Lord Shelburne's defeat. The conversation was on the subject, in the first instance, of Lord Temple's intended resignation of the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland-but the King also entered freely into all his own embarrassments between his reluctance to the Coalition and the impossibility of forming any other ministry. These letters afford an additional corroboration of Lord Brougham's testimony (drawn from the North papers) of the intelligence and accuracy with which his Majesty conducted the business of what we may venture to call his office-of his good sense of his judicious appreciation both of men and measures, and of the strictly constitutional principles on which he acted. We would willingly extract them, but, as our space is limited, we give a preference, over Lord Grenville's narrative, to two letters of the King himself, which exhibit the same qualities. The first is the longest we have ever seen of his Majesty's letters, and describes his situation while the Coalition was Viceroy over him.'

The King to Lord Temple.

'Queen's House, April 1st, 1783. 'MY LORD, I had the pleasure, on the 26th of last month, to receive from your truly amiable and right-headed brother and secretary [Thomas Grenville] your very able letter of the 23rd on the state of Ireland, couched in terms that also conveyed the warmest attachment to my person and Government, which makes me not deem among the least of public misfortunes, that the want of resolution in some, and of public zeal in others, will oblige you to quit a station which you fill so much to the satisfaction of all honest men as well as to mine.

6 Since the conversation I had with Mr. William Grenville on the 16th of last month, I have continued every possible means of forming an Administration; an experience of now above twenty-two years convinces me that it is impossible to erect a stable one within the narrow bounds of any faction-for none deserve the appellation of party; and that in an age when disobedience to law and authority is as prevalent as a thirst after changes in the best of all political Constitutions, it requires that temper and sagacity to stem these evils, which can alone be expected from a collection of the best and most calm heads and hearts the kingdom possesses.

'Judge, therefore, of the uneasiness of my mind at having been thwarted in every attempt to keep the administration of public affairs out of the hands of the most unprincipled coalition the annals of this or any other nation can equal. I have withstood it till not a single man is willing to come to my assistance, and till the House of Commons has taken every step, but insisting on this faction being by name elected Ministers.

To end a conflict which stops every wheel of Government, and which would affect public credit if it continued much longer, I intend this night to acquaint that grateful Lord North, that the seven Cabinet Counsellors the coalition has named shall kiss hands to-morrow, and

then

then form their arrangements, as at the former negotiation they did not condescend to open to [me] many of their intentions.

6

A Ministry which I have avowedly attempted to avoid, by calling on every other description of men, cannot be supposed to have either my favour or confidence; and as such, I shall most certainly refuse any honours they may ask for. I trust the eyes of the nation will soon be opened, as my sorrow may prove fatal to my health if I remain long in this thraldom. I trust you will be steady in your attachment to me, and ready to join other honest men in watching the conduct of this unnatural combination-and I hope many months will not elapse before the Grenvilles, the Pitts, and other men of abilities and character will relieve me from a situation that nothing could have compelled me to submit to, but the supposition that no other means remained of preventing the public finances from being materially affected.

'It shall be one of my first cares to acquaint these men that you decline remaining in Ireland. GEORGE R.'-i. 218.

The second is shorter, but not less interesting, for it shows how ready he was to give up, in favour of that which was represented to him as a public object, the position and even the feelings of his favourite son, the Duke of York.

Weymouth, August 27th, 1794—Thirty-five minutes past One, P..

'I have this instant received Mr. Pitt's letter, accompanying the Paper of Considerations, which I undoubtedly should wish to keep, but, not knowing whether Mr. Pitt has a fair copy of it, I have thought it safest to return.

'Whatever can give vigour to the remains of the campaign, I shall certainly, as a duty, think it right not to withhold my consent; but I own, in my son's place, I should beg my being allowed to return home, if the command is given to Lord Cornwallis, though I should not object to the command being intrusted to General Clairfayt. From feeling this, I certainly will not write, but approve of Mr. Wyndham's going to the army, and shall be happy if my son views this in a different light than I should.

I will not delay the messenger, as I think no time ought to be lost in forming some fixed plan, and that the measure of sending Mr. Wyndham is every way advantageous. GEORGE R.'

Our extracts have been copious, but we must find room for the earliest appearance of the Duke of Wellington in public life. The Marquis of Buckingham, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, had, at Lady Mornington's request, named her son Arthur, at. 18, as one of his aides-de-camp. Lord Mornington (Marquis Wellesley) writes to thank him:

' 4th November, 1787.-You may well believe with what pleasure I received your appointment of my brother to a place in your family, not

only

only as being a most kind mark of your regard for me, but as the greatest advantage to him. I am persuaded that, under your eye, he will not be exposed to any of those [moral] risks which in other times have accompanied the situation [of an aide-de camp] he will hold. I can assure you sincerely that he has every disposition which can render so young a boy deserving of your notice; and if he does not engage your protection by his conduct, I am much mistaken in his character. My mother expects him every hour in London, and before this time I should hope that he had himself waited on you.'-i. 334.

There was, however, a hitch. Sir George Yonge, the Secretary-atWar, insisted that, if the honourable Arthur was to be an aidede-camp, he must be put on half-pay. Against this-that would in fact have thrown him out of the active line of his profession, and made him a mere puppet of the Vice-regal Court-Lord Mornington strenuously remonstrated; but the curious part of this little squabble is, that Lord Mornington in his indignation said that, rather than that the youth should be put on half-pay, he would send him to join a regiment in India. Having seen the elder and the younger brother both sent to India, and the rank and reputation they won there, the threat is piquant.

As to Lord Grenville's letters, which are the main body of the work, they are, as might be expected, well reasoned and well written, and must have been of great interest to him to whom they were addressed; but letters which are of intense interest at the moment are often very tedious in after-times. While a negotiation is pending-or a battle impending-how eager is our curiosity! but when the negotiations are concluded, or the battle won or lost, all the previous conjectures and speculations seem as flat and unprofitable as a detected riddle. So it is, to a great degree, with Tom Grenville's despatches previous to the treaty of Paris, of which the only interest is a rivalry between him and Mr. Oswald, another of our negotiators, for the honour of being duped by Dr. Franklin; and so it is of Lord Grenville's letters on Irish affairs in 1783-on the vicissitudes, the hopes, and the fears of the King's illness in 1788-on the prospect and progress of the Irish Rebellion in 1798-all these may be usefully consulted by any one who has a special object in tracing the minuter steps and more recondite motives of the respective affairs, but now that the events are recorded on the broader page of history there is little for the instruction, and still less for the amusement, of ordinary readers-nothing that we could condense into the limits of a review, with justice either to the writers or to our readers. These letters have, besides, this further disadvantage-they are not only of a grave and didactic style, but they are also very décousues, and are so far from affording

affording any continuous interest, that the editor has been obliged to make the absurd and ineffectual efforts we have noticed to connect them into an intelligible series.

There are a few letters from some gossiping acquaintance of Lord Buckingham's-Lord Bulkeley and Sir William Youngtreating of the news and tattle of the day. They are the only portion of the volumes, and a very small one it is, that affords us any glimpses of the state of public opinion or the habits of society-matters which are, in fact, infinitely more amusing, and to ordinary readers more valuable, than the hundred of pages occupied by poor Lord Grenville's laborious endeavours to keep his irascible brother in good humour.

We do not suppose that a second edition of such a work is likely to be called for, but, should it be, we suggest that the documents themselves, unincumbered by the ridiculous rigmarole of the ridiculous editor, might be collected into one 8vo., with a few notes to clear up the numerous obscurities-none of which the present performance has even attempted to elucidate. These Family Documents' would then form a very suitable and acceptable supplement to the earlier series of Grenville Papers' now in the course of publication, and which are edited in a style of which the most appropriate commendation that we can give is-that it is the very reverse of that which disfigures, and, we may say, stultifies, the volumes now dismissed.

ART. VII.-1. Apsley House, Piccadilly, the Town Residence of his Grace the Duke of Wellington. J. Mitchell. 1853. 2. Apsley House. Illustrated by ten Lithographic Plates. Colnaghi and Co. 1853.

THE

THE first of these publications, in furnishing an authentic catalogue of the contents of Apsley House, simply points out the principal objects, leaving the visitor to form his own reflections; the second work undertakes to bring before the faithful eye an accurate representation of the interior-the actual aspect of rooms left exactly as when the great inhabitant quitted them for the last time. A record thus remains for after ages, by which a condition of things that sooner or later must undergo change is fixed and realized. The drawings have been carefully made and lithographized by Messrs. Nash, Boys, and Dillon, and the accompanying commentary, of which we are about to make a very free use, has been supplied by an experienced Cicerone, the author of the Handbook for Spain.

Few mansions in the enormous capital of Great Britain are

better

better situated or known than Apsley House. Placed at the outlet of the thick-pent town, at the entrance of pleasant parks where it never can be encroached on, approached by arches of triumph and statues symbolic of power and command, it may well attract attention of itself; but the associated religio loci awakens in the public a curiosity altogether reverential. Hence the universal desire to be admitted into those secret and secluded chambers in which the Duke of Wellington laboured in his country's service, and to lift up the curtain that concealed his daily and individual existence, over which the contrast of his out-of-doors ubiquity and notoriety cast so much mystery. Acquainted as man, woman, and child were with the exterior of Apsley House, the interior-the actual lion's den-was a sealed book to the million; for few were privileged to pass the threshold, and enter into the sanctum sanctorum of the object of popular hero-worship. The outward bearing of the Duke of Wellington himself was not less known than his house. He was the best known man in London; every one knew him by sight: like a city built on a hill, or his own colossal statue on the arch, he could not be hid. He was the observed of all observers, and the object of universal royal-like homage, which he neither courted nor shunned. At fixed hours he lived in the public eye, familiar to all as household gods; and his movements were so certain and regular, that he might be calculated on as a planet. For more than forty years he has been the soul of every important transaction-the foremost person in every great act and danger in an age fertile of great men and events; in a word, a fourth estate in the empire. His martial countenance was a salient feature in our streets: whether on foot or horseback, he crossed the path of every one, and his image became so engraved in the memory of his countrymen, that many, half a century hence, will speak of his silvered head and his venerable form, bowed with the weight of years and honours, yet manfully stemming the crowded highways, struggling to the last against the advance of age, the conqueror of conquerors.

The pilgrim longing of the nation to visit the Duke's house has been anticipated by his son, who, to his infinite credit, while inheriting his father's title and estates, appointed himself trustee of his fame, guardian of his memory, and joint heir with us all in whatever tends to our common share in 'the Duke' as public property, and can lead to a better understanding of one, a model and example to Englishmen. By him, Apsley House, so long hermetically sealed, has been thrown open-a well-timed act of filial reverence and kind courtesy, which has won golden opinions from all, and especially from the thousands on thousands who have swarmed in, and testified, by every circumstance of their demeanour,