tinguished him through the whole of his brilliant and honourable career. In domestic life, his lordship's favourite pursuits have always been architecture and the magnificent embellishment of his houses. His palace in Berkeley-Square is esteemed the most elegant and sumptuous in Great Britain: All the cielings are painted by Cypriani, and the collection of paintings and other decorations are by the greatest masters. The furniture alone is estimated to be worth one hundred thousand pounds; and, such is the fondness of the owner for this kind of excellence, that artists of various descriptions are always employed about the premises in making additions and improvements. His library is a chef-d'œuvre. It is one hundred and ten feet in length, and ornamented with the most valuable Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman statues. The cieling is painted by Cypriani from the antiquities found in Herculaneum. The collection of books is worthy of this magnificent apartment and honourable to the taste of the owner. It consists of about ten thousand volumes of the most valuable books, in all languages, which are arranged in a classical and scientific manner. It sons have conceived that a strong general likeness existed between him and the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth; there is, doubtless, more expression and force in the features of the Marquis. He has, for many years, been a martyr to repeated attacks of the gout; but these have not diminished his flow of spirits and his attachment to books and the arts. is most complete, and perhaps unique in the extent of its political collection, and as containing every work which has been published in France and England on the subject of the French revolution. His lordship's first wife was the daughter of the late Earl Granville, by whom he has only one son living, viz. the present Earl of Wycombe, a patriotic member of parliament for the borough of High Wycombe. His second lady was Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, sister to the present Earl of Ossory and the Dowager Lady Holland, mother to the present Lord Holland, by whom he has another son, Lord John Henry Petty, now in the 19th year of his age. This distinguished nobleman possesses the immense fortune accumulated by his great-grandfather, and he has always expended it with princely liberality.* He is a most generous patron of the arts and literature, and many instances might easily be enumerated of his bounties to deserving and distressed men of letters. Few characters in the political walks of life have sustained that consistency of conduct and principle which has marked the life of this illustrious personage; but, as it is the fate of all great men to have powerful rivals and enemies, he has not been exempted from his share of their impotent reproach. His * His rent-roll is said formerly to have been £35,000 per an num. patriotic patriotic conduct during the American war; his necessary peace of 1783; his subsequent submission to a decision of the House of Commons; his manly opposition to a war which has threatened the very existence of the country; his able speeches in parliament, during a period of thirty-eight years; and his munificence in his own elegant pursuits; will become his faithful eulogium when the senseless turbulency and calumny of parties are forgotten. A. D. SIR JOHN PARNELL, EX-CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER IN THIS gentleman, whose late dismission from office has been the subject of conversation in the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland, is the grandson of the late Dean Parnell, author of the Hermit, &c. whose memory is also perpetuated by an excellent Parian marble busto placed in the library of Trinity-College, Dublin. The honour of a baronetage was conferred upon this gentleman's father by his present Majesty November 3d, 1766: the title descended to Sir John about the year 1783. Soon after this gentleman attained the age of manhood, he was returned to serve in the Irish parliament for Queen's county, for for which county he still continues to be one of the sitting members. In the late Earl of Northington's administration, Sir John Parnell was appointed one of the commissioners of Customs and Excise; and, as such offices do not exclude gentlemen from the parliament of the sister-kingdom, Sir John continued to give his assistance to the administration in the Irish senate. For a series of years a great intimacy has existed between Sir John and Mr. Foster, speaker of the Irish House of Commons, whom he is known to have consulted upon every question of great national concern, and to whose exertions he is not a little indebted for his appointment, as that gentleman's successor, in the important office of chancellor of the Exchequer, in the year 1786, under the administration of the late Duke of Rutland. Sir John continued in the industrious discharge of the duties of this station for ten years, under the successive administrations of the Duke of Rutland, Marquis of Buckingham, and Earl Westmorland, with unshaken steadiness. Upon the arrival of Earl Fitzwilliam, in 1795, he appeared to totter in his office; he, however, despised a stubborn consistency, and cheerfully co-operated with Mr. Grattan and the other members of the Opposition, who then came into power. He thus secured his continuance in office during the short-lived administration of that illustrious nobleman, and also during that of Earl Camden, and part of that of the Marquis Marquis Cornwallis; by whom he has, however, been recently dismissed. This gentleman is an instance that perseverance and industry, without brilliancy of talents, will enable persons to rise to the highest offices of the state. There is nothing of superior talent apparent in Sir John Parnell. He certainly possesses a large portion of sound sense, but he is a slow heavy man, with an ungraceful action and an inharmonious loud voice, which, in the senate, frequently rises to discord and harshness. He is quite destitute of brilliant or persuasive eloquence; but, being the official organ, aided by a steady majority, his measures and proposals required but a few prefatory observations, and they were never endangered by the influence of the talents of Opposition. When the important question of an incorporating legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland was introduced into the Irish parliament, Sir John Parnell was disinterestedly against the adoption, or even introduction, of the measure. The result was, that he was dismissed from his office by the Marquis Cornwallis, and a successor appointed in the person of Mr. Corry. He is now nearly fifty years of age, is married, and has several children; his principal countryresidence is at Bathleague, near Maryborough, in Queen's county. Upon the death of a near relation, in the year 1796, he succeeded to one of the most beautiful and highly-cultivated estates in Ireland, called Avon-Dale, in the county of Wick low, |