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deemed it most eligible and efficient. This had ever been and would still be his opinion.

those days when among legislators venality was as much a matter of course as paying their taxes or praying on Sundays for the royal family; endowed with personal attractions which made him irresistible with the fair sex, and born, as one may say, into a social and official rank which made him the natural prey of the foul of both sexes-it is Fox's greatest distinction that with the loss of his office and fortune (for he was thriftless with money as with ministerial favor) he did not surrender himself to his appetites, make merchandise of his principles and conscience, for which his King always kept open market, and rapidly decline into a sensualist or political Cheap Jack, a Sandwich, or a Rigby, or a Wilkes. So far from this, Fox never for a moment lost his self-respect. With all his excess

Never did any one rally quicker from an official discomfiture, and overcome the “avalanche of unpopularity" under which any of his colleagues would have been buried forever sooner, than this stripling statesman did. “And while his elasticity of temperament," says Mr. Trevelyan, "boded well for his own happiness, those who look ed to him as a future servant of his country noticed in all that he said and did the unmistakable tokens of an ingrained disinterestedness, which it required only a good cause to turn into heroism. He was not a political adventurer, but a knight-errant roaming about in search of a tilt, or, still better, of a mêlée, and not much caring whether his foes were robbers or true men, if only there were enough of them.es and irregularities he never lowered a He was one who, in a venal age, looked to something besides the main chance; who, when he had set his mind or his fancy on an enterprise, never counted the odds that he faced, or the hundreds a year that he forfeited. But with all these generous gifts, his education and his circumstances almost proved too much for him; and it was the instinct of moral selfpreservation which drove him to detach himself from his early surroundings, and find safety in uncompromising hostility to that evil system which had come so near to spoiling him.”

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hair's-breadth his standard of public duty. Early in life he fixed his eye upon the highest dignity accessible to a British subject, and he was never conscious of an act or a thought unworthy of that position. Though the most confirmed gambler in Europe, and one of the lions at Brooks's at sixteen, he seems to have played to lose his own money rather than to win the money of others. He may not be presumed to have carried the largest nosegays in London for nothing, but he was never involved in any overt scandal; he broke up no man's home; nor did he ever add a paragraph to the chronicles of sin and shame in which many of his companions and some of his relatives conspicuously figured. "There have been few better husbands," says Mr. Trevelyan, "than Fox, and probably none so delightful; for no known man ever devoted such

When Macaulay called Fox emphatically the debater of the British Parliament, and Burke proclaimed him the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw, they accorded to him an intellectual eminence to which few of the sons of men have attained. But far more marvellous than his gifts as a debater in our judg-powers of pleasing to the single end of ment were his moral forces. How any one trained and indulged as he had been, commended to the excitements of the gaming table and the bagnio, while yet a schoolboy, by a father whom he adored; accustomed from infancy to no restraints but the providential penalties of excess; beset with temptations during the most impressionable years of his life to which those of St. Anthony were but as the heat of Vesuvius to the fires of the sun; taught neither by precept nor example, in the domestic circle or in the social circle in which he lived, to deny or chasten any appetite; plunged prematurely and without discipline or preparation into public life in

making a wife happy. When once he had a home of his own, the world outside, with its pleasures and ambitions, became to him an object of indifference, and at last of repugnance. Nothing but the stings of a patriotic conscience, sharpened by the passionate importunity of partisans whose fidelity had entitled them to an absolute claim upon his services, could prevail upon him to spend opposite, or even on, the Treasury bench an occasional fragment of the hours which were never long enough when passed at Mrs. Fox's work-table, with Congreve or Molière as a third in company."

He was the best-natured of men, and

famous for his ability to inspire friendship and preserve it. Even Dr. Johnson, who detested his politics, cherished him with the affection of a father; but, unlike Johnson, he confessed himself "a bad hater."

Though the Fox property was less by £140,000 as a consequence of Charles's childish extravagance and folly, no one, high or low, Jew or Gentile, was ever a penny the worse for having helped him in his extremities.

en days after, this same gentleman accepted the place of Lord of Trade under those very ministers, and has acted with them ever since.

In the general opinion of mankind it would be thought as great an injustice to Gibbon to rate him on a level with Fox as a moralist as to rate Fox on his level as a historian, and yet Fox was more incapable of such a surrender of his convictions for place as that which is here imputed to Gibbon than he was to build the literary monument which has made the name of Gibbon immortal.

The complete subordination of himself to the cause or party in which he was enlisted made Fox always decorous in debate.

Parliament than any other member, it is safe to say that he was never called to order for an unparliamentary expression.* Gibbon himself bore the most unqualified testimony to Fox's moral elevation of character. "No human being," he said,

How Fox was enabled to pass so little scathed through such fiery furnaces of temptation, and to come out of them with such a throng of active virtues and noble graces of character in no way scorched or smoked, is susceptible of but one ex-Though a more frequent speaker while in planation. He was free from vanity, the besetting sin of public men, which urges them constantly into the sphere of temptation beyond their strength. Fox was ambitious, but he was too proud to ask or accept praise or honors which he had not earned in fair competition and did not deserve. His judgment could not be affected by flattery, while sycophancy of every kind he despised. He carried as much manliness and dignity with him to Brooks's as to the House of Commons. He had no illusions about himself, and no one, however exalted, could by his praise or by his censure make him sacrifice to false gods. This insensibility to flattery was Fox's Egeria. To it he owed in a great degree his perpendicularity of judgment, and his inaccessibility to the meaner motives which always beset and usually mar the career of men in exalted station. We despise the weakness of Bacon, the venality of Marlborough, and the untruthfulness of Napoleon; but no one can despise Charles James Fox for any-banity and amenity which flowed still thing he ever said or did, though more conspicuous for the irregularities of his life than either of them.

When Fox's library, which had been taken under an execution by the sheriff, was sold at auction, among the books was found the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which appeared by the title-page to have been presented by the author. Upon the same page was found the following note in the handwriting of Mr. Fox:

"The author, at Brooks's, said there was no salvation for this country till six heads of the principal persons in the administration were laid on the table. Elev

was ever more free from any taint of malignity, vanity, or falsehood." It was his entire freedom from self-consciousness, which vanity will always betray, that gave Fox a large share of his influence in Parliament. He never seemed to be concerned about himself, or with anything but the division. He roused no man's jealousy, and encountered no hostility but that which was entertained for the cause he advocated. "His superiority," says Sir James Mackintosh, "was never felt but in the instruction which he imparted, or in the attention which his generous preferences usually directed to the more obscure members of the company. The simplicity of his manners was far from excluding that perfect ur

* Bentham, in his Essay on Political Tactics, used Fox's example to illustrate the importance of the rule in debate to "never impute bad motives." of England, who attacked his adversaries with so "Mr. Fox," he says, "the most distinguished orator close a logic, carried to the highest pitch the art of avoiding everything which might irritate them. In his most animated moments, when he was, as it were, borne onward by the torrent of his ideas, always master of himself, he was never wanting in the most scrupulous regard to politeness. It is true that this happy quality was in him less a secret of the art of oratory than the effect of the benevolence of his character-modest amidst its superiority, and generous in its strength. Still, however, no man ever expressed himself more courageously or less ceremoniously. Les mots allaient, as says Montaigne, |'où allait la pensée.'”

more from the mildness of his nature than from familiar intercourse with the most polished society of Europe. The pleasantry perhaps of no man of wit had so unlabored an appearance. It seemed rather to escape from than to be produced by it."

Though Fox may never have known while in the flesh the highest joys of the Christian life, he was a sincere believer in the doctrines of Christianity, and never was heard to utter a word that betrayed either indifference to or want of confidence in them. "Though undoubtedly," says Mr. Fox's earliest biographer, Mr. Fell, "there were and are men of great piety in the House of Commons, whose close attention to religious subjects has done them honor, I have not in the whole course of that attention to the Parliamentary proceedings of the last thirty years which the preceding pages of this volume required, found any speeches or even allusions to a subject in every age so interesting to man, the hope of the virtuous, the comfort of the afflicted, and the terror of the vicious, so replete with

genuine and unaffected religion as those of Mr. Fox."

While there is so much to admire and love in the character of Fox, just commended anew to our study by one of the most fascinating biographical fragments in our language, there is no man of his own or perhaps of any age who presented in himself more to be accepted and at the same time more to be avoided as an example. His habits of life would have ruined him before he had matured if he had not contracted them innocently, and if they had not been afterward controlled to some extent by intellectual endowments of the very highest order. Happily the number of parents who train children as Fox was trained is very limited, and unhappily the number born with such marvellous endowments is still more limited. He is therefore to be contemplated rather as a phenomenon than a model, reminding one of the Pyramid of Cheops, so imposing in its dimensions, so unique in all its proportions, but fitly built in a wilderness, and not a model upon which a school of architecture can ever be founded.

PUSS TANNER'S DEFENSE.

CHAPTER I.

Turrences here in told, Silas Tanner,

WENTY years previously to the oc

when, tall, slender, blue-eyed, and fairhaired, she was the handsomest girl in all that section of Middle Georgia.

Silas Tanner's possessions were his onestory-and-a-half mansion, with piazza and shed-rooms, good common out-buildings, about a dozen negroes, and three hundred acres of good fresh land, lining, on the east side, by Rocky Creek, with the Booker estate, the latter owned, yet undivided, by the widow Booker, her married daughter, Mrs. Kemp, her son George, twenty, and her daughter Eliza, eighteen,

whose home hitherto had been in the
wire-grass region at the head-waters of
the Ohoopees, came up into the hill coun-
try, married Mary Foster, and settled
about two miles east of the somewhat am-
bitious little village of Dukesborough. A
tall, strongly built, awkward man was
Silas, and remarkably taciturn. Within
twelve years of the marriage his wife
died, leaving him with two children-years of age.
Mary, the elder, and Joseph, five years

younger.

Now George Booker greatly loved Puss Tanner, and had told her so some time ago. The Bookers were richer than the Tanners, and although they did not ex

From the day of her mother's death, Mary, whom her father first, and everybody afterward, called Puss, was the mis-actly war against George's intentions, tress of the household. She went for several years to the village mixed school, always taking her brother with her. In the afternoons she attended to domestic matters, gave out next day's dinners for her father and the negroes, and acted in most respects as the only authorized head of the family. Thus matters continued until she was about seventeen years old,

VOL. LXII.-No. 369.-28

yet they would have preferred his pursuing what seemed to them a better fortune, namely, Miss Susan Kemp and her fifteen negroes, together with five hundred acres of land, down on Long Creek. This property was already in hand, and George's married sister, who was the sister-in-law of Miss Kemp, assured him that there was a strong likelihood that ten more negroes

and several hundred other acres would devolve upon the young lady, that were now contingent upon the marriage of the widow Kemp, who had been for several months of late in the habit of declaring that she was many years younger than she had been generally represented and believed to be, and giving her hair and her dress and her gait such turns as were suited to her avowed juvenility.

his degree in the spring thereafter. All three had been school-fellows and quasi friends. John Barnes had been the leading male and Puss the leading female pupil of the Dukesborough school.

George Booker, in his suit, had one powerful auxiliary. Silent a man as was her father outside of his home, he would have his little chats with Puss there. The creek between him and the Bookers was an uncertain line. It looked like a big settled stream just above, at Larmer's mill-pond. But when it had performed its offices with its accumulated and reserved resources at the mill, it dwindled to its original volume, and in the irregular grounds below seemed undetermined what channel it would finally and per

But George Booker was not the only youth in the neighborhood that loved Puss, although he was the only one who had told her of his love. There was John Barnes, who, with his widowed mother and two younger brothers, dwelt two miles west of Dukesborough, on an estate yet smaller than that of the Tanners. Then there was Thaddeus Basil, whose fa-sistently take in its course to the Ogeether, Duke Basil, resided in the village, chee. Sometimes it neared the Bookers' owned the largest estate in the county, field, and left the whole bottom for a year was a member of the Legislature, and one or two to the Tanners. Silas would smile, of the judges of the County Court. Ev- but say nothing, as he walked along the erybody knew that John Barnes would margin and looked at the oaks and hickolike to marry Puss, but that he believed ries which towered all along on his side. both George Booker and Thaddeus Basil But then, perhaps, after an extraordinary stood above himself in her regard. About freshet, the swollen waters would plough Basil people had their doubts. The Bas- up the ground within a few feet of the ils were rather fond of being regarded as Tanner fence, and then the Bookers would aristocratic. Thad had even been toFrank- have their indulgence in view of the statelin College, the State University (so call-ly growth. It was during this latter peed), for a year, and his manners, there acquired, were considered by most of the girls as the best that the neighborhood could afford. It was generally believed that he could win Puss Tanner for the asking, and that her hesitation in accepting George Booker was caused by her waiting to see what direction Thad's matrimonial designs might definitely assume. She believed herself to be his favorite, but she would not have so admitted to any person.

riod that one night Silas had the following chat with his daughter.

"George Booker seems to be coming right often to see us, Puss, here of late."

He had almost turned his back upon her, as they sat by the table, after Joe had gone to bed, for Silas was a modest man, and yet he was trying to be a little artful.

"Not so very often, pa," answered Puss; "not much oftener than some others."

"Some oftener, Puss-a leetle oftener, I think. Thad Basil does come right often, and John Barnes sometimes; but George comes the oftenest, Puss. Do the boys, or do George Booker, seem like he had anything particklar on his mind, Puss-any business?"

She looked squarely at him, but he turned his head farther from her, and with his off hand gently stroked and shaded the near side of his face.

Considering the three as competitors, Basil would have seemed to have marked advantage. He was tall, dark-haired, handsome, easy, gracious, but with a certain imperiousness of deportment which is often a winning card, especially with girls in a country community. George Booker was stout, square-shouldered, ruddy, farmer-like. He was managing-and managing admirably-the estate, which was to be divided in three years. John Barnes was tall, but of a pale complexion. He was studying for the practice of medicine, had already attended one course of "They might wish, you know, to see lectures at Augusta, and was expecting to me afterward, Puss, for a final settlement be at another the ensuing winter, and take |--for a final settlement, you know, Puss."

"No, pa, I don't think they've been coming on business. If they'd had business, I suppose they would have called on you."

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Turn around, pa―turn square around. | artful, honest old pa, you straightforward, Put down your hand, and look at me. blundering old pa, I love you so much Now tell me what you wish to say." that I scarcely know what I would not do at your wish; but remember what I say, and what you say, that that line between the Bookers and us is a crooked one, and an uncertain—”

She had been mistress there too long to be disobeyed at this late day. Silas turned, and tried to come to the point.

"That creek-bottom line betwixt us and the Bookers, I do think, upon my soul, Puss, it's the crookedest and uncertaintest line that any two plantations ever went to work to have a line and set up a line betwixt one another."

Silas looked so mournful as he said these words that Puss must have wept if she had not laughed.

"Well, pa, not one of these young men has ever mentioned, if I remember rightly, the line between us and the Bookers."

"Not George, Puss?"

"Not George."

"The crookedest, Puss, and the uncertaintest-"

"That will do."

She kissed him, and went off to her chamber.

CHAPTER II.

THE being so long without a mother, and in charge of her father's family, had served to make Puss Tanner less reserved and timid in her ways than other girls in

"Nor nothing a-a sort of borderin' on the neighborhood. Not having to conthe line, Puss?"

sult anybody when and where she was to

He tried to turn and hide again, but she go, she went when and where she pleased, pulled him back.

ing the deportment of young females. The men, indeed, old and young, contended that she was not only the prettiest girl in the county, but as full of sense and energy as the most of the married women. But some widows and spinsters

on foot or on horseback. Her freedom "You'll have to explain yourself, pa. in this respect must have attracted some You generally talk to the point, what lit- comment in a community that was extle talk you do at all; but your conversa-tremely strict in its common law regardtion to-night is about as crooked and uncertain as the creek line. Come, now, my dearest old pa, straighten your speech, and let me know what you are thinking about." “You know, Puss, that it have been my wishes always to have that line straightened if it could be done in a peaceable-what few there were-when they would and a friendly and—yes, I may say, Puss, in an affectionate way, family and neighborly; and so I've been a-thinkin', Puss, that if you and George, which, I want you to know, Puss, that I should never be willin' for you to go away from me and Jodie-not while I was alive."

Puss would have laughed again, but her father looked too serious. She rose, went to him, and laid both hands upon his shoulders. "I like George Booker very much, pa, and think he is a good

man.

"I'm glad to hear you say so, Puss." "But that is a very crooked line, pa, you know."

"Very crooked, Puss-the crookedest and uncertaintest-"

"Not uncertaintest, pa; say 'most uncertain.""

"Most uncertain; and you're the only one that can straighten it.

"Am I? Well, we shall see." She wound her hands in his long hair, and moved his head back and forth. "You

see her pacing out of town with George Booker or Thad Basil, would seem to think it a pity that Silas Tanner did not better provide for his motherless children. Some of the girls would say occasionally that they wondered how Puss Tanner could be so brave.

Thad Basil had never addressed Puss, and everybody except Puss, and perhaps George Booker and John Barnes, believed he never would. In general conversation on such subjects Thad had often said that he was not a marrying man; he liked the society of the girls, especially pretty ones, and he liked his fun, but he wanted to see some of the world before he settled down to become an old man.

It was a monthly Sunday meeting day in Dukesborough. Never had Puss seemed finer than on that April morning, with her white frock, blue belt, Leghorn bonnet, with a red, red rose and violets in her hair, and riding-whip in hand. Although George Booker had ridden with Puss to church, he yielded to Thad Basil's

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