to show him her husband's Memoirs, that they were suppressed in consequence of their disagreeable truths about the late Prince of Wales; and that is all that Walpole says he ever knew about the matter. As to the Dramatic Scene in Queen Caroline's dressing-room on the supposed news of Lord Hervey's death, we readily believe Walpole's assertion that he knew it only from Lady Hervey's eulogistic report, for it has allusions to the Princess Caroline which it is not very likely that Lady Hervey should have been willing to show to anybody-least of all to such a gossip as Walpole-during the lifetime of the Princess, which did not close until within a few months of the publication of the Royal and Noble Authors.' On the whole, then, we are nearly satisfied that Walpole never did see the Hervey Memoirs, and agree with what seems to be Mr. Croker's opinion, that the coincidences and variations between them and the Reminiscences are those of general truth conveyed through distinct and independent channels.

From many specimens of Walpole's peculiar style of wit, which it is in general difficult to exhibit in an extract, we select a few sparks:

'What was in the letter that diverted Lord Ossory I remember no more than the man in the moon, whose memory lasts but a month.'—vol. i. p. 187.

At a disastrous period of the American war he says,

There was a Gazette this morning that will frighten the combined [French and Spanish] fleets out of their senses. We have destroyed a whole navy of walnutshells at a place as well known as Pharsalia, called Penobscot. . . . Flying from D'Orvilliers, beaten by D'Estaing, and comforted by gathering a wreath of sea-weeds at Penobscot! How low is a nation sunk when its understanding may be so insulted !'— vol. i. pp. 364-5.

Happening to mention about the same time the virtues and generosity of two old ladies, Miss Stapylton and Lady Blandford, he adds,

'I wish we had some of these exalted characters in breeches! These two women shine like the last sparkles in a piece of burnt paper, which the children call the parson and clerk. Alas! the rest of our old ladies are otherwise employed; they are at the head of fleets and armies.'vol. i. pp. 362-3.

'A prism,' he says, 'is the grammar of the rainbow,' ii. 23.

To hint at some levities of the then Prince of Wales, he says he expects to be invited to revels in Eastcheap,' ii. 48.

Announcing the resignation of Lord Shelburne's Ministry before the successors were named, he dates his letter 13th March

March-New Style,'-which it was chronologically and politically-and concludes it,

Here ends the first chapter of Exodus, which, in Court Bibles, always precedes Genesis.'-vol. ii. p. 148.

He describes one of the villas near Richmond Bridge as

' a house in the middle of a village with nothing but a short green apron to the river.'-vol. ii. p. 393.

There is a grievance of which all letter-writers are constantly complaining the shortness of the time between the arrival and departure of the post; but never was it before conveyed in so epigrammatic a way :

'Our post, madam, which only comes in, turns on its heel, and goes out again, made it impossible for me to answer your ladyship's letter before dinner.'-vol. ii. p. 438.

It is thus that by the metaphorical use of a single word he combines, condenses, and exhibits in, as it were, one flash, a train of ideas that would cost an ordinary writer a long detail. This is, as we formerly noticed, the chief characteristic and merit of Walpole's epistolary style: even in this collection-the least pretentious series of his correspondence-it everywhere inspirits and illuminates what would otherwise be very ordinary matter; though it must be confessed that here, as elsewhere, he frequently abuses his facility, and rides his metaphors too hard.

But there are things in these volumes more valuable than the best of their wit. He was during a great part of his life a very dishonest politician; but he really loved liberty, and well understood that it was inseparable from good order.. His own temper, too, was cynical and selfish almost to infirmity, but he had a sure and prompt taste for kindness and generosity in others. He was the very reverse of what Swift said of himself, that he loved Jack and Tom, but detested the human race in general.' Walpole readily hated and ridiculed individuals, but he loved mankind; and under the surface of his wayward passions and strong prejudices there is always an under-current of good feeling and, above all, of good sense. We have before applauded the sagacity and humanity with which from the very outset he reprobated the American war, and we see him here again writing in the same wise and generous spirit. But it is still more satisfactory to find him, at the close of a long factious life, reclaimed by experience into sounder opinions, and looking at the French Revolution with the same ominous feeling as Mr. Burke-though (as might be expected in familiar letters) with a less extensive scope than the great political philosopher developed it in his more elaborate works. The principles on which the shrewdest wit and the most sublime

sublime statesman of the age, or perhaps of any age, concurred— contrary to all their original prejudices-in auguring ill of the results of the French Revolution, were drawn from the nature of man and the experience of all human society; and Horace Walpole's anticipations of the results of the first revolution are well worthy of the consideration of those who are now speculating on the consequences of the last. The last has not yet (we write in May) been disgraced by the massacres that characterized the first, because there has been neither resistance on one side nor enthusiasm on the other; but the germs of anarchy, indigenous to such sudden and uncontrolled experiments on human tempersnot to say passions-are, to our conviction, as pregnant in 1848 as they were in 1789:

'4th August, 1789.-The Etats Généraux are, in my opinion, the most culpable. The King had restored their old constitution, which all France had so idolized; and he was ready to amend that constitution. But the Etats, with no sense, prudence, or temper, and who might have obtained a good government and perhaps permanently, set out with such violence to overturn the whole frame, without its being possible to replace it at once with a sound model entirely new, and the reverse of every law and custom of their whole country,-have deposed not only their King, but, I should think, their own authority; for they are certainly now trembling before the populace, and have let loose havoc. through every province, which sooner or later will end in worse despotism than that they have demolished.'-vol. ii. p. 382.

The despotisms of Robespierre and of Buonaparte!

So early as a fortnight after the taking of the Bastile the prophetic old man

'For old experience doth attain

To something of prophetic strain'-— foresaw the murder of the King and the despotism of the Emperor :

'4th August, 1789.-When they have deposed their monarch, or worse, and committed ten. thousand outrages, they will rebound to loyalty, and, out of penitence, confer on whoever shall be their king unbounded power of punishing their excesses.'--vol. ii. p. 383.

Then how applicable to the Abbé de Lamennais' recent plan of a constitution is the following observation on the constitutionmongering that was then going on in France!

'An Abbé de Sieyes excuses himself to the Etats from accepting the post of speaker, as he is busy in forming a Bill of Rights and a new Constitution. One would think he was writing a prologue to a new play!'-vol. ii. p. 386.

Any one who reads the National or the Réforme of the present day will see that Walpole had been reading some exactly similar publications:

publications: one would suppose he had especially before him the procès verbal of the 15th of May, 1848.

They have launched into an ocean of questions that would take a century to discuss, and, suppose that a mob of prating legislators, under the rod of the mob of Paris, and questionable by every tumultuous congregation in the provinces, are an all-powerful senate, and may give laws to other kingdoms as well as to their own; and have already provoked, as they have injured, a very considerable part of their own countrymen. In the midst of this anarchy, is it not supremely ridiculous to hear of a young gentlewoman presenting her watch to the national fund, and a lifeguardsman five-and-twenty livres? Nay, there are some tradesmen's wives appointed commissioners for receiving such patriotic oblations! . . . . They have either entailed endless civil wars on, perhaps, a division of their country, or will sink under worse despotism than what they have shaken off. To turn a whole nation loose from all restraint, and tell them that every man has a right to be his own king, is not a very sage way for preparing them to receive a new code, which must curtail that boundless prerogative of free will, and probably was not the first lesson given on the original institution of government.'vol. ii. pp. 391, 2.

This seems as if written yesterday. We suspect that the following prophecy of what then ensued will be found equally true of what is now in progress :

When all Europe is admiring and citing our constitution, I am for preserving it where it is. The decry of prerogative on the Continent is a good counter-security to us; I do not think the season will invite anybody to encroach on liberty; and I hope liberty will be content to sit under her own vine and fig-tree, and receive the advantages that France is flinging into her lap. . I own I shall be curious to see the new constitution of France when it shall be formed, if formed it can be. It must be a curious patchwork composed from sudden and unconnected motions, started in a hurlyburly of disputes, without any plan or system, and voted as fluctuating interests and passions preponderate, sometimes one way, sometimes another, with no harmony in the compost, but calculated to contradict every view of the old government, -or secretly to preserve enough of it to counteract the new.'-vol. ii. p. 394.

And the following sketch of the issue of such attempts, which turned out to be literally true, will, we fear, be found equally true on the repetition of a still more inexcusable experiment:

A pack of pedants are going to be replaced by a pack of cobblers and tinkers, and confusion will be worse confounded. I should understand the Revelations, or guess the number of the Beast, as soon as conjecture what is to ensue in that country. Till anarchy has been bloodied down to a caput mortuum, there can be no settlement, for all will be struggling different ways, when all ideas have been disjointed and overturned; no great bodies can find their account in it, and no harmonious system is

formed

formed that will be for the interest either of the whole or of individuals. Even they who would wish to support what they now call a constitution will be perpetually counteracting it, as they will be endeavouring to protract their own power, or to augment their own fortunes-probably both; and since a latitude has been thrown open to every man's separate ideas, can one conceive that unity or union can arise out of such a mass of discord?'-vol. ii. p. 450.

And, finally, we recommend to M. Lamartine's serious consideration (if, indeed, he has time or disposition for serious consideration) the example of one of his predecessors in revolutionary popularity. We might remind him of Roland, Pétion, Danton, Robespierre; but a lighter example will be in every way more appropriate :

'Madame de Coigny, who is here and has a great deal of wit, on hearing that the mob at Paris have burnt the bust of their late favourite, Monsieur d'Epremenil, said, "Il n'y a rien qui brûle sitôt que les lauriers secs."'—vol. ii. P. 484.

Here we must close our extracts and remarks with thanking Mr. Smith for what he has now given us-with recommending a search for the letters to the Duchess of Grafton-and with expressing a hope that he will not be offended by the freedom with which we have suggested the little that is wanted to make these very acceptable volumes, if not more instructive, at least, in their lighter and more gossiping parts, more amusing.*

ART. V.-Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart, with Selections from his Correspondence. Edited by his Son, Charles Buxton, Esq. London. 8vo. 1848.

THIS

book will have its vogue among those whose opinions are not ours: but it should by no means be confined within a party or sectarian circulation. It has raised our estimate of Sir Fowell Buxton's talents, and introduced us to an acquaintance with graces of character which we might not have been likely to infer from the main circumstances of his public life. It affords some very curious pictures of manners—and, let us add, an example of discretion and good taste in one of the most difficult of literary tasks. The Editor has been contented to rely as far as

* We cannot forbear extracting in a note an anecdote, new to ourselves, for which we could find no fit place amidst the subjects of our text:

26 Nov. 1789.-One story will touch you: the little Dauphin, who is but four years old, and a beautiful child, was learning fables: the one in waiting ended by saying of the animal that was the subject of it, that, though she had had great misfortunes, she became at last heureuse comme les reines. He said, "Hah! toutes les reines ne sont pas heureuses, car maman pleure depuis le matin jusqu'au soir."— vol. ii. p. 407.

possible