Mr. CARPENTER'S Peerage for the People, in its collected shape,
forms a goodly volume ; which, upon the principle of " audi &germ partem," should take its stand beside the eulogistic tomes of more courtly chroniclers. But the book has also ground of its own to stand upon ; being readable, pungent, and anecdotical, with large and apt quotations from memoirs, letters, and even judicial records, touching the exploits of the more modern
hereditary legislators in many pursuits besides legislation. One
of the most extraordinary and racy pieces of the latter kind, is the account of what the Solicitor-General characterized as a "dreadful measure of perjury and guilt "—the Berkeley Peerage case, as proved in evidence before the House, on the attempt of the present Lord SEGRAVE to make good his claim to the earldom of BERKELEY. Such a mixture of coarse, artful profli- gacy, daring fraud, and insensibility to common shame or com- mon decency, has rarely been found in the annals of crime, and never fancied in fiction.
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