or of the ministry. Distinguishing himno less by the vigor and logic of his , a talent of no small account in that - of powerful and searching political cussion, than by the terseness and comeness of his speeches, he soon rose to first rank among the supporters of the isters, though honored with no place the King. This became at length a at source of dissatisfaction between self and the party with whom he actand even threatened a rupture of their ndly relations. Brought forward, howr, by the force of circumstances, as a t of exponent of the party, in a gross ack upon Walpole, which appeared in Craftsman," he was forced into a el with Pulteney, the great opponent of lpole, from which he came off with siderable reputation. His demands for ice could no longer be refused, and in 27, he became Vice Chamberlain to the ng, from which date the chief interest the Memoirs begins.

66

Before we leave the personal history of rd Hervey to examine the subject of his moirs, it may be well enough to say at he retained his place, his standing, his luence, and his friendships, until 1741; en Sir Robert Walpole, finding himself repeated minorities, was forced to ree from his position at the head of the >vernment. He died on the 8th of Aust, 1743; his wife surviving his loss for ore than twenty-five years. Many of s friendships, especially that with Lady ary Wortley Montagu, he retained to the st. Lady Louisa Stuart relates the folwing incident in her works in reference

>this :

"Lord Hervey dying a few years after Lady lary settled abroad, his eldest son (George, ord Hervey) sealed up and sent her letters, ith an assurance that none of them had been pened. She wrote him a letter of thanks for is honorable conduct, adding that she could Imost regret he had not glanced his eye over correspondence which would have shown him hat so young a man might perhaps be inclined doubt-the possibility of a long and steady iendship subsisting between two persons of ifferent sexes without the least mixture of ›ve."

Although Mr. Croker is inclined to treat he remark of Lady Mary, in regard to the Platonic nature of their friendship, rather

superciliously, we have no manner of doubt that it is true. The world, especially that part of it which have known no difference between friendship and love, technically so called, and which have found the great element of both in what Lord Kames calls "self-satisfaction," have no faith in the existence of a sentiment between the sexes, except that by which we are endowed for the continuance of the species. And yet there is no emotion of which mankind are susceptible, that is capable of being sustained by the proofs of a greater number of examples, where a mutual friendship has been cultivated for years between individuals of the different sexes, as pure, generous, magnanimous, unselfish and enduring as human ties can be, than this; and we believe it will be found universally true, that in all cases where such a friendship has existed unimpaired for many years, it has always been of this character.

The friendship of Lord Hervey and Lady Mary had existed for more than twenty-six years, and though there may be here and there throughout the correspondence expressions of regard inconsistent apparently with the lady's declaration, yet we have no doubt that to the parties themselves they were the simple utterance of compliment on the one side, and the courteous acknowledgment of it on the other. Take for example a letter of his, written in 1737, when he was forty-one years and Lady Mary forty-seven, in answer to one of hers in which she had complained that she was too old to inspire a new passion, he, after complimenting her charms, as Mr. Croker says, "more gallantly than decorously," goes on to say:

old

"I should think anybody a great fool that said he liked spring better than summer, merely because it is further from autumn, or that they loved green fruit better than ripe only because it was further from being rotten. Lever did, and believe ever shall, like woman best

Just in the noon of life-those golden days When the mind ripens ere the form decays.'

One of Lord Hervey's last letters, after he became greatly reduced by long and severe illness, was written to his old friend. It is simple and touching in no common degree :

and yet possessed of the true elements of a great and good man;—the Princess Rora gentle, loyal, beloved, and accomplished becoming the victim of state politique in a reluctant marriage to the hideous Printe of Orange, pining for love without its pas sion, and for home without daring to ap proach it;-the Princess Emily, earne violent, talented, dissatisfied with her pe

The great interest of the Memoirs commences, as we have already remarked, in 1727, when Lord Hervey first received the key of Vice Chamberlain. At this time George II. was forty-seven years old, the Queen a few months older, and Walpole fifty-four. The characters of all the royal family have long been familiar to the readers of English history of that day. The King, perhaps the weakest in intellect, as he was the most obstinate in opinion, of all the Hanover family who have yet filled the throne, is perpetually before us, with his bluff, easy countenance, (except when fretting, as he often was, over some fancied neglect of his family or some pertinacious opposition in Parliament,) his fat, burly figure, his strong German accent, his rough, earnest manner, and his opinionated conversation, which suffered no contradiction at the time from Queen or Minister, yet set off in many strong points of native good sense, love of truth, and acquiescence in the inevitable; the Queen, strong-minded, intelligent, gracious, bearing, with the true dignity of a noble woman, the abuse and neglect of his Majesty without a murmur, and always ready to seize the favorable moment when his heart could be brought to bear upon his opinions enough to gain his assent to measures essential to the welfare of the nation;-the Prince of Wales, always at variance with his father and mother, maintaining a strong power in opposition to the crown, which, however, for fifteen years effected no change in ministerial policy; irascible, fluctuating, ultra,

of her life of celibacy, her chief ame ment consisting in petting her fathers weaknesses in his presence and ridi ing them in his absence;-the Princess Caroline, the youngest and most indulged of all the children, gentle, quiet, amibe and tender, loving and beloved by all who came within the beautiful sphere of her attraction, and most of all by Lord Her vey, for whom, says Horace Walpole. "she had conceived an unconquerable passion ;" and whose death was really the g nal for her retirement from the worldall the personages of the royal cre each consistent in principle and character to the end, advance and recede upon the stage of action, in its various phases, u we become familiar with them as with the characters and faces of household intres.

Upon his accession to the crowe, Ms. Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk, ba been for some years the avowed fare of George II. She was the daughter Sir John Hobart, and sister of Henry Hbart, Knight of the Bath, subsequent created Earl of Buckinghamshire. E married to Mr. Howard, the younger brother of the Earl of Suffolk; with slender fortune on her own part, and the reverse of opulence on her husband's; without expectations from her family, and with little hope of Mr. Howard's sucess in political life, the young couple had resorted to Hanover towards the chose d Queen Anne's reign, to endeavor to in tiate themselves with the future sovereis of England. In process of time the yorg wife became Mistress of the Robes to Princess of Wales, and after the rupe between the Prince and Miss Bellenden. whose confidante she had been, and who had never reciprocated the gross pass of her royal lover, she succeeded to br friend's post of favorite, though neither to her dislike nor her resistance.

Though George II. was certainly very

rous, it seems to be allowed on all s, that his continued attachment to Mrs. ward arose more from his idea that an ir of gallantry gave him freedom from government of the Queen, than from real affection. It is certain that his iness for the person even of his wife, ay nothing of his entire reliance upon opinion, was far greater than for any is mistresses. This seems not to have n known, however, until some years r the accession to the throne. At t time, Mrs. Howard, having long n known to have enjoyed the confice of the King, was courted by all the ectants of office-Sir Robert Walpole y excepted, who seems to have discovd in the outset where the source of ver lay-in the hope of finding her hes the law of the King. Such, howr, proved not to be the case. No faite of royalty ever enjoyed less of the lliancy and power of the situation than dv Suffolk. Watched and thwarted by Queen, and disclaimed by the minister, owed to the dignity of her own bevior the chief respect that was paid to r at the last, a respect which must have en meagre compensation for the slavery her life and the mortifications she enred. Notwithstanding the earnest as tions of Lady Suffolk's descendants, cked by no inconsiderable proof, that r connection with the King was purely a Platonic character, Horace Walpole's pposition of the contrary is fully conmed by the revelations of Lord Hervey, 10 had certainly every opportunity to How the facts in the case. Still, added her personal beauty, which is said to ve been very attractive, her symmetrifigure, exquisite make, and beautiful mplexion, always set off by remarkable entility, and simple taste in dress and aring, contrasting well amid the more howy belles of the court, there was so uch of intelligence and character, of disretion and love of truth in her whole life, hich continued to the age of seventyine, that it made her many friends and ave her high respect from all who knew er. Indeed, she was always treated both uring her connection with the court, and fter her retirement, as if her virtue had ever been questioned; and though her Extreme deafness damped her enjoyment

"I know a thing that's most uncommon; (Envy be silent and attend!)

I know a reasonable woman,

Handsome and witty, yet a friend, Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumor, Nor grave through pride or gay through folly; An equal mixture of good humor

And sensible, soft melancholy. Has she no faults then,' (envy says,) 'Sir?' 'Yes, she has one, I must aver; When all the world conspires to praise her, The woman's deaf, and does not hear.'"

Whatever may be the truth in regard to Lady Suffolk's connection with the King, it is certain that Mr. Howard sold his own noisy honor and the quit-claim to his wife, for a pension of twelve hundred a year. The Queen's forbearance, good sense and decency, contrived to diminish the scandal at the time, and to give it a shade of doubt to posterity, to whom, as Sir Walter remarks in his review of the Suffolk correspondence, it is after all of little interest, since gossip is only valued when fresh, and the public have generally enough of that poignant fare, without ripping up the frailties of their grandmothers.

Throughout the whole Memoirs the reader is indulged with frequent glimpses of the Queen's tact in managing his Majesty, without his suspecting it. Lord Hervey often speaks as freely upon this subject, as he does in the following passages:

"As people now saw that all court interest, power, profit, favor, and preferment were returning in this reign to the same track in which they had travelled in the last, lampoons, libels, pamphlets, satires and ballads were handed about, both publicly and privately, some in print and some in manuscript, abusing and ridiculing the King, the Queen, their ministers, and all that belonged to them; the subject of most of them was Sir Robert's having bought the Queen, and the Queen's governing the King; which thought was over and over again repeated in a thousand different shapes and desses, both of prose and verse. And as the 'Craftsman' had not yet lashed their Majes

"The past and present reunite

Beneath time's flowing tide,
Like foot-prints, hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.”

The following anecdote, for example, eds light on the Townshend rupture Om Sir Robert Walpole's party, the uses of which have always been supsed to exist in personal difficulties, witht knowing what they were:

"There was an occurrence at the latter end this summer (1728) at Windsor, relating to e court Lord Townshend then made to Lord revor, which I shall relate, because I think will give a short but strong sketch both of ord Townshend's and Sir Robert's temper; it before I begin my relation, I must premise at Sir Robert Walpole at this time kept a ry pretty young woman, daughter to a merant, whose name was Skerrett, and for whom was said to have given (besides an annual lowance) £5000 as entrance money.

One evening at Windsor the Queen asking ir Robert Walpole and Lord Townshend here they had dined that day, the latter said e had dined at home with Lord and Lady revor; upon which Sir Robert Walpole said her Majesty, smiling, My Lord, Madam, I ink is grown coquet from a long widowhood, nd has some design upon my Lady Trevor's irtue, for his assiduity of late in that family is rown to be so much more than common civil

y, that without this solution I know not how

account for it. What made this raillery of Sir Robert Walpole's very excusable and imossible to shock my Lord's prudery, let him que himself ever so much on the chastity of is character, was, that my good Lady Trevor, esides her strict life and conversation, was of he most virtuous, forbidding countenance that atural ugliness, age, and small-pox ever comounded. However, Lord Townshend affectng to take the reproach literally, and to unlerstand what Sir Robert meant to insinuate

The Miss Skerrett, named here, is the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters are same person to whom more than one of addressed, and who seems to have been, from the frequent mention of her name in other letters, upon terms of intimate acquaintance with her. Sir Robert, after his first wife's death, in 1738, was married to her, thereby gaining an addition, if the journals of the day may be believed, to his already princely fortune of £80,000. A daughter, born to them long before the marriage, was afterwards created with the rank of an Earl's child, greatly to the scandal of the peerage. Gay's satire of the "Beggars' Opera," which had a great run in its day and is still read by lovers of the old drama, caricatured Walpole, his lady, and Miss Skerrett. Gay afterwards published a second part, more severe than the first, which Sir Robert had prohibited from appearance at the theatres, rather than suffer the ridicule of being produced for a succession of nights upon the stage in the person of a highwayman. The poet, irritated at the bar put in the way of his tives to the piece, and applying to the success, added some supplemental invecDuchess of Queensbury, beautiful, accomplished, and at the head of the fashionable world, resolved to print it by her advice, upon subscription. The Duchess, interested in the author, and having herself a personal pique to gratify, set herself at the head of the undertaking, and making her solicitations so universal and so pressing, that she went even to the Queen's apartment and around the draw