mind. _If you are cast down_ who is to hold up? In a few
days I hope to meet you in good health and good heart;
and, in the mean time, remain your faithful and
affectionate.

(Nov. 1783) "J. LEE."

On the opening of the session, great popular feeling was excited against
the coalition. The furious invectives which Fox had been for some years
heaping on Lord North's luckless head, were now flung upon his own.
Traitor, liar, swindler, were "house-hold words;" and Fox, with all his
ability, and that happiest of all ability for the crisis, great
constitutional good-humour, found himself suddenly overwhelmed. In the
House he was still powerful; but, outside its doors, he was utterly
helpless. Like the witches recorded in some of the German romances,
though within the walls chosen for their orgies they could summon
spirits, and revel in their incantations uncontrolled, yet, on passing
the threshold, they turned into hags again. But as if to make the
coalition still more odious in the popular eye, there was presented the
most resistless contrast to both its chiefs in the young and
extraordinary leader of the Opposition, Pitt; with the ardour of youth
and the wisdom of years, at once master of the most vigorous logic, and
the loftiest appeal to the public feelings; honoured as the son of
Chatham; and yet, even at that immature period of his life and his
career, still more honoured for the promise of talents and services
which were to throw even his own eminent predecessor into the shade.

But North, apart from the cabinet, was always delightful. He had more of
easy pleasantry in his manner than any favourite of English
recollection. Lord Eldon, in his anecdotal book thus tells--"Lord North
had gone, at the Prince of Wales's desire, to reconcile the King to him.
He succeeded, and called on the Prince to inform him of his success.
'Now,' said he, 'let me beseech your Royal Highness in future to conduct
yourself differently. Do so, on all accounts; do so, for your own sake;
do so, for your excellent father's sake; do so, for the sake of that
good-natured man, Lord North; and don't oblige him again to tell the
King, your good father, so many lies, as he has been obliged to tell him
this morning'"

Lord Eldon's personal narrative is a sort of comment on the whole public
history of his time. Why did not such a man write his own "Life and
Times?" Intelligent as are the Volumes b