their works. I beg pardon of my masters the public, and am confident, sir, you will not betray me; but let me beg you not to defraud the few that deserve your information, in compliment to those who are not capable of receiving it. Do as I do about my small house here. Everybody that comes to see it or me are so good as to wonder that I don't make this or that alteration. I never haggle with them; but always say I intend it. They are satisfied with the attention and themselves, and I remain with the enjoyment of my house as I like it. Adieu! dear Sir."

But, according to Miss Berry's account, his character presented much deeper traits than the world has been inclined to attribute to him, and which were exhibited to those in whom he took a friendly interest. The affections of his heart, she says, were bestowed on few, "but they were extremely warm, pure, and constant;" and she gives some striking illustrations. To the reader, however, any question closely bearing upon his moral or intellectual qualities will not excite much anxiety; for in whatever way speculation may run, the merits of the Letters will not only be universally acknowledged, but the various features of these merits cannot be mistaken or be the subject of controversy; therefore it is only necessary for us now to quote some of the more entertaining to be found in the present volume, either on account of the anecdotes they contain or the easy and witty trifling of the writer.

We first of all introduce notice of certain royal personages :

"The Duchess of York arrived punctually at twelve, in a high phaeton, with Mrs. Ewart, and Bude rode on horseback. On the step of the gate was a carpet, and the court matted. I received the Princess at the side of her chaise, and, when entered, kissed her hand. She had meant to ride; but had hurt her foot, and was forced to sit most of the time she was here. We had many civil contests about my sitting too; but I resisted, and held out till after she had seen the house and drank chocolate in the round drawing-room; and then she commanded General Bude to sit, that I might have no excuse: yet I rose and fetched a salver, to give her the chocolate myself, and then a glass of water. She seemed much pleased, and commended much; and I can do no less of her, and with the strictest truth. She is not near so small as I had expected; her face is very agreeable and lively; and she is so good-humoured, and so gracious, and so natural, that I do not believe Lady Mary Coke would have made a quarter so pleasing a Duchess of York: nor have been half so sweet a temper, unless by my attentions de vieille cour. I was sorry my Eagle had been forced to hold its tongue. To-morrow I shall go to Oatlands, with my thanks for the honour; and there, probably, will end my connexions with courts, begun with George the First, great-great-great-grandfather to the Duchess of York! It sounds as if there could not have been above three generations more before Adam. Great news! How eager Mr. Berry will look!—but it is not from armies or navies; not from the murderers at Paris, nor from the victims at Grodno. No! it is only an event in the little world of me. This morning, to receive my Princess, I put on a silver waistcoat that I had

made three years ago for Lord Cholmondley's marriage, and have not worn since. Considering my late illness, and how many hundred-weight of chalk I have been venting these ten years, I concluded my wedding-garment would wrap round me like my night-gown; but, lo! it was grown too tight for me. I shall be less surprised, if, in my next century, and under George the Tenth, I grow as plump as Mrs. Ellis. Methinks I pity you, when all the world is in arms, and you expect to hear that Saul Duke of Brunswick has slain his thousands, and David Prince of Coburg his ten thousands, to be forced to read the platitudes that I send you, because I have nothing better to amuse me than writing to you. Well! you know how to get rid of my letters."

The wife of the Pretender is the subject of the following court gossip:

"The Countess of Albany is not only in England, in London, but at this very moment, I believe, in the palace of St. James's-not restored by as rapid a revolution as the French, but, as was observed last night at supper at Lady Mount-Edgcumbe's, by that topsy-turvy-hood that characterizes the present age. Within these two months the Pope has been burnt at Paris; Madame de Barry, mistress of Louis Quinze, has dined with the Lord Mayor of London, and the Pretender's widow is presented to the Queen of Great Britain! She is to be introduced by her great-grandfather's niece, the young Countess of Ailesbury. ** Well! I have had an exact account of the interview of the two Queens, from one who stood close to them. The Dowager was announced as Princess of Stolberg. She was well-dressed, and not at all embarrassed. The King talked to her a good deal; but about her passage, the sea, and general topics; the Queen in the same way, but less. There she stood between the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and had a good deal of conversation with the former; who, perhaps, may have met her in Italy. Not a word between her and the Princesses: nor did I hear the Prince; but he was there, and probably spoke to her. The Queen looked at her earnestly. To add to the singularity of the day, it is the Queen's birth-day. Another odd incident; at the Opera at the Pantheon, Madame d'Albany was carried into the King's box, and sat there. It is not of a piece with her going to court, that she seals with the royal arms."

Our next is excellent in its way. It was addressed to Lady Craven who was a great traveller, and who after the death of her husband, from whom she had been separated, married a foreign prince :

Berkeley Square, Nov. 27, 1786.

"To my extreme surprise, Madam, when I knew not in what quarter of the known or unknown world you was resident or existent, my maid in Berkeley-square sent me to Strawberry-hill a note from your ladyship, offering to call on me for a moment, for a whirlwind, I suppose, was waiting at your door to carry you to Japan: and, as balloons have not yet settled any post-offices in the air, you could not, at least did not, give me any direction where to address you, though you did kindly reproach me with my

silence. I must enter into a little justification before I proceed. I heard from you from Venice, then from Poland, and then, having whisked through Tartary, from Petersburg; but still with no directions. I said to myself, I will write to Grand Cairo, which, probably will be her next stage.' Nor was I totally in the wrong, for there came a letter from Constantinople, with a design mentioned of going to the Greek Islands, and orders to write to you at Vienna; but with no banker or other address specified. For a great while I had even stronger reasons than these for silence. For several months I was disabled by the gout from holding a pen; and you must know, Madam, that one can't write when one cannot write. Then, how write to la Fiancée du Roi de Garbe? You had been in the tent of the Cham of Tartary, and in the harem of the Captain Pacha, and, during your navigation of the Ægaen, were possibly fallen into the terrible power of a corsair. How could I suppose that so many despotic infidels would part with your charms? I never expected you again on Christian ground. I did not doubt your having a talisman to make people in love with you; but antitalismans are quite a new specific. Well, while I was in this quandary, I received a delightful drawing of the Castle of Otranto; but still provokingly without any address. However my gratitude for so very agreeable and obliging present could not rest till I found out. I wrote to the Duchess of Richmond, to beg she would ask your brother Captain Berkeley for a direction to you; and he has this very day been so good as to send me one, and I do not lose a moment in making use of it. I give your ladyship a million of thanks for the drawing, which was really a very valuable gift to me. I did not even know that there was a Castle of Otranto. When the story was finished, I looked into the map of the kingdom of Naples for a well-sounding name, and that of Otranto was very sonorous. Nay, but the drawing is so satisfactory, that there are two small windows, one over another, and looking into the country, that suit exactly to the small chambers from one of which Matilda heard the young peasant singing beneath her. Judge how welcome this must be to the author; and thence judge, Madam, how much you must have obliged him. When you take another flight towards the bounds of the western ocean, remember to leave a direction. One cannot always shoot flying. Lord Chesterfield directed a letter to the late Lord Pembroke, who was always swimmimg, To the Earl of Pembroke in the Thames, over against Whitehall.' That was sure of finding him within a certain number of fathom; but your ladyship's longitude varies so rapidly, that one must be a good bowler indeed, to take one's ground so judiciously, that by casting wide of the mark one may come in near to the jack."

To the Earl of Buchan he thus writes:

"Strawberry Hill, Sept. 23, 1785. "If you can tap the secret stores of the Vatican, your Lordship will probably much enrich the treasury of letters. Rome may have preserved many valuable documents, as for ages intelligence from all parts of Europe centered there but I conclude that they have hoarded little that might at any period lay open the share they had in most important transactions. History, indeed, is fortunate when even incidentally and collaterally it lights

on authentic information. Perhaps, my lord, there is another repository, and nearer, which it would be worth while to endeavour to penetrate: I mean, the Scottish College at Paris. I have heard formerly, that numbers of papers, of various sorts, were transported at the Reformation to Spain and Portugal; but, if preserved there, they probably are not accessible yet. If they were, how puny, how diminutive, would all such discoveries, and others which we might call of far greater magnitude, be to those of Herschel, who puts up millions of covies of worlds at a beat! My conception is not ample enough to take in even a sketch of his glimpses, and, lest I should lose myself in attempting to follow his investigations, I recall my mind home, and apply it to reflect on what we thought we knew, when we imagined we knew something (which we deemed a vast deal) pretty correctly. Segrais, I think, it was, who said with much contempt, to a lady who talked of her star, Your star! Madam, there are but two thousand stars in all; and do you imagine that you have a whole one to yourself?' The foolish dame, it seems, was not more ignorant than Segrais himself. If our system includes twenty millions of worlds, the lady had as much right to pretend to a whole ticket as the philosopher had to treat her like a servant-maid who buys a chance for a day in a state lottery."

The anecdotes which he picked up are endless, and inserted with the most perfect skill. We have room only for one example

inore :

"Pray, delight in the following story: Caroline Vernon, fille d'honneur, lost t'other night two hundred pounds at faro, and bade Martindale mark it up. He said he had rather have a draft on her banker. 'Oh! willingly ;' and she gave him one. Next morning he hurried to Drummond's, lest all her money should be drawn out. 'Sir,' said the clerk, 'would you receive the contents immediately?' Assuredly? Why, Sir, have you read the note?' Martindale took it; it was, 'Pay to the bearer two hundred blows, well applied.'

But is it not to be regretted that few solemn thonghts or religious sentiments are to be met with in the six volumes? It affords grounds for serious reflection when one finds an old man a coxcomb, and his ideas and occupations generally little better than frivolous, however pleasant may be their style, or amusing when one takes up a volume of his letters for random reading. His education, we mean the disclipine of his heart and mind during youth, must have, we suspect, been much neglected; and other circumstances might work powerfully to the production of a superficial man. Much may have depended on what is stated in the following sentences which we meet with in Miss Berry's preface. "He had lost his mother, to whom he was fondly attached in early life; and with his father, a man of coarse feelings and boisterous manners, he had few sentiments in common. Always feeble in constitution, he was unequal to the sports of the field, and to the drinking which then accompanied them; so that during his father's retreat at

Houghton, however much he respected his abilities, and was devoted to his fame, he had little sympathy in his tastes, or pleasure in his society." After all Horace was neither to be imitated nor envied.

ART. IV. The Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, Esq. F.R.S. &c.; including a Narrative of his Voyage to Tangier. By the Rev. J. SMITH, A. M. 2 vols. London: Bentley. 1840. THE Life, Journals, and Corrrespondence of the worthy Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., contained in these volumes, have been deciphered from the Shorthand MSS. in the Bodleian Library, and are now first published from the originals. It in some degree concerns the reputation of Mr. Smith, that his part in the publication has been limited to the mere deciphering, as it had been in the case of the celebrated "Diary;" and that he has had nothing to do with the editing on either occasion. Nay, we are informed, that much has been deciphered by him of the Diarist's that has not been given to the world. We say that the statement in some measure touches the literary reputation of the reverend gentleman; for it saves him from the blame which an incompetent or careless editor incurs. It is not enough that Pepys was one of the most active and observing men that ever lived, that he in an unique manner reflects most accurately the times in which he lived,-that he had extraordinary opportunities of mixing with historical characters, and that his whims and selfcomplacencies took the most diversified shapes and directions; he was also such a gossip, so universal in his quaint notices, that without informing notes, much that he wrote possesses no interest to the general reader at this day; while many things which he recorded were merely of temporary and official concern. It will not serve any literary purpose to publish the whole of the remains even of any man of genius unless the editor can turn every, even the slightest particular, to some enlightening use, respecting the manners of a bygone age; and this can only be accomplished by one deeply and minutely conversant with that age, and by means of judicious arrangements, separations, and curtailments. Connecting, biographical, and elucidatory particulars will require to be added, so as to render the whole a complete and light-giving contribution. Now, the volumes before us present often the reverse of these features. There is a good deal in them that is indefinite or trivial in itself; and then the editorial matter is poor and unsatisfactory,-every way inferior to Lord Braybrooke's Pepys's Memoirs. Still, the major portion of these volumes are valuable and interesting in a high degree, not only as a worthy supplement to the former publication, but as serving to complete the portrait of the worshipful Secretary, and also the picture of the times, in the high and unusually diversified situations in which he flourished.