ile in great examples of it. For
instance, the 'Memoirs of Lord Palmerston,' by Lord Dalling and
Mr. Evelyn Ashley, are full of confidential correspondence on the
secret discussions and resolutions of the Cabinet. The 'Journal
of Lord Ellenborough,' recently published by Lord Colchester,
contains the private record of a Cabinet Minister on the events
of the day and the characters of his colleagues. The more recent
publication of Lord Malmesbury's 'Autobiography,' and of the
Croker Papers, has made public a large amount of correspondence
and information of great interest, with reference to the
ministerial combinations and political transactions of the
present century. And above all, Her Majesty Queen Victoria, by
placing the papers of the late Prince Consort, and her own
correspondence and journals, in the hands of Sir Theodore Martin,
for the purpose of composing from the most authentic materials a
full biography of that illustrious Prince, has shown that, far
from regarding with distrust or repugnance the records of
contemporary history, she has been graciously pleased to
contribute to it in the most ample manner by the publication of
an immense mass of documents relating to the interior of the
Court, the intercourse of the Sovereign with her Ministers, the
character of foreign monarchs, the less known transactions of her
reign, and even the domestic incidents of her life. No Sovereign
ever courted more fully and more willingly the light of publicity
on a reign which needs no concealment or disguise.

It would be presumptuous to compare the Journals of an individual
who never held any important office in the State, and who derived
his knowledge of public affairs entirely from the intercourse of
private friendship, with the correspondence and private records
of sovereigns, ministers, and statesmen of the highest rank,
which have been published with their sanction or with that of
their immediate successors. These Journals advance no such
pretension; but the production of so many confidential documents
of contemporary or recent history by such personages may be
fairly invoked to justify, _a fortiori_, the publication of notes
and memoranda of a humbler character.

The incidents and opinions which will be found in these volumes
derive their chief value from the fact that they are recorded by
a bystander and spectator, who was not, and did not aspire to be,
an actor in the occurrences he witnessed, but who lived on term