left the debt to be discharged by posterity.

The chancellor was not without his faults. His scorn was too palpable. He
despised too many, and the many too much. His haughtiness converted the
perishable and purchasable malice of party, into the "study of revenge,
immortal hate." When he struck down an opponent in the fair strife of
Parliament, his scorn was like poison in the wound, and the blow was never
forgotten but in the grave. But as a statesman, his chief and
unconquerable misfortune was the narrowness of his scene of action. He was
but the ruler of a province, while his faculties were fitted for the
administration of an empire. His errors were the offspring of his
position. He was the strong man within four walls; by the very length of
his stride striking against them at every step, and bruised by the very
energy of his impulse against his hopeless boundaries.

At length a time of desperate trial arose. The Rebellion of 1798 burst
out. He had foreseen it. But the men of the Castle, lolling on their
couches, would not believe in its possibility. The men of the populace,
stirring up the rabble with the point of the dagger, derided him as a
libeller of the people; and even the Government of England--too anxiously
engaged in watching the movements of the French legions from the heights
of Dover, to have time for a glance at disturbers behind the Irish
Channel--for a time left him to his fate. But he was equal to the
emergency. He had been scoffingly called "the Cassandra of the
aristocracy;" but he had neither the fortunes nor the failures of a
Cassandra; he had not forfeited his virtues for his gift, and his prophecy
was too soon and too terribly realized to be disbelieved. Of such times it
is painful to speak, but of the men by whom such times are met, it is
dishonourable not to speak with homage. Almost abandoned by authority,
assailed almost by a nation, with the ground shaking under his feet, and
the whole frame of Government quivering at every roar of the multitude in
arms, he stood the shock, and finally restored the country. Language like
this has not been the first tribute to the memory of this ardent,
vigorous, and unshrinking statesman. But its chief use, and the noblest
use of all tributes to the tomb of civil heroism, is, to tell others by
what strength of principle, and by what perseverance of purpose, the
rescue of nations is alone to be achieved. In the midst of alarm excited
by the extent of the re