Old age came on him at last, but with singular gentleness. Some of his maxims exhibit the mild philosophy of his temperament. "In youth," said he, "the absence of pleasure is pain, in age the absence of pain is pleasure." He characteristically observed, "At my age, it strikes me very much, what little proportion there is between man's ambition, and the shortness of his life." Of the wars during his time he said, "I used to think all the sufferings of war lost in its glory; I now consider all its glory lost in its sufferings." In allusion to the desponding tone of some public men, he said, "I have always fought under the standard of hope, and I never shall desert it." At another time, he expressed the truth, which only the wise man feels—"It is a very important part of wisdom, to know what to overlook." He repeated a fine expression of George III, of which he acknowledged the full value,—"Give me the man who judges one human being with severity, and every other with indulgence."
His religious feelings were such as might be expected from his well-spent life,—pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often shall I be with you, my children!"
On the 3d of February, 1844, he was seized with an attack of influenza, which on the 10th became hopeless; and on the 15th he calmly died, in his 87th year.
We have preferred giving an abstract of the leading portions of this able and amiable man's ministerial career, to following it minutely through his later public years, as the earlier were those which decided the character of the whole: and we have also preferred the tracing the course of the individual, to criticisms on the volumes of his biographer. But the work deserves much approval, for its general intelligence, the clearness of its arrangement, and the fulness of its information. It exercises judgment in the spirit of independence, and, expressing its opinions without severity, exhibits the grave sagacity of a man of sense, the style of a scholar, and the temper of a divine.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The Life and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth. By the Honourable George Pellew, D.D., Dean of Norwich. 3 vols. J. Murray.
HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN THE MODEL REPUBLIC.
In our last April number—on the appropriate Day of Fools—we laid before our readers a few stray flowers of speech, culled with little labour in that rich garden of oratorical delight—the Congress of the United States. Sweets to the sweet!—We confess that we designed that salutary exposure less for the benefit of our readers and subscribers in the Old World, than of those who are our readers, but not our subscribers, in the New. For, in the absence of an international copyright law, Maga is extensively pirated in the United States, extensively read, and we fear very imperfectly digested. This arrangement appears to us to work badly for all the parties concerned. It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author. As to the American public, if our precepts had exercised any influence upon their practice, they would have learned long ago that ill-gotten goods never prosper, and that they who make booty of other men's wits, are not excepted from the general condemnation of wrong-doers. Some day, perhaps, they will consent to profit by what they prig, and thus, like the fat knight, turn their diseases to commodity—the national disease of appropriation to the commodity of self-knowledge and self-rebuke.