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wood), Count Montholon repeated to me the anxiety he had before ex-
pressed in this conversation of hearing from Madame de Montholon.
He trusted the next letter would bring him some certain intelligence
of his successor,
comme elle travaille depuis quelque tems à mon re-
placement." He was the more anxious about it, for he found the
Bertrands were determined to stay no longer here; they had been some
time past talking about going away, but now seemed fully resolved
upon it. He had advised Count Bertrand to wait until something was
known with regard to a successor coming out to relieve him (Count
Montholon); but Count Bertrand had now however gone so far as to
inform l'Empereur of his intention, and had told him that he could
not stay any longer at St. Helena... . On remarking that it was,
perhaps, only Madame Bertrand " qui s'ennuyait," and wished to return
home with her children, Count Montholon said they appeared both
equally bent on it, but that of course Madame Bertrand was most
anxious.'

It will not be doubted that the contemporary minute of Gorrequer is correct as to the date-and that the conversation ascribed by Montholon to the 6th took place really on the 1st, and was the only one about that time on the subject. How awkward, then, the production of this clear evidence that on the 1st of July, 1820, Count Montholon said, he found the Bertrands were determined to stay no longer,' and that the Grand Marshal showed much anxiety about his own return; yet now states in his History that on the 6th of that month he told Sir Hudson Lowe that in his conviction intime le Grand Maréchal n'avait jamais pensé à retourner en Europe!'

Next, as to Sir Hudson Lowe's letter to the Abbé Buonavita. From regard for the feelings of the French officers, whenever the newspapers contained intelligence of a painful nature relating to any of them or to their families, Sir Hudson always took means for breaking it to them in the most considerate manner. After the arrival of the Abbé Buonavita, the Governor employed him to communicate information of this description to the party whom it affected. This was done in the instance of Count Montholon himself, on the death of one of his children in January of this very year; and the Abbé's reply, in which he expressed himself warmly in praise of the Governor's attention and kindness, was, Sir Hudson said, the most civilly expressed thing he had ever received from Longwood.' Wellon the 7th of July, 1820, a newspaper having arrived, containing a notice of the death of General Bertrand's father, Sir Hudson Lowe immediately forwarded the paper to the Abbé Buonavita with the note which Count Montholon has printed. The enclosed paper' consequently was not, as Count Montholon states, 'a despatch from Earl Bathurst relative to General Bertrand,'

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which despatch he also states that he, Montholon, refused to receive but a newspaper containing sorrowful intelligence for General Bertrand; and, instead of Montholon having advised the Abbé not to show the Governor's note and its enclosure to Napoleon, but to deliver them to Bertrand, the Abbé forthwith showed Napoleon the newspaper paragraph, and it was Napoleon himself who informed 'the Grand Marshal' of his loss.

But now as to Lord Bathurst's despatch of March 16, 1820, to Sir Hudson Lowe. That despatch, according to Count Montholon, as we have seen above, commenced in these words :

'Sir, I have learned that it is the intention of the Countess and General Bertrand to demand permission to return to Europe,' &c. In the French edition (ii. 410):

'Londres, 16 Mars, 1820. Monsieur,-Ayant appris que l'intention de la Comtesse et du Général Bertrand est de faire la demande de retourner en Europe,' &c.

The despatch itself is at this moment before us; and what ought to be the confusion of Count Montholon, when we produce the first lines of it? These are

'Sir,-Having understood that it is the intention of COUNT MONTHOLON and General Bertrand to apply for leave to return to Europe,' &c.*

Thus the Historian, who asks to be judged only by the evidence he can produce,' stands convicted of having falsified a despatch for the purpose of concealing from his countrymen that he, the Historian, had conveyed to the English Government by March 1820 his intention of quitting the illustrious captive of St. Helena,'

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Further, Count Montholon says, The Abbé Buonavita

* To illustrate further the scrupulous neatness of Montholon's version, we annex a literal copy of Lord Bathurst's despatch in extenso :—

'TO LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR HUDSON LOWE, K.C.B.

'Downing Street, March 16, 1816. 'Sir,-Having understood that it is the intention of Count Montholon and General Bertrand to apply for leave to return to Europe, and as in consequence of their departure General Bonaparte's society at Longwood will be essentially straitened, you will take a fit opportunity of conveying to him his Majesty's disposition to attend to any wish which the General may express in favour of any individual whose arrival at Longwood would be satisfactory to the General.

'If General Bonaparte should prefer leaving the selection either to the Cardinal Fesch, or to the Princess Pauline de Borghese, I will readily make a communication to that effect.

It is only necessary to add, that the person who shall so go out must come within the established regulations, viz. he must be subject to the conditions to which the persons who last went out subscribed, and must not have been already in the island.

'I have, &c.

'BATHURST.' hastened

hastened to bring me these letters;' but by whom, for what purpose, and in what manner the despatch really was given to the Count is thus described by Sir Hudson Lowe in his letter of the 9th of July, 1820, to Earl Bathurst. After acknowledging the receipt of the despatch, and stating that, by the same opportunity, accounts had arrived of the death of General Bertrand's father, Sir Hudson says—

I thought it proper, therefore, to lose no time in making known his Majesty's gracious disposition to attend to any desire he (Bonaparte) might have respecting a person to replace Count Montholon or General Bertrand; and, having drawn out a copy of your Lordship's letter, put it under a sealed envelope, marked on the back "Note of information from the Governor," and, proceeding to Longwood, sent the orderly officer to inquire for Count Montholon, and to say to him that I desired an oppor. tunity of speaking to him. He was not in his room at the time I first sent to him, but arrived shortly afterwards, when, accompanied by the orderly officer, I called upon him, and delivered him the sealed paper, saying it was upon a point which might be interesting to Napoleon Bonaparte to be personally first informed of, and I begged he would deliver it to him. Count Montholon accepted the paper, and said he would not fail to deliver it.'

Again, though Count Montholon now asserts that he, the Count, received Lord Bathurst's despatch of March 16, 1820, from the Abbé Buonavita on the 7th or 8th of July—and then perceived the astonishment of Bertrand at finding that his wish to leave St. Helena had transpired-yet, in September, two months afterwards, when Count Montholon entreated the Governor's good offices in hastening the nomination of his, the Count's, successor, that he might return to Europe, he told Sir Hudson Lowe that he knew nothing whatever about it (viz., that despatch of Lord Bathurst's); that Bonaparte did not show it him, il nous l'a caché, il ne nous en a pas dit un mot;' and, from

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his desire to avail himself of Lord Bathurst's consent to his quitting St. Helena, he asked if there were any means by which Sir Hudson could now inform him and General Bertrand officially of the receipt of that despatch.'

Such are the artifices by which the History of this illustrious Captivity' has been TRAVESTied.'

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We have given but a glimpse or two of the sort of light that may be expected from the Lowe MSS.-nor can we afford to extend this article, which must soon be followed by an ample one on those extraordinary papers. We cannot, however, conclude without drawing attention to the only really important statements in Count Montholon's work, and which, as they censure neither Sir Hudson Lowe nor Lord Bathurst, may be true, monstrous as is the charge which the Count has therein brought

against

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The

against certain subordinate servants of the British Crown. Count mentions no less than six plans which were formed and proposed for Buonaparte's escape from St. Helena. One of these propositions, he says, came from the commander of an East Indiaman; another scheme, the success of which was certain,' was projected by one of the officers of the garrison; and a third was tabled by a naval Captain on his return from India, who demanded no reward for himself, but a million of francs for his accomplices. The Count states, also, that notwithstanding all the Governor's precautions, the French had little difficulty in corresponding secretly with Europe-adding details which fully justify Sir Hudson Lowe's opinion of the intriguing spirit of at least one of the foreign commissioners, whose presence at St. Helena proved so mischievous, that two of the three were removed long before the Emperor's death.

In these facts, if facts they be, an answer will be found to all the magniloquent reclamations and lamentations touching the wanton and tyrannical rigour of Buonaparte's confinement; and we leave Count Montholon to reconcile as he best may his own distinct avowal in this book of his having had a perfect cognizance of six successive plots for his master's escape - plots formed even by British subjects, and one of them by an officer of the Governor's own garrison-with his, the same Count Montholon's, solemn declaration before God and man, and upon his honour,' in April, 1823, two years after the death of Napoleon, that he always considered the government of Sir Hudson Lowe as arbitrary, unjust, unnecessarily vexatious, and, in short, as that of a Governor bewildered by the vast extent of his responsibility, and swayed by the chimeras of a restless imagination!'

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IT

ART. VII.-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. London, 1848. T has been known ever since Walpole published his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors in 1757, that John Lord Hervey, the Sporus of Pope, had left Memoirs of the Court of George II.; and it was stated by Bowles, in his edition of Pope, 1806, that Lord Hervey's dying injunction must prevent their appearance during the lifetime of George III. That injunction, however, was not Lord Hervey's, but contained in the will of his son Augustus, third Earl of Bristol, whose nephew, the first Marquis,

VOL. LXXXII. NO. CLXIV.

2 L

Marquis, now at last, twenty-eight years after the death of George III., authorises the publication. Mr. Croker's fitness for the editorial task had no doubt been suggested by his edition of Lady Hervey's Letters, 1821. That lady (the famous Mary Lepell) survived her lord for many years, and several of her friends, among others probably Lord Hailes and Horace Walpole, had been allowed by her to peruse parts of the Memoirs; but Lord Hailes, who in 1778 justly described them as 'written with great freedom,' hinted that whenever they appeared the origin of the antipathy between George II. and his eldest son would be revealed to posterity,'-and that promise is not redeemed in the text now given to the world.

The explanation of this seems to be, that the Marquis, upon the expiring of the testamentary injunction, examined the MS. with a view to publication, and not only conceived that a still longer suppression would be expedient, but that some of its contents ought never to be revealed at all. His Lordship accordingly cut out and burnt various passages; and as he was careful to mark the place and extent of each laceration, the editor concludes from the context that they all bore reference to the feuds in the royal family. It is probable that we have thus lost a clue to what certainly is a very perplexing mystery; for it is evident that the alienation between Prince Frederick and not only his father, but his mother, was strong and decided while he was yet in his early youth-years before he ever saw England; and historical inquirers will now be more than ever puzzled, since Hervey's Memoirs show that the parental animosity did go so far as to contemplate, if possible, his actual disinheritance:-an extravagance alleged by Frederick himself, or at his suggestion, in the scandalous mock fairy-tale of Prince Titi, but not heretofore confirmed by any better authority.

It is to be wished that the noble owner of the MS. had consulted some experienced literary adviser before he made irremediable mutilations, some of them possibly of no ordinary importance. Mr. Croker tells us he has altered nothing of the text confided to him except words or phrases not compatible with modern notions of decorum-a liberty which every recent editor of old letters or journals has (or ought to have) exemplified. No man can be justified in publishing for the first time gross indecencies; and expressions that have this character to every modern eye abounded in the familiar intercourse, oral or epistolary, of the purest men and even women a hundred years ago as well as in the most classical literature of their age. But Mr. Croker felt that this is a very nice and difficult part of an editor's task. To omit such things wholly and leave no indication

of

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