1838.] A "WORD-PORTRAIT." 229 I believe his character quite corresponds with his appearance; he is said to be long in determining on a line of proceeding; but, when his mind is once made up, nothing can turn him aside or alter his resolution; he proceeds with an indefatigable perseverance, and spares no effort to accomplish his purpose. As pieces of composition his addresses are faultless; every sentence is perfect in its form and correct in its bearing. His delivery is fluent, but not rapid; his voice fine and rich in tone, but not sufficiently exerted to be generally audible; and his manner, though evidently he is quite in earnest, is animated but somewhat cold. . . When he addresses an audience he stands with his hand resting on the platform rail, and as erect as such a position will possibly allow; he looks his hearers coolly in the face, and, with a very slight bowing movement, barely sufficient to save him from the appearance of stiffness, he delivers, without a moment's hesitation, and with great dignity of voice and manner, a short, calm, serious address. The applause with which he is always heard (for he is very popular in the Societies over which he presides) seems rather an interruption than a pleasure to him, as it breaks into the mutual dependence of his sentences. I have understood that his Lordship is very nervous, and yet the most striking feature of his public deportment is his apparently rigid self-possession, which he never loses for a moment. . . ... CHAPTER VI. 1838-1839. Commencement of Diaries-Lord Melbourne-Lockhart's Life of Scott-Appointment of Vice-Consul at Jerusalem-Lord Lindsay's Travels-A Case in Lunacy-Success of Pastoral Aid Society-At Windsor Castle-Progress of Science-Heresy in High Feather-Letter from Lord Melbourne-The State and Prospects of the Jews-Religious and Political Action in Jerusalem -Letter from Sir Robert Peel-Fall of the Melbourne AdministrationSir Robert Peel Sent for-The "Bedchamber Question"-Appointment in Royal Household offered to Lord Ashley-Peel urges its AcceptanceAttempt to Form a Ministry Fails-Lord Melbourne Recalled-Board of Education, consisting of a Committee of the Privy Council, Appointed— Letter and Memorandum from Duke of Wellington-Lord Stanley's Motion to Revoke the Order in Council-Supported by Lord Ashley-The Measure Attacked as Adverse to the Constitution, and as Hostile to the Church and to Revealed Religion-Lord Stanley's Amendment Lost-The Establishment of the Committee of Council on Education. IN September, 1838, Lord Ashley, who had never completely overcome, as he thought, his tendency to allow time to pass unimproved, determined to commence the systematic writing of a Diary. It was undertaken, in the first place, to assist his "treacherous memory," and in the next to be a source of amusement to him in his old age. But there was yet another reason: he had an almost insuperable aversion to writing, and he determined to adopt this expedient as a means to assist him in overcoming that aversion. There are in the course of the Diaries occasional gaps and breaks, but these are easily accounted for by the pressure of his enormous 1838.] LORD MELBOURNE. 231 labours. It is marvellous that, with the amount of correspondence he carried on, the articles he wrote, and the speeches he prepared, he could ever find time for, or force himself to the task of, posting up a record of passing events, however brief. But his Diaries, exclusive of four travel-diaries, occupy twelve quarto volumes, averaging several hundred pages in a volume, and were continued until very nearly the close of his life. They are written with extreme care; every line is straight as an arrow, although on unruled paper, and there is scarcely a blot or erasure on any of the pages. He had precisely the same gift in writing that he had in speech: his words and his thoughts came in right order and sequence, and the most apt and expressive adjective that could adorn a sentence always fell into its proper place. He never, in his public speeches or in conversation, had to hesitate or recall a word; the exact word he wanted, and generally the best word that could be used, was ready at the right moment. This was also the case in his writing; in the whole of his Diaries there are probably not half a dozen words scored through in order to substitute others. ་ At the time the Diary commences, Lord Melbourne was First Minister of the Crown, and had been the head of the Cabinet from 1834. He was the son of Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne, of Brocket Hall, Herts; his wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, who died in 1828, wrote novels, and was notorious for her admiration of Lord Byron. The sister of Lord Melbourne, the Hon. Emily Lamb, was married in 1805 to the fifth Earl Cowper (who died June 27th, 1837), and her daughter Emily, it will be remembered, became the wife of Lord Ashley. Lady Cowper, the mother of Lady Ashley, was married a second time, in 1839, to Viscount Palmerston, the famous Minister. Such were the family relationships, to which frequent allusion is made in the Diaries. Sept. 28.-Every one who begins to keep a journal regrets that he did not do so before. I follow the general example, and regret the many fine and apt' things, both of fact and imagination, that are now irrecoverably lost. I had a book, a few years ago, in which I made, from time to time, some short desultory entries, but the natural impatience of my disposition, and the mischievous and indulged habit of doing nothing consecutively, broke the thread of my record, and I now resume a business which will conjoin a head and a tail by the exclusion of all intermediate carcase. Yet an actual journal, a punctual narrative, of every day's history would be an intolerable bore-a bore when written and a bore when remembered at least it would be so to me; the probability is that this book of memorandums will share the fate of all my other attempts, and go into oblivion unsullied by ink or pencil; but, should it be carried on, I will make it a mere cage for light and grave thoughts (the paucity of them will render the task easy), which, unless they be caught as they arise, take wing like larks and owls and are gone for ever. Just finished Lockhart's Life of Sir W. Scott. The man is as well displayed in his true light as Johnson was by Boswell, though the one is shown by his conversation, the other by his letters and diary. Never more interested than by this book, and yet never more painfully affected; the seventh volume is elegant and touching, and develops a degree of energy and virtue that I should have thought, until now, confined to works of fiction. I knew the man, and to know him was to love him. The two greatest characters of the last century and of the present, perhaps of any one, 1838.] JERUSALEM AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 233 are, in my mind, the Duke of Wellington and Sir W. Scott, and they have many points of resemblance, none more striking than their simplicity. Sept. 29. Took leave this morning of Young, who has just been appointed her Majesty's Vice-Consul at Jerusalem! He will sail in a day or two for the Holy Land. If this is duly considered, what a wonderful event it is! The ancient city of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations, and England is the first of Gentile kingdoms that ceases to tread her down.' If I had not an aversion to writing, almost insuperable, I would record here, for the benefit of my very weak and treacherous memory, all the steps whereby this good deed has been done, but the arrangement of the narrative, and the execution of it, would cost me too much penmanship; I shall always, at any rate, remember that God put it into my heart to conceive the plan for His honour, gave me influence to prevail with Palmerston, and provided a man for the situation who 6 can remember Jerusalem in his mirth.' Wrote by him a few lines to Pieritz, and sent him a very small sum of money for the Hebrew converts there (I wish it were larger), that I might revive the practice of apostolic times (Romans xv. 26), and 'make a certain contribution for the poor saints that are at Jerusalem!' Oct. 3rd.-Lord Lindsay's 'Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land' are very creditable to him, more so in the feelings and sentiments they express than in the originality and composition. But he saw and felt like a man who fattened on the Word of God, and found it as delicious as it is wholesome and true. I am convinced that Provi dence has laid up in store many riches of 'testimony' to the authenticity of the Bible, to be produced in these evil days of apostacy and unbelief that will afflict the earth in the latter times. Egypt will yield largely in confirmation of the Jewish records; and Palestine, when dug and harrowed by enterprising travellers, must exhibit the past with all the vividness of the present. The very violences of Ibrahim Pasha (the Scourge of Syria) have opened the first sources of its political regeneration by offering free access to the stranger in the repression of native lawlessness; hundreds now go in a twelvemonth where one trod the way in a quarter of a century, and the Bible is becoming a common road-book! God give me, and mine, grace to help forward this accumulation of testimony, that our lamps may be trimmed and our loins girded, whenever we are called on, in the |