from Paris. It was excessively agreeable. Lord Grey in excellent spirits, and Brougham, whom Sefton bantered from the beginning to the end of dinner. Be Brougham's political errors what they may, his gaiety, temper, and admirable social qualities make him delightful, to say nothing of his more solid merits, of liberality, generosity, and charity; for charity it is to have taken the whole family of one of his brothers who is dead-nine children-and maintained and educated them.' (Vol. ii. p. 69.)

Four years after, the following entry occurs, which is creditable to the writer's candour if it be not in some part, at least, a key to his sentiments:

His friends think him much altered in spirits and appearance: he has never shaken off his unhappiness at his brother's death, to whom he seems to have been tenderly attached. It is only justice to acknowledge his virtues in private life, which are unquestionably conspicuous. I am conscious of having often spoken of him with asperity, and it is some satisfaction to my conscience to do him this justice. When the greatest (I will not say the best) men are often influenced by pique or passion, by a hundred petty feelings which their philosophy cannot silence or their temperament obeys, it is no wonder that we poor wretches who are cast in less perfect moulds should be still more liable to these pernicious influences; and it is only by keeping an habitual watch over our own minds and thoughts, and steadily resolving never to be turned from considerations of justice and truth, that we can hope to walk through life with integrity and impartiality. I believe what I have said of Brougham to be correct in the main-that he is false, tricking, ambitious, and unprincipled, and as such I will show him up when I can-but though I do not like him and he has offended methat is, has wounded my vanity (the greatest of all offences)-I only feel it the more necessary on that account to be on my guard against my own impressions and prejudices, and to take every opportunity of exhibiting the favourable side of the picture, and render justice to the talents and virtues which cannot be denied him.' (Vol. iii. pp. 76, 77.)

The author, in his narrative, traces very graphically Brougham's remarkable career, from the period of the Queen's trial, until his great and as it proved permanent downfall in 1835. To his wonderful powers of debate he is never tired of recurring; and in one passage, on the Irish Church Bill, when Peel and Stanley had it all their own way, he wonders how it would flutter the Conservative camp could they have but one half hour of Brougham.

Of the charges of insincerity and treachery which so often recur in these volumes it is needless to speak here. It is not the first time they have been made; but Mr. Greville leaves us. as others have left us, much in the dark as to the specific acts on which they have been founded. Some things, however, are plain enough. Brougham certainly wanted ballast, as Mr.

Greville said. There was a dash of eccentricity and excitable restlessness which tinged all his career. He was sharp in speech, and cared not sometimes if he trod on the tenderest susceptibilities even of those intimate with him. He did not like a brother near the throne,' and was jealous as well as ambitious when his own advancement was in question. He was volatile, reckless, and forgetful, one set of ideas driving out their predecessors in marvellous succession. Such a one makes enemies in the mere wantonness of power and excitement. But of his relations with the Whig party in 1830 Mr. Greville gives us some revelations. When we find members of the party he had led to victory in the House of Commons rejoicing that his wings were clipped and his influence neutralised by his removal to the Lords, can we much wonder that when he discovered this he meditated some reprisals? The want of confidence was not entirely on one side, if this picture be true, nor could those expect party loyalty who failed to give it. If Brougham was jealous of others, others were jealous of him; and without believing, with Mr. Greville, that the insult of being offered the post of Attorney-General was the source of the discontent, we do not think the causes of the ultimate result require any mystery to be solved to ascertain them. Brougham was probably a restless uncomfortable colleague, given to indiscreet remarks, and not prone to conceal or refrain from ridicule or contempt. In or out of season his arrogant and imperious spirit was impatient of control, and despised inferior minds, the greatest mistake a man who aspires to leadership can commit. Finding himself only welcomed because he could not be excluded, he naturally looked to strengthen his own position, perhaps not regarding much that of others who were ready to sacrifice him. All this does not necessarily imply the imputation of perfidious conduct, although having thrown for the stake and lost, it is not surprising that he was not allowed his revenge. The retrospect is sad enough; but in the memory of what he did, we had rather not remember what faint friends, more than open enemies, have sometimes accused him of doing.

O'Connell and Lyndhurst are the remaining portraits, both very well painted. O'Connell's rise and reign form very prominent features in the book; his immense influence, his social position, and extraordinary power of popular speaking are first recounted. Then comes the Clare election, and Mr. Greville concludes he will fail in the House. Then he speaks from the bar of the House, and Mr. Greville concludes that he will succeed. The rest of his career, or at least that which was

the most important part of it, is fully narrated, and the character of the great agitator given in too minute detail for us to transcribe. Mr. Greville met him once in society, and says of him that there was nothing remarkable in his conversation, but that he seemed well bred and at his ease. O'Connell indeed was entirely a man of the world, and was of mark in any society he entered.

Lord Lyndhurst, as he appears in the scattered notices in the Journal, is a livelier sketch. There are few hard words about him, and much pleasant and lively talk recorded. His politics sat very lightly on him; he was not trammelled by earnestness or enthusiasm of any kind; had a genial sparkling spirit which was sympathetic with that of the journalist, and no very fixed or unbending opinions. It was new to us to know, as Mr. Greville informs us, that Lord Grey would have made Lyndhurst Chancellor if he could. We cannot pause over the characteristic traces of this most accomplished and remarkable man which many pages of these volumes contain. They are all refreshing and agreeable, and contrast pleasantly with the sombre shades which Mr. Greville has frequently on his palette. Sombre as they are, however, these are the tints in which a keen observer can hardly fail to depict what he sees around him in social and political life. Mr. Greville's highest merit, as a chronicler of his times, seems to us to be his searching analysis of character. With inimitable penetration and with great felicity of style, he has drawn his contemporaries as they were. It is the rarest quality in a writer of history to trace such portraits alike without concealment and without malice, and we doubt not that they will go down to posterity as they are depicted in these pages.

To some persons it may appear, however, that the main interest and merit of this work does not consist so much in the author's anecdotes of distinguished men as in his narrative of the secret and less familiar history of very important and familiar events. The book begins in 1819-when the Holy Alliance, the Six Acts, and the highest of Toryism were in the ascendant. It ends in 1837, when every trace of them had perished. There is no better or more graphic history of these remarkable events extant than is to be found in Mr. Greville's contemporaneous memoranda and his habit of leaving his daily impressions uncancelled, while it impairs the accuracy of his opinions, adds greatly to the vividness of his book as a history. Nothing can be more interesting than to watch, through these faithful pages, the gradual decay of old abuse, and the rise of genuine constitutional popular in

fluence. The squabbles of men and cabinets, and the intrigues of party, as we now look back on them through a vista of forty or fifty years, important and absorbing as they were at the time, were but the indications of elements over which cabinets and statesmen had little power. But it is through that medium that we can trace most accurately the growth and progress of that great political revolution through which, in the space of fifteen years, this country passed, happier than its neighbours, without anything which deserved the name of popular tumult, and with increased security and stability to all its ancient and constitutional institutions.

ART. X.-Hansard's Parliamentary Debates for the Session of 1874. April to August. London: 1874.

ON

N March 19, 1874, commenced the first session, since that of 1841, in which the Conservative' party could boast of a substantial majority assembled to support a Conservative? government. Never did session open with fairer promise. The appeal to the constituencies, so suddenly made by Mr. Gladstone, had resulted in the total discomfiture of his forces and the positive dislocation of the Liberal party. The Gladstone Ministry had not only fallen, but in their fall had broken up the phalanx, which had sustained them in power, more completely than any political party has been broken up in this country since the days of the first Reform Bill. Clergy, Nonconformists, Permissive-Bill men, Publicans, suspended their differences among themselves to join in common hostility against a government which had managed to rub them all up the wrong way. The men who desired continual and rapid progress in a democratic direction were dissatisfied with the pace of the Ministry, while that very pace had frightened out of their wits no inconsiderable portion of the more quiet and sober part of the community. A general dread-of what was to come next appeared to pervade the country, and that Con'servative reaction,' the existence of which had been so often denied, proved to be a living reality, which its greatest op ponents were at last forced to admit.. Mr. Di~~

- warael was car

rieu into power as the harbinger of rest to a people weary of over-legislation, as the champion of every class and interest which had been harassed' and 'worried,' as the statesman who alone could remedy the plundering and blundering' of the recent administration, who would oppose unnecessary ' restraint and meddling interference with the affairs of the

6

people; and who desired that there should be 'a little more energy in our foreign policy, and a little less in our domestic legislation. The Church was to be preserved, the strength ' and stability of England' maintained, and salutary Conservative progress to take the place of reckless Radicalism and revolutionary concessions to the spirit of democracy.

Seldom, if ever, has a minister had greater opportunities of carrying out a policy and consolidating a party. No doubt, the responsibilities of power had come upon him somewhat suddenly, and the usual time for the preparation of Government measures had, from the force of circumstances, been denied to him. But, on the other hand, the country neither desired nor expected any great novelties in legislation. Upon certain social reforms public opinion had not only made up its mind, but the measures necessary to carry those reforms into effect were actually ready to hand. The obvious course before Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues was to deal with those subjects, and with as little else as need be, during the session of 1874, leaving until next year those efforts of legislative genius for which the preparation of the autumn months might be necessary.

6

This course, indeed, appears to have naturally suggested itself to the Conservative Cabinet, as may be gathered from the contents of the Queen's Speech, delivered at the opening of the session. In this document, after the usual allusions to passing events, her Majesty called the attention of her Parliament, in the first instance, to the delay and expense attending the transfer of land in England,' which have long been felt to be a reproach to our system of law, and a serious 'obstacle to dealings in real property.' Secondly, the extension to Ireland of the re-arrangement of the judicature, and the blending of the administration of law and equity which 'were effected for England by the enactment of last session,' were recommended to the notice of Parliament. Allusion was next made to Scotland, and the Legislature was invited to 'consider the most satisfactory mode of bringing the procedure upon appeals into harmony with recent legislation,' whilst it was also intimated that measures would be introduced for ding the law relating to Land Rights, and for facili11-4 motion of Great Britating the Transfer of Land in that p

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tain. Then, after a passing allusion to the defective state of the laws affecting the relationship of Master and Servant,' to inquire into which a Royal Commission had been issued, her

* See Mr. Disraeli's Address to the Electors of Buckinghamshire.