been completed by His death, and the intimations were prophetic. When our Lord, therefore, wished to make the Pharisees feel that He knew the evil they were meditating, of rejecting Him, He at once took up the ancient type, and joining it to the parable, exhibited in a strong light the act which the type foreshadowed. Possibly the people did not catch His meaning; but of the Chief Priests and Pharisees it is said, "They perceived that He spake of them."

We purposely avoid entering upon the spiritual meaning of the denunciation which concludes the words of our Saviour, except to notice that beyond doubt it includes this meaning, that as to those who displaced this stone from the position appointed for it by God Himself, and imitated the conduct of the husbandmen who caught and cast out and slew the Son, the stone would fall upon them and grind them to powder.

If the 51st and the 118th Psalms both in fact relate to the same period in David's history, and we take them in connection with the 30th, the parallelisms of which are very striking, we may indeed say (to borrow a classical expression), "What a trilogy."

HISTORICUS.

WILBERFORCE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES:

WILLIAM PITT.

WE cannot bring ourselves to close the review of Wilberforce's Friends without a notice of that eminent person, with whom for many years Wilberforce was closely connected. In truth, there was no one, beyond the circle of his family, for whom Mr. Pitt entertained the regard that he had for Wilberforce. Harry Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, was more connected with him by official relations; Mr. Rose, so long his financial Secretary, was bound to him by close allegiance; Mr. Canning was attached to him as his disciple and ardent admirer; Lord Grenville was for many years his colleague; Mr. Addington, while Speaker, was his intimate friend: but, except Mr. Eliot, his brother-in-law, no one lived with him so intimately as Wilberforce, or enjoyed his entire confidence. The others were his political associates; but Wilberforce was his friend. Nor was that friendship abated by political events, as happened to so many of his associates. Lord Grenville was, in the later part of Pitt's life, estranged from him. During Pitt's retirement, their intimacy became less cordial; and on Pitt's return to office, Lord Grenville was his opponent. The separation between Pitt and Addington is well known. Even Lord Melville, when he started an intrigue to unite the divided sections of the party under a third person as Premier, received from Pitt a reply

of cutting indifference. Recounting the conversation to Wilberforce, Pitt said with a smile, "I had not the curiosity to ask what post I was to hold." But neither office, nor retirement, nor restoration to power, affected the relations between Pitt and Wilberforce. Their intimacy lasted, unbroken, from the time they both entered Parliament till Pitt's premature death. Once only it was endangered by political difference on the French war. But while this difference produced antipathy against Wilberforce in the followers, it did not shake the regards of their chief. He felt it, indeed, keenly-so keenly as to cost him, what was then unprecedented, a night's rest. But the difference soon passed, and the intimacy was restored. To him alone Pitt opened his confidential plans, both of finance and general policy. While Canning, Grenville, and Dundas could not penetrate his thoughts at Walmer, to Wilberforce they were laid open. For a man so self-contained as Pitt, this confidence is singular; for, though he had warm affections, and for his relatives cordial sympathy, to the world at large he showed great reserve. From the world he stood apart; and looking down on it from his solitary eminence, he felt and was alone. But with Wilberforce he was always open as he had been in youth; and we cannot therefore omit William Pitt from the circle of Wilberforce's friends.

It was long the wish of Wilberforce to write Pitt's life. We cannot wonder that the intention was not fulfilled. He was busy in important works till age and infirmity drove him. from Parliament, and through life his disposition was not fitted to a continuous task. Besides, he was too near the period, the incidents too fresh, the actors too near him, the close of the life too tragical. During the conflicts of party, Pitt's character, as was natural, received little justice. His opponents hated him for the transcendent powers which banished them from office, and kept them out of it for twenty years. His associates were busy in concert with him while he lived, still busier when he was gone. They had no leisure from the strife of politics to sit down and retrace the story of their departed chief. But justice has at length succeeded to unfairness. The character of Mr. Pitt is at last known, first through the sketch of a writer of a different party, Lord Macaulay, who employed his genius to clear away the mists of prejudice, and do justice to a reputation much maligned. Now Pitt's biography has been written by Lord Stanhope, who had an hereditary claim to the duty, and who brought to the congenial task his usual accuracy and candour as a historian. But while the public life of Mr. Pitt has thus been written so as to leave nothing to be desired, there remains to us a different taskto describe him as he was in private life, and to sketch, however feebly, his portrait in the gallery of Wilberforce's friends.

man.

It was in the year 1780 that Pitt and Wilberforce entered Parliament and that their intimacy began. They had known each other at Cambridge; but they lived there in different sets, and their acquaintance was slight. When they met in Parliament, their acquaintance was favoured by circumstances. Pitt was then a young and poor barrister; Wilberforce had the command of fortune, and his villa at Wimbledon supplied a place in which Pitt found recreation and rest. For Pitt was fond of the country, and at no time robust. Thus the intimacy arose, to which, in the outset of these sketches, we have referred. Those who judged of Mr. Pitt from his manners as a minister, did not truly appreciate the The incident given in Napier's Memoirs presents a truer picture. The distance at which he kept his colleagues (even such colleagues as Lord Castlereagh and Lord Hawkesbury) disappeared within the circle of his family, and gave place to the kindness which showed itself, with the young in buoyant spirits and sportive frolic, with older associates in playful conversation; for of jest and repartee he was a master. This disposition remained even in his later years, when, enfeebled by illness and harassed by cares, he had reasons enough to be morose. But even then the mind unbent itself readily in familiar companionship with the young and the witty. How much more in those brighter days, when fishing with Wilberforce at Wimbledon, or joining him in his pleasant garden, he expanded without restraint in the exuberance of his natural gaiety. In truth, distant as Pitt was in his official manner-and who can wonder, when we know the race of harpies who swarm round a Premier?-and shy before strangers, he was full of jest among the companions of his hours of freedom. None more genial in conversation, none more prompt in repartee, none more gentle of temper or tolerant of difference. In the gladiatorship of wit, none more successful. In that pleasant season, when he used to meet Addington and Dundas, the Duchess of Gordon, and Fergusson of Pitfour, in familiar intimacy, the broad humour of the Scotch laird, and the broad Doric of the Scotch Duchess, called forth all his powers. Then he threw off care, and became once more a boy. "Where have you been this long time, Mr. Pitt?" said the Duchess of Gordon. "Have you been talking as much nonsense as usual?" "At least I have not heard as much, Duchess! "Come, Jekyll," said Pitt, after a passage of arms with that famous wit, in which Pitt had foiled him, in the lobby of the theatre, "here is my carriage. Let me set you down." "No need," was the answer; you have done that already!"

What Pitt was in literature, those, who enjoyed his intimacy, knew. He had studied at Cambridge, under the directions of his celebrated father, who was bent on developing the powers of the remarkable boy. His studies had been interrupted by

the weakness of his health; yet such was his quickness, that he learnt more than most men; and, forgetting nothing, he became so good a scholar, that Greek remained to him through life a familiar language. Lord Grenville used to say that he envied Pitt his classical knowledge more than his political eminence; for, while he himself read Greek daily through life, and Pitt seldom opened a Greek volume, he found him a better scholar than himself. And this fact came out incidentally; for when Lord Harrowby (no mean scholar) was engaged with others in examining a hard passage in Thucydides, and, puzzled by it, they agreed to refer it to Pitt, he translated it without a moment's hesitation, though he had not opened the book for twenty years.

Of his quickness in grasping political subjects it is needless to speak. Adam Smith found him master of the difficult science which he had set forth. The deputations that went to him, whatever was their topic, discovered, from his questions, that he had mastered the subject in hand. His eloquence, always stately, became at times transcendent. His speech on the slave-trade was pronounced by competent judges, by Fox and Grey, Wilberforce and Windham, to have been a marvellous display of eloquence. When he dilated on the future of civilized Africa, his peroration of twenty minutes was sublime like that of a man inspired. His speech on the coalition in 1783, and on the murder of the king of France; his burst of eloquence in following Sheridan on the mutiny of the Nore; his speech against peace in 1800, and for peace in 1801; these have been pointed out by competent judges as unprecedented in their power and effect. Not less remarkable were his financial speeches, those on the French treaty, and on the budgets of successive years; the latter less noted indeed because so frequent, but not less notable for every quality of eloquence. The speech which he delivered when he returned to the House in May, 1803, has been spoken of as electrifying in its power; Fox said of it, that if Demosthenes had been present, he must have admired, and might have envied. But the effect on this occasion was partly due to the anxiety felt to ascertain his opinions, and the eager desire of two hundred new Members to hear the famous orator, whom they had not yet heard. His speeches, which succeeded this, were probably more eloquent; those especially in which he thundered against Addington's policy, when assailing his government in the spring of 1804.

But what we are more concerned with now, is the character of the man. Nothing can be more beautiful than his attention to his mother; in the pressure of business, through his struggle with the Coalition, in the contests on the Regency, in the formidable troubles at the end of the last century, she was never forgotten. Constant letters to her or her companion marked his affection. His love for his sister

His sorrow, at the

was strong; his grief at her death intense. death of his brother-in-law Eliot, exceeded (Rose said) all he had ever witnessed. His temporary estrangement from Wilberforce cut him to the quick. Affections so warm were accompanied by a life of blameless purity. In an age and amongst statesmen remarkable for viciousness, his life was pure. Gambling was then a passion. It was the usual diversion at the Clubs. Fox contracted by gambling enormous debts. Gambling was sanctioned by princely examples. The young Pitt touched cards, tasted their allurement, and threw them down. He was capable of strong affection; his attachment to Miss Eden was sincere; but in the licentious habits of the age he was never involved. It was this rare virtue that, contrasted with the habits of his great rival, led to his popularity in his struggle with the Coalition, and to the confidence felt in him through life both by the king and the people.

Viewing him dispassionately, we notice other features. The habits of political men in those days offered a contrast with our own. The differences between parties were wide; the language, which opponents allowed themselves to use of their rivals, was scandalously strong. Fox abused Lord North with scurrilous vehemence; when Mr. Addington was Premier, his letters characterize that amiable statesman as a low, vile fellow. For Pitt, who had every fault a man can have in the eyes of his opponents-young, upright, able, likely to keep them all their lives out of office-there was no invective which was held to be too strong. Turn to Pitt's language, and you find it a singular contrast. In his private letters, as in his confidential conversation, hardly a bitter word escapes him. The single remark applied to Lord Grenville, who had cruelly disappointed him, that he would make that proud man "feel that he could do without him," shows emotion, but also his self-command. He sought high office; he liked it; he felt he could be useful in it. He was conscious of the shortcomings of Addington's government; but he proved, by his long retirement, and his. refusal to promote or tolerate intrigues, that he would not purchase office by a departure from his own lofty self-denial. He hit his adversaries hard in debate; but, after the asperities of the debate were over, he retained no rancour. He felt none against Fox; he sought to unite with him under Lord Shelburne; ho would have acted with him in the same Cabinet in 1804, He wrote Fox's name on his own list as Foreign Secretary, when that post was only second to the Premiership. No doubt he demanded the Premiership as his right; and with reason, for he had no equal in finance, in council, and in debate; and the consenting voice of England proved it by calling him to the helm in 1804.