llustrious statesmen and men of genius, make the period, when Pitt
managed the helm of state, full of interest and grandeur.

[Sidenote: Early Life of Pitt.]

William Pitt, second son of the first Earl of Chatham, entered public
life at a very early age, and was prime minister of George III. at a
period of life when most men are just completing a professional
education. He was a person of extraordinary precocity. He entered
Cambridge University at the age of fourteen, and at that period was a
finished Greek and Latin scholar. He spent no idle hours, and evinced
but little pleasure in the sports common to boys of his age. He was as
successful in mastering mathematics as the languages, and was an
admirer of the profoundest treatises of intellectual philosophy. He
excelled in every branch of knowledge to which he directed his
attention. In 1780, at the age of twenty-one, he became a resident in
Lincoln's Inn, entered parliament the succeeding spring, and
immediately assumed an active part. His first speech astonished all
who heard him, notwithstanding that great expectations were formed
concerning his power. He was made chancellor of the exchequer at the
age of twenty-three, and at a time when it required a finance minister
of the greatest experience. Nor would the Commons have acquiesced in
his appointment to so important a post, in so critical a state of the
nation, had not great confidence existed as to his abilities. From his
first appearance, Pitt took a commanding position as a parliamentary
orator; nor, as such, has he ever, on the whole, been surpassed. His
peculiar talents fitted him for the highest post in the gift of his
sovereign, and the circumstances of the times, in addition, were such
as were calculated to develop all the energies and talents he
possessed. He was not the most commanding intellect of his age, but he
was, unquestionably, the greatest orator that England has produced,
and exercised, to the close of his career, in spite of the opposition
of such men as Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, an overwhelming parliamentary
influence. He was a prodigy; as great in debate, and in executive
power, as Napoleon was in the field, Bacon in philosophy, or
Shakspeare in poetry. It is difficult for us to conceive how a young
man, just emerging from college halls, should be able to answer the
difficult questions of veteran statesmen who had been all their lives
opposing the principles he advanced, and to assume at once