ul Plympton said, "it was indeed unequalled."

That's what I call handsome. Manly!

Fair!

Disinterested, by Jove!

And Canning died; his gallant soul left the field of politics broken
into a thousand petty parties. From the time of his death the two
great hosts into which the struggles for power were divided have never
recovered their former strength. The demarcation that his policy had
tended to efface was afterwards more weakened by his successor, the Duke
of Wellington; and had it not been for the question of Reform that again
drew the stragglers on either side around one determined banner, it
is likely that Whig and Tory would, among the many minute sections and
shades of difference, have lost for ever the two broad distinguishing
colours of their separate factions.

Mr. Canning died; and now, with redoubled energy, went on the wheels of
political intrigue. The rapid succession of short-lived administrations,
the leisure of a prolonged peace, the pressure of debt, the writings
of philosophers, all, insensibly, yet quickly, excited that popular
temperament which found its crisis in the Reform Bill.

CHAPTER LV.

THE DEATH OF GEORGE IV.--THE POLITICAL SITUATION OF PARTIES, AND OF LADY
ERPINGHAM.

The death of George the Fourth was the birth of a new era. During the
later years of that monarch a silent spirit had been gathering over the
land, which had crept even to the very walls of his seclusion. It cannot
be denied that the various expenses of his reign,--no longer consecrated
by the youthful graces of the prince, no longer disguised beneath
the military triumphs of the people,--had contributed far more than
theoretical speculations to the desire of political change. The shortest
road to liberty lies through attenuated pockets!

Constance was much at Windsor during the king's last illness, one of
the saddest periods that ever passed within the walls of a palace. The
memorialists of the reign of the magnificent Louis XIV. will best convey
to the reader a notion of the last days of George the Fourth. For, like
that great king, he was the representation in himself of a particular
period, and he preserved much of the habits of (and much too of the
personal interest attached to) his youth, through the dreary decline of
age. It was melancholy to see one who had played, not only so exalted,
but so gallant a part, breathing his life away; nor was the gloom
diminished by the many glimpses of a fine original