steinkirks and sword knots, dangling after
actresses, or betting on fighting cocks, he was in pursuit of the
Mentz editions of Tully's Offices, of the Parmesan Statius, and of
the inestimable Virgin of Zarottus. [1] It was natural that high
expectations should be formed of the virtue and wisdom of a youth whose
very luxury and prodigality had a grave and erudite air, and that even
discerning men should be unable to detect the vices which were hidden
under that show of premature sobriety.

Spencer was a Whig, unhappily for the Whig party, which, before the
unhonoured and unlamented close of his life, was more than once brought
to the verge of ruin by his violent temper and his crooked politics. His
Whiggism differed widely from that of his father. It was not a languid,
speculative, preference of one theory of government to another, but a
fierce and dominant passion. Unfortunately, though an ardent, it was at
the same time a corrupt and degenerate, Whiggism; a Whiggism so narrow
and oligarchical as to be little, if at all, preferable to the worst
forms of Toryism. The young lord's imagination had been fascinated by
those swelling sentiments of liberty which abound in the Latin poets
and orators; and he, like those poets and orators, meant by liberty
something very different from the only liberty which is of importance to
the happiness of mankind. Like them, he could see no danger to liberty
except from kings. A commonwealth, oppressed and pillaged by such men
as Opimius and Verres, was free, because it had no king. A member of the
Grand Council of Venice, who passed his whole life under tutelage and
in fear, who could not travel where he chose, or visit whom he chose,
or invest his property as he chose, whose path was beset with spies,
who saw at the corners of the streets the mouth of bronze gaping for
anonymous accusations against him, and whom the Inquisitors of State
could, at any moment, and for any or no reason, arrest, torture, fling
into the Grand Canal, was free, because he had no king. To curtail,
for the benefit of a small privileged class, prerogatives which the
Sovereign possesses and ought to possess for the benefit of the whole
nation, was the object on which Spencer's heart was set. During many
years he was restrained by older and wiser men; and it was not till
those whom he had early been accustomed to respect had passed away, and
till he was himself at the head of affairs, that he openly attempted to
ob