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duty, and we have tacitly promised him a reasonable, if not a generous forbearance; he is absent, and we suffered him to depart in the confidence that he would be allowed some margin" for the execution of his designs; important national interests are at stake upon this question; do not, therefore, select it as the ground on which to fight the battles of mere party. This, we think, is the language that the aristocracy of England might have held in the time of Pitt; to the aristocracy of our day Lord Melbourne frequently addresses wholesome advice, to which, however, they have not shown much proneness to listen: never did he administer a juster or more necessary rebuke, than when he told them that their conduct towards Lord Durham, undignified, imprudent, and unjust, reduced the character of their House to the level of a truculent democracy.

After dwelling at some length on the difficulties which he had to encounter, from all quarters, in the direction of the Spanish war, M. de Chateaubriand proceeds to talk of himself, as he appeared in the interior of the Foreign Office, in that tone of good-natured conceit and romantic credulity which runs so amusingly through these volumes. He is the very last man whose word we should like to take on any matter relating to his own disposition, or the inclinations of his mind. In self-knowledge he appears to us to be peculiarly deficient; he talks about his indifference to place as if this book had not made it obvious to every reader that place was the great object of his life, and that he longed for it with an ardour not exceeded even by Bubb Doddington himself; he would have us believe that he was disgusted by the insincerity which the profession of diplomacy compelled him to practise, whilst the publication of this correspondence shows that diplomacy was his passion, and that he carried the practice of deceit far beyond what any necessities of his position could require. We are not sure that he is not playing off a little innocent mystification, even upon his readers, in the pleasant account of the visitors by whom he was beset in the Foreign Office; but if it be so, it is only done to heighten the effect, a temptation which writers of his class cannot be expected to resist; and the result is altogether so amusing that we could not think of quarreling with the means.

"The cabinet noir was not yet abolished; a miserable invention of the old regime, adopted subsequently by all the other powers, by the Directory, and by Bonaparte. All that concerned our department was sent to us; in this we saw nothing but some despatches of the diplomatic body. We could have guessed the contents without reading them.

"A letter from a coxcoinb at Vienna fell into our hands; it was addressed to an unfortunate female in Paris. This was supposed to concern the department of foreign affairs.

"We had no fixed hours for granting audiences; our office door was always open, and whoever chose might enter.

"In the host of needy solicitors, and of intriguers of all sorts, who moved in procession towards the Rue des Capucines, were some mysterious looking personages, buttoned up in brown coats, and looking like moving boxes filled with secret papers. Next came spies in the rudiments of their profession, who, forgetting when they ought to hold their tongues, babbled of everybody the most extravagant stories. After these came vendors of dreams; but we would not buy any, having plenty of our own to sell. Gentlemen placed huge memorials in our hands, eked out with notes explanatory and corroborative. Then appeared certain useful ladies, who made love by means of romances, as romances were formerly made with love. Some asked for places, and others begged for money. All denounced each other, and would have flown at each other's hair, were it not that these spectres of all the regimes were every one bald. Some were very dirty in their appearance, and some very eccentric. A venerable prelate was pleased to consult us: he was a man of strict morality and sincere piety, but he struggled in vain against the parsimony of his nature: at night in his chamber he would allow himself no other light than that of the moon ; and if he had had the misfortune to lose his soul, he would not have paid anything to recover it."

"We were visited by a gentleman in the banking interest: without ceremony, or any sort of oratorical preface, he informed us that he was connected with respectable houses, and that if it were possible to communicate to him the telegraphic despatches, my excellency might gain considerably without doing the slightest injury to the public funds. We stared at this man with amazement, and requested him to walk out by the door, unless he preferred being sent out through the window; he did not move off, but he stared at us in his turn as if he was looking at a North American savage. We rang the bell, and the imperturbable gentleman took leave with his proffered million. Ignorant and stupid that we were! who would have known anything of our good fortune, or even if known, should we have been thought the worse of for it? Instead of pulling the devil by the tail as we have done, we should have been inhabiting a fine house, and giving good dinners; up to this day they would be calling us Monseigneur by courtesy, and we should be enjoying the reputation of a statesman.

"Fortune, albeit so unceremoniously driven away on this occasion, returned; but the next time she came in her proper shape and dress,-as a female. It was a young lady, who, being under age, could not travel VOL. VII.-No XIV.

2 U

without the permission of her parents, and she begged of us to grant her a foreign-office passport, so as to relieve her from the necessity of an application to the police. She also had something of a private nature to communicate which concerned our interests, if we would only grant her an audience, though, as she confessed with a blush, her conduct might appear somewhat extraordinary. Hereupon the lady flung aside a perfumed veil which she wore over her bonnet, with a fair and graceful hand, which had just laid down a rose, and from which the glove had been removed. We thanked her for the confidence with which she was willing to honour us; but as we were not aware of any interest that we could possibly have in her revelations, we would spare her the trouble of gratifying our curiosity. We added, that the police could never be so uncivil as to refuse her a passport; nor could we suppose that her parents would be so inhuman as to prevent her from going to see the Alps; we offered our congratulations to him who should have the good fortune to be her travelling companion; and, with this observation, we conducted fortune very civilly to the door. The goddess was neither blind nor bald, but it was easy to recognise her by the agility of her motions, Dea mobilis, such as we had formerly seen at Venice. By no means over-confident in our victory, we cautiously bolted the door on the inside; remembering that St. Bernard tells us that we ought to have a wholesome dread of those virgins who carry treasures in an earthen vessel *."

Our author has been censured for the freedom with which he has given the private letters of his correspondents to the world. If there be anything in these letters of a nature to render their publication an act of doubtful propriety, we must say that M. de Chateaubriand's defence of his conduct in this particular does not appear to us to be either satisfactory or intelligible.

"We are about to throw open to the public the cabinet of a Minister in the lifetime of those by whom the affairs were conducted, and in the presence of some of the witnesses of those affairs. The secrets of men are so futile, the men themselves are so insignificant, kings and kingdoms are

*M. de Chateaubriand was born in the year 1769, and consequently was just fifty-four years of age when this pleasant adventure happened. The manner in which he alludes to the passage in the homilies of St. Bernard strikes us as calculated to mislead his readers. The passage runs thus: "Solent virgines, quæ veræ virgines sunt, semper pavidæ, et numquam esse securæ, et ut caveant timida, etiam tuta pertimescere, scientes se in vasis fictilibus thesaurum portare pretiosum, et nimis arduum esse vivere angelice inter homines, et in terris more cœlestium conversari, et in carne cœlibem agere vitam. Ac proinde quicquid novum, quicquid subitum fuerit ortum, suspectas habent insidias, totum contra se æstimant machinatum." With the entire passage before us, it is evident that the wholesome fear thus inculcated is to be entertained by the virgins themselves, and that it was for his visitor, as a protection against her own infirmity, and not for himself, that the noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs found it necessary to take the precaution of bolting his door on the inside.

such small matters, that in truth it is not worth while to envelope in mystery all those wretched trivialities. When by dint of inquiry we discover that some particular event was brought about by an accident, by a femme-dechambre, by a clerk, by a conversation between two personages previously unknown, what is gained by the manifestation of this great truth? Whether events are brought about in this way or in that, it matters little : men are fleeting beings; the occurrences of their transitory life are overwhelmed in the long and enduring current of humanity. Nothing appears to us more ludicrous than the important taciturnity of state secrets.”

Having arrived at this logical conclusion, M. de Chateaubriand immediately proceeds to publish the private correspondence.

We cannot conceive, however, that the friends of Mr. Canning should think it worth their while to complain of the publication of his share in this correspondence. It is, we admit, tolerably clear that a good deal has been suppressed, and that our author has selected from the letters of the English statesman only such as suited his own purposes, and such, more especially, as ministered to the gratification of his ruling passion, by flattering his literary and diplomatic abilities; but the style of Mr. Canning's letters is so fascinating, the wisdom and honesty of his views is made so apparent by comparison with the flippancy and insincerity of the Frenchman, the zeal and good faith of the writer shine so conspicuously in every line, that for the honour of our country, and our respect for the memory of the man, we cannot but rejoice in their publication. We cannot deny ourselves the gratification of extracting one of those beautiful compositions entire; it is long, but justice to the distinguished writer forbids us to mutilate by curtailment a paper of which M. de Chateaubriand declares that "he can conceive nothing more impressive (pressant) or more eloquent."

"London, January 21, 1823.

"A thousand thanks, my dear Viscount, for your long, frank, and friendly answer to my letters. I lose not a day in replying to it; because, though I have (as you may well believe,) enough of official business upon my hands at this moment, I know nothing in the whole range of the correspondence in Europe that can compare in importance with a just understanding between our two governments; and I know no so sure foundation that can be built for such an understanding as in a constant and unreserved communication with you.

"To begin with that part of your letter which relates to our language to Spain, and to the importance which you attach to our holding a common language with France; a language, I mean (for I perceive that I have expressed myself ambiguously), common with that which France holds to Spain;-I will tell you at once quite fairly, that I agree with you on the former point, but presume to differ on the latter.

"The language which you put into our mouths as that which you say you wish we had employed in speaking to Spain-what is it but the language which we have actually employed? Both through the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires here, and through Sir William A'Court at Madrid, Spain knows distinctly what we think on the impracticability of the constitution of 1812, and of the expediency of promising a revision of it; and these opinions are declared, with less reserve in phrase, through Lord Fitzroy Somerset, who carries with him, as his whole instruction, a memorandum from the Duke of Wellington, in which, if your very words are not set down, there is nothing of your sentiments that is not expressed. Do you believe that Spain compte sur nous pour des secours d'armes et d'argent'? Not she, I promise you. Do you imagine that, knowing we shall not be 'contre,' she has reason to flatter herself that we shall be 'pour elle' in a war with France? Be assured that she is under no such misapprehension. If you harbour such, after having seen us in a manner which you characterize (and I do not mean to say characterize unjustly,) as 'si rude,' do ourselves right against Spain by force, at a moment when we risked, by so doing, the chance and the consequent misinterpretation of a coincidence between our maritime aggression on the Spanish colonies, and a French irruption on the Pyrenees;-what would not your apprehensions,-your suspicions, have been, if we had sacrificed our commercial rights and interests to a desire of propitiating Spain; and to the purpose (it might have been said), of leaving her hands more free to cope with the combination of the continental powers?

"You are right, I dare say, in your belief, that this proceeding of ours has blessé l'orgueil Espagnol;' but at least it must have destroyed (in fact it did destroy,) the illusion that we had any thoughts of making common cause with Spain.

Nay, it did create, at the first moment, an impression that we were leagued with you, not in counsel only, but in action, against Spain; and it is against the remnant, or the possible revival, of that impression, we were obliged to guard, when, though speaking (as I have assured you) the language which you would dictate, we nevertheless decline speaking it in concert with you.

"In truth, how could we speak in concert with you, not being prepared to adopt your conclusions;—not having (to state the matter fairly) the same right as you to adopt them? You say to Spain, 'Your present system is not only distasteful to us, it is practically injurious. It subjects us to incessant alarm; it imposes upon us burdensome precautions. A period will arrive, and that shortly, when, if that system is not changed, we must revise our precautions and change them for other means more efficacious.' I do not mistake your argument, I think; I do not here intend to question,