was employed in penning a sort of manifesto published in justification of it. Not long before or after, another paper, written on I forget what different occasion, for the same purpose, bespoken by the same official customer, was penned by Historian Gibbon. A notion has found its way to Mr. Barker that Lind had written and published a Treatise on Grammar. I think I can direct him to the origin of this notion: no such treatise did my ex-reverend friend ever publish or write. He had neither relish, nor literary assets for any such literary enterprise. His views had a busier and higher direction. thought he had made one grammatical discovery, and he was ambitious to distinguish himself by it, and plant reformation in the language: where any body else would say himself, he took upon himself to say his self. This innovation found its way into his diplomatic paper: it attracted notice, but gave to it an air of singularity, of pedantry, of affectation, which certainly did not contribute to the success of it. I threw what cold water I could upon an ambition so unworthy of him, but did not succeed in quenching it.

But he

The reception given to his Polish Letters encouraged him to take a new and adventurous course in the world of politics: the result was, a work which bore for its title "A Review of

the Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament, etc.”* but it went no further than the Acts passed on the occasion of the contest with America, and closed with the act called the Quebec-Act, by which a constitution in the true Tory style, and under the auspices, if not by the pen, of Lord Mansfield, was given to Canada. In that work I had some small share. Before I had any knowledge of this project of my friend's, I put together in a few pages, my thoughts relative to the ground, on which it appeared to me that the question between the mother-country and the colony ought to be determined. Upon his communicating his design to me, I put the paper into his hand, and when the first sheet or two had come out of the press, not small was my surprise at finding this paper of mine placed at the commencement of his work, and constituting the foundation of it. Of this work I have preserved a copy, and shall say more of it by and by. He wrote with rapidity and carelessness; without looking at it, he would have signed with eagerness any thing that I wrote; his style was rather loose and negligent: it was not equal to what it

* [The title is thus given in Dr. Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica :-" Remarks upon the Principal Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament, relating to the Colonies. With a Plan of Reconciliation. Vol. I. 1775. Svo." E. H. B.]

was at the writing of the Polish Letters: though naturally cheerful, he was not quite in such good spirits at this time as in that: in respect of pecuniary circumstances, he was not quite so much at his ease. I touched it up a little in several places. But before it was brought to the length of the Quebec-Act, I lost sight of it. He was in haste to get it out, and circumstances either on his part, or on mine, or on both, admitted not of its passing at that time through my hands. Though writing on the government-side in support of that war, which, from its want of success has now become so universally disapproved, his mind was by no means destitute of the spirit of independence; on the occasion in question, without dictation or instruction, he wrote as he thought, which was as I thought. For by the badness of the arguments used on behalf of the Americans on that side of the water as well as on this, my judgment, unwarped by connection or hope, (for connection I had none, hope proportionable,) was ranked on the government-side. The whole of the case was founded on the assumption of natural rights-claimed without the slightest evidence for their existence, and supported by vague and declamatory generalities. If government be only the representative of rights, for which there is no standard, and about which there will be an infinite variety of opinions, the

right, to which the mother-country laid claim, would seem to stand on an older and a firmer foundation than the rights pretended by the colonies. A compliment I remember Lind reported to me as paid him by Lord Mansfield, was much more favourable to him than I had expected. It was to some such effect as this, where you have justified, you have justified convincingly,-where you have censured, you have censured freely. The Act was indeed widely open to censure; the censure, to judge now from the impression I remember it made on me, had more of strength and freedom, than of correctness or discernment in it. Considering the quarter, from whence the above judgment came, my surprise at finding it so favourable, was not inconsiderable. But by the timid and crafty lawyer the revenge, if any such was taken, was concealed by prudence; certain it is that, during the remainder of their joint lives, Lind being all the time at the Bar, a letter of intercession, which the King of Poland wrote to Lord Mansfield for the purpose of obtaining for the Anglo-Polish Privy Counsellor the benefit of the noble and learned Lord's patronage, was not productive of any effect. His Majesty knows very little of me,' said the Chief Justice to the Barrister, if he thinks that any thing, that he or any body else could say to me, could add any thing to my desire to give to the public the bene

fit of your services.' His labours, however, though the reward came from another quarter, did not go unrewarded.

On his return to England, he found his two maiden sisters, (Mary and Lætitia,) both a little younger than himself, keeping at Colchester a boarding-school for young ladies. It was not without some difficulty that they contrived to keep up, in that situation, a respectable appearance. I do not remember exactly what time it was, but it was during Lord North's administration, and a considerable number of years after the publication of that work of his, that a pension of 50l. a year for life was granted to each of these sisters.

You will have been expecting to hear something of the young Telemachus, to whom, on the occasion of his visit to this island, my ex-reverend friend came officiating in the character of Mentor: how it happened I do not exactly remember, but so it was, that notwithstanding my intimacy with the Mentor, I never saw the Telemachus. The case must have been that Mentor must have been a considerable time in England before he deigned to visit my humble roof, if a garret in Lincoln's Inn may be so termed. The giddiness produced by the exalted vortex, in which, on his arrival, he found himself whirled, kept out of his remembrance, I believe for some