ruth lies
between the two. He was not in the least an estimable or an admirable
figure, but he wrote admirable, indeed incomparable letters to which the
world is indebted beyond expression. If we can almost say that we know
the London of the last century as well as the London of to-day it is
largely to Horace Walpole's letters that our knowledge is due. They can
hardly be over-praised, they can hardly be too often read by the lover
of last century London. Horace Walpole affected to despise men of
letters. It is his punishment that his fame depends upon his letters,
those letters which, though their writer was all unaware of it, are
genuine literature, and almost of the best.

We could linger over almost every page of the Whartons' volumes, for
every page is full of pleasant suggestions. The name of George Villiers,
second Duke of Buckingham brings up at once a picture of perhaps the
brilliantest and basest period in English history. It brings up too
memories of a fiction that is even dearer than history, of that
wonderful romance of Dumas the Elder's, which Mr. Louis Stevenson has
placed among the half-dozen books that are dearest to his heart, the
"Vicomte de Bragelonne". Who that has ever followed, breathless and
enraptured, the final fortunes of that gallant quadrilateral of
musketeers will forget the part which is played by George Villiers, Duke
of Buckingham, in that magnificent prose epic? There is little to be
said for the real Villiers; he was a profligate and a scoundrel, and he
did not show very heroically in his quarrel with the fiery young Ossory.
It was one thing to practically murder Lord Shrewsbury; it was quite
another thing to risk the wrath and the determined right hand of the
Duke of Ormond's son. But the Villiers of Dumas' fancy is a fairer
figure and a finer lover, and it is pleasant after reading the pages in
which the authors of these essays trace the career of Dryden's epitome
to turn to those volumes of the great Frenchman, to read the account of
the duel with de Wardes and invoke a new blessing on the muse of
fiction.

In some earlier volumes of the same great series we meet with yet
another figure who has his image in the Wharton picture gallery. In that
"crowded and sunny field of life"--the words are Mr. Stevenson's, and
they apply to the whole musketeer epic--that "place busy as a city,
bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with
delightful speech," the Abbe Scar