PREFACE (TO THE VOL. PRINTED PRIVATELY IN 1862.) THE correspondence of Hugh Elliot may be divided into two portions: the first collected from the Minto MSS., containing letters addressed to his family, by himself or by others, on matters affecting him; of these none are earlier in date than 1762, none later than 1776: the second portion composed of several volumes of letters, private and official, written to him by various persons between 1772 and 1785. were all in his own keeping at the time of his death, and were sent to Minto a few years ago by my mother,1 along with some other MSS. of a later date, which had also belonged to him. These The letters bound in volumes have been generally 1 Emma, daughter of the Right Honourable Hugh Elliot, married General Sir Thomas Hislop, Bart., G. C.B. collected under three heads: Family Letters; Foreign Miscellaneous Letters; English Miscellaneous Letters. There are, however, two or three volumes entirely occupied by the correspondence of particular friends, as Mr. Liston, Sir James and Lady Harris, and others; and there are volumes of official correspondence with the Office and with his colleagues at foreign Courts; among whom were Lord Stormont, Sir R. Keith,2 and Messrs. De Vismes,3 Wroughton, Morton Eden, and Osborn. All these papers, and many others which have undergone no such process of classification, were left with other property of Mr. Elliot's at Dresden in 1802, when he was transferred from that mission to Naples; and he appears to have taken no steps for their removal before the French occupation of Dresden in 1806, which rendered their recovery impossible. Mr. Elliot had long since given them up for lost, when, some time after the peace, he, being then governor of Madras, received a letter from Dresden, which informed him that his property had been safely preserved by some friends there, who, having saved it from falling into the hands of the French, now only waited his 1 Minister at Vienna and Paris. 2 Vienna. 3 Stockholm. 4 Warsaw. directions to restore it to him. As it comprised plate, pictures, china, and other things far more valuable as plunder than manuscripts, he was as much surprised as pleased by the communication; nevertheless, with his habitual carelessness, he took no steps to recover his losses for some years, and it was not till 1826 that he was prevailed on to let his youngest son Frederick, who was then a mere lad, proceed to Dresden in quest of the long-lost property. There, accordingly, in a cellar, perfectly intact and uninjured, were found some of the most valuable contents of the ci-devant Hôtel du Ministre Britannique, which, in the moment of flight, had been abandoned to their fate. The only paper which my grandfather had been anxious to recover was a private memorandum in Mr. Pitt's handwriting, containing instructions for his guidance, and this, on regaining it, he sent to the Foreign Office. The mixture of order and disorder in the arrangement of these papers is extraordinary. It might be supposed that some one, acting on a suggestion that all the letters should be classified under specified heads, had thrown the contents of desks and drawers into so many several heaps, and had then, without further selection, proceeded to bind them together. Along with letters from royal personages, generals, and statesmen, are found the most trivial notes. Letters of introduction to insignificant persons are preserved as carefully as those from Mirabeau, Romanzow, and Nelson. More than a third of these bulky volumes might be burnt without loss, and yet enough would remain to give a finished picture of the society in which my grandfather spent his youth. The letters of 1775 and 1776 are so numerous, and so abundant in personal details, that one feels on intimate terms with the writers and the correspondents. Strange that it should be so! that, after so long a silence, the dead should speak again, should be restored to our knowledge in all the freshness of their youth, introducing us to sorrows which they themselves long outlived, and to sentiments forgotten sooner still. But if these thoughts be startling to us, what would their feelings have been could they have foreseen that the follies of the moment were to be handed down to generations unborn? What would the flirting dame de cour have said could she have guessed that the indolent Englishman, who rarely troubled himself to answer her notes, would preserve them for the amusement of his descendants? And what would have been felt by the mother and sisters, who believed themselves to possess |