sition has been passive, inert, sterile. Mr. Disraeli has never added a single useful enactment to the statute book. The only merit he himself claims in his Address is to have saved the Church and rescued the State when no one attacked them; the only institution of the country he can pretend to have protected is a system of Church-rates so inefficient that it has ceased to operate as a rating power and that it contributes nothing to Church extension. The sum of the Tory manifesto is an appeal to apprehensions of imaginary dangers, and a total silence as to the real dangers to which a Tory policy would expose the country.

We say, on the contrary, that there is nothing so dangerous as to stand still-nothing so dangerous as to bury the talent of the Constitution in a napkin, as if it were some palladium of stone, which these men worship, and not a living acting power-nothing so dangerous as to pledge the Government of England to the maintenance of abuses, when the time is come for the removal of them. The policy of the Whig party is to guide that movement and to give effect by gradual and wellconsidered measures to the just desires of the country at large. The question for the country to decide is, which of these courses it prefers, what are the measures it adopts, and by whom those measures can best be framed and carried? moment is come when the nation is called upon to answer these questions. We cannot doubt its answer, but it behoves every man who feels the momentous consequences of that answer, to throw the weight of his vote and influence on the side of an enlightened Parliament and a liberal Administration.

The

No. CCL. will be published in October.

THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

OCTOBER, 1865.

No. CCL.

ART. I. Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the year 1783 to 1852. Edited by Lady THERESA LEWIS. 3 vols. London: 1865.

IN

N the autumn of 1788, Horace Walpole (afterwards Earl of Orford), then in the seventy-first year of his age and the height of his fastidiousness, was invited to meet a family, consisting of a father and two daughters, who had recently returned from the Continent with a high reputation for social graces and accomplishments. The first night I met them,' (he writes to Lady Ossory,) I would not be acquainted with them, having 'heard so much in their praise that I concluded they would be all pretension. The second time, in a very small company, I 'sat next to Mary, and found her an angel, both inside and out. Now, I do not know which I like best, except Mary's face, 'which is formed for a sentimental novel, but it is ten times fitter for a fifty times better thing-genteel comedy.' These young ladies were Mary and Agnes Berry, who formed the chief solace and interest of the remaining years of his life. They speedily became his neighbours at Twickenham, where he kept up a constant intercourse with them, and during their frequent absence in town or at country-houses, his letters succeeded each other with such unprecedented rapidity that an overtasked postmaster cried out. Although always writing with the fear of ridicule before his eyes, and almost ostentatiously parading his consciousness of being a septuagenarian adorer, he is prodigal of the most endearing epithets. They are his wives, children, loves, friends. If two negatives make an 'affirmative, why may not two ridicules compose one piece ' of sense? and, therefore, as I am in love with you both, I 'trust it is a proof of the goodsense of your devoted.'

VOL. CXXII. NO. CCL.

X

Mary, however, was in reality the object of his preference; and it is tolerably clear that he wished to marry her, rather with a view to the advantages she would enjoy as a widow, than from the hope or wish of binding her more closely to him by the tender obligations of a wife. Indeed, there is a tradition, handed down by Lord Lansdowne, that he was ready to go through the formal ceremony of marriage with either sister, to make sure of their society and confer rank and fortune on the family; as he had the power of charging the Orford estate with a jointure of 2000l. a year.

On his death in 1797, he bequeathed Little Strawberry Hill to the Miss Berrys, and a box marked O, containing manuscripts, to Mr. Berry and his daughters, with directions that Mr. Berry should undertake the care of a new edition of his works with the addition of the papers contained in the box; thus, as she felt and stated, making Mary his editor, without 'the necessary publicity attached to the name.' This association with his name and memory, no mean title to celebrity, would have constituted an excellent introduction in most European capitals, had these ladies needed one. But their social position was rather recognised and confirmed than strengthened by him. Go where they would, they seemed to have a natural affinity and attraction for the most cultivated and refined society of the place. Mary, especially, the loadstone of the house, seldom failed to draw into their circle the persons best worth knowing, as well as the celebrities, the hero, the orator, the author, the artist, the wit, the beauty of the hour; and this was done spontaneously as it were, and without an effort, by the quiet influence of purely personal qualities, by ready sympathy, frank appreciation, sense, varied information, and simplicity. It was they who sought her, not she them. The Iron Duke grows talkative when accidentally seated by her at a dinner-table; Lord Byron lays himself out to please her; Joanna Baillie is grateful for her critical approval; Canova approaches her with the strongest expressions of affection and esteem; the Princess of Wales (Queen Caroline) tries hard for the cover of her respectability; Sydney Smith looks over one of her proposed publications, and Mackintosh another; Madame Recamier eagerly solicits her friendship; and Madame de Stäel, after some preliminary coquetting and caprice, declares that she had loved her the best, and thought her by 'far the cleverest woman in England.'

Her correspondents, besides Lord Orford, comprise Playfair, Gell, the late Earl of Dudley, Joanna Baillie, Canova, Madame de Staël, the Hon. Mrs. Damer (the sculptor), the

Hon. Keppel Craven, the late Duke of Devonshire, Queen Caroline, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lally Tollendal, Lord Jeffrey, Edward Everett, the late Countess of Morley, the Countess of Gifford (Lady Dufferin), and a host of others who had been in the way of seeing things worth telling and possessed the happy art of telling them effectively. The resulting value of the Journal and Letters now first published is not overstated by the editor:

From the age of seventeen or eighteen to that of nearly ninety, Miss Berry and her sister Agnes (one year younger than herself) lived constantly in society both at home and abroad: they had seen Marie Antoinette in all her pride and beauty, and they lived to regret the fall of Louis-Philippe, for whose prudence and abilities Miss Berry had for many years conceived a high respect, and with whom she was personally acquainted. Born in the third year after the accession of George III., she lived to be privately presented to Queen Victoria a few months before her death.

'In her early youth she gained the respect of her elders, and was well known to have engaged the devoted affection of one already far in the decline of life; in her own old age the loved and admired of the fastidious Horace Walpole won the hearts of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the friends of her youth, and will be affectionately remembered by some who still lingered in childhood at the time of her death.'

The great age to which Miss Berry lived has given almost an historical interest to many trifling incidents in her journals; and changes and improvements, that steal imperceptibly on, in manners, in morals, in refinement, in general convenience, and in opinions, become more defined and more interesting, when brought before the rising generation by the notes and journals of one who, born above one hundred years ago, was so lately moving amongst the living in the full enjoyment of every faculty. They are as the stepping-stones that help us to remount the stream of Time, down which we often drift too fast to mark the ever-varying scenes which accompany our passage, or the objects which unconsciously determine its course.'

So

Miss Berry was unconsciously recommending her own literary remains by anticipation when, in justifying the fondness of the French for private letters and memoirs, she remarks, entirely do time and distance hallow and render interesting 'minute details that, after a certain period, history becomes 'more or less valuable as it presents more or less lively pictures, not only of events, but of their effects on the minds and manners of cotemporaries.'

6

She bequeathed all her papers to the late Sir Frankland Lewis, and informed Lady Theresa Lewis that she had done so, adding that, in case of his death and of his not having had time to deal with them she wished Lady Theresa to take charge of