for this work, together with some very interesting letters.  The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and probably the only original now in existence.  The intellectual forehead, the mild penetration of the eye, and the inflexible resolution expressed by the lines of the mouth, sufficiently guarantee the likeness.  We shall probably make some extracts from the letters.  They contain almost all the new information that Lord Nugent has been able to procure respecting the private pursuits of the great man whose memory he worships with an enthusiastic, but not extravagant veneration.

The public life of Hampden is surrounded by no obscurity.  His history, more particularly from the year 1640 to his death, is the history of England.  These Memoirs must be considered as Memoirs of the history of England; and, as such, they well deserve to be attentively perused.  They contain some curious facts which, to us at least, are new, much spirited narrative, many judicious remarks, and much eloquent declamation.

We are not sure that even the want of information respecting the private character of Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as strikingly characteristic as any which the most minute chronicler, O’Meara, Mrs. Thrale, or Boswell himself, ever recorded concerning their heroes.  The celebrated Puritan leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor shunned greatness, who found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of duty.  During more than forty years he was known to his country neighbours as a gentleman of cultivated mind, of high principles, of polished address, happy in his family, and active in the discharge of local duties; and to political men as an honest, industrious, and sensible member of Parliament, not eager to display his talents, stanch to his party and attentive to the interests of his constituents.  A great and terrible crisis came.  A direct attack was made by an arbitrary government on a sacred right of Englishmen, on a right which was the chief security for all their other rights.  The nation looked round for a defender.  Calmly and unostentatiously the plain Buckinghamshire Esquire placed himself at the head of his countrymen, and right before the face and across the path of tyranny.  The times grew darker and more troubled.  Public service, perilous, arduous, delicate, was required, and to every service the intellect and the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal.  He became a debater of the first order, a most dexterous manager of the House of Commons, a negotiator, a soldier.  He governed a fierce and turbulent assembly, abounding in able men, as easily as he had governed his family.  He showed himself as competent to direct a campaign as to conduct the business of the petty sessions.  We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel for a mind so great, and, at the same time, so healthful and so well proportioned, so willingly contracting itself to the humblest duties, so easily expanding