philanthropy and tramontane enthusiasm.  As a leader or a follower, he makes an odd jumble of interests.  By virtue of religious sympathy, he has brought the Saints over to the side of the abolition of Negro slavery.  This his adversaries think hard and stealing a march upon them.  What have the SAINTS to do with freedom or reform of any kind?—­Mr. Wilberforce’s style of speaking is not quite parliamentary, it is halfway between that and evangelical.  He is altogether a double-entendre: the very tone of his voice is a double-entendre. It winds, and undulates, and glides up and down on texts of Scripture, and scraps from Paley, and trite sophistry, and pathetic appeals to his hearers in a faltering, inprogressive, sidelong way, like those birds of weak wing, that are borne from their strait-forward course

  “By every little breath that under heaven is blown.”

Something of this fluctuating, time-serving principle was visible even in the great question of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.  He was, at one time, half inclined to surrender it into Mr. Pitt’s dilatory hands, and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone from it, and the gaudy colouring of popularity sunk into the sable ground from which it rose!  It was, however, persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion.  Mr. Wilberforce said too little on this occasion of one, compared with whom he was but the frontispiece to that great chapter in the history of the world—­the mask, the varnishing, and painting—­the man that effected it by Herculean labours of body, and equally gigantic labours of mind was Clarkson, the true Apostle of human Redemption on that occasion, and who, it is remarkable, resembles in his person and lineaments more than one of the Apostles in the Cartoons of Raphael.  He deserves to be added to the Twelve![A]

[Footnote A:  After all, the best as well as most amusing comment on the character just described was that made by Sheridan, who being picked up in no very creditable plight by the watch, and asked rather roughly who he was, made answer—­“I am Mr. Wilberforce!” The guardians of the night conducted him home with all the honours due to Grace and Nature.]

* * * * *

MR. SOUTHEY.

Mr. Southey, as we formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye, a falcon glance, a look at once aspiring and dejected—­it was the look that had been impressed upon his face by the events that marked the outset of his life, it was the dawn of Liberty that still tinged his cheek, a smile betwixt hope and sadness that still played upon his quivering lip.  Mr. Southey’s mind is essentially sanguine, even to over-weeningness.  It is prophetic of good; it cordially embraces it; it casts a longing, lingering look after it, even when it is gone for ever.  He cannot bear to give up the thought of