are to be taken for what they are worth], and who was in attendance, waiting to receive the commission, which was then being made out. Mrs. Lincoln came into the President's office, asked what commission it was that he was signing, and, on being told,

seized it from his hands, and tore it in pieces, saying that she had promised it to Lammon,' and he should have it, else her name was not 'Mary Lincoln.'

When the Federal agents entered the residence of Mrs. Greenhow, in Washington, to place her under arrest, and search her premises and person, she had very important papers, which she contrived artfully to keep from them, eating one of them. Respecting these exploits, she makes, herself, the masculine comment, "that the devil is no match for a clever woman.' It is a curious illustration of the excitement that prevails in American society, to find that this shrewd person believes an attempt to have been made by the Abolitionists to poison President Buchanan. To carry out their diabolical scheme, it appears that they purchased thirty pounds of arsenic! It is coolly added, "between fifty and sixty persons fell victims to this wholesale poisoning experiment." Mrs. Greenhow makes light of M'Clellan as a soldier. BrigadierGeneral Butler, of New Orleans celebrity, is naturally her abhorrence. Mr. Secretary Seward does not escape well from her hands. Jove nods at times, and Mr. Seward, who is as reticent as Talleyrand in the morning, is, after supper, genial and confidential. Fremont is a peculator," and Fremont père was a French dancing-master. Stanton is arrogant and servile. In fact, Mrs. Greenhow has a good word for none of her country's enemies. They had in her an exceedingly troublesome prisoner, and, despite all their precautions, she seems to have continued to assist her countrymen, by sending them timely information. Her book, however, will do the Southern Confederacy no service in this country. It is written in too angry a spirit, and, in fact, is chiefly remark able as proving how determined the Southerners are to fight, as their foes say, "to the bitter end," and how entirely impossible it is that these two peoples can ever again be reconciled, so as to live peaceably together under a joint rule.

66

We are anxious to pass to Colonel

Fremantle's work, which will be found full of interest, as a plain, straightforward account of what befell the his three months of travel through tourist, and of what he saw, during the South. The style is clear and correct; sometimes, indeed, it verges on the picturesque. In the first place, the author bears the most willing and hearty testimony to the hospitality of the Southerners. Wherever he went with Confederate officers, whether they had much or little, there was a part for the English mili tary man, although towards the conclusion of his tour, the Southerners were beginning to feel annoyed at the conduct of England towards them. He found among them the manners of gentlemen. They had gone into the war in no reckless spirit, but with a resolve to secure independence for their country, and their patriotic ardour was increasing with their sacrifices and difficulties. Their soldiery were often put to sore shifts, long and harassing marches, scantiness of food and clothing, the necessity to fight battle after battle with the shortest intervals for rest and reorganization. Still the practised eye of the traveller detected no indiscipline, no fatal irregularities, no excesses. In great part this satisfactory condition of the Southern troops is due to their extreme_respect for their generals. Lee, Beauregard, Longstreet, Johnstone, Jackson, Polk, Hardee, Ripley-these are all names deeply rooted in the affections of the Southern people, and almost worshipped by the rank and file. The principal title of these leaders to respect is their personal courage. The Confederates have shown that they do not underrate strategic talent-their commanders have lately made some of the ablest dispositions, and worked out some of the most masterly plots ever known in warfare; but before their men placed confidence in them they were obliged to prove that they deserved it, by exposing themselves to real and visible perils. The Southern troops seem to have a theory that no one can be an able general who is not a notably brave man.

The author of this work adds greatly to its interest by supplying portraits of Mr. Jefferson Davis, and of Generals Lee, Longstreet, Polk, and Beauregard, the heads of the Con

federacy. Mr. Davis is a tall, lank, sallow man, with rather a "Yankee" face, but not ungentlemanlike in appearance. He has a good head, prominent cheek-bones and chin, and a firm mouth. His aspect is that of a self-possessed, sagacious, conscientious person, who might, one would say, be entrusted with the most important responsibilities, and relied on to discharge his duties at all times to the utmost of his powers. Although reared a soldier, he is the statesman of the South. His face bears traces of hard work; and, since the war began, he must have undergone an almost superhuman amount of labour. Next to him, the most remarkable Southern is General Lee, the great Virginian commander. He is an exceedingly handsome man, courteous, dignified, brave as a lion, yet gentle withal, and cheerful. He has none of the small American vices. He does not drink, or gamble, or smoke, or chew, or swear. On the most arduous marches he looks smart and clean. He generally rides a handsome horse, and in that respect alone is "particular." He is fifty-six years of age, tall, well-proportioned, and vigorous. He roughs it with his men, and is their idol. He has the reputation of being a religious man, and is a member of the Church of England. "Stonewall" Jackson had the highest confidence in his military judgment. He is, in short, the main reliance of the Confederate Government, and has done more for its cause than any other man, hardly excepting Mr. Jefferson Davis himself. After Lee, the most prominent figure is that of Longstreet. He is a native of Alabama, and forty-three years of age, stout, wellbuilt, resolute, the special admirer and trusted lieutenant of Lee, who has been co-operating with him of late with great adroitness. Longstreet is considered the "best fighter in the whole army." He is a rigid disciplinarian, and has frequently restrained his soldiers when they manifested a desire to plunder the Northerns and devastate their soil. He is particularly taciturn, but when once induced to throw off his reserve, his observations prove him to be an intelligent man and competent soldier. Colonel Fremantle

found his staff, as well as those of the other Southern generals, to be_composed of thorough gentlemen. Beauregard and Longstreet are nearly of an age, the former, perhaps, being a couple of years older, though he looks younger. His hair has become much more gray, some affirm, from the cares and anxieties of the last two years." "The real and less romantic reason," says the author, "is to be found in the rigidity of the Yankee blockade, which interrupts the arrival of articles of toilette." He is rather a handsome man, and speaks French fluently. Beauregard is a New Orleans creole. He has not only served the Southern Government well as an engineer officer, but has a special organizing talent; the Virginian and Tennesseean armies were brought to their present efficiency by his efforts. He conceives a war between the Northern States and England to be inevitable, and thinks our best policy would be to form an alliance with the South, so that, whenever an attempt was made on Canada, they might assist us by marching into the Federal territory.

This does not seem the place to enter upon a discussion of the general prospects of the Confederacy, or the relations of the European Powers towards it. Nor would it serve any purpose to speculate upon the military situation-whether Washington is likely to be entered by Lee, or Richmond by Meade; whether Charleston, like the impregnable Sebastopol, will succumb at last, and Tennessee be cleared of Confederates; or whether Bragg, reinforced by Johnston, will recover the character he lost at Chickamauga, and, in conjunction with Longstreet, inflict decisive defeats on Grant and Burnside. These are topics for the daily journalists, who deal with them competently. It is enough for us, in this paper, to have indicated briefly the character of the books published on America during the past month, which, certainly, do not give us reason for despairing of the Confederate cause, but tend, rather, to strengthen the views of those who think that the shortest and surest way, even to negro emancipation, will be found through the independence of the Southern States.

THE great statesman, lawyer, and orator, who has recently departed from among us, has already been -weighed in the balance by a multitude of critics, and carefully described by skilful and well-informed biographers. To the facts of his life which are recorded on these literary tablets we have nothing to add; nor with the verdicts returned upon his character have we, upon the whole, much fault to find. The points in his career susceptible of a malicious construction have not been more maliciously construed than is usual with political opponents. All that his enemies have ventured to call in question is his honesty; and, as that question is the one which a pre-eminently able man has always to expect from those to whom his principles are obnoxious, we cannot say that Lord Lyndhurst has been harshly treated. The time, perhaps, has not even yet arrived when the whole constitutional import of those great struggles which ushered in the present generation can be clearly apprehended.

ed that a much longer time is required for the subsidence of personal prejudices which spring from political contentions than for the decline of any other class of prepossessions. The reason is, that so much longer a period must elapse before it can be finally decided which of two parties was in the right. The victorious party for the time cannot well afford to be generous, for it dare not bate one inch of its vantage ground. The vanquished are afraid to acknowledge that they may, after all, have been mistaken, while it is yet possible that posterity should reverse the verdict.

As the leading facts in the career of the deceased chancellor must be, by this time, tolerably familiar to our readers, we shall content ourselves with a very brief recapitulation of them, premising that we are indebted for our knowledge to the same source as was The Times, namely, a memoir of his lordship, which was published in the The Law Magazine, of London, almost exactly eight years ago. Lord Lyndhurst, then, was born at Boston, in America, on the 21st of May, 1772,

ferrent

Vulnus habent populi"

may yet be the final verdict, and it may not be, perhaps, till another century has passed away that due allowance will be made for the conflicting obligations and perplexing problems of that stormy crisis. It is likewise and collaterally to be observ

VOL. LXIII.-NO. CCCLXXIV.

1737. His grandfather emigrated from the county of Limerick, carrying with him, as his wife, Sarah, the youngest daughter of John Singleton, esq., whose family are now represented by the Singletons of Quinville Abbey, county Clare. The father of Lord Lyndhurst, who married a Miss Clarke, of Boston, settled in England,

as a portrait painter, in 1775 or '76, and soon became distinguished as an artist. He died in September, 1819, his widow, Lord Lyndhurst's mother, surviving him some twenty years. The son was educated at Cambridge, where, in 1794, he came out as Smith's prizeman and second wrangler. He was a good scholar as well as a mathematician, and acquired, at the same time, some knowledge of chemistry and inechanics. It is said that at this time he had designs of entering the Church; but, if so, they were probably nipped in the bud by the visit which he paid to America, immediately after taking his degree, where he became imbued with republican ideas not exactly in harmony with the tone of the English Church under Pitt. On his return to England he was chosen a Fellow of Trinity, and adopted the bar as his profession. He was called by the Society of Lincoln's Inn, in 1804, rather late in life, it is to be observed, as he had then just entered upon his thirty-third year. He joined the Midland Circuit. But the first ten years of his professional career have supplied no materials to any of the memoirs we have seen. In 1813 he became Mr. Sergeant Copley; and, in either 1816 or 1817, he so distinguished himself by the conduct of a case at Nottingham, that he rose into the ranks of those whom attornies are eager to retain. As a consequence, partly of his new won reputation, partly, perhaps, of the political opinions which he was supposed to entertain, he was about this time entrusted with the defence of James Watson, indicted for high treason; though, as his coadjutor in the case was the tough old Tory, Sir Charles Wetherell, it is quite possible that his political opinions had nothing whatever to do with it. His speech on this occasion enhanced his reputation still further; and one story is, that it was in consequence of this logical and eloquent performance that Lord Castlereagh, who heard it delivered, first conceived the design of enlisting him in the service of Government. Some say that the speech which impressed the foreign minister was in the cause of Thorpe v. the Governor of Upper Canada. A third story is, that it was during the trial of a prosecution against the publisher of the Quarterly Review, for an alleg

ed libel on Colonel Maceroni, that Copley first fixed the attention of the Tory leaders as a desirable auxiliary. He conducted the defence; and the Duke of Wellington, Lord Liverpool, and other ministers of Government, having been subpœnaed as witnesses, were seated on the bench. Immediately the trial was over, they made him an offer of a seat in Parliament. The offer, unfettered by any conditions or pledges of any sort whatever, was at once accepted, and in the year 1818 he was returned to the House of Commons for the Government borough of Yarmouth, and was soon afterwards appointed Justice of Chester. He was now, therefore, fairly mounted, and the pace at which he rode was rapid. In May, 1818, he made his maiden speech upon the Alien Bill, which showed at once that Sergeant Copley was not one of those whom the forum had spoiled for the senate. In 1819 he was made Solicitor-General. In 1820 he convicted Thistlewood and his gang of high treason, and appeared as counsel against Queen Caroline. In 1824 he was Attorney-General. In 1826 he was returned for Cambridge University. In September of the same year he became Master of the Rolls; and in April of the year following, Mr. Canning appointed him Lord Chancellor. He retained the seals, after Mr. Canning's death, under Lord Goderich; and, after him, under the Duke of Wellington, retiring, with the rest of the ministry, to make way for Lord Grey, in November, 1830, having sat upon the woolsack rather more than three years and a-half.

From Lord Grey he accepted the post of Chief Baron of the Exchequer. In November, 1834, when Sir Robert Peel was entrusted with the formation of a new ministry, his lordship again became Chancellor, and continued so till Sir Robert's resignation in April, 1835. He had, however, retained his office of Chief Baron all the time, a post which he did not resign till the following December, when, it would appear, that he was required to devote himself more exclusively to his political friends. From this time to 1841 he was out of office. From 1841 to 1846 he was Sir Robert Peel's Chancellor; he resigned with him in that year; and

from 1846 to the year of his death he never again resumed official harness. When Lord Derby came into power, in 1852, Lord Lyndhurst was eighty years of age, and had ceased to covet the laborious honours of the woolsack. But till quite lately he took an active, and even commanding, part in the debates of the House of Lords; and for his noble constitutional stand against life peerages in 1856 a deep debt of gratitude is owing to him. The present writer had the good fortune to hear him speak on that occasion, when his upright and defiant figure, his low but still clear and harmonious accents, and the profound respect with which he was treated by the house, made an impression never to be effaced.

The last occasion of all upon which Lord Lyndhurst addressed that great assembly, where for nearly thirty years he had exercised a sway second only, if second, to that of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Eldon, was on the amendment moved by Lord Monteagle to that part of Mr. Gladstone's budget which involved the repeal of the paper duty. Lord Lyndhurst rose before Lord Monteagle to argue the point of privilege, and to show the distinction which not only existed in theory, but had frequently been observed in practice, between the origination or amendment of a money bill, and the absolute rejection of it. By a curious coincidence, the debate took place upon the 21st of May, Lord Lyndhurst's eighty-eighth birth-day. His hale and vigorous appearance was generally remarked by the peers present; and though his voice and gesture were slightly marked by the infirmities of extreme old age, none of those remarkable powers for which he had been always famous seemed the least abated. The lucid exposition, the cogent inference, the weighty exhortation, the finished diction, were all there as of old; lighted up at intervals by touches of that gay satire which is not felt the less because it is perfectly good-humoured. Concluding a speech of some length with a parting lunge at Mr. Gladstone, who reminded him, he said, that "the satis eloquentiæ sapientiæ parum was not an irreconcilable combination,' the veteran retired from the house, and went home comfortably to dinner

with a large family circle assembled to celebrate the day.

On the 21st of last May, he was still well enough to take part in the family festivity, but towards the autumn he began to sink; though so much had he been withdrawn from the public eye during the last year or two, that until we heard he was dead, few knew that he was ailing. He died in London, on the 13th of October last, the sole survivor of a brilliant circle of contemporaries, who, very little older than himself, had almost passed into history, when Lyndhurst was still vigorous. He was eight years younger than Lord Grey. He was only three years younger than the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh, and he was only two years younger than Mr. Canning.

It is known to even the most cursory of political students that the Whig party which had been shattered into fragments by the secession of 1793, and had remained in a state of insignificance as long as the terrors of Jacobinism still hung black and bloody before the eyes of the British nation, began to recruit its strength, and regain some of its popularity, with the suppression of anarchy in France, and the conviction that Napoleon was not, after all, so vile, if he would only not invade England. The heavy expenditure of the Peninsular war was a topic for Parliamentary declamation which never failed the Whigs; while the final refusal of the King to hear any thing more about the Catholics, secured them often the support, and sometimes the permanent alliance, of the old Liberal Tory party. The leadership of this party was disputed for by Canning and Lord Grenville. And Lord Grenville, as is well known, went over bodily to the Whigs, carrying the whole influence and interest of the house of Buckingham to the side of Fox and Grey. Thus fortified, the Whigs became a powerful opposition; and, backed up by the favour of the Prince of Wales, no doubt, promised themselves a speedy restoration to that good land from which they had so long been evicted. But two unforeseen events marred their calculations. The King again lost his reason, and this time without hope of recovery. The Prince suddenly discovered that the Whig idea of the