was his skill that had acquired for him such pieces as those, and that they were much more real marks of ability than a pack of papers picked up here and there. At last Mgr. the Elector himself came down from his box in the disguise of a Dutch sailor, and made purchases here and there in the shops of the fair. There was music in the orchestra, and all those who were present (who either were or ought to have been people of the court or of distinction) have confessed that a grand opera, which would have cost thousands of crowns, would have given much less pleasure both to the actors and the spectators, &c., &c.-LEIBNITZ."-(pp. 241, 243.)

The Electress herself writes the following agreeable letter to some unknown correspondent: its subject is the Czar Peter :

"Herrenhausen, August 11, 1697.

"I must tell you now that I have seen the illustrious Czar. His Majesty's expenses were entirely paid by the Elector of Brandenburg as far as Wesel; but he was obliged to pass through Coppenbrück, which is a fief of our house, belonging to the Prince of Nassau in Friesland. We had asked an audience of his Czarish Majesty, (for he maintains his incognito everywhere, and his three ambassadors have the sole charge of the representation). The Prince consented to receive us, and to see us in private. I was accompanied by my daughter and my three sons, the Elector George Louis, Prince Christian, and Prince Ernest Augustus. The second prince, Maximilian William, had long left Hanover, for reasons which are well known. Although Coppenbrück is four long miles from here, we started for it with the greatest zeal, Coppenstein having gone before us to make the necessary arrangements. We got the start of the Muscovites, who did not arrive till about eight o'clock, and brought up at the house of a peasant. In spite of our agreement, so great a multitude of people had gathered together, that the Czar did not know what to do to avoid being recognised; so we capitulated for a long time. At last my son was obliged to have the spectators dispersed by the soldiers of the guard; and during the time the ambassadors were arriving with their suite, the Czar slipped by a private staircase into his own room, because, in order to get there, he would have had to go through the dining-room. We joined his Majesty in this room, and the first ambassador, M. Le Fort, of Geneva, acted as interpreter. The Czar is very tall, his face is very handsome, and his person very noble; he has great liveliness of spirit, and his repartee is ready and to the purpose: but with all the advantages which nature has given him, it is much to be desired that his manners should be a little less rustic. We sat down at once to table. M. Coppenstein, who acted as marshal, presented the napkin to his Majesty, but he did not know what to do with it, because, instead of napkins at table, they had given him in Brandenburg waterglasses after dinner. His Majesty was placed at table between my daughter and myself, with an interpreter on each side. She was very gay and very talkative, and we struck up a great friendship. My daughter and his Majesty exchanged snuff-boxes: the Czar's was ornamented with his initials, and my daughter sets great store by it. We remained at table, in truth, a very long while, but we would willingly have stayed even longer, without feeling a moment's ennui, for the Czar was in a very good humour, and did not cease to entertain us. My daughter made her Italians sing: their performance pleased him, although he confessed he did not care much for music. I asked him if he liked hunting: he replied, that his father had been very fond of it, but that as for himself, from his childhood upwards he had been passionately fond of navigation and fireworks. He told us that he worked himself at ship-building, shewed us his hands, and made us feel the callosities which had formed themselves there by dint of manual labour. After our meal his Majesty sent for his violins, and we danced Russian dances, which I like much better than the Polish ones. We kept up the ball till four o'clock in the morning: we had, in fact, formed a design to pass the night in a château in the neighbourhood, but as it was already daylight, we returned hither at once without sleeping, and very well satisfied with our day. It would take up too much time to detail to you all we saw. M. Le Fort and his nephew were dressed in the French fashion; both of them are very clever. I could not get an opportunity of speaking to the two other ambassadors, or to the multitude of princes who are in the suite of the Czar. The Czar, who did not know that the locality made it utterly impossible for us to remain there, expected to see us the next day: if we had known this beforehand, we would have made some arrangement to stop in the neighbourhood, in order to see him again, for his company gave us a great deal of pleasure. He is in all respects a noble man. I must also tell you that he did not get drunk in our presence; but scarcely had we started, when the people of his suite made ample amends to themselves. Coppen

stein has certainly richly earned the superb pelisse of sables which they presented him with, for having kept up with them. He has told us, however, that even in their drunkenness they preserved a good deal of gaiety and politeness; but he had the honours and the triumph, for the three Muscovite ambassadors had absolutely drowned their reason in wine when they set out."-(pp. 198, 200.)

This pleasant account of the Czar is confirmed by a letter from the Queen of Prussia, and his behaviour contrasts agreeably with that of his boorish, half-mad rival, Charles XII., who is thus spoken of by Leibnitz :

"At the moment when the King returned I was at Altranstadt, and I saw him at dinner; that lasted a full half-hour, but his Majesty did not say a single word during his dinner, and never raised his eyes but once, when a young Prince of Würtemberg, seated at his left hand, began to play with the dog, which he left off doing the moment he caught that look. One may say that the physiognomy of the King is very good, but his demeanour and dress are those of the troopers of the old school. Having waited above a week for his return, I could not stay any longer, although hopes were held out to me that I might have an audience of his Majesty, as the young Count Platen and M. Fabricius the younger, who arrived just as I was about to start, have since had. But what should I have been able to say to him? He does not like to hear his own praises, even when they are just, and he does not talk of business; but he speaks very well about military matters, as I have been assured by M. de Schulenburg, who had an audience of nearly two hours of him."—(p. 458.)

Most of the letters in this collection have been originally written in French, and Mr. Kemble has translated the majority of them; but in some instances, "where the manner appeared more noteworthy than the matter," he has printed them verbatim. This is in some cases a real unkindness to their authors. One letter, by the Princess Caroline of Anspach, (at pp. 482-3,) shews that the writer was as guiltless of" French of Paris" as Chaucer's fair pilgrim, who

"Spake the French of Stratford-atte-Bow:"

the interlineary translation of Leibnitz and the notes of Mr. Kemble hardly render it intelligible, and it seems to have been printed as a libel on the tutors of the Princess. A more pleasant specimen is the following spirituelle effusion, addressed by Leibnitz to the Countess von Klenk :—

"Vienne, le 30 de May, 1713.

"Mademoiselle,-Je suis bien fâché de ne pouvoir jouir de l'advantage que M. le Comte Jörger m'offre de faire ma cour à Ebersdorf en sa compagnie, et de vous faire la révérence particulièrement. Je suis engagé dans une occupation dont je ne saurois me dispenser aujourdhuy. Cependant je vous communique une nouvelle philosophique, qui est que les chiens commencent déjà de parler, et que par conséquent le monde va s'embellir, que les bêtes peu à peu deviendront raisonnables, que les hommes deviendront des anges, et que les anges, tels que vous êtes déjà avec vos belles compagnes, deviendront enfin des petites divinités. Vous en pouvés juger par le papier cy-joint, qui contient un extrait de la lettre que M. le Duc de Saxe-Zeiz m'a fait l'honneur de m'écrire de sa main. Ne vous hatés pourtant pas trop, je vous en prie, de quitter l'estat angélique où vous êtes, pour courir à l'apothéose, qui vous est réservée. Daignés plustôt de vous humaniser envers celuy qui se nomme avec respect, "Mademoiselle,

"Votre très humble, etc.,
"[LEIBNITZ]."

One letter remarkable both for matter and manner is the following from the famous Earl of Peterborough. It is so thoroughly characteristic of the man that we cannot forbear to quote it :

"PETERBOROUGH TO HALIFAX.

"May the 29th, 1706, abord the Sommersett. "My Lord,-There cannot be worse company than a beggarly German and a proud

Spaniard, particularly to my humour; and were it not for the revenge we seek in the disagreable men with the agreable ladys, our condition were intollerable, black eyes and wit in the wives being what alone can make us endure the husbands; the Fair sex especially never failing to put in practise the making use of all opportunities in pleasures, the revers of what our Statesmen practise in business.

"Are you not bound in conscience to make us amends from England with now and then a letter, in these dismal circumstances? The Ministers have given us till lately neither men nor money, and our friends no letters, neither of business nor scandal; I know not which we ought most to reproach.

"But however, my Lord, being perfect good Christians and well with the Church in these Countrys (which thinkes herself intirely safe under her Majesties protection), we forgive, if you will repent and amend; we offer you letter for letter, if you will enter in correspondence and traffic, story for story, and good wine for good ale and sider, bottle for bottle.

"I doe not trouble you with the account of our successes, which I am obliged to send to the Secretary's Office. I believe the French themselves will own enough to make the news agreable, but my Lord, I hope our Spanish prince will mend his pace, now he is become as one of us, a Lover and a Sinner; to merit some news of that kind from England, I inform you, that we have certain intelligence to our great satisfaction, as we hope it may prove to the chitcats assembled near charing cross, that a Don John is upon the stocks in Barcelona.

"What is past you have heard before this comes to your hands, and I will write a letter to my Lord Sommers to summon in the Whig Arrierban for our support in case of necessity for autumn. Tell my Lord Duke next Sunday dinner I'm actually a board the Sommersett, pressing her to comply with my earnest desires of getting me ashore at Valentia; the Germans tell me the King will follow; the English will excuse me I hope if I stay for nobody; they sent me to Valentia when none of them desired to be of the party. I came back with more hast than I went, and am returning with the same impatience to try if I can find the way to Madrid, during this consternation of the Ennemy, and from thence to London.

"When the time comes that you shall see orders from a King to abandone Kingdomes, which by disobedience I have preserved for him,--when you shall see that all the generall officers have had a more dangerous war with Ministers, than the Ennemys, and above twenty positive orders from Court rejected from all sides by the unanimous Votes of Councills of War, consisting of Spaniards, Italians, Flemings, Dutch, and English,-you will think our story remarkable, and my circumstances very agreable all this while, who have supported this affair hetherto by methods hardly ever approved by Councills of War, where our case was most commonly thought desperate, and the measures I was obliged to take thought so too, but against German directions we were always of a piece.

"My Lord Gallway should be in Madrid, having secured all the Spanish foot in Alcantara, being within a few days march of that Capital, early in May; by the last accounts he was at Almara along the river leading to Toledo, but if Portugall Generalls (who passe all understanding) should retire with six and twenty thousand men, having no Ennemy, we loose the present criticall minut, and if not supported this Autumn, fortune may turn against us, and justly punish us for neglecting her favourable offers, which however, my Lord, shall never be lay'd to my charge, and may neither man nor woman forgive when that appeares my fault.

"My Lord, your most humble and obedient Servant, "PETERBOROW.

"My Lord, I am so stung with Musquitoes that I am not able to writte with my own hand."-(pp. 445-447.)

The length of our extracts will shew the estimation in which we hold this work, and were it not that, like our author, our space is limited, we would willingly enliven these pages with a most amusing description, by Leibnitz, of " a banquet after the manner of the ancients." We wonder whether Smollett ever saw it. We have, however, quoted enough to shew that even the "raw material" of history may afford a pleasant book, and as such we recommend this volume to our readers.

LEMON'S CALENDAR OF STATE PAPERS a.

AFTER above two centuries and a half of the existence of what was designed as the national and official collection of State Papers, and nearly a century after the great want of means of reference to that collection had been recognised by the appointment of the three greatest antiquaries of the time to supply that want, we have in the volume under notice the first portion of a published Calendar of its contents. The collection of State Papers seems to have been as much neglected and as badly used as any other portion of the national records; and there are some stories in existence as to its treatment in times gone by-never, we trust, to return-that would be very ridiculous, if they were not really humiliating. It has fared better than any other portion of the national collection, in being earlier and better provided with a habitation, which, being considered to some extent as the munimentroom of some of the chief working departments of the State, its keepers have been obliged to place the more modern portion of their stores in consultable condition. This, there can be no doubt, reacted very advantageously upon the state of the earlier part of the collection, the condition of which, as we have already remarked, early attracted the attention of antiquaries.

But the Ayloffe Commission, expressly appointed as it was to supply the want of Calendars, &c., did so little, that after about thirty-five years' labour very slight traces of its operations existed, and its arrangements were very superficial, and incorrectly performed. Having done so little, and that not well, it was decided, not to do better and more, but to do nothing at all in the way of Calendars, by the next commission, which was devoted to the publication of the documents themselves. The labours of that commission were carried on much in the same way as those of its contemporary the Record Commission; and they were directed to the printing of documents not only in the State Paper Office itself, but also in the Museum and other collections, before the Commissioners thought of giving satisfactory information as to what really might be the extent and nature of the stores it was directed to bring to light.

Unquestionably, its first work should have been the preparation of complete Calendars of the "State Papers," properly so called, existing in the department especially committed to its notice. An examination of other public collections should then have been made, and its results fully detailed; but, under the shield of a supposed want of powers, this really useful work was not attempted.

By the issue of a new commission in the year 1840, provision was made, and formal authority given, for extending its labours to making Calendars and indexes to the contents of the office. With such zeal was the work entered upon and carried out, that in fourteen years no less than 350 octavo pages of a Calendar were printed, but none published! The office having since that time fallen under the purview of the Master of the Rolls, as Keeper of the Records of the kingdom, his Honour, not being quite satisfied, we imagine, at the rate of progress at which the calendaring had progressed, made arrangements which are sufficiently well known to our

"A Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, 1547–1580, preserved in the State Paper Department of her Majesty's Public Record Office. Edited by Robert Lemon, Esq., F.S.A." (London: Longman & Co.)

readers to need repetition here, for securing extraneous help for the more vigorous prosecution of a work which had been so long in hand. The firstfruits of this more active condition of the department, and of the arguments strongly urged by the Deputy-Keeper in his last Report, (on which we made some remarks b,) appears in the volume before us. It contains the famous 350 pages before noticed, with somewhat more than another 350 pages of a similar kind, with an index, &c. It may excite surprise that the first volume of the Calendars of documents known to commence in the reign of Henry VIII. should begin with the portion for the reign of Edward VI.; but, although the Calendars were not very advanced, it seems that excellent progress had been made as to the distribution of the whole collection of State Papers into the classes to which they were assigned. On this point we are told in the preface:

"The circumstance that this publication commences with the reign of Edward VI. will not be productive of any practical inconvenience. The chronological arrangement of the State Papers admits of any portion of the Calendar being taken up at any period, and, without difficulty, added to the parts preceding or following the period first published; the separate books not being distinguished numerically as volumes, but ranging only in their order of time. Thus the remaining portion of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from 1581 to 1603, although it is in hand, may not appear until after the Calendar of a portion of the reign of James I. shall have been published; and again, the first volume of Charles I. may be in print before the reign of James I. is fully completed. The whole, when finished, will make one consecutive series, in complete chronological order; and the Calendar of the Papers of the reign of Henry VIII. will, in fact, when published, form the first volume of the series."

And for this state of things, highly satisfactory as far as it goes, the public are chiefly indebted to the present staff of the establishment.

With regard to the contents of this volume, the works of Sharon Turner, Mr. Tytler, Von Raumer, and others, have long shewn unmistakeably what a rich store of historic material was hidden, and seemed to be too jealously watched, in the State Paper Office.

For the general reader and historic student, notices of papers of great interest will be found scattered throughout the volume. The intrigues of Seymour, Somerset, and Northumberland, in the reign of Edward VI.; the rebellion of Wyatt, and the plots of others, in that of Mary; the varied struggles of parties, and the ever-changing phases of the religious difficulties in the reign of Elizabeth, all receive illustration in many papers here described, not always at sufficient length. During the last-mentioned reign, as the editor remarks, there is a strongly-marked change in the character of the papers. The progress of the social condition of the kingdom in its numerous branches, the vicious system of monopolies, the origin of many improvements and discoveries that have long been considered modern, may be here traced.

There can be no question that it is the bounden duty of a public department to make known the extent and nature of its charge. In this case, though the contents of the State Paper Office have long been tolerably well known to a select few, yet that select number is only a small portion of those who would take an interest in the documents there contained, if full descriptions of those contents were consultable. This is shewn by the very favourable reception with which the present volume has been greeted, and the great increase in the number of those who have availed themselves of its contents by consulting the originals it refers to.

In the feeling of gratitude which is sure to pervade those who, having

b GENT. MAG., September, 1856, p. 318, sqq.