Disinclined to mercantile pursuits, he withdrew from the business of which he was at his majority to have become a partner, and turned to another profession; one which may be deemed of some importance, that of member of the British House of Commons. To be one of the governing counsel of the British Empire, to adjudicate on the affairs of that considerable assemblage of millions, to lend a helping voice and hand to steer the British monarchy in such an era as ours, that it may ever have its head forward, avoiding collisions, and sunken rocks, and quicksands, may be thought a task of some difficulty and solemnity. The instinct of British honor revolts at the idea of its being made a trade; no salaried members, were your legislators forever confined to a class in consequence; but there is no such prevailing abhorrence against its being made an amusement. Accordingly, it is one of what may be styled the hereditary recreations of the British opulent and aristocratic classes; perhaps of a somewhat higher and more imposing order than fox-hunting and grouse-shooting; having, in particular, the advantage of serving as a background to these, giving them a look of relaxation in the eyes of the world, imparting to their enjoyment a fine zest, and freeing them of all ennui or monotony. Young Wilberforce, whom we have been observing, and of whose education for this profession we can judge, thought that to be an honorable member would just suit him. He had, indeed, received a good average training for the business. Quick to acquire, he had secured a fair amount of classical knowledge, and in those vital particulars, suavity of manners, happy fluency of speech, generally engaging deportment, he was surpassed by none; the old gayeties of Hull, the Olympian suppers of St. John's, and an excellent musical talent, would probably set him high among young honorable members. Besides, he would spend the last

year of his minority in London; in feasting and addressing a number of Hull freemen who lived there, he might make advances in the stiff old art of ruling men; while his evenings would be spent in actual apprenticeship to his business by attending the gallery of the House. All this was done; the member of the British Parliament deemed himself fully equip ped. Immediately on becoming of age, Wilberforce was elected by an overwhelming majority for the city of Hull. His seat cost him between £8000 and £9000.

Returned by such a constituency, and in such a manner, and on terms of personal intimacy with Pitt, who had been a Cambridge acquaintance, and whom he had met in the gallery of the House, Wilberforce found honorable membership a most easy and animated affair. Acting as background, in the way we have indicated, it threw out finally the foreground of fun and frolic, of sport and light joyance, of feast, and dance, and merriment, on which he acted. At all the clubs he was received with the most cheerful welcome; there, with the men in whose hands were, or were soon to be, the destinies of the British nation, he laughed, and chatted, and sung, and gambled. His winnings were once or twice a hundred pounds, and happening, on one occasion, from an unforeseen circumstance, to keep the bank, he cleared six hundred. But here, as always, on the verge of sheer vice, his better nature checked him; what would have stamped a man of radical baseness an irretrievable gambler, pained and shocked Wilberforce: he played no more. There was no abatement of any of the other pleasures. “ Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all your leading men," frequented these clubs; Pitt showed himself there as the wittiest of the witty; altogether, the spectacle presented by British statesmen behind the scenes was one of mirth and great exhilaration. Gay, boisterous, frivolous they were; not devoid of a certain

earnestness and business-like expertness when at their work, yet sportive and light of heart, as men whose places were safe, and who, for the rest, had only the matters of a British empire to think of. Wilberforce was by no means a technically inactive member; he presented to the eye of the world an unimpeachable aspect, and kept his own conscience perfectly quiet. Seeming, to himself and others, to be doing his whole. duty, he was satisfied and happy. Glancing, with his quick, clear eye, into circle after circle-lighting up all faces, by the gentle might of his wit, if not with uncontrollable mirth, yet with soft, comfortable smiles-suiting himself, by a tact swift and sudden as magic, to the society or subject of the moment -gesticulating and mimicking with rare histrionic art-pouring forth, in unbroken stream, a warm and glowing eloquence-or gliding softly into one of those songs to which his rich mellifluous voice lent such witching charms-he was the life and soul of supper-parties, the caressed of fashionable circles, the darling of the clubs. The Prince of Wales praised his singing; could human ambition look higher than that?

After some parliamentary work of this nature, Wilberforce flits gayly across the Channel; we find him in the autumn of 1783, with his friends Pitt and Elliot, in the French capital. It is strangely interesting to mark him as he flutters among the Vauxhall luminaries of the old French court; light and frivolous almost as they, yet with an open eye, and an English shrewdness, which note well the salient points in the dreamlike scene. His jottings are brief but suggestive:-Supped at Count Donson's. Round-table: all English but Donson. Noailles, Dupont. Queen came after supper. Cards, tric-trac, and backgammon, which Artois, Lauzun, and Chartres, played extremely well." This was that Artois who goes down to a fool's immortality as the inventor or possessor of those

"breeches of a kind new in this world," into which, and from which, his four tall lackeys lifted him every morning and evening; and this Chartres, who distinguished himself at tric-trac, became Egalité, and found it more difficult to play another game. Had the curtain of the future been drawn aside for a moment before the eyes of the group, and Philip of Orleans seen himself at that moment when he stopped before his own palace on his way to the guillotine, what astonishment, and trembling, and dismay, would have sunk over that gay company! He sees La Fayette, too, and styles him "a pleasing, enthusiastical man," surely with happy shrewdness and accuracy. The latter is already a patriot of the most high-flown description, quite on the model of Addison's Cato. The ladies of the court try to induce him to join in cards; but will the classic hero compromise the austere dignity of freedom? The ladies have to glide away in admiring respect, almost in reverence, and the heart of the patriot is strengthened. "The king is so strange a being (of the hog kind), that it is worth going a hundred miles for the sight of him, especially a boar-hunting." This was poor Louis, whose contribution to human knowledge. was of so decidedly negative a nature; who bore testimony to this one doctrine, whose worth, however, deserved to be written in blood; that nature, in this world, grants inappreciably little to good intentions. He sees Marie Antoinette frequently, and bears witness to the gentle witchery of her manner, queenly dignity blended with feminine kindness. Seen against the darkness which we know lay in the background, all this gaylytinted picture, of which Wilberforce for a short pace formed an appropriate figure, has a strange and fascinating look. "Light mortals, how ye walk your light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from you by a film!"

In the spring of 1784, Wilberforce was elected to represent

Yorkshire. His popularity in his native county was extreme; and when, after the prorogation of Parliament, he went down to spend his birth-day there, and appeared at the races, the whole era of his history which we now contemplate may be said to have reached its highest manifestation and climax. A running chorus of applauding shouts followed his path; he was the cynosure of all eyes; if vacant stare and noise could make one happy, he were the man.

In October, 1784, he left England on a journey to the Continent, in the company of Isaac Milner, brother of the Church historian, and, though unapt to show them, of thoroughly evangelical views. A few serious words which dropped from Milner's lips on the journey, and the effect of a perusal of Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” did not altogether pass away from the mind of Wilberforce; invisibly, perhaps intermittently, yet indestructibly, the disturbing influence acted within. On his return to London, he again rushed into the halls of fashion and frivolity; now and then a monition of other things flickered momentarily, like the glance of an angel's eye, across his sphere of vision; but he still continued, with reckless determination, to drain the chalice of wild, unmeasured mirth. No change was seen in the external aspect of his life he frisked about at Almack's, danced till five in the morning, charmed and fascinated as before; yet the monitory glance was at intervals upon him, the perfect peace of death was broken.

In the summer of 1785, he had another Continental tour with Milner. They now conversed more earnestly on the subject of religion, and commenced together the study of the New Testament. The time at length had come from which Wilberforce was to date a new era in his life: the time when he was, whether in delusion or not, to believe himself savingly