Here then, my lord, you stood pledged to your country.  What were we not to expect from the first patriot of modern story?  Your lordship will readily imagine that our expectations were boundless and indefinite.  “Glorious and immortal man!” we cried, “go on in this untrodden path.  We will no longer look with drooping and cheerless anxiety upon the misfortunes of Britain, we have a resource for them all.  The patriot of Stowe is capable of every thing.  He does not resemble the vulgar herd of mortals, he does not form his conduct upon precedent, nor defend it by example.  Virtue of the first impression was never yet separated from genius.  We will trust then in the expedients of his inexhaustible mind.  We will look up to him as our assured deliverer.—­We are well acquainted with the wealth of the proprietor of Stowe.  Thanks, eternal thanks to heaven, who has bestowed it with so liberal a hand!  We consider it as a deposit for the public good.  We count his acres, and we calculate his income, for we know that it is, in the best sense of the word, our own.”

My lord, these are the prejudices, which Englishmen have formed in your favour.  They cannot refuse to trust a man, descended from so illustrious progenitors.  They cannot suspect any thing dark and dishonourable in the generous donor of 2700_l_. a year.  Let then the commentators against whom I am providing, abjure the name of Briton, or let them pay the veneration that is due to a character, in every view of the subject, so exalted as that of your lordship.

I have the honour to be,

MY LORD,

with the most unfeigned respect,

your lordship’s

most obedient,

most devoted servant.

INSTRUCTIONS

TO A

STATESMAN.

MY LORD,

I have long considered as the greatest happiness of my life, the having so promising a pupil as your lordship.  Though your abilities are certainly of the very first impression, they are not however of that vague and indefinite species, which we often meet with in persons, who, if providence had so pleased, would have figured with equal adroitness in the character of a shoe-black or a link-boy, as they now flatter themselves they can do in that of a minister of state.  You, my lord, were born with that accomplishment of secrecy and retentiveness, which the archbishop of Cambray represents Telemachus as having possessed in so high a degree in consequence of the mode of his education.  You were always distinguished by that art, never to be sufficiently valued, of talking much and saying nothing.  I cannot recollect, and yet my memory is as great, as my opportunity for observation has been considerable, that your lordship, when a boy, ever betrayed a single fact that chanced to fall within your notice, unless indeed it had some tendency to