orton Papers,
of which the reader may likewise observe a particular notice in Sir
Henry Wotton's will, in Izaak Walton's Lives. Unsunned treasures lie
in the State-paper office.

[255] Since this article has been sent to press I rise from reading
one in the _Edinburgh Review_ on Lord Orford's and Lord Waldegrave's
Memoirs. This is one of the very rare articles which could only come
from the hand of a master long exercised in the studies he
criticises. The critic, or rather the historian, observes, that "of
a period remarkable for the establishment of our present system of
government, no authentic materials had yet appeared. Events of
public notoriety are to be found, though often inaccurately told, in
our common histories; but the secret springs of action, the private
views and motives of individuals, &c., are as little known to us as
if the events to which they relate had taken place in China or
Japan." The clear, connected, dispassionate, and circumstantial
narrative, with which he has enriched the stores of English history,
is drawn from _the sources of_ SECRET HISTORY; from _published
memoirs_ and _contemporary correspondence_.

LITERARY RESIDENCES.

Men of genius have usually been condemned to compose their finest works,
which are usually their earliest ones, under the roof of a garret; and
few literary characters have lived, like Pliny and Voltaire, in a villa
or _chateau_ of their own. It has not therefore often happened that a
man of genius could raise local emotions by his own intellectual
suggestions. Ariosto, who built a palace in his verse, lodged himself in
a small house, and found that stanzas and stones were not put together
at the same rate: old Montaigne has left a description of his library;
"over the entrance of my house, where I view my court-yards, and garden,
and at once survey all the operations of my family!"

There is, however, a feeling among literary men of building up their own
elegant fancies, and giving a permanency to their own tastes; we dwell
on their favourite scenes as a sort of portraits, and we eagerly collect
those few prints, which are their only vestiges. A collection might be
formed of such literary residences chosen for their amenity and their
retirement, and adorned by the objects of their studies; from that of
the younger Pliny, who called his villa of literary leisure by the
endearing term of _v