Sir t. Monro and Canning

Sir Thomas Monro and Sir Stamford Raffles were both great men; but I / recognise more genius in the latter, though, I believe, the world says / otherwise.

I never found what I call an idea in any speech or writing of -- -- 's. / Those enormously prolix harangues are a proof of weakness in the higher / intellectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful and the good; -- - / rarely speaks but to abuse, detract, and degrade. I confine myself to / institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my / judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered / the idea of the use of an institution. How fine, for example, is the idea / of the unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking together the / duke to the country gentleman in the primary distribution of justice, or / in the preservation of order and execution of law at least throughout the / country! Yet some men never seem to have thought of it for one moment, but / as connected with brewers, and barristers, and tyrannical Squire Westerns! / From what I saw of Homer, I thought him a superior man, in real / intellectual greatness.

Canning flashed such a light around the constitution, that it was difficult / to see the ruins of the fabric through it.