the much more famous Travels in France during 1787, '88, '89, and 1790, in which he gives impressions of an acute observer during the Revolution. He was author also of surveys of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, Hertford, Essex, and Oxford; with reports on waste lands, enclosures, manures, soils, rotation of crops, &c. The French Revolution alarmed Young with respect to its probable effects on the English lower classes, and he wrote several warning treatises and political tracts. Sir John Sinclair-another enthusiastic agriculturist-having prevailed on Pitt to establish a Board of Agriculture, Arthur Young was appointed its secretary (1793), with a salary of £400, and he was indefatigable in his exertions to carry out the views of the association. To the end of his long life, even after he was afflicted with blindness and had become an earnest -even morbid-convert to extreme evangelical views, his attention was given to public interests. He was a correspondent of Priestley and Bentham, the Dukes of Bedford and Grafton, a friend of Dr Burney, and latterly of Wilberforce and his set. Young is deservedly regarded as the greatest English writer on agriculture. than any man he compelled his contemporaries to realise the shameful mismanagement of this great national interest, and induced landlords to carry into farming the same spirit of enterprise as capitalists did into industrial undertakings; and in spite of the lamentable failure of his own attempts at practical farming, it was largely his doing that agriculture was seen to depend on science and insight rather than on tradition. His Travels in France from the first took rank as a literary classic and a first-hand authority on the state of France at the time of the Revolution. He had his limitations and made many mistakes-thus he blamed the Government indirectly for all the ills of the country. But his acute observation, vivacious description, and sympathetic comment are as charming as they are illuminative. Of the Travels in France the second part only deals with agriculture in specific detail. Young's works were not merely translated into French, but into Russian and German, and exercised a wide influence in all three tongues. For his pithy, lively, direct English style Young has been compared with Cobbett.

The Old Régime.

More

The 29th [Aug. 1787]. To Barbesieux, situated in a beautiful country, finely diversified and wooded; the marquisate of which, with the château, belongs to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, whom we met here; he inherits this estate from the famous Louvois, the minister of Louis XIV. In this thirty-seven miles of country, lying between the great rivers Garonne, Dordonne, and Charente, and consequently in one of the best parts of France for markets, the quantity of waste land is surprising; it is the predominant feature the whole way. Much of these wastes belonged to the Prince de Soubise, who would not sell any part of them. Thus it is whenever

you stumble on a grand seigneur, even one that was worth millions, you are sure to find his property desert. The Duke of Bouillon's and this prince's are two of the greatest properties in France; and all the signs I have yet seen of their greatness are wastes, landes, deserts, fern, ling. Go to their residence, wherever it may be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boars, and wolves. Oh! if I was the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip again. We supped with the Duke de la Rochefoucauld; the provincial assembly of Saintonge is soon to meet, and this nobleman, being the president, is waiting for their assembling.

Paris in 1787.

The 25th [Oct]. This great city appears to be in many respects the most ineligible and inconvenient for the residence of a person of small fortune of any that I have seen, and vastly inferior to London. The streets are very narrow, and many of them crowded, nine-tenths dirty, and all without foot-pavements. Walking, which in London is so pleasant and so clean that ladies do it every day, is here a toil and fatigue to a man, and an impossibility to a well-dressed woman. The coaches are numerous, and, what are much worse, there are an infinity of one-horse cabriolets, which are driven by young men of fashion and their imitators, alike fools, with such rapidity as to be real nuisances, and render the streets exceedingly dangerous, without an incessant caution. I saw a poor child run over and probably killed, and have been myself many times blackened with the mud of the kennels. This beggarly practice, of driving a one-horse booby hutch about the streets of a great capital, flows either from poverty or a wretched and despicable œconomy; nor is it possible to speak of it with too much severity. If young noblemen at London were to drive their chaises in streets without footways as their brethren do at Paris, they would speedily and justly get very well threshed or rolled in the kennel. This circumstance renders Paris an ineligible residence for persons, particularly families, that cannot afford to keep a coach; a convenience which is as dear as at London. The fiacres, hackney-coaches, are much worse than at that city; and chairs there are none, for they would be driven down in the streets. To this circumstance also it is owing that all persons of small or moderate fortune are forced to dress in black, with black stockings; the dusky hue of this in company is not so disagreeable a circumstance as being too great a distinction; too clear a line drawn in company between a man that has a good fortune and another that has not. With the pride, arrogance, and ill-temper of English wealth this could not be borne; but the prevailing good humour of the French eases all such untoward circumstances. Lodgings are not half so good as at London, yet considerably dearer. If you do not hire a whole suite of rooms at an hotel, you must probably mount three, four, or five pair of stairs, and in general have nothing but a bed-chamber. After the horrid fatigue of the streets, such an elevation is a delectable circumstance. You must search with trouble before you will be lodged in a private family, as gentlemen usually are at London, and pay a higher price. Servants' wages are about the same as at that city. It is to be regretted that Paris should have these disadvantages, for in other respects I take it to be a most eligible residence for such as prefer

a great city. The society for a man of letters, or who has any scientific pursuit, cannot be exceeded. The intercourse between such men and the great, which, if it is not upon an equal footing, ought never to exist at all, is respectable. Persons of the highest rank pay an attention to science and literature, and emulate the character they confer. I should pity the man who expected, without other advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a brilliant circle at London because he was a Fellow of the Royal Society. But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris; he is sure of a good reception everywhere. Perhaps this contrast depends in a great measure on the difference of the governments of the two countries. Politics are too much attended to in England to allow a due respect to be paid to anything else; and should the French establish a freer government, academicians will not be held in such estimation, when rivalled in the public esteem by the orators who hold forth liberty and property in a free parliament.

A French Family Party.

The 27th [Sept. 1788]. Among my letters, one to Mons. de la Livoniere, perpetual secretary of the Society of Agriculture here. I found he was at his country-seat, two leagues off at Mignianne. On my arrival at his seat, he was sitting down to dinner with his family; not being past twelve, I thought to have escaped this awkwardness; but both himself and madame prevented all embarrassment by very unaffectedly desiring me to partake with them, and making not the least derangement either in table or looks, placed me at once at my ease, to an indifferent dinner, garnished with so much ease and cheerfulness that I found it a repast more to my taste than the most splendid tables could afford. An English family in the country, similar in situation, taken unawares in the same way, would receive you with an unquiet hospitality and an anxious politeness; and after waiting for a hurryscurry derangement of cloth, table, plates, sideboard, pot and spit, would give you perhaps so good a dinner that none of the family, between anxiety and fatigue, could supply one word of conversation, and you would depart under cordial wishes that you might never return. This folly, so common in England, is never met with in France: the French are quiet in their houses, and do things without effort.-Mons. Livoniere conversed with me much on the plan of my travels, which he commended greatly, but thought it very extraordinary that neither Government, nor the Academy of Sciences, nor the Academy of Agriculture, should at least be at the expense of my journey. This idea is purely French; they have no notion of private people going out of their way for the public good, without being paid by the public; nor could he well comprehend me when I told him that everything is well done in England, except what is done with public money. I was greatly concerned to find that he could give me no intelligence concerning the residence of the late Marquis de Tourbilly, as it would be a provoking circumstance to pass all through the province without finding his house, and afterward hear perhaps that I had been ignorantly within a few miles of it. In the evening returned to Angers.-20 miles.

See Young's French tour, edited, with memoir, by Miss Betham Edwards (1890), and Young's Autobiography by the same editor (1898); also A. W. Hutton's edition of the Irish tour (1892).

Francis Grose (1731-91), antiquary, was born at Greenford in Middlesex, son of a rich Swiss jeweller settled at Richmond. In the Heralds' College from 1755 till 1763, he next became adjutant of the Hampshire and Surrey Militia— a historic service, for it was in the Hampshire Militia that Gibbon and Mitford served-and, when his easy habits had cost him his fortune, put to profit the favourite studies of his youth and his excellent draughtsmanship. His Antiquities of England and Wales (1773-87) proved a success, and in 1789 he set out on an antiquarian tour through Scotland. His splendid social qualities, his rich humour and good nature, made him friends everywhere-Burns one of them. He went to Ireland on a like errand, but died suddenly in Dublin. Grose's work on the antiquities of Scotland (to which Burns contributed 'Tam o' Shanter,' commended by the friendly editor as a 'pretty poem'!) appeared 1789-91; that on Ireland in 1791. Other works were A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785; new ed. with Memoir by Pierce Egan, 1823), A Provincial Glossary (1787), Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons (1785–89), Military Antiquities (1786–88), The Grumbler (1791), and The Olio (1793).

Richard Gough (1735–1809), antiquary, born in London, published British Topography (1768), Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain (1786–99), an English version of Camden's Britannia (1789), and more than a score of other works, historical, archæological, topographical, and numismatical.

Dr Richard Farmer (1735-97), born at Leicester, and ultimately master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, published an Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare (1767), which put an end to the dispute concerning the classical attainments of the great dramatist. Farmer certainly showed that Shakespeare had implicitly followed English translations of the ancient authors-as North's Plutarch-copying even their errors. He was indolent, but was a brilliant talker as well as an accomplished scholar.

Edmund Malone (1741-1812), editor of Shakespeare, was born in Dublin, the son of an Irish judge, and graduated at Trinity College. Called to the Irish Bar in 1767, he fell into a fortune, and from 1777 devoted himself to literary work in London, his first publication being a 'supplement' to Steevens's version of Johnson's edition of Shakespeare (1778); see Vol. I. of this work, p. 376. Malone's own edition of the great dramatist (1790) was warmly received, and deservedly so; his learned dissertations on the history of the stage and on the genuineness of the three plays of Henry VI. especially attracted notice. He had been one of the first to express his disbelief in Chatterton's Rowley Poems, and in 1796 he denounced Ireland's forgeries. He wrote a Life of his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds; he edited Dryden, with a memoir; and he left behind a large mass of

materials for 'The Variorum Shakespeare,' edited in 1821 by James Boswell the younger. See the Life by Sir James Prior (1860).

Samuel Parr (1747-1825), 'the Whig Johnson,' was better known as a classical scholar than as a theologian, but probably owed the extraordinary fame he enjoyed to his extraordinary and amazing powers as a talker; though even here he was very inferior to his prototype--he had Johnson's pomposity, love of antithesis, and roughness without his deeper gifts. His collected works (8 vols. 8vo, 1828) deal with matters historical, critical, metaphysical; there are sermons and a mass of unarranged correspondence; but nothing here justifies or even explains his great reputation. His style is mannered and verbose to a degree, and nothing of his is now read. His Characters of Fox (1809) is his best-known work; it discusses Charles James Fox in various aspects, argues for reform of the criminal law, and is as usual overlaid with notes. His celebrated Spital sermon preached before the Lord Mayor at Easter 1800 displays in its printed form fifty-one pages of text and two hundred and twelve of notes. Sydney Smith humorously compared the sermon to Dr Parr's wig, which, while it trespassed a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes in the anterior parts, scorned even episcopal limits behind, and swelled out into boundless convexity of frizz.' Godwin attacked some of the principles laid down in this discourse, as not sufficiently democratic for his taste; for, though a staunch Whig, Dr Parr was no revolutionist or leveller-his aim was to ameliorate the condition of the poor by education and other constitutional means. Parr, born a surgeon's son at Harrow, was educated at Harrow and Cambridge; taught at Harrow; was headmaster of Norwich grammar-school (1778–86); held a series of livings, on one of which, at Hatton near Warwick, he spent the latter half of his life. An uncompromising Whig, he hated Evangelicals, and was theologically of the anti-mysterious school of Paley and Watson. De Quincey's-somewhat unfair-essay on Whiggism and literature contains a brilliant criticism of Parr.

William Coxe (1747-1828) was born in London, and from Eton passed to King's College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow in 1768. As tutor to the sons of four persons of quality, he spent most of twenty years on the Continent, and published accounts of his travels in Switzerland (1778-1801), and in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1778-84). His History of the House of Austria (1807) became at once the standard English authority on that subject, and his Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole (1798) and of Marlborough (1816-19)—not to speak of other historical works -were important as containing letters private, official, and diplomatic, with other details drawn from manuscript collections; though he was rather a dull writer, a partisan Whig, and as a biographer

apt to magnify the merits and sink the defects of his hero. He died, a prebendary of Salisbury and Archdeacon of Wilts, at Bemerton rectory.

William Mitford (1744–1827), author of the famous History of Greece, was of Northumbrian stock but born in London, and educated at Cheam School, Surrey, and Queen's College, Oxford. He studied law, but on his father's death succeeded to the family estate at Exbury in Hampshire, where, devoting himself mainly to the study of Greek literature, he lived till his death. His first publication was an Essay on the Harmony of Language (1774)While in the militia he published a Treatise on the Military Force, and particularly of the Militia of the Kingdom-a subject which engrossed much of his attention; and when a member of the House of Commons he advocated the cause of the militia with much fervour, recommending a salutary jealousy of a standing army. On the suggestion of Gibbon, a fellow-officer in the South Hampshire Militia, he undertook his great work, The History of Greece (1784-1810; new editions repeatedly till 1835). Byron sketched his characteristics: His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern History of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins,' adds the courteous critic, it is but fair to state his virtueslearning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.' The earnestness of Mitford is too often directed against 'the inherent weakness and the indelible barbarism of democratical government.' He was a warm admirer of the English constitution and of the monarchical form of government, and a fanatical enemy of French republicanism. This bias led him to be unjust to the Athenian people, 'the sovereign beggars of Athens.' And while he unhesitatingly accepted all the good he found credited to monarchs and tyrants, he was apt to exaggerate or overstate defects charged against democracies and democrats. Philip of Macedonia was a great statesman, Demosthenes a mere noisy demagogue. But, as Byron said, his pugnacious zeal to prove his case made him diligent in minute research; his book surpassed all earlier English works on the subject, and held the field till the appearance of the fairer and more scholarly works of Thirlwall and Grote. Freeman, an uncompromising critic, said of Mitford that he was a bad scholar, a bad historian, and a bad writer of English,' but yet 'the first writer of any note who found out that Grecian history was a living thing with a practical bearing.' Mitford wrote also on the Corn-Laws and on design in architecture.

Condemnation and Death of Socrates. We are not informed when Socrates first became distinguished as a Sophist; for in that description of

men he was in his own day reckoned. When the wit of Aristophanes was directed against him in the theatre, he was already among the most eminent, but his eminence seems to have been then recent. It was about the tenth or eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, when he was six or seven and forty years of age, that, after the manner of the old comedy, he was offered to public derision upon the stage by his own name, as one of the persons of the drama, in the comedy of Aristophanes called The Clouds, which is yet extant.

Two or three and twenty years had elapsed since the first representation of The Clouds; the storms of conquest suffered from a foreign enemy, and of four revolutions in the civil government of the country, had passed; nearly three years had followed of that quiet which the revolution under Thrasybulus produced, and the act of amnesty should have confirmed, when a young man named Melitus went to the king-archon, and in the usual form delivered an information against Socrates, and bound himself to prosecute. The information ran thus: 'Melitus, son of Melitus, of the borough of Pitthos, declares these upon oath against Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of the borough of Alopece: Socrates is guilty of reviling the gods whom the city acknowledges, and of preaching other new gods: moreover, he is guilty of corrupting the youth. Penalty, death.'

Xenophon begins his Memorials of his revered master with declaring his wonder how the Athenians could have been persuaded to condemn to death a man of such uncommonly clear innocence and exalted worth. Elian, though for authority he can bear no comparison with Xenophon, has nevertheless, I think, given the solution. 'Socrates,' he says, 'disliked the Athenian constitution; for he saw that democracy is tyrannical, and abounds with all the evils of absolute monarchy.' But though the political circumstances of the times made it necessary for contemporary writers to speak with caution, yet both Xenophon and Plato have declared enough to shew that the assertion of Ælian was well founded; and further proof, were it wanted, may be derived from another early writer, nearly contemporary, and deeply versed in the politics of his age, the orator Eschines. Indeed, though not stated in the indictment, yet it was urged against Socrates by his prosecutors before the court, that he was disaffected to the democracy; and in proof, they affirmed it to be notorious that he had ridiculed what the Athenian constitution prescribed, the appointment to magistracy by lot. Thus,' they said, he taught his numerous followers, youths of the principal families of the city, to despise the established government, and to be turbulent and seditious; and his success had been seen in the conduct of two of the most eminent, Alcibiades and Critias. Even the best things he converted to these ill purposes: from the most esteemed poets, and particularly from Homer, he selected passages to enforce his anti-democratical principles.'

Socrates, it appears, indeed, was not inclined to deny his disapprobation of the Athenian constitution. His defence itself, as it is reported by Plato, contains matter on which to found an accusation against him of disaffection to the sovereignty of the people, such as, under the jealous tyranny of the Athenian democracy, would sometimes subject a man to the penalties of high treason. 'You well know,' he says, 6 Athenians, that had I engaged in public business, I should long

ago have perished without procuring any advantage either to you or to myself. Let not the truth offend you: it is no peculiarity of your democracy, or of your national character; but wherever the people is sovereign, no man who shall dare honestly to oppose injustice-frequent and extravagant injustice-can avoid destruction.'

Without this proof, indeed, we might reasonably believe that though Socrates was a good and faithful subject of the Athenian government, and would promote no sedition, no political violence, yet he could not like the Athenian constitution. He wished for wholesome changes by gentle means; and it seems even to have been a principal object of the labours to which he dedicated himself, to infuse principles into the rising generation that might bring about the desirable change insensibly.

Melitus, who stood forward as his principal accuser, was, as Plato informs us, noway a man of any great consideration. His legal description gives some probability to the conjecture that his father was one of the commissioners sent to Lacedæmon from the moderate party, who opposed the ten successors of the thirty tyrants, while Thrasybulus held Piræus, and Pausanias was encamped before Athens. He was a poet, and stood forward as in a common cause of the poets, who esteemed the doctrine of Socrates injurious to their interest. Unsupported, his accusation would have been little formidable; but he seems to have been a mere instrument in the business. He was soon joined by Lycon, one of the most powerful speakers of his time. Lycon was the avowed patron of the rhetoricians, who, as well as the poets, thought their interest injured by the moral philosopher's doctrine. I know not that on any other occasion in Grecian history we have any account of this kind of party-interest operating; but from circumstances nearly analogous in our own country -if we substitute for poets the clergy, and for rhetoricians the lawyers--we may gather what might be the party-spirit, and what the weight of influence of the rhetoricians and poets in Athens. With Lycon, Anytus, a man scarcely second to any in the commonwealth in rank and general estimation, who had held high command with reputation in the Peloponnesian war, and had been the principal associate of Thrasybulus in the war against the thirty, and the restoration of the democracy, declared himself a supporter of the prosecution. Nothing in the accusation could, by any known law of Athens, affect the life of the accused. In England no man would be put upon trial on so vague a charge-no grand jury would listen to it. But in Athens, if the party was strong enough, it signified little what was the law. When Lycon and Anytus came forward, Socrates saw that his condemnation was already decided.

By the course of his life, however, and by the turn of his thoughts for many years, he had so prepared himself for all events, that, far from alarmed at the probability of his condemnation, he rather rejoiced at it, as at his age a fortunate occurrence. He was persuaded of the soul's immortality, and of the superintending providence of an all-good Deity, whose favour he had always been assiduously endeavouring to deserve. Men fear death, he said, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good. If, indeed, great joys were in prospect, he might, and his friends for

him, with somewhat more reason, regret the event; but at his years, and with his scanty fortune--though he was happy enough at seventy still to preserve both body and mind in vigour-yet even his present gratifications must necessarily soon decay. To avoid, therefore, the evils of age, pain, sickness, decay of sight, decay of hearing, perhaps decay of understanding, by the easiest of deaths (for such the Athenian mode of execution-by a draught of hemlock-was reputed), cheered with the company of surrounding friends, could not be otherwise than a blessing.

Xenophon says that, by condescending to a little supplication, Socrates might easily have obtained his acquittal. No admonition or entreaty of his friends, however, could persuade him to such an unworthiness. On the contrary, when put upon his defence, he told the people that he did not plead for his own sake, but for theirs, wishing them to avoid the guilt of an unjust condemnation. It was usual for accused persons to bewail their apprehended lot, with tears to supplicate favour, and, by exhibiting their children upon the bema, to endeavour to excite pity. He thought it, he said, more respectful to the court, as well as more becoming himself, to omit all this; however aware that their sentiments were likely so far to differ from his that judgment would be given in anger for it.

Condemnation pronounced wrought no'change upon him. He again addressed the court, declared his innocence of the matters laid against him, and observed that, even if every charge had been completely proved, still, all together did not, according to any known law, amount to a capital crime. But,' in conclusion he said, it is time to depart-I to die, you to live; but which for the greater good, God only knows.'

It was usual at Athens for execution very soon to follow condemnation-commonly on the morrow; but it happened that the condemnation of Socrates took place on the eve of the day appointed for the sacred ceremony of crowning the galley which carried the annual offerings to the gods worshipped at Delos, and immemorial tradition forbade all executions till the sacred vessel's return. Thus the death of Socrates was respited thirty days, while his friends had free access to him in the prison. During all that time he admirably supported his constancy. Means were concerted for his escape; the jailer was bribed, a vessel prepared, and a secure retreat in Thessaly provided. No arguments, no prayers, could persuade him to use the opportunity. He had always taught the duty of obedience to the laws, and he would not furnish an example of the breach of it. To no purpose it was urged that he had been unjustly condemned he had always held that wrong did not justify wrong. He waited with perfect composure the return of the sacred vessel, reasoned on the immortality of the soul, the advantage of virtue, the happiness derived from having made it through life his pursuit, and with his friends about him, took the fatal cup and died.

Writers who after Xenophon and Plato have related the death of Socrates, seem to have held themselves bound to vie with those who preceded them in giving pathos to the story. The purpose here has been rather to render it intelligible-to shew its connection with the political history of Athens-to derive from it illustration of the political history. The magnanimity of Socrates, the principal efficient of the pathos, surely deserves admiration; yet it is not that in which he has most out

shone other men. The circumstances of Lord Russell's fate were far more trying. Socrates, we may reasonably suppose, would have borne Lord Russell's trial; but with Bishop Burnet for his eulogist, instead of Plato and Xenophon, he would not have had his present splendid fame. The singular merit of Socrates lay in the purity and the usefulness of his manners and conversation; the clearness with which he saw and the steadiness with which he practised, in a blind and corrupt age, all moral duties; the disinterestedness and the zeal with which he devoted himself to the benefit of others; and the enlarged and warm benevolence, whence his supreme and almost only pleasure seems to have consisted in doing good. The purity of Christian morality, little enough, indeed, seen in practice, nevertheless is become so familiar in theory that it passes almost for obvious, and even congenial to the human mind. Those only will justly estimate the merit of that near approach to it which Socrates made who will take the pains to gather -as they may from the writings of his contemporaries and predecessors-how little conception was entertained of it before his time; how dull to a just moral sense the human mind has really been: how slow the progress in the investigation of moral duties, even where not only great pains have been taken, but the greatest abilities zealously employed; and when discovered, how difficult it has been to establish them by proofs beyond controversy, or proofs even that should be generally admitted by the reason of men. It is through the light which Socrates diffused by his doctrine, enforced by his practice, with the advantage of having both the doctrine and the practice exhibited to highest advantage in the incomparable writings of disciples such as Xenophon and Plato, that his life forms an era in the history of Athens and of man.

See the Life of Mitford, prefixed to the seventh edition of his History (1838), by his brother Lord Redesdale, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. The Rev. John Mitford (1781-1859), who wrote poems and criticism and edited a dozen of the Aldine poets, was a kinsman; he was an Oriel man, and held Benham and two other Suffolk livings. Miss Mitford was of another stock.

John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), known in literature as philologist, but notable rather for his political and social character, was the son of Mr Horne, a wealthy London poulterer; so that when asked by schoolfellows what his father was, he could answer, 'A Turkey merchant.' Well educated -first at Westminster, then at Eton, and afterwards at St John's College, Cambridge-he took orders, but disliking the clerical profession, he studied law at the Middle Temple, took a living for a short time to please his father, and travelled in France and Italy as tutor to a son of Elwes the miser; but having cast off the clerical character in these Continental tours, he never resumed it. He became an active politician and supporter of John Wilkes, in praise of whom he wrote an anonymous pamphlet in 1765. When in 1768 Wilkes stood for Middlesex, 'Parson Horne' pledged his credit for the expenses, and said that ' in a cause so just and holy he would dye his black coat red.' George III. having from the throne in 1770 censured an address presented by the London city authorities, the latter waited upon the sovereign