vide great hoarding chests, and put into them the millions of gold and silver collected per force in that shape from the importers; who, to fill these government hoards, are obliged to draw the gold and silver from the reservoirs where it was deposited by the community; so that the man who puts a thousand dollars in gold into the vault of a bank, thinking that from that point it will flow out through all the channels of trade, hears the day after that it has all gone into the hoarding box of the government, to lie there perhaps three months unused, when the community are so much in want of it they would willingly pay an hundred dollars to have it in circulation for that time. But the evil does not stop here. The bankers, whose business it is to convert private notes into a public currency, which is a good and safe substitute for gold and silver, cannot do this unless they have a proportionate quantity of specie in their vaults, and for every thousand of gold and silver drawn from their vaults they are obliged to refuse to convert three thousand of private notes into current notes. Thus when the government thus indirectly draws a million from the banks of New York, which happens whenever there is a great arrival of foreign dutiable goods, they effectually stop three millions of currency from the smaller channels of the markets. Thus all kinds of business are impeded; nobody has any money to pay their small debts; the small dealers either stop entirely or cease to make profits, while the great capitalists who have money enough, go on and make large profits, and the brokers in Wall street make fortunes by lending at exorbitant interest. By this arrangement of the government every importa tion from Europe is not only made ruin ous to the manufacturers, whose distresses are doubled by foreign competition and want of a currency to pay their workmen. but it throws a damp over every species of enterprise, from the publication of reviews (as we are well aware) to the growing of corn and the digging of cara The whole business of this continent i thus made subject to the whim of the English importing houses, who can make mor plenty or scarce as they see fit; and there is less and less money, and less at less manufactures, they send more and mo goods to flood the market, draw spece from the banks, to choke their own and a other profits, and to keep the whole st tem of society in a perpetual fret and ag tation. Upon the whole, but particularly wha we consider this last result of the ph phy of our great Administration, with the unjust beginning and ridicu end of the Mexican and Oregon afs what with the attempt to change the w system of our business, the denial of pr tection and aid to all branches of indus except maritime commerce, and that pr cipally for the protection of English ins ing houses; what with, in fine, the . odious catalogue of errors, blunders and meddlesome experiments; what w this, and the forbearance and noble of our candidate and his friends, it s to be a matter rather of congrat than of astonishment that the Whis achieved so easy and so complete a tory. LORD HERVEY'S MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF GEORGE II.* IN the life of Pope, written by Mr. | Sowles and published in the year 1806, is said, that Lord Hervey wrote the Iemoirs of his own time, leaving strict ininctions with his executors that they were ot to be published until after the decease f George III. It seems now that such as not the fact, the injunction not to pubsh having proceeded from a son of Lord Hervey. Augustus, third Earl of Bristol, ho, perceiving that the Memoirs were vritten with great freedom, forbade out of notives of delicacy and duty, that they hould ever see the light until two generaions, at least, had passed off from the stage. More than the prescribed limits, one hundred and ten years in fact, have elapsed since Lord Hervey completed his nanuscript; the actors during the reign of George II. have long since taken their places in the niches of history; the direct male line of the family of Hanover completed its drama in the morning of our day, when the old men around us were first stepping upon the threshold of active life, and the middle-aged were busy in the plays of the school-ground; and the earnest present of the Georgian era, with its wit and learning, its eloquence and poetry, its state and splendor, its fair women and brave men, has long since been hushed into the stillness of the silent past. The time then has come at length, when the Memoirs of Lord Hervey-first announced to the world by Horace Walpole, in his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, published in 1757; desiderated by Lord Hailes in his compilation of the Opinions of the Duchess of Marlborough, who, in his lamentation over the fashion of destroying original papers during the eighteenth cen tury, rejoices that "much which was then in doubt would be made clear, should the writings of Lord Hervey ever see the light;" and alluded to with an ill suppressed curiosity by every historian of the reign of the second George-the time then has come at length, when, without personal offence or public impropriety, they may be given to the world. The Memoirs are preceded by a prefatory and biographical notice of the noble author, written by the editor, John Wilson Croker, who prepared and published an edition of Lady Hervey's letters in 1821. The original manuscript, as it now exists, was committed to his hand by the present Marquis of Bristol, nephew to the late Earl of Bristol, and grand nephew to the author of the Memoirs. Mr. Croker describes the MS. as being wholly in autograph, remarkable for its clearness and legibility, and complete as it came from the author, with the exception of several chasms, indicated by * upon the printed page, occasioned by former possessors having destroyed several sheets here and there, that appear to have contained additional details of the dissensions in the royal family. He thinks that these omissions are not, upon the whole, to be regretted; that they have spared us much scandal; and that they have not essentially diminished the historical value of the work. Now, with all deference to Mr. Croker's apology for his noble employer and his most noble ancestors, we take the liberty of expressing an opinion entirely contrary to his upon this subject. We can discover no possible ground in the whole chapter of rights, upon which one of Lord Hervey's literary executors, in any generation *Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, from his accession to the death of Queen Caroline. By John, Lord Hervey. Edited from the original manuscript at Ickworth, by the Right Hon. J. W. Croker. 2 vols. 8vo. Philadelphia. 1848. VOL. II. NO. VI. NEW SERIES. 37 since his day, could have been justified in mutilating a manuscript of veritable history. The expunged portions contained, undoubtedly, the true narrative of the difficulties which existed between Frederick Prince of Wales, and his royal parents, from the day he first landed in England until his decease, and the causes which produced them, a secret, unparalleled in all modern history, which neither contemporaneous writings, nor tradition, have ever satisfactorily unlocked. We agree with Lord Hailes, when speaking upon this very subject, that to destroy the records of genuine history is a relic of barbarism unpardonable to the last degree, and that they who suppress memorials of truth, do all that they can to leave the history of the eighteenth century in darkness." are, even at the expense of strict decor and if the oral and written intercour the purest men and women who live hundred years ago was of a character shock our delicacy, so undoubtedly ve oftentimes the manners which they ca vated and the dresses which they wore." banish the one of which from the deseri tions of the poet, or the other from the traits of the limner, would be no less surd, than to insist upon the dialect of :: present day being used in their convers tion. Lord Hervey was the eldest son of t: first Earl of Bristol, by his second w daughter of Lady Howard, and gra daughter and heiress of the third Ear Suffolk. The readers of Horace Walpo letters may remember several complim tary allusions to Carr, Lord Hervey elder brother of the author of the Mere by the first wife of the Earl of Br Horace says, "that he was reckoned have had parts superior to his more c brated brother," a remark incident confirmed by Pope, who, in one of sarcastic sallies towards the second L Hervey, the Sporus of his Dunciad,!" fesses the pleasure with which he pa the memory of the first," the debt hees to his friendship, whose early death prived the family of as much wit and mor as he left behind him in any br of it." With all his intellect and bility, Carr, Lord Hervey, seems to been a man of great laxity of princ Lady Louisa Stuart speaks of him, introduction to the works of Mary W Mr. Croker has also made some alterations from the original MS., with which, however, as they pertain mainly to the correction of lax and antiquated orthography, the suppression of indelicate expressions, and the substitution of more decent equivalents, we do not feel disposed to find much fault; still we cannot but regard even this as a matter of very serious question. Waiving the subject of orthography, as of comparatively little consequence, we should like to ask how far the prevailing taste of any particular age, present or future, has a right to go in its demands for the revision, alteration and expurgation of ancient manuscripts? What would be thought of an expurgated edition of Shakspeare, for example, emended and corrected according to the most approved notions of a New York Blue Stock-ley Montagu, as a person of great tale ing Club? Or of a revised edition of Dean Swift's writings, by the Cincinnati Moral Reform Society? Or of Sterne's Tristam Shandy, rendered fit for beginners by a grandmother? The truth is, there is great danger in these days of overdelicacy about language, and over-carelessness about sentiment, for such is the character of nine-tenths of the fictitious publications of the last ten years,-there is great danger of indulging the scruples of refinement to the manifest hurt of his torical truth. If we would know what other generations before us were, if we would possess a true idea of individual character and national manners as they ly existed, we must take them as they and great vices, and adds also, under stock, which Lady Mary immortalized by her division of the human species into Men, Women, and Herveys. Lord Hervey's early education seems to have been of the most thorough kind. The hope of the family after the death of his brother, the comfort and support of a superior and judicious mother, and the main reliance of many personal friends of his father, whose early retiracy from court had been deeply regretted by the party to which he belonged, his early promise was cherished and cultivated by all the appliances which rank and wealth could evoke. After a successful completion of academic studies, and having made the usual tour of the Continent, the young nobleman attached himself to the court of the Prince and Princess at Richmond, where he soon became a great personal favorite. At this period Pope and his literary friends were in great favor at this young court, of which, in addition to the handsome and clever Princess herself, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Selwyn, Miss Howe, Miss Bellenden, and Miss Lepell, with Lords Chesterfield, Bathurst, Scarborough, and Hervey, were he chief ornaments. Perhaps the world as rarely seen more of beauty, gaiety, vit, elegance, taste, and refinement than vere to be found in the galaxy of the Prince and Princess of Wales during the ast years of George I. Pope, the wit nd poet of the circle, warmed into a new fe by the smiles of royal courtesy, was ever tired in after days, when the sunhine of favor had been withdrawn, of atirizing the follies in the midst of which e had basked. In the outset he had ourted the acquaintance of Lord Hervey, nd an intimacy had sprung up between hem and their joint friend, Lady Mary, hich promised to be perpetual. Alas, ›r the mutability of human love, that he hould have become the bitterest enemy f the former, and have given ample ocasion to the latter to realize the truth of ongreve's mourning bride, when she deares that Earth hath no curse, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd." ow far the quarrel with Lord Hervey duced Pope's subsequent rupture with ady Mary, we are not informed. It has en often ascribed to the rivalry of the "I have got fifty or sixty of Mr. Pope's letters by me. You shall see what a goddess he makes of me in them, though he makes such a devil of me in his writings afterwards, without any reason that I know of. I got a third person to ask him why he left off visiting me; he answered, negligently, that he went as often as he used to do. I then asked Dr. Arbuthnot to get from him what Lady Mary had done to him. He said that Lady Mary and Lord Hervey had pressed him once together-(and I do not remember that we ever were together with him in our lives)-to write a satire on certain persons; that he refused it, and that this had occasioned the breach between us.' The estrangement between Pope and Lord Hervey commenced in 1725, two years before the decease of George I., but it was greatly increased in bitterness two years later, when the new court, to which Lord Hervey soon gave in his adhesion, discarded its old friends, and continued Walpole at the head of the gov ernment. Whatever may have been its cause will probably now never be known. Lord Hervey was not unlike Pope, in many characteristics of mind and heart, and especially in that nervous irritability so common to men of a poetical temperament, the genus irritabile vatum. Floating together upon the surface of a life, the brilliancy of which was made up of sententious witticisms and sparkling repartees, lively tittle-tattle and biting pasquinades, and, to a certain degree, rivals for ladies' favors and courtly smiles, it was not wonderful that a disagreement should spring up between them, which should at last grow into open hostility. Where the public quarrel commenced, or who was the first aggressor, it is difficult to tell. In Pope's "Miscellanies," published in 1727; in his first edition of the "Dunciad," published in 1728; and in some lighter pieces published subsequently, there are bitter allusions to Lord Hervey, | "So much for Pope,-nor this I would have Had not the spider first his venom shed: And if one common foe the wretch has made In his Epistle to Arbuthnot, published in 1734,.Pope took occasion to immortalize the personal foibles, the faults, weaknesses and vanity of Lord Hervey, in one of the most brilliant and popular sallies of mingled invective and sarcasm ever published. P. Let Sporus tremble A. What that thing of silk? P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded This painted child of dirt that stinks stings! and Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, midst of the fascinating society of the Prince's court, he soon found a new attraction in the person and mind of Miss Lepell, daughter and heiress of Brigadier General Nicholas Lepell. Of the virtues of the character of Miss Lepell, as well as of the charms of her person and face, we have abundant testimony, not only from Walpole, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Chesterfield, and others, friends of Lord Hervey, but even from his avowed enemies, one of whom, Pope, goes out of his way to compliment and eulogize her, tha: his satire upon the husband might be the keener. Gay wrote: "Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full we With thee, youth's youngest daughter, fair le pell;" and a celebrated ballad of the day the eulogizes the happy pair: "For Venus had never seen bedded So perfect a beau and a belle, Mr. Croker says: "To her more solid merits as a dangti wife, and a mother, we have the earlier, 27- In 1725, Lord Hervey was rum Or at the ear of Ere, familiar toad? bigh, now low, now master up, now miss, imself one vile antithesis." |