Lord Brougham has resumed his memoirs of the eminent writers of England;and every lover of literature will feel gratified by this employment ofhis active research and of his vigorous pen.
One of the most striking distinctions of English public life from thatof the Continent, is in the condition of statesmen after their casualretirement from power. The Foreign statesman seems to exist only inoffice. The moment that sees him "out of place," sees him extinguished.He is lost as suddenly to the public eye, as if he were carried to thetomb of his ancestors. He retires to his country-seat, and theresubsides into the garrulous complainant against the caprices of fortune,or buries his calamities in the quiet indulgence of his appetites;smokes away his term of years, subsides into the lean and slipperedpantaloon, occupies his studies with the Court Gazette, and hisfaculties with cards; and is finally deposited in the family vault, tocontinue the process of mouldering which had been begun in hisarm-chair, to be remembered only in an epitaph. France, at the presentday, alone seems to form an exception. Her legislature affords a newelement in which statesmanship in abeyance can still float: the littlevessel is there at least kept in view of mankind; if it makes noprogress, it at least keeps above water; and, however incapable ofreaching the port by its own means, the fluctuations of the nationalsurge, sometimes so powerful, and always so contemptuous of calculation,may at some time or other carry the craziest craft into harbour. But thegeneral order of continental ministers, even of the highest rank, whenabandoned by the monarch, are like men consigned to the dungeon. They goto their place of sentence at once. The man who to-day figured in thehighest robe of power, to-morrow wears the prison costume. His rise wasthe work of the royal will—his fall is equally the work of the royalwill. Having no connexion with the national mind, he has no resource inthe national sympathies. He has been a royal instrument: when his edgebecomes dull, or the royal artificer finds a tool w