f any
sort or kind. He had the finest game to play in Canada that could
be placed in his hands, for the proceedings here gave him a
legitimate grievance, and would have enabled him to claim double
credit for success, and exemption from any blame or discredit
from failure; but temper, uncontrollable and unreflecting,
hurried him into the irretrievable follies he committed, and he
is now without any alternative but that of renewing the Radical
connexion from which a short time ago he evinced a disposition to
keep aloof, and he has nothing left for it but to accept the post
that is offered him of leading a party which, in its composition,
principles, and objects, is as uncongenial as possible to his
real character and disposition. For it is not a little curious
that this levelling democratic faction, to whom the aristocracy
are an abomination, are not only wild to have a lord for their
leader, but must have that lord who is the especial incarnation
of all those odious qualities which they ascribe most unjustly to
the order of which he is a member: and he who is brimful of pride
and arrogance, and of an overweening sense of his greatness and
his rank, is content to associate with men whose chief
recommendation is the profuseness with which they pander to his
vanity, and to seek personal distinction and power by lending
himself to the promotion of schemes the success of which no man
would more earnestly deprecate than himself. The greatest enigma
is how Durham has ever come to be considered of such importance,
and what is the cause of the sort of reputation he has acquired;
for whatever may be his intrinsic value, he certainly fills a
considerable space, attracts a great share of public attention,
and is a personage of some consequence in the political world. He
is a clever man, can both write and speak well, but he has not
been in the habit of _saying_ much, and he has never _done_
anything whatever. He is known to the world by no specific act,
and he has taken part very rarely and occasionally in the debates
in Parliament. All that is known of his embassy to Russia is,
that he was completely bit by the Emperor Nicholas, and gave up
the question of the 'Vixen;' still, by dint of being perpetually
cried up by a particular party, and by doing well the little he
has occasionally done in public, he has succeeded in making
himself pass for a man of high pretensions and uncommon
endowments, and in the present state of parties h