TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

IN our Number for October will be given a Life of CHARLES JAMES FOX, in which we shall follow the same plan which we adopted in our Life of William Pitt; we shall endeavour to investi gate his intellectual, moral, oratorical, and political character; as well as give a sketch of his history. We pledge ourselves, that no difference of sentiments shall in the least interfere with impartiality, or prevent us from doing, to the utmost of our power, justice to such a subject as, in a country abounding with able men, very rarely occurs.

The anonymous account from Stirling of the proceedings of the Scotch Missionaries displays strong humour, but is, we should hope, exaggerated. Though not without a recollection of Scotch Seceders, and consequently prepared for great absurdity from their imitators and followers, we cannot admit a description of so extravagant deviation from common sense, unless properly authenticated.

Dr. Munkhouse has our best thanks, and we hope to have many oppor tunities of doing justice to his loyal, constitutional, and able writings. The Essays in Defence of the Slave Trade are under consideration. The letter in defence of a Methodist Preacher, applying the character of Mr. Coal in our last Number to an existing individual is come to hand.' Qui capit ille facit.

Several Poetical Favours are received, some of which are intended for insertion in the next Number.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE

OF THE LATE

JAMES, EARL CHARLEMONT, K.S.P. &c.

JAMES

AMES CAULFIELD, Earl Charlemont, Viscount Charlemont, and Baron Caulfield, of the County of Armagh in Ireland, was born in that kingdom August 22, 1728, and in the sixth year of his age succeeded to the title and estates of his father, Viscount Charlemont, on the 21st of April, 1734. His Lordship's mother afterwards married Thomas Adderley, Esq. of the Kingdom of Ireland, and died in child-bed, May 30, 17+3.

Lord Charlemont received a private education, and at a very early age proceeded upon his travels, not merely to make what is generally termed the grand tour, for he not only visited every count in Europe, where he staid considerably longer than the residence of ordinary travellers, but passed through a considerable part of Africa, and made himself most intimately acquainted with the state of society, customs, and manners of the different countries which he visited. †

Above fifteen years of his lordship's early life were spent abroad, the most considerable part of which he passed in Italy, a country. whose climate, language, and encouragement of the fine arts captivated him in a peculiar degree. By his long residence in that country he not only acquired a thorough knowledge of its language, but, as a most critical judge in the fine arts, and a perfect master of taste in the sciences, he surpassed most men.

The death of his father, while he was yet so young, put his lordship, at the tender age of six years, into possession of an unencum

This account of the late Lord Charlemont was communicated to us by a gentleman who had full access to the knowledge of the facts. From these materials, with others which we are now collecting, we shall be able, in the course of the winter, to give a more detailed account of that nobleman, in a different form.

EDITOR.

+ His Lordship, when in Turkey, received a present from the Grand Seignior of a most superb Turkish bridle, so gaudy in its appearance that it has never been used but by the Lord Mayors of Dublin when the grand triennial procession of the Franchises used to be rode in that city, but some years since abolished.

bered estate of about 12,00cl. per ann. independent of a considerable sum of ready money. These circumstances enabled him to give full scope to his inclinations, by living in a stile of splendour and magnificence seldom witnessed upon the Continent from a nobleman upon his travels.,

While in Italy, and for some years after his return to Ireland, his lordship continued to keep a house and regular establishment in Rome, Naples, and Florence. His acts of munificence in those parts of the world were unbounded; he frequently liberated debtors and emptied prisons. He was also in the daily habit of collecting precious relics of antiquity, and employing numbers of artists in copying the choicest works of the antients in painting and sculpture, which are now to be seen at Charlemont-House, Dublin.

His lordship was attended upon his travels by his private tutor, the late Doctor Murphy, a gentleman well calculated, if any stimulus had been necessary, to infuse into his pupil's mind an ardent love of science. His return home was hastened by a disorder which afflicted him with so much violence as to baffle the skill of medicine in that part of the world, a circumstance which has been mentioned in various ways, but of a nature so delicate as to preclude conversation even among his lordship's intimates; he himself has often mentioned that he was exceedingly injured by an inattention to the heavy dews of Sicily, which caused a rheumatic complaint from which he was pever afterwards free. The other disorder is stated by some to have arisen from poison administered by the jealousy of a lady. This circumstance, so much lamented, did not occasion his return home before he had collected a number of the works of art, which have been for many years the delight and admiration of the curious.

His lordship's health after his return to his native country, which was in the year 1758, continued, exceedingly precarious; and to the lot of an Irish physician, Dr. Lucas, (so well known as a political writer to every one, acquainted with the history of Ireland) it fell to be the preserver of a life which continued for forty-one succeeding years to be the delight, the pride, and the ornament of the peerage

of his native land.

«fabt an air577 sit Desirous of adorning his native country with productions of the fine arts, Lord Charlemont, immediately upon his arrival in Ireland, purchased a large piece of ground upon an elevated spat in the city of Dublin, upon which he caused to be erected, after a design of the late Sir William Chambers, that admirable piece of architecture, Charlemont-House. The whole of the internal part of this

town residence has never been completed; but such parts as have been finished exhibit an uncommon stile of taste, spirit, and chaste correctness. In this house are several admirable and valuable ori ginal pictures from the pencils of Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyke, Guido, Van Lo, Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, &c. &c. Among those of Hogarth are his original Gates of Calais, Lady's last Stake, and the Harlot in high keeping with the Jew! Mrs. Hogarth ob tained permission from his lordship to have the Lady's last Stake copied, in order to complete the whole of that artist's works, which were engraving about seventeen years since, and at which time Mr. Livesay the painter went to Ireland expressly for that purpose, and copied it. Among others of Sir Joshua's works is the original Venus chiding Cupid, never copied, although a print bearing some resemblance to it has been published. anga loi 201

A magnificent library, also designed by the late Sir William Chambers, has been erected by his lordship in the rear of his town residence: it is composed of four rooms, the centre room built in the Corinthian order, about sixty feet long, forty wide, and fifty high, lighted by arcaded windows at the top of the north and south sides; between each pilaster are shelves, containing many thousand volumes of the most precious books and manuscripts in all languages, and valuable curiosities. One of the rooms is appropriated to the custody of gems and curious medals, another to works of ruder antiquity, and the anti-room more immediately to the works of the Roman and Grecian historians, artists, &c. The floors are of Irish oak, laid down in geometrical figures. The tout en semble of this suit of rooms displays a magnificence far surpassing, we believe, the library of any private gentleman in Europe.tes d

In all those rooms are placed, in most advantageous dispositions, several productions of the best masters of antient and modern sculp Ture, and in the anti-room, in addition to some copper bustos of the Roman Emperors, executed at the time they flourished; and two marble bustos by Wilton of the late Lords Chatham and Chesterfield, is an exact copy, in parian marble, same size as the original, of the Venus de Medicis, sculptured by the same eminent artist, Jolin Wilton, at Florence, in the year 1753, and brought by his lordship from thence. The emblematical devices, analogous to the rising of Venus from the sea, upon the marble pedestal which supports this statue, are curiously sculptured; the whole supported by four tor toise's; and upon at entablature in the front of the pedestal an in

10

stance of his lordship's peculiar taste may be conceived, from the following inscription engraved thereon:

whento via Quiz quoniam rerum,

Some gaivą, o Naturam sola gubernas,

9. Necisine te quicquam

༢”ནི

od qrabayl our Dias, in luminis oras pode arhaugestion Exoritur; neque fit lætum,

do benz Neque amabile quicquam, piedi annitusza 21. Te sociam studeo!

- Notwithstanding the efforts of the skilful Dr. Lucas, Lord Charlemort found that the still delicate state of his health would preclude him from frequently visiting his estate, which blay at a considerable distance from the metropolis; he therefore, in consequence of his aphysician's advice to use sea-bathing without intermission, purchased actract of land, containing about two hundred acres, contiguous to the sea, situate, about two miles to the eastward of the Irish onetropolis; and commanding a fine prospect of the Bay of Dubliny and the beautifully bespangled Wicklow mountains terminating a part of the opposite shore.

210 Upon this spot Lord Charlemont immediately proceeded to erect barbuilding, which is a chef d'œuvre in architecture. It was designed -by Sir William Chambers, aided by his lordship; and, while it stands, will be a monument of their united taste to future ages. It is built of -Portland stone, formed of the Doric order, and almost every moulding of the building enriched by carved ornaments. The inarth froht sis adorned by statures large as life of Bacchus and Ceres, and the south front by those of Apollo and Venus.rw sd (blsfim) ropM

When this building was commenced, it was the intention of Lord Charlemont to dead a single life, to which, happily for his country and his friends, he did not adhere, and under that idemɔthe several sapartments in it are neither sufficiently numerous nor spacious for a large familyb The exterior of the building has been long finished, but the interior, thus so splendidly begun, has been for a series of years falling into decay:i: 36 como prazos fijnomeind') broJ

This spot his lordship called Marino, from the name of a small independent state in Italy, the patriotism of whose inhabitants he contemplated with great pleasure; and the building he dedicated as a temple to the great WILLIAM PITT, whose exertions in the year the foundation of it was laid, 1759, raised the empire of Great Britain to an heighth then unparalleled in the annals of her history, 12 This building,