BOOKS.

LADY PALMERSTON AND HER TIMES.* LADY AIRLIE did admirably in her In Whig Society, but she has done even better in her new book, Lady Palmerston and Her Times. Here she gives us, not merely an anthology of Whig letters and 'Whig stories, but a full-length picture of a great Whig lady, and incidentally a number of kitcats " of her family and friends. The chief of these is Lord Beauvale, her brother, and brother, therefore, of the great Lord Mel- bourne. Incidentally, also, we get an excellent picture of Lord Palmerston.

Lady Airlie carries the reticence of the biographer to its farthest limits. She never gets between us and her subjects. Yet she shows no small literary accomplishment, though usually on the negative side. Her essential quality is that she exactly understands the people of whom she writes and is sympathetic without, as the Elizabethans would have put it, growing "fond." She never bores us with tedious or inept comparisons, though she will often hint a contrast. Above all, there is no foolish singing of the praises of the great days of old or depreciation of the little days of the new age. And so we get an easy, well-proportioned book.

Lady Palmerston had no literary pretensions, and obviously had no notion of what an excellent letter writer she was. She wrote, not to show off her talent, but to please herself and her correspondents—wrote, that is, about things for which she eared and therefore always with vividness and charm. She was a fascinating woman in every scene in the drama of life. She was the most attractive of girls and of daughters. As a young wife and mother she bewitched the world. When, after Lord Cowper's death, she became Lady Palmerston, she was one of the best of the long list of statesmen's wives of which English History and Politics shows so many good examples. As a sister she was as warm-hearted as she was wise and gentle. To her children and grandchildren she showed herself an admirable mother, and throughout her long life, chequered though it was by many griefs, she maintained a great-hearted and level-headed temper which will get thousands of admirers for the splendid shadow thrown on Lady Airlie's screen. Of no woman is it truer to say that she was never "grave through pride nor gay through folly." Neither her position, nor her beauty, nor her cleverness, ever made her vain or selfish. But, above all, she was always alive and always an inspiration of vitality in others.

With a sure instinct Lady Airlic has kept perhaps the most characteristic story of her till the last moment of her biography. Though the beloved Emmie felt Lord Palmerston's death deeply, and though it seemed at first as if the light of her life had gone out, she made the four years by which she survived him full of "the sunshine - of the breast "—to borrow Gray's immortal phrase. In that sunshine she rejoiced with her friends and her children. Only a year before her death she said to her daughter : "I think, Fanny, I must really begin low bodies again in the evening." She was then eighty-one years of age, and yet still sat bolt upright in her chair. Throughout her life she was always beginning "low bodies" again. Just as age could not destroy her matchless shoulders and the gallant carriage of the "dashing gown" which Lord Melbourne had admired, so it could not enfeeble her desire to make her friends happy. Those she loved must share in the resilience of her heart. So long as her pulses beat, her eyes shine, and her ears hear, she charmed the world and got back from those she charmed the joy of joys. Happiness flew backwards and forwards between her and her companions like a weaver's shuttle. "Who will fetch my green bag ? " was the order of the day for her great-grandchildren, for in the green bag lurked the lemon drops they loved.

Lady Airlie tells us, incidentally, a saying of Sir Robert Peel's which might be a fit motto for her book. "Damn the Whigs, they're all cousins ! " he exclaimed, when he was trying to put together his first Ministry in 1834. The book is a history of cousins, for in the Whig political world Lady Palmerston was " cousine de tout le monde." But this is specially true of the early part, or what we might call the • Lay Palmerston and Her Times. By Ifabell Countess of Airlie. 2 Volumes. London: Hodder. and Stoughton., L30s. net.1

Lady Cowper side of the book. Lady Airlie well brings out a point which the ordinary public of to-day might easily miss. In marrying Palmerston she stepped out of the inner Whig circle. Palmerston, though an Irish Viscount, was by no means in the Holy of holies. Indeed, he was looked upon by the members of that supercilious oligarchy as some- thing of a vulgarian, a political adventurer; little better, indeed, than Canning or the Wellesleys. lie by no means knew all the shibboleths or rules of the great game, and many of his deeds and words would have raised the eye- brows of the fastidious Melbourne and of the still more fastidious Beauvale. But it was part of the greatness of Lady Palmerston that when her heart was touched she cared for none of these things, and could pass from the serene atmosphere of Panshanger to that of Brocket without a qualm.

What make these little ripples on the best side of the Whig world all the more amusing is the fact that many of the smartest Whig families were what the heralds in any country but our own would have dubbed " ignobiles." Just as the Foxes and Pitts at the beginning of the eighteenth century were people of very humble birth, so in the middle of the eighteenth century were the Lambs. Lord Melbourne was characteristically amused to tell the Queen that be did not know who his grandfather was. In France, indeed, the Lambs, with their plebeian name and plebeian pedigree, would have been almost invisible to the grandees of Versailles. In Austria they could not have crossed the doors of the Hofburg. And yet so wonderfully constructed and so little aristocratic in the true sense was English Society then as now that the smart Whigs of the Regency quite naturally and without any feeling of inverted snobbism looked down upon men of far better birth.

Scattered up and down Lady Airlic's two volumes there are plenty of little touches to illustrate what we have been saying. A good example is Lady Palmerston's attitude towards the Duke of Wellington. Curiously enough, the great soldier was a good deal of a snob. He realized that he was a little out of it in those innermost rooms of fashion which he so greatly loved to enter. What he yearned to be, and what he never attained to, was to be the first gentleman of polities. Ile wanted the Melbourne touch but never achieved it. There is a delightful account of George IV. trying to persuade him to take office as Commander-in-Chief and so help Canning and his Ministry. Lady Palmerston tells us that the Duke of Wellington's reason for not accepting was that " he cannot till Canning apologizes for the rebuke he gave him in his letter, & this rebuke is always what he stands upon ; this he said to the King, who's answer naturally was, ` What Nonsense ! ' "

I wish I could quote the whole of this letter with its amusing remarks about SheridSn's grand-daughters, who, we are told, "are much admired, but are strange girls, swear and say all sorts of odd things to make the men laugh. I am surprised so sensible a woman as Mrs. Sheridan should let them go on so. I suppose she cannot stop the old blood coming out."

In this context I may quote a letter from Lady Cowper to her brother, Frederick Lamb, afterwards Lord Beauvale :—

"Begun August 3rd (1827).

I got your letter yesterday of 26th July & am sorry not to hear of your arrival here being more fixed, but I think you are quite right to make some sacrifices to Canning's interests. I really do pity that Man, he is so beset by business, & at the same time so unwell—not I hope seriously, but still anything is uncomfortable that lasts so long, & now in this time of quiet he ought to be gaining strength which has not yet been the ease. What he wants is quiet of mind and brisk air : the first in his situation is pretty nearly impossible & the air of Chiswick is merely just better than Downing Street. They talk of Brighton and did talk of Chatsworth, but this latter seems more improbable. Nothing is more prosperous than the general state of politicks, but his health is the ticklish point. Ile has had a blister on his side these two days for a pain he had, but it laity be only cold or derangement of Liver, and Stomach is such a capricious Organ that one never need despair even when the symptoms are worst, witness Lambton & Lord Tavistock who were both given over by their friends, & got well nobody knows how—but then they were not in Office and their minds were quiet."

That is not a good but a bad example of Lady Palmerston's style, but there is an amusing naiveté about the Liver and Stomach episode. I feel sure it will be enjoyed by readers at's moment when so many of us are "fog-poisoned."

• Though it is not by Lady Palmerston, but by her brother, Lord Beauvale, I cannot resist quoting a .portion of a very

amusing letter which he wrote to his sister in regard to a plan under which her beautiful daughter Minny was to be married to an undesirable suitor. Here is his super-scolding of his sister :—

"The Girl has no fancy for him and what the Devil there is in its favor I am at a loss to perceive, except his being what you call in love with her and a Person as you think to be fallen in Jove with. I am used to this sort of stuff from Ldy Anne Wyndham and Ldy Sarah Bayly and Mrs. Orby Hunter, but in yr mouth it surprises me and I am at a loss to know what you do upon these occasions with the strong sense which you shew upon all others. If the Girl had taken a violent fancy for him, it would be to be lamented and undergone if it could not be cured, but to daily with it and invite it is to me inconceivable. You have now got the thing into yr favorite position, that is, to keep him as a hanger on, shilly-shallying with her till the Girl shld appear to be on the point of wishing the thing, when the inconveniences of it wld fairly strike you and you wld have the amusement of a difficulty to be overcome in getting rid of what you had yrseff been instrumental in bringing on. But this mode of dealing with these things is in my opinion neither safe nor fair nor creditable, and if She cares as little for him as you say, I recommend the getting rid of it at once and for ever. As to his love I suppose it's about as violent as it was for Liverpool's daughter and as it will be for some other six weeks after Mizmy shall have turned him off. As to her, I can't say how much I admire her. She shews in every thing a good sense and resolution which will bring her through all things—but in God's name when this is got rid of, (as I have no doubt it will be when you come to look fairly at it) do try to know beforehand what is suitable to her and what is not, and do not be balancing about after a thing is proposed, and when a negative of it is to be pronounced ought to be so at once. Of all the matches that have offered I have not a hesitation in saying that this is the least desirable. Ossulston was 40 times better, Bob Grosvenor was better. F. Robinson is infinitely better, but if anything can cloud her happy and brilliant prospects and reduceher ultimately to make an indifferent marriage, it will be this way of dallying with undesirable offers, a way which is attended with a thousand risks, which never fails to let loose a torrent of ill nature and which justifies it from the very quarters where you wld least desire it to exist. So much for this, instead of being flattered by the offer she has had, I am humbled by the mode in which it has been dealt with. I rate her a good deal higher, and so I have no doubt would every- body else.'

The writer ends by working off the ffi-temper caused by the marriage project with some ill-natured remarks about fellow tourists in Scotland.

And so farewell to the generous, the ingenuous, the high- hearted, sweet-tempered Lady Palmerston, and many thanks to Lady Airlie for having presented her to the reading public. But Lady Airlie, having shown us what she can do, must be kept at it. That sounds brutal, but there are so many delightful pages of history which she might make living for us that we cannot spare her. Why, for example, should she not give us a gallery of the great Whig ladies to whom Stowe was a centre ? But very likely she has plenty of letters at her command that deal with her own family and will introduce us to a new set of fascinating figures.

J. Si. LOE STRACHEY.