in 1802, by John Soane, Esq. for 580 guineas; in whose possession they still remain.

The next article is a life of Richard Wilson, the British Claude, in which Mr. Cunningham has of course availed himself of the memoirs by Mr. Wright; for a copious notice of whose entertaining work we refer to vol. xcIV. ii. p.

521.

"In person he was above the middle size; his frame was robust and inclining to be corpulent; his head was large and his face red and blotchy; he wore a wig with a tail plaited into a club, and a three-cocked hat according to the fashion of his time. In his earlier days, when hope was high, he was a lover of gay company, and of gay attire: he sometimes attended the Academy in St. Martin's-lane in a green waistcoat ornamented with gold lace. He loved truth, and detested flattery; he could endure a joke but not contradiction. He was deficient in courtesy of speech-in those candied civilities which go for little with men of sense, but which have their effect among the shallow and the vain. His conversation abounded with information and humour, and his manners, which were at first repulsive, gradually smoothed down as he grew animated. Those who enjoyed the pleasure of his friendship agree in nouncing him a man of strong sense, intelligence, and refinement, and every way worthy of those works which preserve the name of

Richard Wilson."

pro

The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds is compiled with care, and from his high place in society, and the eminence of his associates, the biography of the first President of the Royal Academy will always be read with intense interest. His success was the very reverse of his friend Wilson; but his good fortune was richly deserved, and was the reward of a long life spent in an honourable profession. He seems to have wisely adopted Kneller's_reason for preferring portraiture. "I paint the living, and they make me live!" Sir Joshua's claims as an historic painter are thus given:

"Sir Joshua's historical paintings have little of the heroic dignity which an inspired mind breathes into compositions of that class. His imagination commonly fails him, and he attempts to hide his want of wings in the unrivalled splendour of his colouring, and by the thick-strewn graces of his execution. He is often defective even where he might have expected to show the highest excellence: his faces are formal and cold; and the picture seems made up of borrowed

fragments, which he had been unable to work up into an entire and consistent whole. "His single poetic figures are remarkable for their unaffected ease, their elegant simplicity, and the splendour of their colouring."

The portraits of Reynolds are equally numerous and excellent, and all who have written of their merits have swelled their eulogiums by comparing them with the simplicity of Titian, the vigour of Rembrandt, and the elegance and delicacy of Vandyke. Certainly, in character and expression, and in inanly ease, he has never been surpassed. He is always equal-always natural-graceful-unaffected. His boldness of posture, and his singular freedom of colouring, are so supported by all the grace of art-by all the sorcery of skill-that they appear natural and noble. Over the meanest head he sheds the halo of dignity; his men are all nobleness, his women all loveliness, and his children all simplicity: yet they are all like the living originals. He had the singular art of summoning the mind into the face, and making sentiment mingle in the portrait. He could completely dismiss all his pre-conceived notions of academic beauty from his mind, be dead to the past and living only to the present, and enter into the character of the reigning beauty of the hour with a truth and a happiness next to magical. It is not to be denied that he was a mighty flatterer."

The fourth place in British art is given to the truly national painter, Thomas Gainsborough; of whom, unfortunately, biographical materials are very scanty.

"Books Gainsborough admired little : in one of his letters, he says, he was well read in the volume of Nature, and that was learning sufficient for him; the intercourse of literary men he avoided as carefully as Reynolds courted it but he was fond of company, and passionately so of music."

"The chief works of Gainsborough are not what is usually called landscape, for he had no wish to create gardens of paradise, and leave them to the sole enjoyment of the

sun and breeze. The wildest nooks of his

woods have their living tenants, and in all his glades and his vallies we see the sons and daughters of men. A deep human sympathy unites us with his pencil, and this is not lessened because all its works are stamped with the image of old England. His paintings have a national look. He belongs to no school; he is not reflected from the glass of man, but from that of nature. He has not steeped his landscapes in the atmosphere of Italy, like Wilson, nor borrowed the postures of his portraits from the old masters, like Reynolds. No academy schooled down into uniformity and imita

IN the earliest records explored by Mr. Carlisle, the personal attendants of the sovereign occur under the name of "valecti," or "valetti." He has not investigated the derivation of this title; but "valettus" is shewn by Ducange to be a diminution of " vasas Domicella (in English a sallus," damsel) of Domina. That the ancient

vassal, like the modern valet, was a domestic servant, appears both from records, and from its probable original signification of a bearer of vases or dishes,-in modern terms, a waiter at table. It is well known, however, how honourable an occupation it was considered to be a servant of the sove

reign, and how nobly filled, particularly on high occasions, were the officers of sewer, carver, and cupbearer. It is also well known how advantageous an education at the Court was esteemed, and how greatly courted were such offices as gave the possessors the privilege of a constant residence within its circle. With such feelings would anxious parents introduce their children to become the king's "vasleti," or "little vassals," and with such feelings would aspiring courtiers regard the honourable post of "Valettus Cameræ Regis," or Valet of the King's

Chamber.

We find, however, that the name of valet was of far wider application than to the monarch's personal servants : it embraced his feudal military ser

* Vassaleti, the original diminutive word, contracted to Vasleti, and then, by the omission of the s, customary in the French language, to Valeti.

vants, and was particularly given to such as were not of age to take the rank of knighthood, though the heirs. of lands held by the tenure of knight's service; those, in short, who also occur under the name of the King's wards. We perceive that Mr. Carlisle (p. 3,) has considered the titles "Valettus Cameræ," and "Valettus Coronæ," or "de Corona," as indifferently signifying the same description of officer,the presumed prototype of a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber; but we consider it highly probable that the former only was the King's attendant, and the latter merely his ward or military retainer. This presumed distinction derives support from the anecdote which Mr. Carlisle him

self relates of Richard Harleston, who, being a Valet of the Crown, had a command, far from the person of the King, of the garrison of Guernsey.

Mr. Carlisle has not, however, overlooked the frequent occurrence of the word valettus," (unaccompanied by any distinctive addition) in cases where military service alone could be implied. One record, he says, "expressly limits the number to be attendant upon the King, and also how many each of the nobility should be allowed to engage. The numbers are far too large for the mere purposes of domestic servants." In the course of time the lowest menials of the camp and the stables took title; and the Anglicised varlet has possession of this once honourable ever since been used only as of reproach." Dr. Johnson gives it that definition, on the authority of Shakspeare; whilst in Troilus and Cressida, in Spenser, and in Holinshed, varlet is used in its former sense of a soldier's servant.

66 a term

The title being thus disgraced, the courtiers were obliged to assume another. The "Squyers of Houshold," who were forty in number, in the reign of Edward the Fourth, are consithe Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber; dered to have been the predecessors of but under the latter designation they have not been found in any document earlier than the Ordinary of the King's Train upon the French expedition of Henry the Eighth in 1513.

A few years after, in the Ordinances for the regulation of the Royal Household promulgated at Eltham in 1526, it was

"Ordayned, that noe person, of what estate, degree, or condicion soever he be, from henceforth presume, attempt, or be in any wise suffered or admitted to come or repaire into the King's Privy-chamber, other then such onely as his Grace shall from time to time call for or command, except onely the Mynisters now deputed, or in lieu of them hereafter to be deputed, for attendance in the same; that is to say, the Marquesse of Exeter, who is the King's neer kinsman, and hath been brought up of

a childe with his Grace in his chamber,six Gentlemen, two Gentlemen Ushers, four Groomes, and the King's Barber, and a Page, being in all the number of fifteen persons, whom the King's Grace for their good behaviour and quallityes hath elected for that purpose."

Their qualifications are thus described:

"Which said six Gentlemen, with Ushers and Groomes, Barber and Page, the King's minde is shall dilligently attend upon his person in his said Privy-chamber, doeing humble, reverent, secrett, and lowly service, about all such thinges as his pleasure shall be to depute and put them to doe; not pressing his Grace, nor advancing them selves, either in further service then his Grace will or shall assigne them unto; or also in sewtes [suits, or petitions,] or intermeddle of any causes or matters whatsoever they be; of the which number of six Gentlemen, diverse be well languaged, experte in outward parts, and meete and able to be sent on familiar messages, or otherwise, to outward Princes, when the case shall require."

Their other duties are then detailed at considerable length. Mr. Carlisle remarks, "On a review of these Ordinances it will appear that six Gentlemen only are specified to be of the Privy-chamber, but in the Bouche of Court eighteen are named. We must, therefore, conclude that either an increase in their number was afterwards made, or that six only were required to be upon duty at a time." The number is so expressly limited in the passage above quoted, that we are inclined to think there was an increase. Mr. Carlisle has not given the date of the "Bouche of Court" to which he refers above, and which he afterwards quotes; and we presume he considered it of the same date as the Eltham Ordinances, in the copy of which, preserved in the Harleian MSS. 642, and first printed in the Antiquarian Society's volume on the Royal Households, it occurs. A very slight examination, however, of the names contained in this Bouche of Court, will

prove the contrary. Lord Russell and Viscount Lisle are both in the list; the former was not created a Baron until 1538-9, and the latter died in 1541-2. A careful investigation of the various other parties might probably bring dates still closer; but this is sufficient to fix this" Bouche of Court" to about 1540, fourteen years after the original date of the Ordinances of Eltham. During that time the number of the Gentlemen of the Privy-chamber may have been altered more than once.

The next information we have regarding the number of these officers is, that Queen Mary "preserved the Gentlemen, at the same time that she adopted the Ladies, of the Privychamber." Queen Elizabeth did the same, and in subsequent reigns the Ladies of the Privy-chamber were continued in the Courts of the Queens Consort.

Under James the First the Gentlemen of the Privy-chamber had before 1616 increased to twenty-four; but, although the salary had been 501. in the reign of Henry the Eighth, they had then "noe fee of the King," their diet only being allowed them during their residence in Court. From this arrangement, the honour appears to have been freely bestowed, so that soon after, at the time of Charles's accession, they were forty-eight in number, and besides those appointed "in Ordinary," so many "Extraordinary" were sworn, that in 1637-8 the latter amounted to upwards of two hundred. The individuals then executing the duty, of whom it appears that twelve were "in waiting," had at that period begun to feel their degradation from the former dignity of the post, and consequently petitioned for the restoration of certain privileges.

The civil war converted these courtiers into soldiers. At the Restoration forty-eight Gentlemen of the Privy chamber were again appointed, "to attend diligently there, to attend the King when going out and coming in, and that twelve shall wait every quarter, whereof two shall lodge every night in the Privy-chamber." The system of appointing supernumeraries was, however, again practised, and in 1667 the Gentlemen Extraordinary actually amounted to four hundred and ninety. It had been a contrivance, characteristic of the age, for evading the payment of debts; and in 1673 it

was found necessary to stop the privilege by an Order of Council, directing that all such nominal servants, "that do not by virtue of their places receive either fee, wages, salary, dyet, boardwages, or livery, be from the first day of January next, absolutely disabled from making use of the same for any pretence of privilege or protection from their creditors, bearing of offices, or any other privilege or protection from the due course of law whatever." It is well known that the same system of privileges, in France, continued even for a century later, and was productive of the most mischievous discontents.

With the change of manners, at the close of the seventeenth century, the court became less numerous, and assumed more of the habits of private life. It is uncertain when the duty of the Gentlemen of the Privy-chamber expired; its performance was probably only occasional with James and William; and on the accession of another female Sovereign it became merely honorary, as it has since continued.

With the "honour" the present possessors of the office must be content; for we imagine they will obtain very little of that "serious, if not mournful consideration," which Mr. Carlisle, in sober sadness, requires for their lost "rights, profits, privileges, and advantages!" The privilege of setting a creditor at defiance, is one which no honest man would wish to enjoy; and, notwithstanding the learned pleadings of a late Advocate-general, who was one of the body, we cannot think it can conduce either to "the personal grandeur of the Sovereign, or the splendour of the kingly office," to defend by its prerogative a spendthrift or a swindler. With regard to exemption from offices too, it appears a contradiction to plead the priority of the King's service, at the same time that it is lamented that the King has ceased to require any service at all. The present Gentlemen are, in fact, in the same situation as the Gentlemen Extraordinary of the reign of Charles the Second; and their claim to privileges no stronger.

The present personal servants of Royalty are styled Pages. It appears probable that, in actual service, as each set of officers became superior to the duties of their place, the Grooms superseded the Gentlemen, and the Pages the Grooms.

We trust a second edition may enable Mr. Carlisle to arrange more perfectly the many curious particulars he has here assembled. He has obtained a large number of original documents from the State-paper and other record offices; and having inserted the names of all the Gentlemen whom he has found as having enjoyed the office, he has agreeably enlivened the lists with biographical anecdotes. Much more, however, the industry of the amiable author will enable him to collect on that part of the subject; and such a biographical collection, with an index, would be a desirable work.

An Historical Essay on the Magna Charta of King John: to which are added the Great Charter in Latin and English, the Charters of Liberties and Confirmations granted by Henry III. and Edward I. the original Charter of the Forests, and various authentic Documents connected with them; explanatory Notes on their several Privileges, a descriptive Account of the principal Originals and Editions extant, both in print and manuscript, and other Illustrations, derived from the most interesting and authentic sources. By Richard Thomson. 8vo. pp. 644. Major.

THE industrious compiler of the "Chronicles of London Bridge" has here selected a subject which cannot be better recommended than in the words of Sir William Blackstone, which he has adopted for his motto, that "There is no transaction in the ancient part of our English History more interesting and important, than the rise and progress, the gradual mutation and final establishment, of the Charters of Liberties."

Mr. Thomson has brought together all that could be found on the various

discussions and ratifications of the ancient liberties of England; and besides the Great Charter of John, has printed at length translations of three Great Charters of Henry the Third, and another of Edward the First. These show that, although the celebrated Charter had been actually and perfectly obtained from the reluctant John, it required constant vigilance on the part of the subject to maintain his prize unimpaired. Such, at least, is one view of the history of these transactions; in another we may perhaps find a wellmeaning Monarch persecuted by disaffected and encroaching nobles-by those petty tyrants whose iron rule