Ryall's Portraits and Memoirs of Eminent Conservative Statesmen, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint) (Paperback) | Released: 13 Nov 2018

Excerpt from Ryall's Portraits and Memoirs of Eminent Conservative Statesmen, Vol. 1

There is one quality, and one alone, in which Sir Robert Peel does not equal some few of his contemporaries, (two or one) and in which a considerable number equal him. And we must frankly admit this quality to be an indispensable element of a great orator -we mean, passion. But to say that Sir Robert Peel wants passion, is simply to admit that he does not possess two qualities which are absolutely incompatible with each other. He has more of what is understood by the phrase good sense than any other existing statesman, - only excepting, perhaps, his illus trious friend and political associate, the Duke of Wellington. And to display the highest amount of passion in connexion with the largest share of practical wisdom and good sense, was never yet given to any public speaker in any age or country.

It would be unjust to close our necessarily brief and imperfect notice of Sir Robert Peel, without glancing for a moment at that portion of his private life and habits which can alone be fitly adverted to in a memoir that is to appear before the public during the lifetime of its subject. We mean that refined taste for art, and that munificent patronage of it, the first of which our public men have too little cultivated. And the second of which they have rarely, if ever, except in his case, seemed to rank among their public duties. Though an excellent judge and an enlightened admirer of the works of the old masters, and possessing many admirable specimens of them, Sir Robert Peel's patronage has been chiefly extended to living English artists. Perhaps no other individual is so extensive and liberal a purchaser of their works and his portrait-gallery of distinguished living characters, painted expressly for himself by English artists, is already the most extensive and interesting collection of the kind that anywhere exists.

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