On the 28th of December died the King's third daughter, Princess Caroline. She had been the favourite of the Queen, who preferred her understanding to those of all her other daughters, and whose partiality she returned with duty, gratitude, affection, and concern. Being in ill health at the time of her mother's death, the Queen told her she would follow her in less than a year. The Princess received the notice as a prophecy; and though she lived many years after it had proved a vain one, she quitted the world, and persevered in the closest retreat, and in constant and religious preparation for the grave; a moment she so eagerly desired, that when something was once proposed to her, to which she was averse, she said, I would not do it to die!" To this impression of melancholy had contributed the loss of Lord * Hervey, for whom she had conceived an unalterable passion, constantly marked afterwards by all kind and generous offices to his children. For many years she was totally an invalid, and shut herself up in two chambers in the inner part of St. James's, from whence she could not see a single object. In this monastic retirement, with no company but of the King, the Duke, Princess Emily, and a few of the most intimate of the court, she led, not an unblameable life only, but a meritorious one: her whole income was dispensed between generosity and charity; and, till her death, by shutting up the current discovered the source, the jails of London did not suspect that the best support of their wretched inhabitants was issued from the palace.

From the last Sunday to the Wednesday on which she died, she declined seeing her family; and when the mortification began, and the pain ceased, she said, I feared I should not have died of this!"-Vol. II. pp. 268-9.

Walpole has attempted the difficult task of drawing his own portrait; and we do not remember ever to have seen a more signal failure. He must, indeed, have possessed even less than the usual moderate portion of the γιῶθι σεαυτόν to have sketched the following picture. If every item of it were reversed, it would be much nearer the reality than as it now stands.

Walpole had a warm conception, vehement attachments, strong aversions; with an apparent contradiction in his temper -for he had numerous caprices, and invincible perseverance. His principles tended to republicanism, but without any of its austerity; his love of faction was unmixed with any aspiring. He had great sense of honour, but not great enough, for he had too much weakness to resist doing wrong, though too much sensibility not to feel it in others. He had a great measure of pride, equally apt to resent neglect, and scorning to stoop to any meanness or flattery. A boundless friend; a bitter, but a placable enemy. His humour was satiric, though accompanied with a most compassionate heart. Indiscreet and abandoned to his passions, it seemed as if he despised or could bear no constraint; yet this want of government of himself was the more blameable, as nobody had greater command of resolution whenever he made a point of it. This appeared in his person: naturally very delicate, and educated with too fond a tenderness, by unrelaxed temperance and braving all inclemency of weathers, he formed and enjoyed the firmest and unabated health. One virtue he possessed in a singular degree-disinterestedness and contempt of money-if one may call that a virtue, which really was a passion. In short, such was his promptness to dislike superiors, such his humanity to inferiors, that, considering how few men are of so firm a texture as not to be influenced by their situation, he thinks, if he may be allowed to judge of himself, that had either extreme of fortune been his lot, he should have made a good prince, but not a very honest slave.-Pp. 336-7.

There is a long account of Lord George Sackville's case:-but, though Walpole evidently inclines to the unfavourable side, he gives little additional means of deciding on the long-mooted nature and degree of Lord George's culpability.

Lord Ferrers' murder of his steward is thus spiritedly related:

Lawrence, Earl Ferrers, had been parted from his wife*, and an allowance settled on her by parliament out of his estate, for

* Sister of Sir William Meredith, a most amiable woman; afterwards married to Lord Frederic Campbell, brother of the Duke of Argyle.-A She was burnt to death in 1807.-E.

his causelessill usage of her. A receiver of his rents, too, had been appointed, but the nomination left to the earl, who named one Johnson, his own steward. That honest man not proving so tractable as his lordship expected, had fallen under his displeasure. The earl lived at his own seat in Leicestershire with a former mistress, whom he had taken again on being separated from his wife, and by whom he had four children. In that retirement there appeared many symptoms of a frenzy incident to his family, as had also during his cohabitation with his lady; and frequent drunkenness inflamed the disorder. In that mood of madness and revenge he sent for Johnson, having artfully despatched his family and servants different ways on various pretences. The poor man was no sooner alone with him, than the earl locking the door, and holding a pistol to his breast, would have obliged Johnson to sign a paper, avowing himself a villain. While the unhappy man, kneeling at his feet, hesitated to sign, Lord Ferrers shot him in the body. The wound was mortal, but not instantly so. Remorse or fear seized on the murderer, for he was then sober. He sent for a surgeon, and wished to have Johnson saved. Those sentiments soon vanished, or were expelled by drink; for the earl passed the remaining hours of that horrid day between his bottle and the chamber of the expiring man, sometimes in promises to his daughter, whom he had summoned to her father, oftener in transports of insult, threats, and cruelty, to the victim himself, who languished till the next morning. At first the peer prepared to defend himself from being seized; but his courage failed him, as it had on former occasions. He was apprehended by the populace, and lodged in Leicester jail. Thence he was brought to town, and carried before the House of Lords, where his behaviour was cool and sensible. The Lords committed him to the Tower.-P. 417419.

The earl's behaviour on his trial conciliated no favour to him: it was somewhat sullen, and his defence contemptible, endeavouring to protract the time, though without address. At length he pleaded madness-unwillingly, but in compliance with the entreaties of his family. The audience was touched at the appearance of his two brothers, reduced to depose to the lunacy in their blood. But those impressions were effaced, and gave way to horror, when it appeared to the court that the earl had gloried in his shocking deed. Being easily convicted, he begged pardon of his judges for having used the plea of madness. But if his life was odious, and during his life his cowardice notorious, he showed at his death that he did not want sense, resolution, or temper. He bore the ignominy of his fate like a philosopher, and went to meet it with the ease of a gentleman. In the tedious passage of his conveyance from the Tower to Tyburn, which was impeded by the crowds that assembled round his coach, he dropped not a rash word, nor one that had not sense and thought in it. Little was wanting to grace his catastrophe but less resentment to his wife, the peculiarity of being executed in his wedding-habit too strongly marking that he imputed his calamity to that source. His relation, Lady Huntingdon, the metropolitan of the Methodists, had laboured much in his last hours to profit of his fears for the honour of her sect; but, having renounced the plea of madness, he did not choose to resign his intellects to folly.-Pp. 434, 435.

There are, as we have said, fewer anecdotes interspersed through this work than one would expect from the gossipping propensities of the author. Some there are, however, of course, or the book would not be written by Horace Walpole. There is a very entertaining account of Doddington, with several amusing instances of his wit. -The following is, perhaps, the best :

Doddington was very lethargic: falling asleep one day after dinner, with Sir Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, the General, the latter reproached Doddington with his drowsiness; Doddington denied having been asleep, and to prove he had not, offered to repeat all Lord Cobham had been saying. Cobham challenged him to do so; Doddington repeated a story, and Lord Cobham owned he had been telling it. "Well," said Doddington, " and yet I did not hear a word of it; but I went to sleep because I knew that about this time of day you would tell that story."

The following is a curious scrap of parliamentary anecdote:

Townshend was obliged to yield, that the inquiries should commence on the 19th of April, the first day after the recess