The Lancaster ledger. [volume] (Lancaster, S.C.) 1852-1905, 1854-05-31

and vote as his father did, on the Tory side,
because his father had INDUCED him, and he
must indulge his father But his father
died, and the love of sincerity which had
been taught him as bravery and pre-
dominance, was encouraged to break forth
by the Calling of his political trammels :;
and though he could not refuse his passions
their indulgence, till friends rescued him
from insolvency, and thus pitued his graft
into amendment, that very circumstance
tended to show that he added strength and
largeness of heart to his fathers softness t;
for the spoilt child and reckless gamester.
finally settled down as the representative of
nobler age that was coming, and was the
city of manners and the perfection of good
sense. Apart from this love Of truth, we
| do not take him, in any respect, to have
been profound, or to have seen beyond the
next generation. What was greatest in
Charles Fox, was his freedom from non
sense, pettiness, and prctension. He could
by no means admit that greater was smaller,
or the rights of american and French ma
tons inferior to those of their princes He
envied no man his good qualities felt un-
der no necessity of considering his dignity
with young or old though humanity at
large superior to any particular forms of it,
and in becoming its representative in circles
which would have conceded such privi-
lege to none but man Of BIRTH enabled
them to feel how charming it was.
The spoilt child prevailed so long in the
life of Fox, and TO all appearance irremedi-
bly,, that accounts of him at different periods
seem hardly recording the same man.
To give instances, in rs few words as
possible. We have seen the smashing of
the watch.
When yoath he was great admirer of
pceragcs and ribbons; and on his return
from his first visit to the con tinent, he ap.
peared in red .heeled shoes, and feather
in his hat; the greatest foppcrics of the day
- His father paid nhnndred and forty thous
pounds for his gaming debts.
He took to the other extreme in dress,
and became rs slovenly as he had been fop-
pish.
On coming into Office, he showed that he
could be as industrious rs he had been idle.
Whenever he was in office he never touch
ed a card; and when his political friends,
out of II sense of what was due to his pub
lie services, finally paid his debts and made
him easy for life, he left off play entirely.
lie dressed deccntly and simply, and set
tied down for the remainder Of his life into
the domestic husband the reader of books.
and the lover of country retirement, from
which he could not bear TO be absent for a
day.
In Holland House, Fox passed his boy
hood and part of his youth. He is lot much
associated with it otherwise, except rs n
name. He and a friend, one dav, without a
penny in their pockets, walked thither from
Oxford, distance of fifty-six miles, for the
purpose we suppose of getting supply.
They resolved to do it without stopping on
the road; the day was hot; an alchouse be-
came irresstablc; and on arriving at their
journeys end, Charles thus addressed his
father who was drinking his coffee:
"You must send half guinea or n gujnea
without loss of time, to the alehouse-keeper
at Nettlebed, to redeem the gold watch you
gave me some years ago, and which have
left in pawn there for pot of porter
A little before he died, at fty-eight years
ofage, of dropsy, he drove several times
with his wife to Holland House, and looked
about the House with a melancholy tender
ness.