e of truth and freedom, which rendered him superior to
the accidents that control the fate of ordinary men.

"But this is not all--I feel that to him, under God, I am, at this
moment, indebted for the enjoyment of the rights which I possess
as a subject of these free countries; to him I owe the blessings
of civil and religious liberty, and I venerate his memory with a
fervour of devotion suited to his illustrious qualities and to
his godlike acts."

This is not so magnificent a panegyric as that of Grattan in his written
tribute to Chatham, but, enhanced by the gesture and voice of the
great orator, it was reputed to have left a deep impression upon all who
heard it.

But few speeches, however eloquent, survive, while the printed work of
the writer may long endure; but to the orator is given what the writer
never experiences--the fierce enjoyment, amounting almost to rapture,
of holding an audience entranced under the spell of the spoken
cadences; and English, Antony, has a splendour all its own when
uttered by a master of its august music.

Your loving old
G.P.

18

MY DEAR ANTONY,

To-day I will write about Robert Southey, and, as he and Coleridge
married sisters, you may claim a distant relationship with him. His
personal character was beautiful and unselfish, and his dwelling at
Keswick was the home that for years sheltered Coleridge's children.

With hardly an exception the poets of England have had an easy and
royal mastery of prose; and in the case of Robert Southey there are
some, and they are not the worst critics, who anticipate that his prose
will long outlast his poetry in the Temple of Fame.

We may suppose that to a man whose whole private life was stainlessly
dedicated to a noble rectitude of conduct, and whose every act was
sternly subjected to the judgment of an unbending conscience, some
circumstances of the private life of Nelson must have been distasteful
and open to censure; but no such reservations dimmed the splendour
of Southey's tribute to the public hero who gave his life in the act of
establishing, beyond reach of dispute or cavil, the throne of England as
Queen of the Sea.

"The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a
public calamity; men started at the intelligence, and turned pale,
as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of
our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, wa