66 would be an infallible cure for all disorders of the constitution. To the Radicals he gave no quarter, for to them he attributed the passing of those acts which circunscribed the field of his operations, excluding him from his usual sources of gain. To the Spenceans, and their system, he was an avowed and irreconcileable enemy; and he would sieze every opportunity of uniting them with the other reformers, and making both the subjects of his sarcastic and keen observations. At the very sight or mention of the Spencean he would prepare himself for battle-as doth the fretful porcupine: he would become animated, fiery, and enthusiastic; and it was evident then to all that he entered into the subject, con amore, and spoke from the integ ty and sincerity of his heart. Then he shone supreme over his compeers, an archangel still though fallen." He could, whenever he pleased, sometimes to show his powerful skill and talent, and sometimes to conceal his ignorance, involve our thoughts in a labyrinth of words, words that seemed to embody ideas, and yet were airy nothings, and he himself often lost the clue to his own meaning, and was unable to extricate himself from his perplexity. You know not, perhaps, Mr. Editor, what important subjects are discussed at these assemblies; you are not aware how they will give their opinions and arguments, and finally their decision by a show of hands. They will set at rest for ever the most abstruse and difficult mysteries, doubtful points in jurisprudence, science, morals; theology, civil society, its prejudices, institutions, customs, &c. &c. they will debate with as much solemnity as the councils of Trent and Nice of old, and with as much authority as our modern congresses of sovereigns. In all the mazes of these important subjects our orator was well versed, and he would discourse an hour by Shrewsbury clock very learnedly, and very scientifically upon the policy of our own, and the surrounding nations. He would draw actions and inferences from premises that never had being, and now and then he would astonish the natives by a scrap of Latin, which of course, had formed part of his studies during youth, and you would hear the astonished natives exclaiming: That's Latin,'How I loves to hear learned lingo,' and give their speaker an additional stamp with their feet, in testimony of his extraordinary powers. In a celebrated Forum, which became at one time, even' an object of attention to the Imperial Debating Club, which fixes the destinies of these isles of the ocean, and whose decisions are of greater weight than those I am now dilating upon, our Orator was oft the competitor for praise, and the antagonist in argument of a celebrated Galen, one who is well versed in all disorders of the constitution, and whose exploits have rendered him notorious to the world. Then were feats of skil: then were watchings for the enemy's weak part, where each adversary sought to put in a thrust; there were guards and attacks and parrying, and though both were cunning o' fence,' yet neither exclaimed with the timid Sir Andrew, I'd have seen him damned ere I'd have challenged him. The one degraded the existing authorities, ridiculed their policy, and the whole tenor of their conduct with the most bitter and unsparing sarcasm; a champion for public freedom, for civil and religious liberty, for the rights of man on their most extended scale, for the freedom of the press, and unlimited licence in discussing the measures of our rulers, he eloquently and boldly animadverted on the cause of popular discontents, on the right of Englishmen to enjoy the testament which Alfred the Great bequeathed to them, namely, to be free as that,' chartered libertine' the air, and he would talk boldly of Magna Charta, the martyrdom of Charles, the revolution of James II. and he would appeal to the feelings and passions of his auditors, by calling upon them to fall with the gallant few and brave, fighting against the enslaved and enslav. ing myriads of kings, like as Leonidas fell at the immortal conflict of Thermopyla. His speeches were always rounded, and concluded by those declamatory expressions which are ever sure to have an influence with the unreasoning and passionate multitude, who. are hasty in their resolves, and intemperate in their movements. But our orator had a more arduous task: inasmuch as he had to combat against popular prejudices, as he had to allay the enthusiasm excited by his predecessor, to call back their excursive imaginations and bid them exercise their reason, as he had to view man and society as it is, and has been, and to avoid on the one hand the Utopian dreams of romancers, and of theoretical and book-learned philosophers, and on the other, to combat against those who held man to be created for a few, and who, arguing from his vices only, condemn him as an irrecoverably degraded being. Then was Jack Wright seen in the full meridian of his glory, then, animated by the quantum sufficit of necessary excitement, by the applause that awaited his success, by the triumph he would have over his eloquent opponent, by the prospect of gain, by the full swing that he could give to his real principles, as he termed them, those of a Whig of 1688; then I say, he would fearlessly encounter the hydra of sedition and discontent, he would remind us of the glorious days of Old England, and of good Queen Bess, and would ask, in a triumphant tone, if Englishmen had not always been secured in the full enjoyment of their rights and liberties? He would ask, who fought for the Magna Charta, on which the eloquent gentleman that preceded him had said so much? Who accomplished the Reformation? Who passed the Habeas Corpus Act? Who expelled the Stuarts? Our brave Ancestors, he would exclaim. He would ask, if England had not always been the abode of the free and independent, and whether the very complaints of, and the licence given to his antagonist, did not prove the existence of that liberty, whose loss he so warmly lamented. It showed that our institutions were liberal in their tendency, and equally balanced between the reveries of wild speculators, and those who blindly venerated the ignorance of antiquity with all its absurdities. I have heard, and I have lamented, that a man possessing such wonderful powers, endowed so largely with the divine gift of eloquence, and capable of enlisting our judgment while he raised our passions, the ne plus ultra of an orator-I have lamented, I say, that he should ever so far degrade himself, as to exhibit for a trifling pecuniary consideration, those powers, almost daily to the mere mob, to men, who could scarce comprehend the meaning of his words; to men, as inferior to himself in intellectual acquirements, as he was beneath them in point of personal respectability and esteem in the world. Yet he would unblushingly espouse that side of any argument which his employers chose, now the patriot, now the apologist of tyranny. He would describe in high wrought phrases, the career of that one man, who died an exile on a rock, the victim of his own over-reaching ambition, he would laud him at one time, as the great regenerator of the human race, and the first opportunity, denounce him as an unprincipled and sanguinary tyrant, without one redeeming quality to secure our esteem, or merit him a niche among the great and good of the earth. Necessity first pointed out this irregular and devious path, indolence of habit confirmed it, and thus gradually he became the individual I have been endeavouring to describe. Nevertheless, he retained the manners of a gentleman-one of the old school, and which could not be disguised by poverty or any external appearance. He was incapable of exertion, when exertion was required, but make toil a pleasure, instead of a duty, and he would cheerfully perform the task allotted to him. The latter period of his life was rendered insupportable to him, from his craving for spirituous liquors, which left him a prey to the most horrible imaginings, when the events of his preceding life would rise up in horrible array against him, accusing him of having murdered time, and wasted his days in pursuit of the vainest of all vanities; without honour to himself, or usefulness to society. The dreams of early ambition would then present themselves, he would weep in anguish over his fate, and he would supplicate in the humblest terms, for the means of drowning memory in the Lethean oblivion of intoxication. The last scene which ends this strange eventful being, was 'in that receptacle of the unfortunate-a workhouse, where amongst strangers he expired, forgotten by all; and his name, to those who knew him, serves now, like many other great men, merely to point a moral, or adorn a tale. Fashionable Gallantry. MORALITY OF A MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL. THE OFFICE OF THE JUDGE PROMOTED BY SAUNDER V. THE Dr. Phillimore stated, that in this case the judge's office had been promoted by Mr. Sander, against the Rev. Griffiths Davis, clerk, in a suit, touching and concerning his soul's health, and the lawful correction and reformation of his manners, and more particularly for profaneness, drunkenness, irregularity, and indecorum, in the performance of divine service. Mr. Davis, it appears, is a parson, on whom the Lord hath shed the gentle anointings of the Holy Ghost, to teach men the way they should go, and the things they should avoid Having got possession of the said Holy Ghost, he next got a living, or a cure for sonls; though from what appeared afterwards, he was not very healthy himself. He, however, cured them of their affection for the church, and got into a pickle himself, as the result will disclose. He was charged with getting drunk in four different parishes frequently, and ingulphed such large doses of spirits, that the devil, the best friend of the cloth, took possession of his soul's tabernacle of clay, and caused this same divine, to blaspheme, swear, sing obscene songs, and the like of that, to the great edification of his congregation. Indeed, we find the Prince of the Power of the Air, Old ́Lucifer, him with the hoofs and horns, and forked tail, was quite a crony of this same divine; for on one time, at a vestry meeting, when he had been thanked for removing a pauper, he declared |