ition to our stock of knowledge of those times. The literary style of
this piece of writing shows Lord Shelburne to have had in him the
making of a successful memoirist. Gossip, anecdote, passages of sarcasm
and epigram are mingled in skillful proportions; and there is certainly
no waste of the milk of human kindness. Pitt (Lord Chatham) is dissected
with ruthless elaboration: half a dozen minor statesmen are scarified
with a single sentence apiece. Horace Walpole himself, with all his
sinister acidity, nowhere hits harder--we had almost said more
bitterly--than does Lord Shelburne in this short sketch of his. But just
as an English House of Commons loves nothing so well as a "personal
explanation," so the personalities of literature have a way of
attracting us in the direct ratio of their piquancy and severity. Lord
Shelburne has quite a gift of killing two birds with one stone in his
trenchant criticisms. He cannot crush George III.'s father without
demolishing poor Lord Melcombe _en passant_. "The prince's life (he
says) may be judged in some degree from the account given of it in Lord
Melcombe's diary--a man who passed his life with great men whom he did
not know, and in the midst of affairs which he never comprehended, but
recites facts from which others may draw deductions which he never
could. The prince's activity could only be equaled by his childishness
and his falsehood. His life was such a tissue of both as could only
serve to show that there is nothing which mankind will not put up with
where power is lodged."

The elder Pitt--with whom, it will be remembered, Lord Shelburne acted
in the memorable events that immediately preceded and accompanied the
beginning of the war of independence--comes in for his full share of
severe animadversion, but the portrait is undeniably vigorous and alive.
Here is a specimen: "It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was
insolent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue and
patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded
consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which
may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying on
any private testimony. He certainly was above avarice, but as to
anything else, he only repressed his desires and acted; he was naturally
ostentatious to a degree of ridicule; profuse in his house and family
beyond what any degree of prudence could warrant. His marriage certainly
had no s