SKETCH OF EARL GREY.†

ALTHOUGH jealous of his rank, and resolved to stand by his order;" the title Earl Grey bears is of very modern creation; for it, he is indebted to the bravery of his father in those wars, the commencement and continuance of which the present Noble Lord uniformly conden ned. In person, he is tall and commanding, his head is partly bald, and his countenance, although severe, is dignified, and intellectual. Age does not seem to have injured his health, or weakened his constitution; his features are placid, but convey a haughty expression; he is remarkbly thin, and his height increases in appearauce the spare habit of his body; his action is not graceful, for he has acquired the practice of hiding one hand beneath his coat-skirt, as if standing near the fire, which is very unbecoming, but at times he extends his arms to their full length, and then his attitude is manly and imp, sing. He frequently, throughout his speech, advances from his seat towards the table, and retires again; but with him this is an easy movement, unlike the awkward motions of Sir Robert Peel, who paces at regular intervals, and with invariable sameness, between the table and the bench, poising one leg upon his toe, lifting up his hand and laying it down again with the regularity of a pendulum. The tones of Lord Grey's voice are clear, but not varied or harmonious, and his utterance is distinct and firm. Of his style of oratory I have next to speak. On this subject the writers of the day are loud in his praise he is by them ranked amongst the most famous of the contemporaries of his youth, and is, as it were by one accord, placed at the head of all living orators.

† From the Dublin Magazine.-No. VII.

I must

At

Earl G.ey is the eldest son of General, afterwares Sir Charles Grey, K. B., who was an aide-decamp to Prince Ferdinand at the battle of Minden, and held a command during the American wat. the breaking out of the war with France, in 1793, he assisted at the reliet et Ostend and Nieuport, and having been appoint commander-in-chiet in the West .dies, succeeded in reducing Martinique, St, Lucie, and Gaudaloupe. In 1891, he was created Baron Grey de Howick, and in 1806, Viscount Howick and Earl Grey. He is descended iron a very ancient family in the north of England Sir Charles was the younger brother of Sir Henry Grey, Bart., who dying without issue is tile and estates descended to the present Earl Grey, who was bred to the bar; but in consequence of the intention of his uncle, ir Henry, to constitute him his heir, he ccased to devote himself to the practice of his prolession; and becoming early in lite a member of the House of Commons for the county of Northumbe land, he rapidly attained eminence as a speaker in Parliament. He is somewhat older than the Duke of Wellington, being about sixty-six, the Duke being sixty-two in May, 1831.

(not, I hope, in a spirit of presumptuous criticism), deny his claims to the character of an orator. It is preposterous in the newspaper-men to say, that he is like Burke, Fox, or Sheridan; he is the direct opposite in every respect to any thing I have ever read or heard, or can conceive of these three immortal senators. WAL any man, save a sycophant, venture to assert, that in any one speech Earl Grey ever delivered in the whole course of his life, he displayed the sublime philosophy of Burke, or breathed thoughts comparable with his glorious conceptions? or can his stately language be assimilated with the burning words which issued from the rich and boundless imaginations of his mighty rivals? A finished and classical education, like that which Earl Grey received, may accomplish much for the public speaker; yet, after all, his brightest efforts are but darkness, when- matched against the light and splendour of heavenborn genius. With less justice still, could the imperious Premier be likened to the bold and impetuous Fox, either as to language or appearance; about him there was nothing cold or studied; he was vigorous, impassioned, and often indiscreet; he expressed himself in hurried sentences, in involuntary exclamations, by vehement gestures, by sudden starts, and bursts of passion. "Every thing, (said a celebrated political writer) showed the agitation of his mind; his tongue faltered, his voice became almost suffocated, and his face was bathed in tears. He was lost in the magnitude of his subject. He reeled and staggered under the load of feeling which oppressed him. He rolled like the sea, beaten by a tempest." We are told that Sheridan sat quaffing old port in Bellamy's, till he ascertained that "Charley's waistcoat was open," and then hastened to participate in the triumph of his friend. When was Earl Grey ever guilty of any of these glorious indiscretions? It would be undignified in him to evince deep emotion, or to suffer storms of passion, which should convulse vulgar souls only, to ruffle the serenity of his aristocratic temper. He was inferior to Fox, in every attribute necessary to the attainment of oratorical renown, or the management of a popular assembly. It would be a mockery to class Earl Grey with Sheridan-for Sheridan was a man of genius and a plebeian. Earl Grey would perish sooner than protest, with uplifted crutches, as did the dying Chatham, against the iniquity of injustice and oppression; but to his son, William Pitt, I should conceive the Noble Earl to bear a strong resemblance. William Pitt was an aristocrat by nature-like him,

Lord Grey, is a logician, addicted to the cold formalities of speech-and like him, stiff, unbending, bitter, and relentless. Whether as a minister of state he will display the same strength of mind, the same confidence in his own resources, and the same tenacity of purpose as Pitt, is yet to be proved. Great political experience, extensive research, and long practice, have made him an exact and argumentative speaker, but to the higher and nobler excellencies of the orator, he never can aspire. I believe Earl Grey to be a maa of frigid disposition, of severe correctness of mind; his very elegance like that of the most finished works of the sculptor, has a certain coldness and hardness in it; while we admire his abilities, we cannot love the man. He seems to have as little of softness in his nature as Brougham, but he is without Brougham's impetuosity of passion, which shows that he has a heart in his bosom, although its gentle emotions are sometimes overmastered by the huge tide of stronger and darker feelings that flow from the same source. His oratory is clear, forcible, and elegant, but it produces neither enthusiasm nor tears; its fountains are the reason and memory. His panegyrics are elaborate and precise, and commonly rounded with a classical quotation for the sake of elegant effect; his phillippics are carefully-wrought compositions of bitter and passionless severity; the arrows of his vengeance seem pointed with icicles. The intrepidity of Lord Grey is greatly mixed up with pride, and his temper is highly aristocratic; even when he is desirous to appear scornful, he seems to disdain the semblance of angry emotion; he knows that anger is a levelling and vulgar passion, while scorn is a feeling proper to a superior. Lord Grey is a friend to the diffusion of knowledge, and a patron of the London University. At the first distribution of prizes within the walls of that infant institution, his Lordship presided, and awarded the honours with stately dignity and aristocratical composure; his exhortation to the prizemen to persevere in their studies with unabated ardour, was eloquent and impressive; and he concluded his address by payiug a compliment to Mr. Brougham, not less beautiful than it was deserved.

A TALE OF THE DARK_MOOR.†

IT was a gray, cold, silent morning when I left the little inn of Inverloich, and pur

† From Leitch Ritchie's Tales and Confessions.

sned my solitary way along the North Road. The road after winding along pleasant hills, arrived at a wide open moor, black as night, except when here and there in the distance a faint glimmer showed some dangerous and mysterious bog reflecting the gray light of the dawn. As the dimness and obscurity gradually cleared from the mighty amphitheatre of mountains, enclosing the moor, my attention was irresistibly drawn towards one petty item in the scene. This was a

rain on the moor, about a stone-cast from the main road, the remains of a hut or cottage, such as the lonely shepherd sometimes builds upon the hills. While I stood gazing at it, an old man driving a cow before him approached the spot. He was going, he said, to the village of Lochmere, and I now learned that about a dozen huts bearing that name, were in the immediate neighbourhood, although concealed from my view by a hill. The old man was of a communicative garrulous disposition, and after some talking of indifferent things, observing me look so intently upon the remains of the ruined hut, he stuck his staff into the side of the dyke by the moor-side, and leaning upon it with both hands, while his cow, with a face of infinite sagacity, stood ruminating by his side, he began a relation, which, with the little knowledge of the southern tongue I have acquired in my journeyings, is here done into modern English.

That cottage, said he, or rather those blackened and scattered remains of what. once was a human dwelling, formed the abiding place on the earth of William and Mary Lindsay. It was said by those who knew something of the matter, that William was a cadet of an honourable family, descended from a Scottish poet, the Lord Lion of Queen Mary's time, and that his relations discarded him for marrying a girl of low degree, and altogether without fortune. Too proud to make submission, and too young and bold to know fear, he removed with his bride to Edinburgh, and tried scheme after scheme for their support. Without a business or profession, however, without baseness to cringe or to flatter, he soon found it no easy task to supply his beloved Mary even with bread.

Unfit to associate with his gay com panions, or supposed to be so, from the homeliness of her manners and ideas, and even from the broad Scotticisms of her speech, the latter, at length, became solitary in the crowded city; and William in scorn and indignation, put the seal to his who might eventually have served him, to fate, by abandoning the society of those share the solitude of his wife.

Malice could not long be passive under the imputation of cruelty and false refinement; and the revenge she took was summary. Stories began to be whispered of William Lindsay's new mode of life; low company, debauchery, vice of every form and hue-except the genteel-were imputed to him. When William at length driven to despair by the destitution in which he saw his poor Mary, bad resolved to sacrifice his pride upon the altar of love, he found it was too late; every door was shut against him, every eye was averted as he passed. Even a young and fair cousin, whom he had loved with the love of a brother to a sister, either in fluenced by religion, or morality, or coldness of heart, or by all three, dissolved without an apparent struggle the intimacy of years. Leaving a bitter curse upon the heartlessness which had sacrificed him to. the malice of those whom she would not. have believed on their oaths on an affair involving the destinies of a ball, William left Edinburgh with his wife, and wandered far into the country.

For no apparent reason, except that here they might lodge at free-cost, (for the winter season had set in, and Mary was far gone in pregnancy) they pitched their tent on that very spot before us, which forms the eastern angle of what is called the Dark Moor. A shed built by some turf-cutters the season before to shelter them from the sun, was a temptation which the houseless, and now moneyless, pair could not withstand. William repaired it in the best manner he was able, and with the black mud of the bog, rendered it almost water tight. This was the work of only one day, and the villagers saw with surprise, and some with dismay, a family settled with the snddeuness of magic on the borders of the Dark Moor. There was a fierce abruptness in the manner both of the man and wife, which offended some and scared others. In pity to their forlorn condition, we would have offered what assistance we could; but our advances were received with coldness, and by degrees, all connection ceased between the village and the hut. A little yard of potatoes and two or three rows of kail seemed to form the materials of their subsistence, assisted, no doubt, by an occasional hare or wild-bird caught in the springes which the turf-gatherers found spread upon the moor, with now and then a few little trouts caught by the hand in the many shallow rivulets with which this district abounds. As for the various small luxuries of life, become necessaries by habit, they never to our knowledge crossed the threshold of the solitary hut.

Tea and sugar, which of late years had become as necessary to the dames of the village as kail or porritch, and which, no doubt, the poor Wife of the Moor (for so was she designated) had been still more accustomed to, were articles utterly unknown; and in short, the cottagers, though careful to support life, appeared to be altogether indifferent as to any thing farther. Life, however, at this rate, that questionable good, for the sake of which they submitted to so much unquestionable evil, did not appear to be easily supported. The incompleteness of the shelter afforded by the hut against the cold and rain, and the damp fogs rising perpetually from the moor, added to their lean diet and imperfect clothing, seemed, in a short time, to take effect upon the health of the hapless pair. The woman was seldom seen out of doors, and the man looked pale and wasted. Then changing in turn, the man would be confined to the cottage, and the woman would be observed dragging heavily about the visible burden of love and nature, of which she had not as yet been delivered.

At last came the February of that awful winter when this country-side was buried for weeks under the snow; and each one being intent on his own preservation, we lost sight of the miserable hut and its tenants altogether. At last the anger of the Lord departed from the land, and when the snow cleared away, we saw Mrs. Lindsay as usual about her affairs on the moor. She appeared to have suffered a paralytic stroke; her body was bent almost double, she halted as she walked, and her face was distorted, and of a ghastly paleness. On her bosom there lay a lovely infant, whose placid features contrasted strangely with the sharp and hag.ard visage of its mother; and we thought of the sufferings that distracted mother must have endured. "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth," saith the Scripture; but bitter-bitter must have been her sorrow, when in the midst of cold, and darkness, and hunger, and weeping, and despair, the voice of her first born smote upon her weary heart.

The husband was not with her. His illness must have sorely increased, we thought, or surely he would now be at her side, to support these tottering steps, and relieve her sometimes of that little burden of love. We saw him not on the next day, although we brought some food and warm clothing to the hut we saw him no more. A mound of fresh earth at the southern gable of the cottage told the story of his fate. He had died in darkness, and perhaps in hunger; and his wife had dug him a grave with her own hands.

From this time the character of the Wife of the Moor appeared to be undergoing a rapid and awful change. She no longer refused the charity sent by the villagers, but snatched it eagerly, and yet thanklessly, from their hands. She went no longer mute and moping about her work; but with songs and wild laughter seemed to mock her misery. It was a fearful thing to hear the voice of that strange mirth, as we passed in the gloaming along the road. It seemed, at times, more the yelling of a fiend than the songs of a human being; and by degrees, the sympathy, which her sufferings had attracted, was changed into fear.

The spring soon came, and the infant shot up like the flowers and branches around him. The summer sun looked upon his beauty, and bestowed a tinge of healthy brown upon a skin which before was whiter than the snow in the midst of which the human blossom had sprung up; another winter came-another spring another summer, and the leaves were beginning to fall, and the winds to howl in the second autuma.

Mrs. Lindsay was at work in the cottage, and the child playing at her feet. This day her sufferings had been particularly severe, and her temper was proportionably affected. On these occasions she had been observed to give way to such fits of rage, as proved that her intellects were in some measure injured by her misfortunes. There was even a certain coarseness in her expressions, approaching to vulgarity; as if the delicacy of her mind had been destroyed by the physical hardships of her situation, or as if she found the language of taste and refinement too tame to express the bitterness of her soul. Such moods of mind were usually chequered by intervals of excessive fondness; and the storm, as suddenly as it arose, would melt away in tears, and blessings, and kisses. The evening of the day I have alluded to, was already darkning the moor, when, with a perversity so often noticed in childhood, the little boy rose up, and insisted upon going out to play. In vain the mother refused; he would return to the charge with fresh importunity; in vain she cursed and stormed -he was neither to be awed nor reasoned with. He interrupted her in her songs, displaced the few articles of miserable furniture which she had been painfully striving to arrange, and at length fairly succeeded in awaking the evil spirit with in her, "Sorrow of my life!" she exclaimed, opening the door, and flinging him tiercely over the threshold-" Gang out, if ye will have it so-gang out in the Ill Nume, and never come in again!" She VOL. VI. 2 S

then returned to her work, and strove to subdue her nature by the labour of her body. The child had not been ont long before the mother began to get uneasy, as she saw the shadows of evening darkening the cottage more and more. She listened, however, and, bearing his voice, was satisfied. When she listened again the child had ceased to prattle; but she said to herself, that the cold air of approaching night would soon drive him in to the fireside. In a little while it began to rain, and she could hear the drops pattering upon the roof. "Now he will come!" She exclaimed joyfully, as she halted to the door: but he did not come. The mother stood watching, for a few minutes, with eye and ear for some signal of his approach: while the rain ceased for a moment, and the voice of the nightwind that had now arisen, died away into a whisper. The momentary stillness of nature was not brokeu by her beloved, and even his footsteps, that she had heard pattering upon the soft ground, were now silent. The next moment the breeze rose again with new strength, the rain dashed in torrents upon the cottage, and the alarmed mother, tearing open the door, rushed forth in search of her child.

It is said, that a lamp was seen that night upon the moor, flitting from bog to bog, till it was lost in distance. I do not know how this may be, for I have myself seen a faint, glimmering spark of light, hopping in marshy ground from one pool to another; but if we are to believe that the appearance was produced by human agency, it is not nreasonable to suppose that the wretched mother returned into the cottage for a light, and pursued the lost one upon the moor. However, there were sounds heard that night in the village, which prevented many an eye from closing. The fancies of some shaped them into human shrieks; and these were syllabled by others into the cry "my bairn— my bairn!" Some of the older inhabitants, starting as the sound fell upon their ear, rose upon their knees and gave themselves up to prayer; but the younger buried their heads under the bed clothes, and awaited with fear and trembling the coming of the dawn.

When the morning at last came, the villagers hastened to the borders of the moor, when they saw the bereft mother sitting upon the ruins of her hut-the frait tenement having been torn down, no doubt, by her own hands in the phrensy of disappointment and despair. She was led into the village deprived of reason, but not of life; for there she still sings her wild songs, sitting on the threshold of a widow's cottage, who is paid by the in

habitants to take care of her, from which, in the day time she ises only to ask the passing traveller if he has seen her child upon the Dark Moor.

ST. HELENA,†

JANUARY 1827.

It was early in the morning when St. Helena was first seen from our decks, and it then seemed merely a dark speck on the horizon, but as we approached, its form became gradually more distinct, and in a few hours we found ourselves rapidly sailing within half a mile of the shore. If it is possible to conceive a steep, abrupt rock, fully eight hundred feet high, rising perpendicularly from the ocean, and offering no possible means of landing, it will give a good idea of that part of St. Helena which is first approached from the south ward. A few fissures in the rock are the only varieties in its uniform surface; not a blade of grass nor a tree can be seen, and its volcanic origin may easily be traced in the different strata of lava which appear to form the island. On every high peak, or point of land, signal-houses and guns had been placed, and after turning round a projecting rock we perceived a succession of batteries mounted with nu merous guns, and bidding defiance to an invader. Indeed, it would be impossible for nature and art combined to form a more complete place of exile than this selected for Napoleon.

Tire little town, however, offered some relief to the aridness of the preceding scenery. It is built in James Valley, a narrow opening between two steep barren hills. The Church, Government-house, and a few verdant trees have a pleasing effect from the anchoring place, which is not far distant from the shore. The roofs of a few other habitations appear up the valley; and on the summit of a hill, a small grove of dwarf firs indicates that vegetation flourishes inland, although none exists on the brink of the ocean. Our stay at St. Helena was not intended to exceed a few hours; but as it would have been the height of barbarism to have passed such a classic spot without seeing Longwood and the tomb of Napoleon, five of our party landed, with strict injunctions from those whom want of taste aud euriosity induced to remain on board,

From the United Service Journal.-No. XXV.

to bring off numerous slips of willow from the tree which droops over the grave.

On landing and entering James Town, we proceeded to the hotel, and in a short time were provided with horses. When on the point of mounting, we were informed by our landlord, that it was necessary we should procure an order for admittance within the railing which he offered to obtain for us. Away he went, and shortly returned with a printed order in the Governor's name, authorising the corporal on guard to allow the bearers to see the tomb and cut slips of the willow. Furnished with this legal order for procuring memorials, we set off on our little steeds, and after passing through the only street in the town, commenced ascending the mountain by a road cut in the side of the hill, and guarded by a parapet.

Leaving the little town far below us in the valley, we arrived at the summit of the hill near a small verdant spot of ground, nourished by a running stream, and perceived the little cottage of Briars, where Napoleon first resided on landing at the island. One low story, apparently containing but few apartments, constituted the mansion; but our time not allowing us to examine the premises, we pursued our journey, and after passing a pretty plantation of dwarf firs, opened a view of the hills and valleys of the west side of the island. The scenery here was really imposing; the ground, broken into abrupt mountains and deep valleys, presented a striking contrast, the latter being brilliant with vegetation where they formed the beds of rivulets, and the former rearing their lofty heads to the clouds, with their surface quite parched and barren. Here and there, where streams gushed from the ocks, stripes of verdure might be seen, and near them or in the valleys, were little formal white houses, with red tiled or slated roofs, brilliant green windows, and their tout ensemble offering a perfect specimen of cockney taste, which seenied quite out of character with the boldness of the scenery, and reminded me forcibly of the little wooden houses I used to buy in toyshops, to amuse myself with in my juvenile days. In the breaks between the mountains, the sea might be seen for a great distance far below us, blending in the distance with the haze, so that no horizon could be distinguished, and in the harbour the shipping appeared the size of mere fishing-boats.

We were here still at some distance from the object of our trip, but at about a mile further on looking down the side of the hill we perceived a little green spot, and a house in the vale below, whither we were directed by a man whom we met;