utility of this class of
_sentimental biography_. It is the Life of Robert Price, a Welsh lawyer,
and an ancestor of the gentleman whose ingenuity, in our days, has
refined the principles of the Picturesque in Art. This Life is announced
as "printed by the appointment of the family;" but it must not be
considered merely as a tribute of private affection; and how we are at
this day interested in the actions of a Welsh lawyer in the reign of
William the Third, whose name has probably never been consigned to the
page of history, remains to be told.

Robert Price, after having served Charles the Second, lived latterly in
the eventful times of William the Third--he was probably of Tory
principles, for on the arrival of the Dutch prince he was removed from
the attorney-generalship of Glamorgan. The new monarch has been accused
of favouritism, and of an eagerness in showering exorbitant grants on
some of his foreigners, which soon raised a formidable opposition in the
jealous spirit of Englishmen. The grand favourite, William Bentinck,
after being raised to the Earldom of Portland, had a grant bestowed on
him of three lordships in the county of Denbigh. The patriot of his
native country--a title which the Welsh had already conferred on Robert
Price--then rose to assert the rights of his fatherland, and his
speeches are as admirable for their knowledge as their spirit. "The
submitting of 1500 freeholders to the will of a Dutch lord was," as he
sarcastically declared, "putting them in a worse posture than their
former estate, when under William the Conqueror and his Norman lords.
England must not be tributary to strangers--we must, like patriots,
stand by our country--otherwise, when God shall send us a Prince of
Wales, he may have such a present of a crown made him as a Pope did to
King John, who was surnamed _Sans-terre_, and was by his father made
Lord of Ireland, which grant was confirmed by the Pope, who sent him a
crown of peacocks' feathers, in derogation of his power, and the poverty
of his country." Robert Price asserted that the king could not, by the
Bill of Rights, alien or give away the inheritance of a Prince of Wales
without the consent of parliament. He concluded a copious and patriotic
speech, by proposing that an address be presented to the king, to put an
immediate stop to the grant now passing to the Earl of Portland for the
lordships, &c.

This speech produced such an effect, that the address was carried
u