found the sentiments of such people at variance with their own. They would have found them sometimes lamenting, and sometimes indignant, to see men who profess themselves patriots and philanthropists steadily turning away from every joyful event and every bright prospect-to dwell only upon the few intermingled occasions of regret, or censure, or despondency-and uttering nought but groans over the fate of Norway, or Spain, or Saxony, or Genoa-while our own country and half the civilised world felt as if breathing when first risen from a bed of imminent death. I wish your friends could have heard in secret the opinions of the impartial upon the justice and expediency of the war last year; I wish they could now hear the expressions I have heard from some who entertain the soundest Whig principles, and lean towards their party-of dread at the idea of any man being in office whose indulgent favour of Napoleon might render it, in however small a degree, more likely that he should escape from his confinement and again throw the world into confusion. Opposition in Parliament is generally conducted upon one very false principle, namely, that the measures of ministers must in every case be so far wrong as to deserve upon the whole very severe reprobation. I will not suppose this principle to be speculatively recognised; but it seems at least to be practically adopted. Now it is plain that where a set of men have the good of the country mainly at heart, and have tolerable capacities for business, though their talents be neither profound nor brilliant, and though their principles lean rather more than is right in favour of the Crown, yet their measures must in all probability be often often as good as circumstances will admit of, and sometimes entitled to praise for unusual prudence or magnanimity. On such occasions justice is, for the most part, denied them altogether by the opposition side of the House; or, if praise is bestowed at all, it is bestowed in feeble terms, and with reservations much insisted on; but what is denied them in Parliament is granted by an impartial public without doors, with proportionate disgust at the bitter and unremitting censures of factious enmity. Upon this point I must add, that I heard it said (by a friend too) that you hurt yourself in the opinion of the public by some want of candour towards the latter part of the last session. 'Do not conceive that I am insensible to the benefits which the country derives from a vigorous opposition. But I am confident that these benefits might be greatly increased, and every interest of the opposition party much advanced, if the temper, which party is sure to generate, were better controlled by those at least whose talents place them at its head; and if their views, freed from the bias of that temper, accorded more with the sentiments of an enlightened and almost neutral part of the nation. Opposition, even when carried on with the spirit of Sir Francis Burdett, is a check to abuses and a safeguard to our liberty; there are few, however, with intelligence superior to that of the mob, who would favour his political objects. Mr. Whitbread's conduct in opposition was of a higher character: a friend of the people, and a firm foe to corruption, he was entitled to great respect; yet there were occasions when I could not have wished to see Mr. Whitbread in office, from the fear of his acting upon those mistaken notions, and with that vehement and perverse spirit which appeared in his attacks upon Government, and which sometimes made him even go beyond the sentiments of his own political friends. There are higher stations in opposition than that of Mr. Whitbread-higher, from a display of more temperate and candid judgment. I would fain see you occupying the highest in this as well as in other respects; and I would fain know that the dignified propriety of language and demeanour which you have so successfully cultivated in the House was founded upon just and moderate views of events, and men, and manners. 'Believe me, my dear Horner, —vol. ii. pp. 319-326. What a lesson may public men of all parties take from these dignified admonitions of this kind, upright man! But a deeper cause for solicitude awaited the personal friends of Mr. Horner. The perplexing symptoms of his fatal malady began to show themselves, assuming some of the appearance of pulmonary consumption, but without the worst signs of that insidious disease. It was thought that a winter in a warm climate might restore him to health and activity. His own kindness of disposition received its reward in the touching interest of all who knew and valued him. Accompanied by his brother, Mr, Leonard Horner, who left left his family in England to fulfill this fraternal office, he fixed himself at Pisa. Sanguine hopes were at first entertained of his complete recovery: his mind never lost its activity; he devoted himself to Italian literature, especially to the study of Dante; he still brooded over designs which would have demanded the longest life and most sustained mental vigour, 'Tu secanda marmora Locas sub ipsum funus, et sepulchri There is something absolutely appalling in the vast plan of intellectual castle-building, drawn out by Mr. Horner within six days of his death: it is given in the Appendix. On the first page was written Designs at Pisa, 2nd February, 1817, under the auspices of opening and returning spring.' Suffice it to say, that, with other things, this scheme comprehends a theory of jurisprudence; a history of his own times, with a full examination of all the great questions which agitated the public mind; and studies of style, which embraced a great part of our best authors. On the 8th of February a sudden seizure took place, and closed his blameless and honourable life. The post-mortem examination, by an eminent Italian physician, showed the wonderful sagacity of Dr. Baillie, whom he had consulted in London. Dr. Baillie, it was said, gave it as his opinion that his disease was one or other of two so rare as to be almost without example in pathological science: it appeared that he had been suffering under a complication of both. The suddenness with which Mr. Horner was carried off at last, and his own utter unconsciousness that his end was approaching, may perhaps account for the silence about that which we trust, though unexpressed, soothed and cheered his last hours-the deep Christian feeling of immortality. Mr. Leonard Horner intimates that the earnest and unobtrusive piety of their mother made a profound impression upon the character of her children. Where there was so much Christianity in the life, so much lofty principle, kindliness of disposition, and the conscientious discharge of every duty, we cannot conceive the want of its pure inward principle: and the character of Mr. Horner, with its sensitive and shrinking repugnance to pretension or display, was exactly that which could consider religion to belong to the secret sanctuary of the heart, to be felt and acted upon rather than spoken. Mr. Leonard Horner has executed his task as biographer, modestly and unaffectedly; and just in time to rescue his brother's memory from that oblivion into which it must have fallen, those dropped off who witnessed or accompanied his career. His speeches, meagrely and badly reported, can convey no satis as factory |