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d my complaisances to you farther than I ought. ou make new scruples: you have a great deal of ney! and your distrusts, being all of your own aking, are more immovable than if there were me real ground for them. Our aunts and grandothers always tell us, that men are a sort of anials, that if ever they are constant, 'tis only where ey are ill-used. "Twas a kind of paradox I could ever believe; but experience has taught me the uth of it. You are the first I ever had a corresondence with; and I thank God, I have done with for all my life. You needed not to have told me ou are not what you have been; one must be upid not to find a difference in your letters. You em, in one part of your last, to excuse yourself om having done me any injury in point of fortune. Do I accuse you of any?

an opinion of your merit, which, if it is a mistake, I would not be undeceived. It is my interest to believe (as I do) that you deserve every thing, and are capable of every thing; but nobody else will believe it, if they see you get nothing.”—Vol. i. pp. 250-252.

The second volume, and a part of the third, are occupied with those charming letters, written during Mr. Wortley's embassy to Constantinople, upon which the literary reputation of Lady Mary has hitherto been exclusively founded. It would not become us to say any thing of productions which have so long engaged the admiration of the public. The grace and vivacity, the ease and concise

"I have not spirits to dispute any longer with ou. You say you are not yet determined. Letness, of the narrative and the description which e determine for you, and save you the trouble of riting again. Adieu for ever; make no answer. wish, among the variety of acquaintance, you may nd some one to please you: and can't help the anity of thinking, should you try them all, you ront find one that will be so sincere in their treatnent, though a thousand more deserving, and every ne happier."-Vol. i. pp. 219–221.

These are certainly very uncommon prouctions for a young lady of twenty; and inicate a strength and elevation of character, hat does not always appear in her gayer and nore ostentatious performances. Mr. Wortey was convinced and re-ássured by them; nd they were married in 1712. The conluding part of the first volume contains her etters to him for the two following years. There is not much tenderness in these letters; or very much interest indeed of any kind. Mr. Wortley appears to have been rather inlolent and unambitious; and Lady Mary akes it upon her, with all delicacy and julicious management however, to stir him ap to some degree of activity and exertion. There is a good deal of election-news and small politics in these epistles. The best of them, we think, is the following exhortation to impudence.

they contain, still remain unrivalled, we think, by any epistolary compositions in our language; and are but slightly shaded by a sprinkling of obsolete tittle-tattle, or womanish vanity and affectation. The authenticity of these letters, though at one time disputed, has not lately been called in question; but the secret history of their first publication has never, we believe, been laid before the public. The editor of this collection, from the original papers, gives the following account of it.

"In the later periods of Lady Mary's life, she employed her leisure in collecting copies of the letters she had written during Mr. Wortley's embassy, and had transcribed them herself, in two small volumes in quarto. They were, without doubt, return to England for the last time, in 1761, she sometimes shown to her literary friends. Upon her gave these books to a Mr. Snowden, a clergyman of Rotterdam, and wrote the subjoined memorandum on the cover of them: These two volumes are given to the Reverend Benjamin Snowden, thinks proper. This is the will and design of M. minister at Rotterdam, to be disposed of as he Wortley Montagu, December 11, 1761.'

"After her death, the late Earl of Bute commissioned a gentleman to procure them, and to offer Mr. Snowden a considerable remuneration, which he accepted. Much to the surprise of that nobleman and Lady Bute, the manuscripts were scarcely safe in England, when three volumes of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters were published by Beckett; and it has since appeared, that a Mr. Clehad negotiated before, was again despatched to land was the editor. The same gentleman, who Holland; and could gain no further intelligence

"I am glad you think of serving your friends. I hope it will put you in mind of serving yourself. need not enlarge upon the advantages of money; every thing we see, and every thing we hear, puts us in remembrance of it. If it were possible to restore liberty to your country, or limit the encroach-from Mr. Snowden, than that a short time before ments of the prerogative, by reducing yourself to a called on him to see the Letters, and obtained their he parted with the MSS. two English gentlemen garret, I should be pleased to share so glorious a poverty with you: But as the world is, and will request. They had previously contrived that Mr. be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in Snowden should be called away during their peone's power to do good; riches being another word rusal; and he found on his return that they had disfor power; towards the obtaining of which, the first appeared with the books. Their residence was necessary qualification is Impudence, and (as De- unknown to him; but on the next day they brought mosthenes said of pronunciation in oratory) the back the precious deposit, with many apologies. It second is impudence, and the third, still, impu-may be fairly presumed, that the intervening night dence! No modest man ever did, or ever will was consumed in copying these letters by several make his fortune. Your friend Lord Halifax, R. amanuenses."—Vol. pp. 29-32. Walpole, and all other remarkable instances of quick advancement, have been remarkably impudent. The ministry, in short, is like a play at court: There's a little door to get in, and a great crowd without, shoving and thrusting who shall be foremost; people who knock others with their elbows, disregard a little kick of the shins, and still thrust heartily forwards, are sure of a good place. Your modest man stands behind in the crowd, is shoved about by every body, his clothes torn, almost squeezed to death, and sees a thousand get in before him, that don't make so good a figure as himself. "If this letter is impertinent, it is founded upon

90

A fourth volume of Lady Mary's Letters, published in the same form in 1767, appears now to have been a fabrication of Cleland's; as no corresponding MSS. have been found among her Ladyship's papers, or in the hands of her correspondents.

To the accuracy of her local descriptions, and the justness of her representations of oriental manners, Mr. Dallaway, who followed her footsteps at the distance of eighty years, and resided for several months in the very

3 x 2

Majesty, no bloodshed ensued. However, thum
are now tolerably accommodated; and the fara
rides thrrough the town in the shining berin za
hero, not to reckon the more solid advan?
100%. a month, which 'tis said, he allows at
will send you a letter by the Count Caylus,
if you do not know already, you will thank
introducing to you. He is a Frenchmas, a..

palace which she had occupied at Pera, bears a decided and respectable testimony; and, in vindication of her veracity in describing the interior of the seraglio, into which no Christian is now permitted to enter, he observes, that the reigning Sultan of the day, Achmed the Third, was notoriously very regardless of the injunctions of the Koran, and that her Lady-fop; which, besides the curiosity of it, is cur ship's visits were paid while the court was in a retirement that enabled him to dispense with many ceremonies. We do not observe any difference between these letters in the present edition, and in the common copies, except that the names of Lady Mary's correspondents are now given at full length, and short notices of their families subjoined, upon their first introduction. At page eighty-nine of the third volume, there are also two short letters, or rather notes, from the Countess of Pembroke, that have not hitherto been made public; and Mr. Pope's letter, describing the death of the two rural lovers by lightning, is here given at full length; while the former editions only contained her Ladyship's answer,-in which we have always thought that her desire to be smart and witty, has intruded itself a little ungracefully into the place of a more amiable feeling.

prettiest things in the world."-Vol. ii. pp. 126–1.
birth-night; my brain warmed with ad the gra
"I write to you at this time piping-hot free i
ideas that fine clothes, fine gentlemen, krisk tan
and lively dances can raise there. It is to be bor
that my letter will entertain you; at least y
certainly have the freshest account of y
on that glorious day. First, you must know to
more, I believe in my conscience 1 made
led up the ball, which you'll stare at; but wi
the best figures there: For, to say truth, peque
grown so extravagantly ugly, that we od bay
are forced to come out on show-days, to kes
court in countenance. I saw Mrs. Money
through whose hands this epistle will be cre
I do not know whether she will make t
compliment to you that I do. Mrs. West wa
her, who is a great prude, having but two lever
a time; I think those are Lord Hadding:
Lindsay; the one for use, the other for shos

I

"The world improves in one virtue to art degree-I mean plain dealing. Hypocristi as the Scripture declares, a damnable sla our publicans and sinners will be saved by xa The next series of letters consists of those profession of the contrary virtue. I was a written to her sister the Countess of Mar, from very good author, who is deep in the secre. I. 1723 to 1727. These letters have at least as this very minute there is a bill cooking up a much vivacity, wit, and sarcasm, as any that ing seat at Norfolk, to have not taken of a 's have been already published; and though they commandments, and clapped into the cu contain little but the anecdotes and scandal am very sorry for the forlorn state of m ensuing session of Parliament. To speak tar of the time, will long continue to be read and which is now as much ridiculed by car you admired for the brilliancy and facility of the as it used to be by young fellows: In ster composition. Though Lady Mary is exces-sexes have found the inconveniences of it; and sively entertaining in this correspondence, we cannot say, however, that she is either very amiable, or very interesting. There is rather a negation of good affection, we think, throughout; and a certain cold-hearted levity, that borders sometimes upon misanthropy, and sometimes on indecency. The style of the following extracts, however, we are afraid, has been for some time a dead language.

appellation of rake is as genteel in a weste the maid of honour, looks very well now shesa man of quality: It is no scandal to say Mis again; and poor Biddy Noel has never been well since her last confinement. You may n♫ we married women look very silly: We have s thing to excuse ourselves, but that it was de great while ago, and we were very young wink did it."-Vol. iii. pp. 142–145.

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Sixpenny worth of common sense, dvir among a whole nation, would make our w "I made a sort of resolution, at the beginning away glibly enough: But then we nake of my letter, not to trouble you with the mention and we follow customs. By the first we di of what passes here, since you receive it with so our own pleasures, and by the second we much coldness. But I find it is impossible to forbear swerable for the faults and extravagances of orbis telling you the metamorphoses of some of your ac- All these things, and five hundred more, cont quaintance, which appear as wondrous to me as me that I have been one of the condemned t any in Ovid. Would any one believe that Lady since I was born; and in submission to the D H*****ss is a beauty, and in love? and that Mrs. Justice, I have no doubt but I deserved it, in a Anastasia Robinson is at the same time a prude and pre-existent state. I will still hope, howere”, 5 a kept mistress? The first of these ladies is ten- I am only in purgatory; and that after whang derly attached to the polite Mr. M***, and sunk in pining a certain number of years, I shall be tr all the joys of happy love, notwithstanding she lated to some more happy sphere, where virtut wants the use of her two hands by a rheumatism, be natural, and custom reasonable; that is, in shot and he has an arm that he cannot move. I wish I where common sense will reign. I grow wi could tell you the particulars of this amour; which devout, as you see, and place all my hoper seems to me as curious as that between two oysters, next life-being totally persuaded of the ob and as well worth the serious attention of naturalists.ness of this. Don't you remember how mis The second heroine has engaged half the town in arms, from the nicety of her virtue, which was not able to bear the too near approach of Senesino in the opera; and her condescension in accepting of Lord Peterborough for her champion, who has signalized both his love and courage upon this occasion in as many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Dulcinea. Innumerable have been the disorders between the two sexes on so great an account, besides half the House of Peers being put under arrest. By the Providence of Heaven, and the wise care of his

we were in the little parlour, at Thoresby?
wr the
thought marrying would put us at once into pass
sion of all we wanted. Then came though, T
all, I am still of opinion, that it is extremely
to submit to ill-fortune. One should pluck
spirit, and live upon cordials; when one can
no other nourishment. These are my presente
deavours; and I run abort, though I have in
thousand pins and needles in my heart. Ima
console myself with a small damsel, who is a
sent every thing I like-but, alas! she is yet a

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

white frock. At fourteen she may run away with
ine butler."-Vol. iii. pp. 178-180.

I cannot deny but that I was very well diverted
on the coronation-day. I saw the procession much
at my ease, in a house which I filled with my own
company; and then got into Westminster-hall
without trouble, where it was very entertaining to
observe the variety of airs that all meant the same
thing. The business of every walker there was to
conceal vanity and gain admiration. For these pur-
poses some languished and others strutted; but a
visible satisfaction was diffused over every counte-
nance, as soon as the coronet was clapped on the
head. But she that drew the greatest number of
eyes was indisputably Lady Orkney. She exposed
behind, a mixture of fat and wrinkles; and before,
a considerable protuberance, which preceded her.
Add to this, the inimitable roll of her eyes, and her
grey hairs, which by good fortune stood directly
upright, and 'tis impossible to imagine a more de-
lightful spectacle She had embellished all this with
considerable magnificence, which made her look as
big again as usual; and I should have thought her
one of the largest things of God's making, if my
Lady St. J***n had not displayed all her charms in
honour of the day. The poor Duchess of M***se
crept along with a dozen of black snakes playing
round her face; and my Lady P**nd (who has fallen
away since her dismission from Court) represented
very finely an Egyptian mummy embroidered over
with hieroglyphics. In general, I could not per-
ceive but that the old were as well pleased as the
young: and I who dread growing wise more than
any thing in the world, was overjoyed to find that
one can never outlive one's vanity. I have never
received the long letter you talk of, and am afraid
that you have only fancied that you wrote it."

Vol. iii. pp. 181-183.

to the year 1761, consists of those that we
The last series of letters, which extends to t
addressed by Lady Mary, during her res
middle of the fifth volume, and comes dow
dence abroad, to her daughter the Countes
of Bute.
less brilliant than those to the Countess of
Mar, have more heart and affection in them
than any other of her Ladyship's productions;
and abound in lively and judicious reflections.
These letters, though somewha
They indicate, at the same time, a very great
share of vanity; and that kind of contempt
and indifference for the world, into which the
veterans of fashion are most apt to sink.-
With the exception of her daughter and her
children, Lady Mary seems by this time to
have, indeed, attained to the happy state of
really caring nothing for any human being;
and rather to have beguiled the days of her
declining life with every sort of amusement,
than to have soothed them with affection of
friendship. After boasting of the intimacy
in which she lived with all the considerable
people in her neighbourhood, she adds, in one
of her letters, "The people I see here make
figures on the tapestry, while they are before
my eyes. I know one is clothed in blue, and
no more impression on my mind than the
another in red: but out of sight they are so
entirely out of memory, that I hardly remem-
ber whether they are tall or short."

much in character.
The following reflections upon an Italian
story, exactly like that of Pamela, are very

from artifice on one side, and weakness on the other.
An honest, tender heart, is often betrayed to ruin
by the charms that make the fortune of a designing
In my opinion, all these adventures proceed
head; which, when joined with a beautiful face,
can never fail of advancement-except barred by a
till nobody cares to look on them. My poor friend
the Duchess of Bolton was educated in solitude,
with some choice of books, by a saint-like gover
wise mother, who locks up her daughters from view
ness: Crammed with virtue and good qualities,
she thought it impossible not to find gratitude,
though she failed to give passion and upon this
plan threw away her estate, was despised by her
in an alehouse, and produced on the stage, has ob-
tained wealth and title, aud even found the way to
be esteemed!"-Vol. iv. p. 119, 120.
husband, and laughed at by the public. Polly, bred

In spite of all this gaiety, Lady Mary does not appear to have been happy. Her discreet biographer is silent upon the subject of her connubial felicity; and we have no desire to revive forgotten scandals; but it is a fact, which cannot be omitted, that her Ladyship went abroad, without her husband, on account of bad health, in 1739, and did not return to England till she heard of his death in 1761. Whatever was the cause of their separation, however, there was no open rupture; and she seems to have corresponded with him very regularly for the first ten years of her absence. These letters, which occupy the latter part of the third volume, and the beginning of the fourth, are by no means so captivating as most of the preceding. They contain but little wit, and no confidential or striking reflections.They are filled up with accounts of her health and her journeys; with short and general notices of any extraordinary customs she meets with, and little scraps of stale politics, picked up in the petty courts of Italy. They are cold, in short, without being formal; and are gloomy and constrained, when compared with those which were spontaneously written to show her wit, or her affection to her correspondents. She seems extremely anxious to impress her husband with an exalted idea of the honours and distinction with which shar was everywhere received; and really seems more elated and surprised than we should have expected the daughter of an English Duke to be, with the attentions that were shown her by the noblesse of Venice, in particular. From this correspondence we are not tempted to make any extract.

There is some acrimony, and some power
of reviling, in the following extract:

work, which has extremely entertained, and not at
all surprised me, having the honour of being ac-
"I have only had time to read Lord Orrery's
quainted with him, and knowing him for one of
beauty, spend their whole time in humbly admiring.
Dean Swift, by his Lordship's own account, was
so intoxicated with the love of flattery, that he
those danglers after wit, who, like those after
sought it amongst the lowest of people, and the
last of women; and was never so well pleased
ovcompanions as those that worshipped him,
insulted them. His character seems to
had the same power, he would have made the same
use of it. That Emperor erected a temple to him-
me a parallel with that of Caligula; and had he
self, where he was his own high-priest, preferred
fessed enmity to the human race, and at last loat
his life by a nasty jest on one of his inferiors,
his horse to the highest honours in the state, pro-
which I dare swear Swift would have made in his

place. There can be no worse picture made of the Doctor's morals than he has given us himself in the letters printed by Pope. We see him vain, trifling, ungrateful to the memory of his patron, making a servile court where he had any interested views, and meanly abusive when they were disappointed; and, as he says (in his own phrase), flying in the face of mankind, in company with his adorer Pope. It is pleasant to consider, that had it not been for the good nature of these very mortals they contemn, these two superior beings were entitled, by their birth and hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of link-boys. I am of opinion, however, that their friendship would have continued, though they had remained in the same kingdom. It had a very strong foundation-the love of flattery on one side, and the love of money on the other. Pope courted with the utmost assiduity all the old men from whom he could hope a legacy, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Peterborough, Sir G. Kneller, Lord Bolingbroke, Mr. Wycherly, Mr. Congreve, Lord Harcourt, &c., and I do not doubt projected to sweep the Dean's whole inheritance, if he could have persuaded him to throw up his deanery, and come to die in his house; and his general preaching against money was meant to induce people to throw it away, that he might pick it up."

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"The confounding of all ranks, and making a jest of order, has long been growing in England; and I perceive, by the books you sent me, has made a very considerable progress. The heroes and heroines of the age, are cobblers and kitchenwenches. Perhaps you will say I should not take my ideas of the manners of the times from such trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them, than from any historian: as they write merely to get money, they always fall into the notions that are most acceptable to the present taste. It has long been the endeavour of our English writers, to represent people of quality as the vilest low-born themselves. I am not surprised at their and silliest part of the nation, being (generally) very propagating this doctrine; but I am much mistaken if this levelling principle does not, one day or other, break out in fatal consequences to the public, as it has already done in many private families." Vol. iv. pp. 223, 224. She is not quite so fortunate in her remarks on Dr. Johnson, though the conclusion of the extract is very judicious.

The Rambler is certainly a strong misnomer: he always plods in the beaten road of his predeces: Bors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper. These writers may, perhaps, be of service to the public, which is saying

They place a merit in extravagant pas encourage young people to hope for i events, to draw them out of the misery thes to plunge themselves into; expecting g unknown relations, and generous ben distressed virtue, as much out of tama treasures."-Vol. iv. pp. 259, 260.

The idea of the following imag lieve, is not quite new; but it is exp a very lively and striking manner.

"The world is past its infancy, and will cei be contented with spoon-meat. A colem like a single individual. When I reflect se of men make a gradual progress in undersing increase of useful as well as speculative inv the last three hundred years has produced ne the peasants of this age have more rased than the first emperors of Rome had anys, I imagine we may now be arrived at which answers to fifteen. I cannot think we

older; when I recollect the many paljulai which are still (almost) universally persa Among these I place that of War-asses the boxing of school-boys; and whenever we to man's estate (perhaps a thousand years do not doubt it will appear as ridiculou pranks of unlucky lads. Several discove which we have now no more idea than the then be made, and several truths made o had of the circulation of the blood, or the pur Sir Isaac Newton."-Vol. v. pp. 15, 16.

After observing, that in a preced her Ladyship declares, that "it is eleve since she saw herself in a glass, beg pleased with the figure she was the le ning to make in it," we shall close the tracts with the following more favoura count of her philosophy.

"I no more expect to arrive at the aged Duchess of Marlborough, than to that of Netce lem; neither do I desire it. I have long th myself useless to the world. I have seen ration pass away, and it is gone; for I th youth. You will perhaps call these me are very few of those left that flourished in reflections; but they are not so. There w after the abandoning of pursuits, something rest that follows a laborious day. I tell you for your comfort. It was formerly a terrifying to me, that I should one day be an old woman now find that nature has provided pleasa every state. Those only are unhappy whe not be contented with what she gives, but break through her laws, by affecting a perpet at present as the babies do to you, that off of youth,-which appears to me as little desa, delight of your infancy. I am at the end of paper, which shortens the sermon." Vol. iv. pp. 314, 313

Upon the death of Mr. Wortley in 1761 a great deal in their favour. There are numbers Lady Mary returned to England, and productions; and cannot spare time, from doing age. From the large extracts which we ha of both sexes who never read any thing but such there in October 1762, in the 73d year of her nothing, to go through a sixpenny pamphlet. Sugh been tempted to make from her corresp gentle readers may be improved by a moral hant, ence, our readers will easily be enabled which, though repeated over and over, from gener-judge of the character and genius of this er

ation to generation,

I should be glad to know the r heard in their is n8-traordinary woman. A little spoiled by author. H. Fielding has given a true pictuntery, and not altogether "undebauched by himself and his first wife, in the characters Mr. the world," she seems to have possessed and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own masculine solidity of understanding, great figure excepted; and I am persuaded, several of liveliness of fancy, and such powers of ob the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact. servation and discrimination of character, Jones and Mr. Booth to be both sorry scoundrels. to give her opinions great authority on all the I cannot easily vardon, being very mischievous. I conduct. After her marriage, she seems t

I wonder, however, that he does not perceive Tom

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lively conceptions, is already consigned to that oblivion in which mediocrity is destined, by an irrevocable sentence, to slumber till the end of the world. The Essays are extremely insignificant, and have no other merit, that we can discover, but that they are very few and very short.

have abandoned all idea of laborious or regu- the polite and witty sort of poetry which Lady iar study, and to have been raised to the sta- Mary has attempted, is much more of an art tion of a literary character merely by her than prose-writing. We are trained to the vivacity and her love of amusement and anec- latter, by the conversation of good societyį dote. The great charm of her letters is cer- but the former seems always to require a good tainly the extreme ease and facility with deal of patient labour and application. This which every thing is expressed, the brevity her Ladyship appears to have disdained; and and rapidity of her representations, and the accordingly, her poetry, though abounding in elegant simplicity of her diction. While they unite almost all the qualities of a good style, there is nothing of the professed author in them: nothing that seems to have been composed, or to have engaged the admiration of the writer. She appears to be quite unconscious either of merit or of exertion in what she is doing; and never stops to bring out a Of Lady Mary's friendship and subsequent thought, or to turn an expression, with the rupture with Pope, we have not thought it cunning of a practised rhetorician. The let- necessary to say any thing; both because we ters from Turkey will probably continue to be are of opinion that no new lights are thrown more universally read than any of those that upon it by this publication, and because we are now given for the first time to the public; have no desire to awaken forgotten scandals because the subject commands a wider and by so idle a controversy. Pope was undoubt more permanent interest, than the personali-edly a flatterer, and was undoubtedly suffi ties and unconnected remarks with which the ciently irritable and vindictive; but whether rest of the correspondence is filled. At the his rancour was stimulated, upon this occasame time, the love of scandal and of private sion, by any thing but caprice or jealousy, history is so great, that these letters will be and whether he was the inventor or the echo highly relished, as long as the names they of the imputations to which he has given nocontain are remembered;-and then they toriety, we do not pretend to determine. Lady will become curious and interesting, as ex- Mary's character was certainly deficient in hibiting a truer picture of the manners and that cautious delicacy which is the best guarfashions of the time, than is to be found in dian of female reputation; and there seems to most other publications. have been in her conduct something of that The Fifth Volume contains also her Lady-intrepidity which naturally gives rise to misship's poems, and two or three trifling papers construction, by setting at defiance the maxims that are entitled her Essays. Poetry, at least lof ordinary discretion.

(May, 1820.)

The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Ireland. By his Son, WILLIAM HENRY CURRAN, Barrister-at-law. 8vo. 2 vols. pp. 970. London: 1819.

THIS is really a very good book; and not less instructive in its moral, and general scope, than curious and interesting in its details. It is a mixture of Biography and History-and avoids the besetting sins of both species of composition-neither exalting the hero of the biography into an idol, nor deforming the history of a most agitated period with any spirit of violence or exaggeration. It is written, on the contrary, as it appears to us, with singular impartiality and temper-and the style is not less remarkable than the sentiments: For though it is generally elegant and spirited, it is without any of those peculiarities which the age, the parentage, and the country of the author, would lead us to expect:-And we may Bay, indeed, of the whole work, looking both to the matter and the manner, that it has no defects from which it could be gathered that it was written either by a Young man-or an Irishman-or by the Son of the person whose history it professes to record-though it has attractions which probably could not have

existed under any other conditions. The distracting periods of Irish story are still almost too recent to be fairly delineated-and no Irishman, old enough to have taken a part in the transactions of 1780 or 1798, could wel be trusted as their historian-while no one but a native, and of the blood of some of the chief actors, could be sufficiently acquainted with their motives and characters, to communicate that life and interest to the details which shine out in so many passages of the volumes before us. The incidental light which they throw upon the national character and state of society in Ireland, and the continual illustrations they afford of their diversity from our own, is perhaps of more value than the particular facts from which it results; and stamp upon the work the same peculiar attraction which we formerly ascribed to Mr. Hardy's life of Lord Charlemont.

To qualify this extraordinary praise, we must add, that the limits of the private and the public story are not very well observed,

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