Half-Hours with Some Famous Ambassadors. By George Barnett Smith does
not seem to have gone to original sources, but to have contented himself with easily-accessible books. There are documents in our State Paper Office, at Simancas and elsewhere, which might make some really good " half-hours " with ambassadors, famous or other. This we do not find. The book does not even give what is promised. The ambassadors, in the first place, are not all "famous." Even when they are famous, we do not hear much about them in their character of ambassadors. Sir R. M. Keith may or may not have deserved the title ; but the first chapter is really the story of Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark. We have three pages about Keith, with some quite common-place details. Then the writer quietly says :—" Place aux dames ! Having traced the career of Colonel Keith to his settlement at that Court, when he was to reap hie greatest diplomatic laurels, we now come to the history of that unfortunate Queen, ece." Keith is mentioned again more than once, but always in a subordinate way. As for any particulars of a diplomatic contest, which, of course, took place, there is but little indeed. Talleyrand, the subject of the next article, was un- doubtedly famous ; but we hear little of him as ambassador. The familiar incidents, the well-worn anecdotes reappear, but of his diplo- matic career we have no satisfactory account. The articles on Gondomar and Metternich are more to the point. That on the Chevalier d'Eon is out of place, and so is that on Lord Malinesbury, which is really a repetition of the miserable story of Queen Caroline of Brunswick.
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