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WILLIAM EARL OF LONSDALE,

KNIGHT OF The garter, &c. &c. &c.

MY LORD,

THE age of Dedications is over, and with reason for if a work is bad, no name, however great, can make it good; and on the other hand, if it have merit, the want of such a name will never disparage it. I must therefore look for other motives for begging to inscribe this work, such as it may be thought, to your Lordship. They may be easily known, at least by those who know what reason I have had, and for how long a time, to esteem you beyond all men now alive. The friendship you have allowed me to cultivate with you, and the distinctions you have condescended to shew me, while they have done me nothing but honour, make me hope that most of the opinions entertained in the following narration, as well as the scenes and topics described, will not be disapproved by your Lordship. If so, it will be

a pleasure to me to think that the advance of our years has not, as it has with many, created any difference between us in regard to those public or private principles which we entertained when both were much younger. To have been allowed to share with you in those principles, and to have acted upon them with you for years, has always been regarded by me as one of my truest sources of pride and gratification. In other

respects, you are now the only person left in the world, to whom I may say,

"Quod spiro et placeo (si placeo) tuum est."

Vale et vive, is the sincere wish of your obliged and affectionate humble servant,

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

66

a

THE following letters depict, I will not say, great man struggling with the storms of fate," but a rational being, who having acted a fair and important part in the State, quits it before he is worn out, or in other words, before it quits him. To think of a better world, and in doing so to take leave of his former pursuits, and cultivate his quieter tastes, and the natural, philosophic, and independent disposition of his mind, are his praiseworthy objects.

He has honourably filled very honourable employments, and might have obtained riches as well as power, but for this his darling and characteristic moderation. His resolution, however, being doubted by his contemporaries, and great and quick changes having occasioned much disorganization in the political parties of the time, it was

thought that his abilities and experience would make him a valuable acquisition to any party that could obtain him.

This, and perhaps a wish to put his philosophy to the trial, produce the discussions in the following narrative. His actual retirement, and even his professed resolution to live for himself after having so long lived for the State, are not thought any bar to the attempt to bring him back to business. It was believed he would not be proof against the usual temptations of power and interest, which have so often seduced other statesmen back to a world which they have professed, and almost sworn, to abandon.

The following letters are addressed to one of the old colleagues of Atticus, by the gentleman who was commissioned to make the trial above referred to.

LETTER I..

TO THE VISCOUNT L

MY DEAR Lord,

THOUGH I have been silent, I have not forgotten the task I undertook, as a consequence of the very interesting conversation that passed at your Lordship's table the other day; and though perhaps disappointed in my own notions of the event, I must in all truth lay before you, and our other friends, the result of my visit to Atticus.

I was not, as you know, among your supporters, when you held that he would act up to his resolution of retiring for ever, and would never repent it. We, on our side, said that the experiment, though of two years standing, had not been sufficiently tried; that, old as he was in the world, he was not sufficiently so to feel satisfied at having abandoned it; and that if one went to see him, one would find him like the Distressed Anchorite, in that clever tale of Columella, by the now long forgotten Jago. You bade me in jest go and