that difficulty is started in conversation, and I only wish it may not alarm.

"I am, my dear Lord,

"Your faithful humble Servant, "GEO. SACKVILLE."

"To Lord Viscount Bateman.”

In justice to his Lordship's memory, I may here state, after thoroughly investigating the particulars, that I consider him to have been an injured man, and therefore take this opportunity of coinciding with Mr. Stockdale, who was well acquainted with him. left the army long before this period he could have no sinister views in espousing his cause; he has given us so undisguised a testimony in favour of his Lordship's reputation that I cannot pass it over in silence.

Having

"As my own faults," says Mr. Stockdale,

great and numerous as they are, have been aggravated, and my good endeavours undervalued and traduced by malice, I seize every fair opportunity, with a particular zeal, to do justice, as far as my limited power goes, to distinguished and injured merit, living or departed. Consistently with this disposition and habits, I must beg leave to offer a generous and grateful, but equitable tribute to the memory of the unfortunate, for I cannot call him

the criminal, Lord George Sackville, afterwards Lord George Germain, who, in the year 1757, commanded our camp near Chatham and Brompton, in Kent. I said a grateful tribute, for he endeavoured essentially to befriend me, twenty-three years after that encampment; and with a degree of magnanimous generosity, when we consider that honest, virtuous, and bold truths are seldom pardoned by the great. I dedicated my defence of Pope to him. My dedication was short, independent, and manly. I took notice of the strong and fair claim which he had, on his own account, and on that of his ancestors, to a public tribute from a zealous asserter of the high poetical merit and fame of Pope. To shew the disinterested respect, which, as a scholar and a writer, I bore to his Lordship, I openly reprobated the American War, over which he, at that time, politically presided. This frankness was so far from disgusting him against me, that he afterwards set his interest in motion to befriend me in Jamaica; some adverse circumstances prevented me from availing myself of his kindness. But what a singular example have we here, of a statesman, of a person high in power, who was so far from being offended at the downright sincerity of a poor unprotected man, who condemned his plans, who disapproved his own ambition, that

he wished to reward it! He was a brave and honourable man, but he was iniquitously and basely treated. It must be well known to all the surviving friends and acquaintances of that unfortunate nobleman, that he bore the insults of the vulgar, and the coldness and taunts of those who were equal or superior to him in situation, with a calm and unshaken fortitude. Not a less powerful auxiliary than conscience could have inspired and supported this equanimity under such trying circumstances. The valour of his philosophy in the region of envy and malevolence, must certainly have been preceded by his collected mind in the field of Mars. The calmness and serenity, the politeness of manner of which he was master when he fought a duel with Governor Johnstone, in 1770, for a sarcasm allusive to Minden, will be a decisive proof of what I am now advancing, with every unprejudiced and generous man. But his behaviour at a more solemn and awful crisis, even in the last extremity of nature, will, I should think, be an unexceptionable, an irresistible voucher for his courage and firmness in the day of battle.

I was a young clergyman in London when Lord George Sackville was tried by a general CourtMartial. I was on the most friendly terms with my old brother officers, and I often visited those who were at that time in the metropolis. I had

the honour to be well acquainted with Captain Smith, father to Sir Sydney Smith, who was aid-de-camp to Lord George at Brompton, and at the battle of Minden. He was a man of sense and spirit; a man of a warm, generous, and sincere heart, with whom no consideration upon earth could ever prevail to suppress the truth, when he thought that it was his duty to declare it. His testimony at the Court-Martial in favour of his noble friend, was unreserved, explicit, and ardent. However impartial he was, he must have been ardent on that obnoxious occasion. But his honesty did him no good. Walking with him, one day, along Wych Street, we resumed the memorable subject. I seriously asked him, if it was his real opinion that the conduct of Lord George Sackville deserved no censure on the Minden day? He emphatically answered, that his conduct on that day was perfectly accurate, and what it ought to have been; and that he merited no more blame, as a soldier, than that child,' pointing to a little flaxen-headed boy that passed as we conversed.

"I asked Mr. Smith, if he did not advance too slowly when he did march? He insisted, that he could not, circumstanced as he was, march faster; and he gave me clear and satisfactory reasons for that assertion. He added, that the orders which were brought to Lord George,

by Prince Ferdinand's aid-de-camps were contradictory to each other, confused, and consequently embarrassing to any man.' He further observed, that when he rode himself to Prince Ferdinand to get an explanation, he was exposed to more danger than he would have been in the pursuit of the French.'

"I lately had the honour of conversing with my Lord Grey, on this important subject. He not only acquitted Lord Sackville of the least misconduct at the battle of Minden, but spoke with great respect of his general character. A predestinarian would say, that Lord Sackville was fated to be unfortunate both in his military and political capacity. Long after the war in Germany, he presided over a more unjustifiable war on the continent of America.

"As Lord Sackville was a person of high rank, and had all the advantages of education, it is almost superfluous for me to say, that he was a polite man. He was tall and well formed: he had an elegance-a dignity of deportment. He was conversant with books and men: he was eloquent in the Senate: and eloquent, often poignant, in conversation."

This undisguised sketch of his Lordship's character, and impartial testimony in favour of his reputation, added to various other accounts which I have repeatedly seen in connection