thors. We think them sufficiently paid if their books sell, and of course leave them to their colleges and obscurity, by which means we are not troubled with their vanity and impertinence." Surely this is outrageously aristocratic, and must be very offensive to all our friends, the scribes by trade; though, in his humble dedication to the Duke of Richmond, Mr. W. condescends to solicit a place among them. A condemnation of philosophers in the mass, also, while he was himself ever ambitious of being mustered in their corps, certainly disqualifies our author from ranking with true philosophers of the Socratic sect.

Hume's reply to Mr. W.'s arrogance, p. 268, is temperate and admirable:

"What new prepossession has seized you to beat in so outrageous a manner your nurses of mount Helicon, and to join the outcry of the ignorant multitude against science and literature? For my part, I can scarce acknowledge any other ground of distinction between one age and another, between one nation and another, than their different progress in learning and the arts. I do not say between one man and another; because the qualities of the heart and temper and natural understanding are the most essential to the personal character; but being, I suppose, almost equal among nations and ages, do not serve to throw a peculiar lustre on any. You blame France for its fond admiration of men of genius: and there may no doubt be, in particular instances, a great ridicule in these affectations: but the sentiment in general was equally conspicuous in ancient Greece, in Rome during its flourishing period, in modern Italy, and even perhaps in England about the beginning of this century."

We come now to the author's Reminiscences; in which we expected more information and amusement than we have found. Chap. I. Is an eulogy on his father, Sir Robert Walpole. Chap. II. A satire on the House of Hanover. Respecting the story of the Count de Konigsmark's admiration of the Electrice of Hanover, and of his assassination, Mr. W. says that it was hushed up, and Geo. II. entrusted the secret to his wife, Queen Caroline, who told it to my father: but the king was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his mistress; nor did Lady Suffolk ever hear of it till I informed her of it several years afterwards.' He dwells on this very serious business with too much levity.

Chap. III. A continuation of the scandalous Court Chronicle. Sir Robert Walpole would not suffer a bill of restriction to pass, which would have restrained the crown from ever adding more than 6 peers to the number limited; wisely recollecting that he and his friends in the House of Commons would be for ever precluded from the House of Lords. The disagreement beween George the First and his son the Prince of Wales, afterward ward Geo. II. is here detailed: as also the quarrel between the same Prince of Wales and the Duke of Newcastle.

Chap. IV. Bp. Atterbury's disgrace. Sir Robert's heroism, and escapes from assassination. Revival of the Order of the Bath. Trait of good-humour in Geo. I. on seeing the picture of the Pretender in a German nobleman's collection.

Chap. V. Court intrigues on the accession of Geo. II. Mrs. Howard (afterward Lady Suffolk) unable to serve the Tories, or diminish the power of Sir Robert, who was supported by Queen Caroline.

Chap. VI. The memory of Geo. I. and Geo. II. attacked by the revival of the old stories of burning wills. Mr. Walpole's vouchers are report, vague rumours, and demands said to have been frequently made by Frederic the late K. of Prussia.

Chap. VII. The longest and most entertaining of all, though at the expence of the royal master of the author's father, Geo.II. and his son Frederic Prince of Wales. We have here the history of Lady Suffolk from her birth to her decease; and the chapter is filled with little political and amorous intrigues. The character of Queen Caroline, the steady patroness of Sir Robert Walpole, is elaborately and ably drawn; and the colouring is less dark than it usually is in our author's portraits. We shall therefore select this Reminiscence for the entertainment of our readers.

• Queen Caroline was said to have been very handsome at her marriage, soon after which she had the small-pox; but was little marked by it, and retained a most pleasing countenance. It was full of majesty or mildness as she pleased, and her penetrating eyes expressed whatever she had a mind they should. Her voice too was captivating, and her hands beautifully small, plump and graceful. Her understanding was uncommonly strong; and so was her resolution. From their earliest connection she had determined to govern the king, and deserved to do so; for her submission to his will was unbounded, her sense much superior, and his honour and interest always took place of her own: so that her love of power, that was predominant, was dearly bought, and rarely ill-employed. She was ambitious too of fame; but, shackled by her devotion to the king, she seldom could pursue that object. She wished to be a patroness of learned men: but George had no respect for them or their works; and her majesty's own taste was not very exquisite, nor did he allow her time to cultivate any studies. Her generosity would have displayed itself, for she valued money but as the instrument of her good purposes: but he stinted her alike in almost all her passions; and though she wished for nothing more than to be liberal, she bore the imputation of his avarice, as she did of others of his faults. Often when she had made prudent and proper promises of preferment, and could not persuade the king to comply, she suffered the breach of word to fall on her, rather than reflect on him. Though his affection and confidence in her were implicit, he lived in dread of being supposed to be governed by her; and that silly parade was extended even to the most private moments of business with my father: whenever he entered, the queen rose, curtsied and retired, or offered to retire. Sometimes the king condescended to bid her stay-on both occasions she and Sir Robert had previously settled the business to be discussed. Sometimes the king would quash the proposal in question: and yield after re-talking it over with her but then he boasted to Sir Robert that he himself had better considered it.

One of the queen's delights was the improvement of the garden at Richmond; and the king believed she paid for all with her own money-nor would he ever look at her intended plans, saying, he did not care how she flung away her own revenue. He little suspected the aids Sir Robert furnished to her from the treasury. When she died, she was indebted twenty thousand pounds to the king.

• Her learning I have said was superficial; her knowledge of languages as little accurate. The king, with a bluff Westphalian accent, spoke English correctly. The queen's chief study was divinity; and she had rather weakened her faith than enlightened it. She was at least not orthodox; and her confidante lady Sundon, an absurb and pompous simpleton, swayed her countenance towards the less-believing clergy. The queen however was so sincere at her death, that when archbishop Potter was to administer the sacrament to her, she declined taking it, very few persons being in the room. When the prelate retired, the courtiers in the anti-room crowded round him, crying, "My lord, has the queen received?" His grace artfully cluded the question, only saying most devoutly, "her majesty was in a heavenly disposition" and the truth escaped the public.

• She suffered more unjustly by declining to see her son, the prince of Wales, to whom she sent her blessing and forgiveness-but conceiving the extreme distress it would lay on the king, should he thus be forced to forgive so impenitent a son, or to banish him again if once recalled, she heroically preferred a meritorious husband to a worthless child.

• The queen's greatest error was too high an opinion of her own address and art: she imagined that all who did not dare to contradict her, were imposed upon; and she had the additional weakness of thinking that she could play off many persons without being discovered. That mistaken humour, and at other times her hazarding very offensive truths, made her many enemies; and her duplicity in fomenting jealousies between the ministers, that each might be more dependent on herself, was no sound wisdom. It was the queen who blew into a flame the ill-blood between Sir Robert Walpole and his brother-in-law lord Townshend. Yet though she disliked some of the cabinet, she never let her own prejudices disturb the king's affairs, provided the obnoxious paid no court to the mistress. Lord Ilay was the only man, who, by managing Scotland for Sir Robert Walpole, was maintained by him in spite of his attachment to lady Suffolk.

• The queen's great secret was her own rupture, which till her Jest illness nobody knew but the king, her German nurse Mrs. Mailborne,

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Mailborne, and one other person. To prevent all suspicion, her majesty would frequently * stand for some minutes in her shift talking to her ladies; and though labouring with so dangerous a complaint, she made it so invariable a rule never to refuse a desire of the king, that every morning at Richmond she walked several miles with him; and more than once when she had the gout in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in cold water to be ready to attend him. The pain, her bulk, and the exercise, threw her into such fits of perspiration as vented the gout-but those exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper. It was great shrewdness in Sir Robert Walpole, who, before her distemper broke out, discovered her secret. On my mother's death, who was of the queen's 's age, her majesty asked Sir Robert many physical questions--but he remarked, that she oftenest reverted to a rupture, which had not been the illness of his wife. When he came home, he said to me, "Now, Horace, I know by possession of what secret lady Sundon has preserved such an ascendant over the queen." He was in the right. How lady Sundon had wormed herself into that mystery was never known. As Sir Robert maintained his influence over the clergy by Gibson bishop of London, he often met with troublesome obstructions from lady Sundon, who espoused, as I have said, the heterodox clergy; and Sir Robert could never shake her credit.

• Yet the queen was constant in her protection of Sir Robert, and the day before she died gave a strong mark of her conviction that he was the firmest support the king had. As they two alone were standing by the queen's bed, she pathetically recommended, not the minister to the sovereign, but the master to the servant. Sir Robert was alarmed, and feared the recommendation would leave a fatal impression-but a short time after the king reading with Sir Robert some intercepted letters from Germany, which said that now the queen was gone Sir Robert would have no protection: "On the contrary," said the king, " you know she recommended me to you." This marked the notice he had taken of the expression; and it was the only notice he ever took of it: nay, his majesty's grief was so excessive and so sincere, that his kindness to his minister seemed to increase for the queen's sake.

• The queen's dread of a rival was a feminine weakness; the behaviour of her eldest son was a real thorn. He early displayed his aversion to his mother, who perhaps assumed too much at first; yet it is certain that her good sense and the interest of her family would have prevented if possible the mutual dislike of the father and son,

* While the queen dressed, prayers used to be redde in the outward room, where hung a naked Venus. Mrs. Selwyn, bed-chamberwoman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid the chaplain Dr. Madox (afterwards bishop of Worcester) begin the service. He said archly, " And a very proper altar-piece is here, madam!" Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped. The queen sent to ask why he did not proceed? He replied, " he would not whistle the word of God through the key-hole."

and

and their reciprocal contempt. As the opposition gave into all adulation towards the prince, his ill-poised head and vanity swallowed all their incense. He even early after his arrival had listened to a high act of disobedience. Money he soon wanted: old Sarah, duchess of Malborough *, ever proud and ever malignant, was persuaded to offer her favourite grand-daughter lady Diana Sper.cer, afterwards duchess of Bedford, to the prince of Wales, with a fortune of an hundred thousand pounds. He accepted the proposal, and the day was fixed for their being secretly married at the duchess's lodge in the great park at Windsor. Sir Robert Walpole got intelligence of the project, prevented it, and the secret was buried in silence.

• Youth, folly, and indiscretion, the beauty of the young lady, and a large sum of ready money, might have offered something like a plea for so rash a marriage, had it taken place: but what could excuse, what indeed could provoke, the senseless and barbarous insult offered to the king and queen by Frederic's taking his wife out of the palace of Hampton-court in the middle of the night when she was in actual labour, and carrying her, at the imminent risk of the lives of her and the child, to the unaired palace and bed at St. James's? Had he no way of affronting his parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir of the crown? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is not more void of reflection. The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotism closed with paltry hypocrisy.

** That woman, who had risen to greatness and independent wealth by the weakness of another queen, forgot, like the duc D'Epernon, her own unmerited exaltation, and affected to brave successive courts, though sprung from the dregs of one. When the prince of Orange came over to marry the princess royal Anne, a boarded gallery with a pent-house roof was erected for the procession from the windows of the great drawing-room at St. James's cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel in the friary. The prince being indisposed and going to Bath, the marriage was deferred for some weeks, and the boarded gallery remained, darkening the windows of Marlborough-house. "The duchess cried, "I wonder when my neighbour George will take away his orange chest!"-which it did resemble. She did not want that sort of wit †, which ill-temper, long knowledge of the world, and insolence can sharpen-and envying the favour which she no longer possessed, Sir R. Walpole was often the object of her satire. Yet her great friend lord Godolphin, the treasurer, had enjoined her to preserve very different sentiments. The duchess and my father and mother were standing by the earl's bed at St. Albans as he was dying. Taking Sir Robert by the hand, lord Godolphin turned to the duchess and said, "Madam, should you ever desert this young man, and there should be a possibility of returning from the grave, I shall certainly appear to you."-Her grace did not believe in spirits.'

+ Baron Gleicken, minister from Denmark in France, being at Paris soon after the king his master had been there, and a French lady being fo ill-bred as to begin censuring the king to him, saying, "Ah! monsieur, c'est une tete!""Couronnée," replied he instantly, stopping her by so genteel a hint.'

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