importance is not likely to be regarded as dishonourable. In a country in which many very honest people had, within the space of a few months, supported the government of the Protector, that of the Rump, and that of the King, a man was not likely to be ashamed of abandoning his party for a place, or of voting for a bill which he had opposed.

The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were by no means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of talent appear to have been developed amongst them to a remarkable-we might almost say, to a morbid and unnatural degree. Neither Theramenes in ancient, nor Talleyrand in modern times, had a finer perception of all the peculiarities of character, and of all the indications of coming change, than some of our countrymen of those days. Their power of reading things of high import, in signs which to others were invisible or unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon them all: "Unstable as water, thou shall not excel."

ancient and honourable, had, before his time, been scarcely mentioned in our history; but which, long after his death, produced so many eminent men, and formed such distinguished alliances, that it exercised, in a regular and constitutional manner, an influence in the state scarcely inferior to that which, in widely different times, and by widely different arts, the house of Neville attained in England, and that of Douglas in Scotland. During the latter years of George II., and through the whole reign of George III., members of that widely spread and powerful connection were almost constantly at the head either of the Government or of the Opposition. There were times when the "cousinhood," as it was once nicknamed, would of itself have furnished almost all the materials necessary for the construction of an efficient cabinet. Within the space of fifty years, three First Lords of the Treasury, three Secretaries of State, two Keepers of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of the Admiralty were appointed from among the sons and grandsons of the Countess Temple.

Parliament, he supported the popular cause. He was arrested by order of the Duke of Or. mond, but regained his liberty by an exchange, repaired to England, and there sat in the House of Commons as burgess for Chichester. He at tached himself to the Presbyterian party, and was one of those moderate members who, at the close of the year 1648, voted for treating with Charles on the basis to which that prince had himself agreed, and who were, in conse quence, turned out of the House, with small ceremony, by Colonel Pride. Sir John seems, however, to have made his peace with the victorious Independents; for, in 1653, he resumed his office in Ireland.

This character is susceptible of innumerable So splendid have been the fortunes of the modifications, according to the innumerable main stock of the Temple family, continued by varieties of intellect and temper in which it female succession. William Temple, the first may be found. Men of unquiet minds and of the line who attained to any great historical violent ambition followed a fearfully eccentric eminence, was of a younger branch. His facourse-darted wildly from one extreme to ther, Sir John Temple, was Master of the Rolls another-served and betrayed all parties in in Ireland, and distinguished himself among turn-showed their unblushing forereads al- the Privy Councillors of that kingdom by the ternately in the van of the most corrupt admi-zeal with which, at the commencement of the nistrations and the most factious oppositions- struggle between the crown and the Long were privy to the most guilty mysteries, first of the Cabal, and then of the Rye-House Plot -abjured their religion to win their sovereign's favour, while they were secretly planning his overthrow--shrived themselves to Jesuits with letters in cipher from the Prince of Orange in their pockets-corresponded with the Hague whilst in office under James-began to correspond with St. Germains as soon as they had kissed hands for office under William. But Temple was not one of these. He was not destitute of ambition. But his was not one of those souls within which unsatisfied ambition anticipates the tortures of hell, gnaws like the worm which dieth not, and burns like the fire which is not quenched. His principle was to make sure of safety and comfort, and to let greatness come if it would. It came: he enjoyed it and in the very first moment in which it could no longer be enjoyed without danger and vexation, he contentedly let it go. He was not exempt, we think, from the prevailing political immorality. His mind took the contagion, but took it ad modum recipientis;-in a form so mild that an undiscerning judge might doubt whether it were indeed the same fierce pestilence that was raging all around. The malady partook of the constitutional languor of the patient. The general corruption, mitigated by bis calm and unadventurous temperament, showed itself in omissions and desertions, not in positive crimes; and his inactivity, though sometimes timorous and selfish, becomes respectable when compared with the malevolent and perfidious restlessness of Shaftesbury and Sunderland.

Temple sprang from a family which, though

Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry Hammond, a learned and pious divine, who took the side of the king with very conspicuous zeal during the Civil War, and was deprived of his preferment in the church after the victory of the Parliament. On account of the loss which Hammond sustained on this occasion, he has the honour of being designated, in the cant of that new brood of Oxonian sectaries who unite the worst parts of the Jesuit to the worst parts of the Orangeman, as Hammond, Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor.

William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London, in the year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was subsequently sent to school at BishopStortford, and, at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling

greens of Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from BishopStortford, and never retrieved the loss;-a circumstance which would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact, that fifty years later, he was so absurd as to set up his own authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He made no proficiency either in the old philosophy which still lingered in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord Bacon was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak of the former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally ignorant contempt.

many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his illustrious father, destitute also of the meek and placid virtues of his elder brother, this young man was perhaps a more formidable rival in love than either of them would have been. Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the sentiments of the grave and aged, describes him as an "insolent fool,” and a “debauched ungodly Cavalier." These expressions probably mean that he was one who, among young and dissipated people, would pass for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie on modern hearth-rugs; and Henry Cromwell promised that the highest functionaries at Dublin After residing at Cambridge two years, he should be set to work to procure her a fine departed without taking a degree, and set out Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his upon his travels. He seems then to have been attentions as very flattering, though his father a lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not was then only Lord-General, and not yet Proby any means deeply read, but versed in all tector. Love, however, triumphed over ambithe superficial accomplishments of a gentle- tion, and the young lady appears never to have man, and acceptable in all polite societies. In regretted her decision; though, in a letter writpolitics he professed himself a Royalist. His ten just at the time when all England was ringopinions on religious subjects seem to have ing with the news of the violent dissolution of been such as might be expected from a young the Long Parliament, she could not refrain man of quick parts, who had received a ram- from reminding Temple, with pardonable vabling education, who had not thought deeply,nity, "how great she might have been, if she who had been disgusted by the morose austeri- had been so wise as to have taken hold of the ty of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from offer of H. C." childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel an impartial contempt

for them all.

Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, On his road to France he fell in with the son and spoke of him as an unprincipled advenand daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. Sir Peter turer, without honour or religion, ready to renwas Governor of Guernsey for the king, and der services to any party for the sake of prethe young people were, like the father, warm ferment. This is, indeed, a very distorted view for the royal cause. At an inn where they of Temple's character. Yet a character, even stopped, in the Isle of Wight, the brother in the most distorted view taken of it by the amused himself with inscribing on the windows most angry and prejudiced minds, generally his opinion of the ruling powers. For this in- retains something of its outline. No carica stance of malignancy the whole party were ar- turist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, rested and brought before the governor. The or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any libeller sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profuin those troubled times, scarcely any gentle- sion to Marlborough. It must be allowed that man of any party ever failed to show where a the turn of mind which the eulogists of Ternwoman was concerned, took the crime on her-ple have dignified with the appellation of phiself, and was immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.

losophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in an old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful appearance in youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who were ready to fight or suffer martyrdom for their exiled king and their perse cuted church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated by these imputations on her lover, defended him warmly behind his back. and addressed to himself some very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue. On one occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her brothers spoke of Temple: "We talked ourselves weary,' she says-"he renounced me, and I defied him."

This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament, the father of the heroine was holding Guernsey for King Charles. Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the Nearly seven years did this arduous wooing prospects of the lovers were scarcely less continue. We are not accurately informed gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the mean time beseiged by as

respecting Temple's movements during that time. But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes i

Ireland, sometimes in London. He made him- | good or evil may hereafter be produced. The self master of the French and Spanish lan- poisoning of an emperor is in one sense a far guages, and amused himself by writing Essays more serious matter than the poisoning of a and Romances-an employment which at least served the purpose of forming his style. The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved of those early compositions is by no means contemptible. Indeed, there is one passage on Like and Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of the best things in Montaigne.

He appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many of them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt whether his read ers will think him justified in inserting so large a number of these epistles. We only wish that there were twice as many. Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation is so well worth reading. There is a vile phrase of which bad historians are exceedingly fond-"the dignity of history." One writer is in possession of some anecdotes which would illustrate most strikingly the operation of the Mississippi scheme on the manners and morals of the Parisians. But he suppresses those anecdotes because they are too low for the dignity of history. Another is strongly tempted to mention some facts indicating the horrible state of the prisons of England two hundred years ago. But he hardly thinks that the sufferings of a dozen felons pigging together on bare bricks in a hole fifteen feet square would form a subject suited to the dignity of history. Another, from respect for the dignity of history, publishes an account of the reign of George II., without ever mentioning Whitefield's preaching in Moorfields. How should a writer, who can talk about senates, and congresses of sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions, and ravelines, and counterscarps, and battles where ten thousand men are killed and six thousand men with fifty stands of colours and eighty guns taken, stoop to the StockExchange, to Newgate, to the theatre, to the tabernacle?

Tragedy has its dignity as well as history; and how much the tragic art has owed to that dignity any man may judge who will compare the majestic Alexandrines in which the "Seigneur Oreste" and "Madame Andromaque" utter their complaints, with the chattering of the fool in "Lear," and of the nurse in "Romeo and Juliet."

That an historian should not record trifles, that he should confine himself to what is important, is perfectly true. But many writers seem never to have considered on what the historical importance of an event depends. They seem not to be aware that the importance of a fact, when that fact is considered with reference to its immediate effects, and the importance of the same fact, when that fact is considered as part of the materials for the construction of a science, are two very different things. The quantity of good or evil which a transaction produces is by no means necessarily proportioned to the quantity of light which that transaction affords as to the way in which

rat. But the poisoning of a rat may be an era in chemistry; and an emperor may be poisoned by such ordinary means, and with such ordinary symptoms, that no scientific journal would notice the occurrence. An action for a hundred thousand pounds is in one sense a more momentous affair than an action for fifty pounds. But it by no means follows that the learned gentlemen who report the proceedings of the courts of law ought to give a fuller account of an action for a hundred thousand pounds than of an action for fifty pounds. For a cause, in which a large sum is at stake, may be important only to the particular plaintiff and the particular defendant. A cause, on the other hand, in which a small sum is at stake, may establish some great principle interesting to half the families in the kingdom. The case is exactly the same with that class of subjects of which historians treat. To an Athenian, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the result of the battle of Delium was far more important than the fate of the comedy of the "Knights." But to us the fact that the comedy of the "Knights" was brought on the Athenian stage with success is far more important than the fact that the Athenian phalanx gave way at Delium, Neither the one event nor the other has any intrinsic importance. We are in no danger of being speared by the Thebans. We are not quizzed in the "Knights." To us, the importance of both events consists in the value of the general truth which is to be learned from them. What general truths do we learn from the accounts which have come down to us of the battle of Delium? Very little more than this, that when two armies fight, it is not improbable that one of them will be very soundly beaten-a truth which it would not, we appre hend, be difficult to establish, even if all memory of the battle of Delium were lost among men. But a man who becomes acquainted with the comedy of the "Knights," and with the history of that comedy, at once feels his mind enlarged. Society is presented to him under a new aspect. He may have read and travelled much. He may have visited all the countries of Europe, and the civilized nations of the East. He may have observed the manners of many barbarous races. But here is something altogether different from every thing which he has seen either among polished men or among savages. Here is a community, politically, intellectually, and morally unlike any other community of which he has the means of forming an opinion. This is the really pre cious part of history,-the corn which some threshers carefully sever from the chaff, for the purpose of gathering the chaff into the garner, and flinging the corn into the fire.

Thinking thus, we are glad to learn so much, and would willingly learn more, about the loves of Sir William and his mistress. In the seventeenth century, to be sure, Louis XIV. was a much more important person than Temple's sweetheart. But death and time equalize all things. Neither the great king, nor the beauty of Bedfordshire-neither the gorgeous

When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all the obstacles which kins men and rivals could oppose to their union, a yet more serious calamity befell them. Poor Mistress Osborne fell ill of the small-pox, and, though she escaped with life, lost all her beauty. To this most severe trial the affection and honour of the lovers of that age was not unfrequently subjected. Our readers probably remember what Mrs. Hutchinson tells us of herself. The lofty Cornelia-like spirit of the aged matron seems to melt into a long-forgotten softness when she relates how her beloved Colonel “married her as soon as she was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted to look on her, But God," she adds, with a not ungraceful va nity, “recompensed his justice and constancy, by restoring her as well as before." Temple showed on this occasion the same "justice and constancy" which did so much honour to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage is not exactly known. But Mr. Courtenay sup poses it to have taken place about the end of the year 1654. From this time we lose sight of Dorothy, and are reduced to form our opi nion of the terms on which she and her hus band were, from very slight indications which may easily mislead us.

paradise of Marli nor Mistress Osborne's fa- | worse for some passages in which raillery and vourite walk "in the common that lay hard by tenderness are mixed in a very engaging the house, where a great many young wenches namby-pamby. used to keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads,"-is any thing to us. Louis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cottonmill stands on the ruins of Marli, and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the ancient roof of the Chicksands. But of that information, for the sake of which alone it is worth while to study remote events, we find so much in the love-letters which Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase equally interesting billets with ten times their weight in state papers taken at random. To us surely it is as useful to know how the young ladies of England employed themselves a hundred and eighty years ago, how far their minds were cultivated, what were their favourite studies, what degree of liberty was allowed to them, and what use they made of that liberty, what accomplishments they most valued in men, and what proofs of tenderness delicacy permitted them to give to favoured suitors, as to know all about the seizure of Franche Comté and the treaty of Nimeguen. The mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as important as the mutual relations of any two governments in the world; and a series of letters, written by a virtuous, amiable, sensible girl, and intended for the eye of her lover alone, can scarcely fail to throw some light on the relations of the sexes; whereas it is perfectly possible, as all who have made any historical researches can attest, to read bale after bale of despatches and protocols without catching one glimpse of light about the relations of governments.

Temple soon went to Ireland, and resided with his father, partly in Dublin, partly in the county of Carlow. Ireland was probably ther a more agreeable residence for the higher classes, as compared with England, than it has ever been before or since. In no part of the Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of empire were the superiority of Cromwell's Dorothy Osborne's devoted servants, and ex- abilities and the force of his character so sig presses a hope that the publication of her letters nally displayed. He had not the power, and will add to the number. We must declare our-probably had not the inclination, to govern that selves his rival. She really seems to have been island in the best way. The rebellion of the a very charming young woman-modest, ge-aboriginal race had excited in England a strong nerous, affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly, -a royalist, as was to be expected from her connections, without any of that political asperity which is as unwomanly as a long beard, religious, and occasionally gliding into a very pretty and enduring sort of preaching, yet not too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the great lights of the Assembly at Westminster, with a little turn for coquetry, which was yet perfectly compatible with warm and disinterested attachment, and a little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed the bounds of good nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. She read the verses of Cowley and Lord Broghill, French Memoirs recommended by her lover, and the Travels of Fernando Mendez Pinto. But her favourite books were those ponderous French Romances which modern readers know chiefly from the pleasant satire of Charlotte Lennox. She could not, however, help laughing at the vile English into which they were translated. Her own style is verv agreeable, nor are her letters at all the

religious and national aversion to them; nor is there any reason to believe that the Protector was so far beyond his age as to be free from the prevailing sentiment. He had vanquished them; he knew that they were in his power; and he regarded them as a band of malefactors and idolaters, who were mercifully treated if they were not smitten with the edge of the sword. On those who resisted he had made war as the Hebrews made war on the Canaanites. Drogheda was as Jericho; and Wexford as Ai. To the remains of the old population the conqueror granted a peace, such as that which Joshua granted to the Gibeonites. He made them hewers of wood and drawers of water. But, good or bad, he could not be otherwise than great. Under favourable circumstances, Ireland would have found in him a most just and beneficent ruler. She found him a tyrant; not a small, teasing tyrant such as those who have so long been her curse and her shame, but one of those awful tyrants who, at long intervals, seem to be sent on earth, like avenging angels, with some high commission of destruction and renovation. He was no man of half measures, of mean affronis and ungracious concessions. His Protestant

All Temple's feelings about Irish questions were those of a colonist and a member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself as little about the welfare of the remains of the old Celtic population as an English farmer on the Swan

made to him. If he really did refuse any preferment, we may, without much breach of charity, attribute the refusal rather to the cantion which, during his whole life, prevented him from running any risk than to the fervour of his loyalty.

ascendency was not an ascendency of ribands, enclosures raised throughout the kingdom, and fiddles, and statues, and processions. He purchases made by one from another at very would never have dreamed of abolishing penal valuable rates, and jointures made upon mar laws against the Irish Catholics, and withhold-riages, and all other conveyances and settleing from them the elective franchise-of giving ments executed, as in a kingdom at peace withthem the elective franchise, and excluding them in itself, and where no doubt could be made from Parliament-of admitting them to Parlia- of the validity of titles." ment, and refusing to them a full and equal participation in all the blessings of society and government. The thing most alien from his clear intellect and his commanding spirit was petty persecution. He knew how to tolerate, and he knew how to destroy. His administra-river troubles himself about the New Holland tion in Ireland was an administration on what ers, or a Dutch boor at the Cape about the Caffres. are now called Orange principles,-followed out The years which he passed in Ireland while the most ably, most steadily and undauntedly, most Cromwellian system was in full operation he unrelentingly, to every extreme consequence to always described as "years of great satisfacwhich those principles lead; and it would, if con- tion." Farming, gardening, county business, tinued, inevitably have produced the effect which and studies rather entertaining than profound, he contemplated,—an entire decomposition and occupied his time. In politics he took no part, reconstruction of society. He had a great and and many years after he attributed this inac definite object in view, to make Ireland tion to his love of the ancient constitution, thoroughly English-to make it another York-which, he said, "would not suffer him to enter shire or Norfolk. Thinly peopled as Ireland into public affairs till the way was plain for then was, this end was not unattainable; and the king's happy restoration." It does not ap there is every reason to believe that if his po-pear, indeed, that any offer of employment was licy had been followed during fifty years this end would have been attained. Instead of an emigration, such as we now see from Ireland to England, there was, under his government, a constant and large emigration from England to Ireland. This tide of population ran almost as strongly as that which now runs from Massachusetts and Connecticut to the states behind the Ohio. The native race was driven back before the advancing van of the Anglo-Saxon population, as the American Indians or the tribes of Southern Africa are now driven back before the white settlers. Those fearful phenomena which have almost invariably attended the planting of civilized colonies in uncivilized countries, and which had been known to the nations of Europe only by distant and questionable rumour, were now publicly exhibited in their sight. The words, "extirpation," "eradication," were often in the mouths of the English back-settlers of Leinster and Munster -cruel words yet, in their cruelty, containing more mercy than much softer expressions which have since been sanctioned by universi- In May, 1663, the Irish Parliament was proties, and cheered by Parliaments. For it is in rogued, and Temple repaired to England with truth more merciful to extirpate a hundred his wife. His income amounted to about five thousand people at once, and to fill the void hundred pounds a year, a sum which was then with a well-governed population, than to mis-sufficient for the wants of a family mixing in govern millions through a long succession of generations. We can much more easily pardon tremendous severities inflicted for a great object, than an endless series of paltry vexations and oppressions inflicted for no rational object at all.

In 1660 he made his first appearance in pub lic life. He sat in the Convention which, in the midst of the general confusion that preceded the Restoration, was summoned by the chiefs of the army of Ireland to meet in Dublin. After the king's return, an Irish Parlia ment was regularly convoked, in which Temple represented the county of Carlow. The details of his conduct in this situation are not known to us. But we are told in general terms, and can easily believe, that he showed great moderation and great aptitude for business. It is probable that he also distinguished himself in debate; for many years afterwards he remarked, that "his friends in Ireland used to think that, if he had any talent at all, it lay in that way."

fashionable circles. He passed two years in London, where he seems to have led that easy, lounging life which was best suited to his temper.

He was not, however, unmindful of his interest. He had brought with him letters of Ireland was fast becoming English. Civili- introduction from the Duke of Ormond, the zation and wealth were making rapid progress Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to Clarendon, and in almost every part of the island. The effects to Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, who was of that iron despotism are described to us by a Secretary of State. Clarendon was at the head hostile witness in very remarkable language. of affairs. But his power was visibly declin"Which is more wonderful," says Lord Cla-ing, and was certain to decline more and more rendon, "all this was done and settled within Jittle more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for beauty as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees, and fences, and

every day. An observer much less discerning than Temple might easily perceive that the Chancellor was a man who belonged to a bygone world;-a representative of a past age. of obsolete modes of thinking, of unfashion