The storm it creates may clear the heavy atmospheres of nations that require such a purification

'But storms and earthquakes break not Heaven's design'and although we do not promise ourselves that there may not possibly be here and there throughout Europe deplorable calamities, we are satisfied that, if the example of France has led to the agitation, her example also will afford the best remedy.

For ourselves at home, parodoxical as it may seem, we gladly confess that we feel less alarm than we have done for the last sixteen years. The governing power had suffered so deeply by the inroads of the Whigs on the old constitution and by the division of the Tories into antipathetic sections, that, while France exhibited the successful and apparently prosperous result of an insurrectionary and, in principle, democratic revolution, we trembled at the example, and could not overcome our apprehensions that we were destined to the same experiment. These apprehensions are now greatly diminished-that revolution has signally and calamitously failed, and so we are confident will this-much sooner and more completely; and the result will be, nay we think that it has already been, to strengthen the hands of our Government, and to rally round the throne of our Queen a warmer feeling of loyalty, a stronger constitutional zeal, and a more determined spirit to maintain those institutions which have for near two centuries realised for us all the civil and religious liberty, all the political and social blessings that the rest of Europe are now with so much doubt and danger groping after in the smoke of cannon, and through kennels running with blood. We must, however, add that our conviction of the security of the British crown and constitution requires two postulates:

First, that the Government will entitle itself to the cordial support of the real friends of our institutions, by abstaining from any further violation of their principles, and by taking speedy and effectual measures to suppress that chronic rebellion which now palsies and perils the empire under the pretence of repealing the Irish union; and,

Secondly, which will be a consequence of the former, the reunion of the whole Conservative party, of whatever shade, in giving that strength, vigour, and consistency to her Majesty's Councils which in this great crisis we—the humble echo of the most powerful feeling in the nation-tell her Majesty and her Ministersrespectfully but frankly and confidently-cannot be derived from any other source; and none of us, high or low, should for a moment forget that if we, by weakness or dissension or indiscretion, forfeit our ancient position, Europe has now no hospitable refuge left for us-no Holyroods or Claremonts for our princes!

NOTE.

NOTE.-LORD CHANCELLOR MACCLESFIELD (No. clxiii., Art. II.). We have received the following communication from a gentleman in the confidence of the Macclesfield family :

:

'Lord Campbell, in his account of Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, makes the following statements :-That he did not know distinctly whether he had a grandfather; that he was sent to a grammar school in Newport, in Shropshire; that he there learned and then knew little more than the peasantry among whom he was reared; and that he never had any further instruction. In adverting to the Chancellor's course of life after the issue of his impeachment, Lord Campbell describes him as not only withdrawing from public life, but as hurrying to bury himself in retirement in a small house near Derby, where he shunned his former friends and acquaintance; and a very melancholy description is given of his cheerless old age. He is said to have died in his son's house in Soho Square while on a visit there. The story, in short, amounts to this-that he was so overwhelmed by the disgrace of his condemnation as to avoid all society.

"Now, 1st. I have before me a long pedigree of the Parker family taken from Jacobs' Peerage. I insert only what is enough to show that the Chancellor had a grandfather descended from an old family of the name. George Parker of Park Hall in Staffordshire, the missing grandfather, was the son of William Parker, seated at Ashburn, who was a younger son of Parker of Norton Lees in Derbyshire. The said George married Grace, daughter of Hugh Bateman of Harrington in that county, by whom he had two sons, William and Thomas;-Thomas, the second son, married Anne, daughter and coheir of Robert Venables, of Wincham, in Derbyshire; and their only son was Thomas, first Earl of Macclesfield.

'2nd. With respect to the Chancellor's education-his descendants had never till now heard of any doubt that he was educated at Derby School and Trinity College, Cambridge. It is so stated in the journal of his son-in-law, Sir W. Heathcote, of Hursley. I have before me a copy of the entry of his name in the books of Trinity College, Cambridge, furnished by Dr. Whewell to the present Lord Macclesfield. The date is Oct. 9, 1685. He is described as eighteen years of ageas having been at school at Derby under Magister Ogden; and is entered as a Pensioner. Further, when Lord Macclesfield became Chancellor, he had the honour to receive, according to the usual courtesy of Cambridge, a letter of congratulation from the authorities of Trinity, and its terms are these:

6.66

My Lord,-As the great and eminent virtues and abilities whereby you have been long distinguished, and by which you have filled and adorned so many and so important stations, have been lately called to a further advance and to display themselves in a yet more exalted sphere, so that we now behold your Lordship invested with supreme dignity, and entering upon the custody and conduct of the most arduous as well as the most illustrious province of the Law; and as we have this peculiar happiness and glory belonging to us, that, together with those great ornaments of the profession, the Lord Chief Justice Coke and the

Lord

Lord Chancellor Bacon, your Lordship's name is recorded among
us, and that so noble a triumvirate were all members of our
Society; we therefore, the Master and Senior Fellows of Trinity
College, esteeming it a duty we owe not only to your Lordship
but to our Society not to be silent upon so great an occasion,
have appointed two of our Fellows, Dr. Baker and Dr. Rudd,
personally to wait upon and to congratulate your Lordship in our
names and behalf, being with all veneration and respect-May it
please your Lordship, your Lordship's most devoted and humble
servants, &c. &c. &c."

'After this it is needless to quote the complimentary couplets of
Eusden, the Laureate, who must, however, have been a fool as well as a
flatterer to have told the Chancellor to his face that "Prophetic Granta "
saw greatness omened in him, and that "she could not teach as fast as
he could learn," if there had been any doubt about his having been bred
at that university.

'3rd. One word on the statement made as to Lord Macclesfield's
latter years. His family never heard of his retirement to Derbyshire,
and have no manner of doubt that he did live at Shirburn Castle, his
seat in Oxfordshire, and occasionally visited London. His cellar-book
happens to be extant, and it gives sufficient proof of this. I have from
the family that he was building a house in St. James's Square when
he died the same which was afterwards inhabited by his son.

'I send this note to the Editor in the persuasion that he will insert
it in his forthcoming Number, seeing that from his having not unnatu-
rally placed confidence in the accuracy of Lord Campbell's details, a
wider currency has been given to them-and that even if, as may be
anticipated, Lord Campbell corrects them in future editions of his book,
that correction may never reach many readers of the Quarterly Review.'

ERRATUM.

Page 503, line 17, dele 'prose.'

INDEX

TO THE

EIGHTY-SECOND VOLUME OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW