and proposed to quit the court and its vanities at any moment, for his sake. Thus, February 13th, 1710:

My lord mighty ill, and still had a mind to quit office. I told him that I would never oppose anything he had a mind to do; and after arguing calmly upon the matter, I offered him, if it would be any pleasure done him, to retire with him into the country, and quit too, and, what was more, never to repine at doing so, though it was the greatest sacrifice that could be made him. I believe he will accept.

Her entry for the January of the same year alludes to what Burnet calls another thing of a great example' done by Lord Cowper during his first Chancellorship, in 1706:

This month used to be ushered in with New-year's gifts from the lawyers, which used to come to near £3000 to the Chancellor. The original of this custom was, presents of wine and provisions, which used to be sent to the Chancellor by the people who practised in his court. But in process of time a covetous Chancellor insinuated to them that gold would be more acceptable; so it was changed into gold, and continued so till the first time my lord had the seals: everyone having blamed it that ever had the seals, but none forbidding it.

The Earl of Nottingham, when Chancellor, used to receive them standing by a table; and at the same time he took the money to lay it upon the table, he used to cry out, Oh, tyrant cuthtom!' (for he lisped)-my lord forbade the bringing them.

Indications of the prevalent coarseness of manners abound. The Duke of Somerset, the proud Duke, being informed by Lord Townshend that the King had no further occasion for his Grace's services, inquires, 'Pray, my lord, what is the reason of it?' Lord Townshend answers, he did not know. Then,' says the Duke of Somerset, by G-! my lord, you lie. You know that the King puts me out for no other cause but for the lies which you, and such as you, have invented and told of me.' Such is the account given by the Duke himself to Lord Cowper; convincing enough so far as concerned his own want of breeding; but, as suggested by the editor, it is not very probable that such language could be addressed with impunity to Lord Townshend, who once drew

his sword upon Sir Robert Walpole, his brother-in-law, for no worse provocation. Their well-known quarrel was the original of the scene between Peachum and Lockit in the Beggars' Opera.

The following scene between the Princess and Craggs, however, is no doubt correctly described :

Craggs had been with the Princess, and makes many professions and tells many lies. He says he was not for taking the children from the Princess. He said the quarrel had been made by under-servants, who had reported abundance of things, which they said were true; that for the ministers, he would answer they had never done any such things; that their complaint against the Prince was, that he spoiled and opposed the King's affairs; and they used to say to the King that the Prince's friends were like a battalion that broke through all their measures: And perhaps,' says he, 'I myself have been one of the foremost to say it, it being true.' She said, I was told you had condescended so low as to call me a b. -h;' at which he began a volley of oaths and curses of the falseness of the assertion, for so long a time, and with so much vehemence, that she said to him: Fie! Mr. Craggs; you renounce God like a woman that's caught in the fact.'

This was Craggs the elder, who is said to have begun life as a footman to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. The singularity, therefore, consists not so much in his having used such language as in his being called personally to account for it by the Princess. The following are telltale entries:

At the drawing-room. George Mayo turned out for being drunk and saucy. He fell out with Sir James Baker, and in the fray had pulled him by the nose.

At night we all went in the same train. The Duke of Newcastle had got drunk for our sins; so the Princess's ladies had no places, but stood in the heat and crowd all the night.

Dined with Aunt Allanson. Go to the Master of the Rolls. The servants got so drunk, I was forced to send one of them home.

I dine with Mrs. Clayton. Am left by chairmen and servants-all drunk. I can hardly get to the Princess.

Lord Cowper resigned the Great Seal in the spring of 1718, when Sunderland and Stanhope got possession of the King's ear and the

This thing was carried on at Horace's (Horace Walpole's) lodging, who lives in a by-place, and keeps but one servant, which was always sent out of the way upon these occasions.

The Speaker was in another scheme with Carlton, Harcourt, Atterbury, Trevor, and all the Tories.

A third little scheme was a carrying on at this time by Bernstorff with Chandos and the moderate Tories.

A fourth little scheme was laid down between Lechmere, Bolton, Cadogan, and Roxburgh.

In short, there was not a rogue in town that was not engaged in some scheme and project to undo his country.

The reconciliation was brought about by the peacemakers for their own private ends, and reluctantly accepted by the King from motives far remote from paternal affection. The King (writes Lady Cowper) was very hardly brought to see the Prince when proposed to him. He said, "Can't the Whigs come back without him?"" The situation is strikingly analogous to that which was presented towards the beginning of the present century, when the Whigs hoped to make. the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) a stepping-stone to place.

The next extract expresses the usual effect of coalitions; by which the demand for places is inevitably doubled or trebled without a corresponding increase in the supply:

A world of discontents among people that have been zealous on both sides, and that are dropped.

Great hugging and kissing between the two old and two new ministers. They walk all four, with their arms round one another, to show that they are all one.

One of the best stories in the book relates to the efforts made to procure pardons for the rebels taken at Preston:

Sad pleadings; some sons drawn in by their fathers, and Mr. Shafto by his son, who forced him to take arms. Mrs. Collingwood wrote to a friend in town to try to get her husband's life granted to her. The friend's answer was as follows: '1 think you are mad when you talk of saving your husband's life. Don't you know you will have five hundred pounds a year jointure if he's hanged, and that you won't have a groat if he's saved? Consider, and let me have your answer, for I shall do nothing in it till then.' The answer did not come time enough, and so he was hanged.

It is a general belief that the lower orders were then favourable to the Stuarts; but the reception of the prisoners in London leads to an opposite conclusion, unless it be simply attributable to the proverbial tendency of the multitude to insult the weak:

Dec. 4, 1715.-This week the prisoners were brought to town from Preston. They came in with their arms tied, and their horses (whose bridles were taken off) led each by a soldier. The mob insulted them terribly, carrying a warming-pan before them, and saying a thousand barbarous things, which some of the prisoners returned with spirit. The chief of my father's family was amongst them. He is above seventy years

old.

A desperate fortune had drove him from home in hopes to have repaired it. I did not see them come into town, nor let any of my children do so. I thought it would be an insulting of the relations I had here; though almost everybody went to see them.

We strongly suspect that the gags mentioned in the following passage as taken from the rebels, belong to the same category as the poisoned daggers and spearheads, of which several hundredweight were recently alleged to have been found in a Polish convent:

I carried the gag which was brought from Preston by Mr. Carter to court, by order of the Princess. A great number of

them were found at the house of one Shuttleworth, a Papist, afterwards hanged. He was famous for saying he hoped in a little time to see Preston streets running as fast with heretic blood as they do with water when it has rained twelve hours. The gags are really frightful. They go down the throat a great way, with a bend, and under that there is an iron spike that runs into the tongue if it is stirred, and the ends have screws that screw into the cheeks.

Amongst the accredited scandals of the period, there is one which will sorely grieve the respectable community of Quakers, who made so gallant a stand against Lord Macaulay when the reputation of Penn was assailed by him :

I went to-night to Court. The Duchess of Bolton went with the ladies, to make believe she was one of the royal family: though that won't do; it's too plainly writ in her face that she's Penn's daughter, the quaking preacher.

The Duchess of Bolton was the reputed daughter of the Duke of Monmouth, by a daughter of Sir Robert Needham.

The notices of literary and scientific characters are slight, but curious. When Lady Cowper spoke to the Prince of a ballad in his praise, by Congreve, His Royal Highness inquired who Mr. Congreve was.

In February, 1716, she writes, 'Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Clarke came this afternoon to explain Sir Isaac's system of philosophy to the Princess. I could not stay to hear them, having left my lord not so well.' Lady Nottingham told the Princess that Dr. Clarke's writings were tainted with heresy. Mrs. Clayton defended him, and quoted Dr. Smaldridge :

of something: 'Not I, indeed. I dare not trust myself with the reading such books.'

An Irish bishop (not named) is thus commemorated:

I shall only tell two little stories as' a specimen of him. The one was, that, at a christening, after he had baptized the child, he brought the basin of water that had been used on that occasion to the lady of the house, saying, 'This, madam, is sanctified water; pray let it be put into bottles. I assure you it is a sovereign remedy for sore eyes.' The other, while he was in Ireland, a sea captain came to wait on him, whom, according to his custom, he entertained mighty well (for he might have been a Roman prelate for his luxury). After dinner he would needs show the tar his library, which the other did not care for, excepting himself because he did not understand books; but the bishop insisting upon it, they rose, and he followed the bishop, who carried him into the finest cellars, and the best filled, the captain had ever seen; and then, turning to him, he said, 'How do you like my library?' The other replied,

Ah! this is something like a library. I assure your lordship it is one of the finest I ever saw; though I desire to remark to your lordship that most of the books are in quarto.'

It will be seen from these specimens that we are indebted to Mr. Spencer Cowper for an amusing collection of incidents and remarks, as well as a valuable aid to history. With this Diary, Lord Hervey's Memoirs, and Lord Oxford's Reminiscences before us, we can no longer have much difficulty in forming a tolerably just estimate of what the nation gained or lost at the outset, in manners, morals and cultivation as well as in constitutional government, by the importation of a royal stock from Germany.

E quite worn out with the

Wever increasing noise of Paris;

or, perhaps, I should rather say, as the heat became greater, so our necessity for open windows by day and by night increased; and the masons opposite rose to their work with the early morning light. So we determined to go off to Brittany for our few remaining days, having a sort of happy mixture of the ideas of sea, heath, rocks, ferns, and Madame de Sévigné in our heads. The one and first destined point in our plans being to see the cathedral at Chartres.

We left Paris about three o'clock, and went past several stations, the names of which reminded us of Madame de Sévigné's time-Rambouillet, perhaps, the most of all. The station is some distance from the town of Chartres, which, like so many French provincial towns, consists of a Place,' and a few appendant streets. The magnificent cathedral stands a little aloof; we left it on one side as we came in an omnibus up to our hotel, which looked on to the Place. But, alas for my hopes of a quiet night! The space before the house is filled with booths dancing booths, acting booths, wild-beast shows, music booths, each and all making their own separate and distinct noises; the 'touter' to one booth sitting in front of it and blowing a trumpet as hard as any angel in the old pictures; the hero of the theatrical booth walking backwards and forwards in front of his stage, and ranting away in King Cambyses his vein; the lions and tigers are raging with hunger to judge from their roars; and the musicians are in in the full burst of the overture to Guillaume Tell. Mary and Irene have gone out, in spite of it all, to have a peep at the cathedral before it is too dark; and I have chosen our bedrooms. If the lion only knew it, he could easily make a spring into our balcony; but I hope, as he is great, he will be stupid. I have rung the bell, and rung the bell,

II.

Chartres, May 10th, 1862. and gone out in the corridor and called; and, at last, I shall have to go down stairs to try and find some one to bring up the meal which I have promised the others they shall find ready on their return. I have been and found Madame, and laid my complaint before her. She says the servants are all gone out to see the shows in the Place, which is very wicked in them; but I suspect, from her breathless way of speaking, she has only just rushed in herself to see that I am not running away with the house. I fancy I am the only person in it. She assures me, with true French volubility, that she will send up some coffee and bread directly, and will scold Jeanette well.

May 11th.-Mary and Irene returned from the cathedral last night before anything was ready, and were too full of the extraordinary architectural magnificence they had seen to care about my Martha-like troubles. But I had not seen the cathedral, and I was hungry if they were not. I went down again, and this time I found Madame in full tilt against an unfortunate woman, who looked as if she had been captured, vi et armes, out of the open-air gaiety and the pleasant company of friends in the Place. She brought us up our meal with sullen speed, giving me occasionally such scowls of anger that I almost grew afraid at the feeling I had provoked. Yet she refused to be soothed by our little expressions of admiration for the 'fair, and our questions as to what was to be seen. Her only attempt at an apology was a sort of grumbling soliloquy to the effect that ladies who knew what was comme il faut would never have gone out so late in the evening of a jour de fête to walk about the town; and that, as Mary and Irene had done this improper thing, there was no knowing when, if ever, they would return. I wish she had let us try to comfort her, for I really was very sorry to have dragged a poor creature back from what was,