diary,
which obviously was not intended for any purpose but for his own private
eye and collected meditations.[105] There his whole heart is laid open:
his errors are not concealed, and the purity of his intentions is
established. Laud, who too haughtily blended the prime minister with the
archbishop, still, from conscientious motives, in the hurry of public
duties, and in the pomp of public honours, could steal aside into
solitude, to account to God and himself for every day, and "the evil
thereof."

The diary of Henry Earl of Clarendon, who inherited the industry of his
father, has partly escaped destruction; it presents us with a picture of
the manners of the age, from whence, says Bishop Douglas, we may learn
that at the close of the last century, a man of the first quality made
it his constant practice to pass his time without shaking his arm at a
gaming-table, associating with jockeys at Newmarket, or murdering time
by a constant round of giddy dissipation, if not of criminal indulgence.
Diaries were not uncommon in the last age: Lord Anglesea, who made so
great a figure in the reign of Charles the Second, left one behind him;
and one said to have been written by the Duke of Shrewsbury still
exists.

But the most admirable example is Lord Clarendon's History of his own
"Life," or rather of the court, and every event and person passing
before him. In this moving scene he copies nature with freedom, and has
exquisitely touched the individual character. There that great statesman
opens the most concealed transactions, and traces the views of the most
opposite dispositions; and, though engaged, when in exile, in furthering
the royal intercourse with the loyalists, and when, on the Restoration,
conducting the difficult affairs of a great nation, a careless monarch,
and a dissipated court, yet besides his immortal history of the civil
wars, "the chancellor of human nature" passed his life in habitual
reflection, and his pen in daily employment. Such was the admirable
industry of our later ancestors: their diaries and their memoirs are its
monuments!

James the Second is an illustrious instance of the admirable industry of
our ancestors. With his own hand this prince wrote down the chief
occurrences of his times, and often his instant reflections and
conjectures. Perhaps no sovereign prince, said Macpherson, has been
known to have left behind him better materials for history. We at length
possess a considerable porti