Correspondence of Charlotte Grenville, Lady Williams Wynn. Edited by Rachel
Leighton. (Murray. 21s. net..)—George frenville's daughter married Sir Watkin Williams Wynn and was left a widow with six children in 1788. Hex correspondence with her children up to her death in 1832 has been printed and carefully annotated. The volume will interest those who are familiar with the society of the period, though from a historical standpoint it is fragmentary. Lady Williams Wynn's brother was the Earl Temple who communicated to his fellow-peers in 1783 the King's desire that Fox's India Bill should be rejected, and who was rewarded with the Marquisate of Buckingham and with rich sinecures; we hear a. good deal of the life at Stowe in these pages. Lady Williams Wynn's youngest son Henry entered the diplomatic service and went with his uncle, Thomas Grenville the book-collector, to Berlin in 1799. Henry's accounts of his political missions are entertaining. Another son, Charles, went to Paris in 1802, after the Peace of Amiens, and saw there Sir James Mackintosh, who had defended the Revolution against Burke. Mackintosh had met Tallien and put some plain questions to him. Was it true that if Louis had concentrated all the Swiss Guards in barracks round Paris on the morning of the 10th August, he could have reasserted his authority "Yes," replied Tallien, "I fought that day and I was looking on when the handful of Swiss in the Tuileries had cleared the Place du Carrousel and therm ruffians whom one then had to call 'the sovereign people' were fleeing in all directions, but that poor cowardly Xing was afraid to give orders." Tallien went on to ridicule Louis XVL for fearing to shed the blood "of what he called hie good people," good Frenchmen,' and all that sort of nonsense." Tallien's remarks deserve to be noted, as well as his admission that the revolutionary leaders meant to measure the whole of the royal family in the Tuileries.
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