should be intrusted. The parliament and the country alike supported the policy of Pitt with the utmost enthusiasm, and his regency bills passed both houses by large majorities. The recovery of the king at this critical moment tilled the great body of the people with heartfelt joy and gratitude, and confirmed the triumphant minister in his undisturbed possession of supreme power. The remaining years of his administration, however, were beset with the most harassing difficulties and dangers, and closed amid public disasters and dark forebodings. When the French revolution broke out, Pitt regarded its early stages with interest and even approbation. He tried to avert the war between France and the other great continental powers, and he laboured with especial earnestness to preserve the neutrality of Great Britain. But the frightful excesses of the French mob, and the fanatical propagandism of the jacobins on the one hand, and the alarm of the English people on the other, rendered a collision inevitable. There is the clearest evidence that Pitt yielded to the current with the greatest reluctance, and that again and again during the progress of the contest, he was willing and anxious to make great sacrifices for the sake of peace, but without effect. His military administration was confessedly a failure. His continental expeditions were badly planned and grossly mismanaged, in the words of his powerful colleague. Lord Grenville, by "some old woman in a red riband," to whom the command was intrusted. The successive coalitions of faithless, greedy, and selfish allies, which Pitt laboured assiduously to build up, and on which he lavished vast sums, fell to pieces like a rope of sand. Meanwhile his domestic policy, which was orignally liberal and mild, became rigorous and harsh in the extreme, no doubt from the conviction in which the great body of the people shared at the time, that the state could be saved by no other means. In the midst of this fierce struggle, however, he earned through the union with Ireland in the face of difficulties almost insurmountable, and had devised a series of measures for the benefit of that unfortunate country, and the removal of the Roman catholic disabilities, which were unhappily frustrated through the obstinate resistance of George III. Pitt in consequence retired from office, and Mr. Addington succeeded him at the head of the treasury in February, 1801. But before the formal transfer of office could take place, the anger and distress of the king brought back an attack of his mental malady. Pitt was deeply affected by this unexpected result, and at once conveyed an assurance to the king that he would never again during his majesty's reign bring forward the catholic question. This incident in Pitt's life has been greatly misunderstood and misrepresented; but the documents brought to light by Lord Stanhope have shown beyond a doubt that the ostensible was the real reason of the minister's resignation. Pitt remained out of office until May, 1804, when the notorious incompetency of Addington and his colleagues to provide for the defence of the country compelled them unwillingly to retire, and the king, rather reluctantly, requested his former premier to lay before him the plan of a new administration. In the critical position of the country Pitt was anxious to form a strong and comprehensive government, which should include Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville. But the king obstinately refused to admit Fox, and without him Grenville would not join. The consequent load of anxiety and toil which devolved upon the premier, proved too much for his enfeebled health. In a short time his weak cabinet was rendered still weaker by the loss of his ablest lieutenant and attached friend. Lord Melville. In this emergency Pitt again tried to induce the king to accept the services of Fox and Grenville, but his majesty was inexorable; and his selfish and unreasoning stubbornness ere long crushed his faithful minister, and reduced himself to the humiliating necessity of putting his hated rival in his place. Pitt's health rapidly gave way under his overwhelming labours, and his loss of strength became very apparent. Still he struggled on with unconquerable spirit, though the political horizon grew darker and darker. But the news of Austerlitz at length laid him prostrate. The gout, which had hitherto confined its attacks to his extremities, assailed some vital organ, and he died on the 23d of January, 1806, in the forty-seventh year of his age. His last words were—"Oh my country! how I leave my country!"
Mr. Pitt was probably the most powerful minister who has governed the country since the Revolution. He possessed great talents and great virtues. He was pre-eminently qualified for the office of a parliamentary leader, and throughout his whole career was the idol not only of his party, but of the country. He was certainly ambitious, but his love of power had in it nothing mean, paltry, or low. His patriotism may not have been always far-seeing and sagacious, but it was at all times pure and self-denying. He was upright, straightforward, and truthful. His private life was without a stain, and he was exemplary and affectionate in all his domestic and social relations. His manner in public and before strangers was somewhat haughty, stiff, and reserved, but among his intimate associates he was amiable, affectionate, and even playful. His oratory was of a high order, and in sentiment, in language, and in delivery evidently bore the stamp of his character. It wanted, indeed, the earnestness and fire of his father's eloquence; it had none of Burke's splendour of imagination, or of Fox's impassioned argument; but it was better adapted than the oratory of any of these great masters for its sphere of action—the British house of commons. His unbroken fluency and lucid arrangement, the clearness of his statements, his forcible appeals to reason and feeling, and especially the splendour of his declamation and his powers of sarcasm—set off as these were by the majesty of his diction, the depth and fulness of his sonorous voice, and the dignity of his manner—placed him in the foremost rank of parliamentary debaters, and contributed greatly to establish and perpetuate that unrivalled pre-eminence which he so long enjoyed, both in the legislature and in the country.—(Life of William Pitt, by Earl Stanhope, 4 vols., 1862.)—J. T.
PITT, William, Earl of Chatham. See Chatham.
PITTACUS, one of "the seven wise men of Greece," was born at Mitylene, the capital of the island of Lesbos, about 652 B.C. He was distinguished as a philosopher and poet, but still more as a warrior and practical politician. The latter, indeed, was the character in which the "seven sages" shone most conspicuously. They lived at a time when the old Greek tyrannies were tending to become republics, and they exerted all their talents and influence to bring about the change. In 612 B.C. Pittacus slew Melanchrus the tyrant of Mitylene, and so distinguished himself by his courage and capacity that the citizens appointed him commander of their forces in a war which they were waging with the Athenians for the possession of Sigeum in the Troad. Here, too, Pittacus greatly distinguished himself. He slew, with his own hand, Phrynon the Athenian general, having first entangled him in a net, after the fashion which was afterwards in use among the gladiators at Rome. The Athenians, however, obtained possession of the disputed territory through the mediation of Periander the tyrant of Corinth. (It may be scarcely necessary to mention that, among the Greeks, the word "tyrant" meant not necessarily a cruel, but only an arbitrary ruler.) To allay the intestine troubles at Mitylene which had followed on the death of Melanchrus, and to extinguish the aristocratical party, Pittacus was placed at the head of affairs by the suffrages of the people. He administered the government with great wisdom and moderation. Being offered as much land as he pleased, he accepted only so much as could be measured by one cast of a spear. Of this he dedicated one half to Apollo, and kept only the other to himself, saying, "The half is greater than the whole"—a maxim which inculcated the golden mean, and furnished a germ of doctrine to Aristotle and other moral philosophers of antiquity. Another of his sage sayings was, "Know the opportunity"—the right moment for action. He ordained that offences committed in a state of drunkenness should be punished twofold. Pittacus held office during ten years, and afterwards lived for ten years in retirement. He died in 569 B.C.—J. F. F.
PITTS, William, English sculptor, was born in London in 1790. The son of a gold-chaser, he was brought up to his father's business, in which he early became very expert. He was employed to assist Flaxman in chasing his Shield of Achilles, and from him derived probably his instruction in the sculptor's art. Pitts was also employed under Stothard in chasing the Wellington Shield. His own works are pretty numerous, considering his adverse circumstances and unfortunate absence of patronage. He possessed many of the qualifications for a sculptor—imagination, poetic feeling, taste, and refinement; but would probably in any case have excelled most as a sculptor in metal Among his works may be mentioned the Shield of Hercules and the Outlines from Virgil, produced in friendly emulation of Flaxman; a series of reliefs illustrative of the English poets, for the drawing-rooms of Buckingham Palace; a Christening cup, executed for the queen; the Rape of Proserpine, the Muses, and
