peror's men" were allowed to lodge where they pleased, with the exception of the inhabitants of Tiesle (Thiel in Guelderland), and Brune (probably Brurren, in the same country), who had given some cause of grave offence, perhaps explained by the prohibition to the men of Antwerp to go beyond London Bridge, "in case they should object to be ruled by London law." The natives of Denmark, however, were most favoured, being allowed to reside in the City the whole year, "with a right to all the benefits of the law of the City of London." The Norwegians had the former, but not the latter privilege. Special privileges also were sometimes granted by express conventions, as in the case of that concluded in 1237 between the citizens of London and the merchants of Amiens, Corby, and Nesle. The city of Cologne had certain privileges for its merchants, the trade between the two cities being one of early date and considerable extent; and the Cologne merchants, we find, had a guildhall in London belonging to them. But we should form from these specially privileged bodies of foreigners a very erroneous idea of the treatment pursued towards foreign merchants generally. Take for instance the woad-merchants, chiefly from Picardy and Normandy, who met with a sorry measure of justice.

"On their arrival the merchants are reminded that it is their duty to place their woad upon the quay, and that they may enclose it with hurdles and hatches, if they think proper, but upon no account are they to stow it in houses or in cellars. Here they were to sell it, or give it in exchange for other merchandise, but only to men of the City, and to no one else, and that by reasonable and ancient measure of the City.' Nor ought they too, nor might they, buy any thing of foreigners, but only of men of the City, for exportation beyond sea; nor might they leave the City for the purpose of visiting any fair, or for going to any other place for the purposes of traffic. If found to be on the road to such a place, and proceeding towards a fair, all their chattels were to be forfeited, seeing that all their buying and selling ought to take place within the City, and that only with the men of the City.'

Even more than this. The said merchants 'might not, nor ought they to, stay within the City more than forty days;' at the end of which, they were to return to their own country, or else to some other place beyond sea, at as great a distance as the place from which they came.' To fill up the measure of the woad-merchant's difficulties, the 'foreigner' (foraneus) was also to take care that within such forty days he had sold or exchanged the whole of his wares, without holding back any part thereof,-'seeing that when such term shall have expired, and it shall be his duty to depart, he may not hand over any part of his wares to his host, or to any other person, nor may he carry them away with him. But let him see that within the time limited he makes sale of the same, as well as he can; for if any part thereof shall

be found after the time limited unto him, it shall be wholly lost.' In the trade of dyeing cloth, on no account were these merchants to interfere."

As Mr. Riley observes, the profits of these merchants must have been very large to induce them to encounter such a reception.

It is pleasant, however, to find that under all these restrictions the foreign merchants kept a good heart, and had their meetings of good-fellowship, in which the vexations and suspicions to which they were subjected were for the time forgotten. Such merry-makings would, indeed, tend to corroborate our view of the general happiness of the citizens of London under their comparatively light fetters. At the close of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, we find established in London "a Society, or brotherhood, of the Pui, in honour of God, our Lady Saint Mary, and all Saints, both male and female, and in honour of our lord the King, and all the Barons of the country; and for the increasing of loyal love, and to the end that mirthfulness, peace, uprightness, gaiety, and good love may be maintained." The title of the society was derived from the city of Le Puy en Velay in Auvergne. Societies of this nature flourished extensively in Picardy and Normandy; but nowhere, says the most recent historian of the confréries of Notre Dame du Puy, does there exist so ancient and full an account of their regulations as in the document preserved in the Guildhall Liber Custumarum, which contains the rules of the London society. Its members were mostly foreigners, but a few natives of the realm were admitted. How and when it arose, and how and when it came to an end, are equally unknown. Mr. Riley conjectures that it received its deathblow in the French wars of Edward III. There was a "prince" of the society yearly elected; a reward for the best songs, or "ballads-royal;" a grand feast every year, the residue of the food going to the prisoners at Newgate and the City poor; and a dance at the new prince's house, after solemnly escorting him home; "which ended, they are to take one drink and depart, each to his own house and all on foot." It is curious to trace strong resemblances between these festive regulations and those of a branch fraternity of the Pepperers of London, the ances tors of the "Company of Grocers," and to observe a relic of these ancient civic feasts in the silver crowns, chaplets, and garlands with which the master and wardens of some of the City companies are still crowned on hall-days.

Such, then, are a few of the characteristics of Old London in the days of the earlier Plantagenets; or rather the skele ton of its past existence, disinterred from the catacombs of the

Guildhall records. We may gain from this some idea of its outward organisation, and of the spirit in which that organisation was created; but it is vain for us to hope to obtain any but the most faint and imperfect impression of the spirit in which these institutions were really worked, and of what it actually was to live the daily life of a citizen of Old London. Our inferences and our conjectures may be plausible, but the substantial fact still evades our grasp. Old London, with its privileges and its grievances, its narrow and exclusive policy in some things, and its free independent spirit in others; its cherished feuds and its red-letter days; its ideas of happiness and its standard of evil and misery,-lies, after all, buried under the centuries along with the Henries and the Edwards, against whose tyranny it successfully struggled, and under whose politic favour it laid the foundation of its extraordinary reputation.

ART. IX.-WILLIAM PITT.

Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt. By Earl Stanhope, Author of the "History of England from the Peace of Utrecht.

LORD STANHOPE's Life of Mr. Pitt has both the excellencies and the defects which we should expect from him, and neither of them are what we expect in a great historical writer of the present age. Even simple readers are becoming aware that historical investigation, which used to be a sombre and respectable calling, is now an audacious pursuit. Paradoxes are very bold and very numerous. Many of the recognised "good people" in history have become bad, and all the very bad people have become rather good. We have palliations of Tiberius, eulogies on Henry VIII., devotional exercises to Cromwell, and fulsome adulation of Julius Cæsar and of the first Napoleon. The philosophy of history is more alarming still. One school sees in it but a gradual development of atheistic belief, another threatens to resolve it all into "the three simple agencies, starch, fibrin, and albumen." But in these exploits of audacious ingenuity and specious learning Lord Stanhope has taken no part. He is not anxious to be original. He travels, if possible, in the worn track of previous historians; he tells a plain tale in an easy plain way; he shrinks from wonderful novelties; with the cautious scepticism of true common sense; he is always glad to find that the conclusions at which he arrives coincide with those of former inquirers. His style is charac

teristic of his matter. He narrates with a gentle sense and languid accuracy, very different from the stimulating rhetoric and exciting brilliancy of his more renowned contemporaries.

In the present case Lord Stanhope has been very fortunate both in his subject and in his materials. Mr. Pitt has never had even a decent biographer, though the peculiarities of his career are singularly inviting to literary ambition. His life had much of the solid usefulness of modern times, and not a little also of the romance of old times. He was skilled in economical reform, but retained some of the majesty of old-world eloquence. He was as keen in small figures as a rising politician now, yet he was a despotic premier at an age when, in these times, a politician could barely aspire to be an UnderSecretary. It is not wonderful that Lord Stanhope should have been attracted to a subject which is so interesting in itself, and which lies so precisely in the direction of his previous studies. From his high standing and his personal connections, he has been able to add much to our minuter knowledge. He has obtained from various quarters many valuable letters which have not been published before. There is a whole series from George III. to Mr. Pitt, and a scarcely less curious series from Mr. Pitt to his mother. We need not add that Lord Stanhope has digested his important materials with great care; that he has made of them almost as much as could be made; that he has a warm admiration and a delicate respect for the great statesman of whom he is writing. His nearest approach to an ungentle feeling is a quiet dislike to the great Whig families.

Mr. Pitt is an example of one of the modes in which the popular imagination is, even in historical times, frequently and easily misled. Mankind judge of a great statesman principally by the most marked and memorable passage in his career. By chance we lately had the honour to travel with a gentleman who said that Sir R. Peel was the "leader of the Whigs;" and though historical evidence will always prevent common opinion from becoming so absurd as this, it is undeniable that, in the popular fancy of younger men, Sir Robert Peel is the Liberal minister who repealed the corn-laws, and carried Catholic Emancipation. The world is forgetting that he was once the favourite leader of the old Tory party-the steady opponent of Mr. Canning, and the steady adherent of Lord Sidmouth and Lord Eldon. We remember his great reforms, of which we daily feel the benefit; we forget that, during a complete political generation, he was the most plausible supporter of ancient prejudices, and the most decent advocate of inveterate abuses. Mr. Pitt's fate has been very similar, but far less fortunate. The event in his life most deeply im

planted in the popular memory is his resistance to the French Revolution; it is this which has made him the object of affection to extreme Tories, and of suspicion and distrust to reasonable Liberals. Yet no rash inference was ever more unfounded and more false. It can be proved that in all the other part of Mr. Pitt's life the natural tendency of his favourite plan was uniformly Liberal; that at the time of the French Revolution itself, he only did what the immense majority of the English people, even of the cultivated English people, deliberately desired; that he did it anxiously, with many misgivings, and in opposition to his natural inclinations; that it is very dubious whether, in the temper of the French nation and the temper of the English nation, a war between them could by possibility have been avoided at that juncture; that in his administration and under his auspices the spirit of legislative improvement which characterises modern times may almost be said to begin; that he was the first English minister who discussed political questions with the cultivated thoughtfulness and considerate discretion which seem to characterise us now; that in political instruction he was immeasurably superior to Fox, and that, in the practical application of just principles to ordinary events, he was equally superior to Burke.

There are two kinds of statesmen to whom, at different times, representative government gives an opportunity and a career-dictators and administrators. There are certain men who are called in conjunctures of great danger to save the State. When national peril is imminent, all nations have felt that it was needful to select the best man who could be found -for better, for worse; to put unlimited trust in him; to allow him to do whatever he wished, and to leave undone whatever he did not approve of The qualities which are necessary for a dictator are two,-a commanding character and an original intellect. All other qualities are secondary. Regular industry, a conciliatory disposition, a power of logical exposition and argumentative discussion, which are necessary to a parliamentary statesman in ordinary times, are not essential to the selected dictator of a particular juncture. If he have force of character to overawe men into trusting him, and originality of intellect sufficient to enable him to cope with the pressing, terrible, and critical events with which he is selected to cope, it is enough. Every subordinate shortcoming, every incidental defect, will be pardoned. "Save us!" is the cry of the moment, and, in the confident hope of safety, any deficiency will be overlooked, and any frailty pardoned.

The genius requisite for a great administrator is not so imposing, but it is, perhaps, equally rare, and needs a more