characters never appear, and all who figure are so
misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is a
complete mystification, and the perusal of the narrative about
as profitable to an Englishman as reading the Republic of
Plato or the Utopia of More, the pages of Gaudentio di Lucca
or the adventures of Peter Wilkins.

The influence of races in our early ages, of the church in our
middle, and of parties in our modern history, are three great
moving and modifying powers, that must be pursued and analyzed
with an untiring, profound, and unimpassioned spirit, before a
guiding ray can be secured. A remarkable feature of our
written history is the absence in its pages of some of the
most influential personages. Not one man in a thousand for
instance has ever heard of Major Wildman: yet he was the soul
of English politics in the most eventful period of this
kingdom, and one most interesting to this age, from 1640 to
1688; and seemed more than once to hold the balance which was
to decide the permanent form of our government. But he was
the leader of an unsuccessful party. Even, comparatively
speaking, in our own times, the same mysterious oblivion is
sometimes encouraged to creep over personages of great social
distinction as well as political importance.

The name of the second Pitt remains, fresh after forty years
of great events, a parliamentary beacon. He was the
Chatterton of politics; the "marvellous boy." Some have a
vague impression that he was mysteriously moulded by his great
father: that he inherited the genius, the eloquence, the state
craft of Chatham. His genius was of a different bent, his