BOOKS.

THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS.—THIRD PART.0 Ow November 7th and 14th, 1885, we published notices of the second part of this work. In that of the 7th, we endeavoured to record our recollections of Mr. Greville himself, and to give some idea of his person, his character, his capacity, and his defects. The two volumes now under notice contain nothing which adds to our knowledge of him in those respects. We are somewhat disappointed in them. We expected to find more profound observations, if the details of society were less amusing. But the political events have been treated by numerous writers ; and as to the chronicle of society, Lord Malmesbury's amusing memoirs have completely cut the ground from under Mr. Grevilla's feet; so that unless men are interested in the special study of history, and wish to compare these journals with those of others, there is hardly a page to make them forget the dinner-hour or postpone their slumbers.

The portraits of deceased persons, which formed so important a section of the previous volumes, are few and short in these. Theyconsist of an affectionate encomium on the first Lord Ellesmere, a fair enough memoir of the Princesse de Lieven, one of Lady Ashburton, and of sundry short notices of Miss Berry, Croker, Macaulay, and the Duke of Devonshire. That of General Anson is promised, but not given ; while we are deprived of one of Mr. Rogers on the score that "for some years past he had so great an aversion to me that I kept away from him, and never saw anything of him." In fact, he seems to have displayed to Mr. Greville those peculiarities which made Byron write of him,— " For his faults, be has bat one, 'Tie but envy, when all's done; And his merits, would yea know 'em, Once he wrote a pretty poem."

As in the earlier volumes, there are certain characters whit& stand out of themselves, without any intention on the part

• A Journal of the Reign of Quotes Viotorie,front MG to 1850. By the late Chariot OP. Greville, Pee., Clerk of the,fte. Loudon: Loosening end Co.

of Mr. Greville to make them conspicuous. Of these, we may name, first and foremost, that of the Queen as a

shining example, and that of Lord Russell as one which in

every page of the book causes the reader to wonder on what ground, if Mr. Greville is to be trusted, Lord Russell had

achieved the reputation which at one time he enjoyed. A large portion of these journals are, indeed, taken up with everlasting scenes with Lord John as to his elaime,his position, his wishing for this, and avoiding that, the whole course of his career apparently being devoted to the object of getting back the Prime Minister's place, or of bringing in a little Reform Bill,—these to be accomplished at a moment when all Europe was verging on a tremendous war. Either the importance of these cross-purposes is exaggerated, or else they afford grounds for a suspicion that Lord John must have already very much changed in moral strength and political insight from what he had been. Yet he kept up the struggle for ten years, and ultimately, on Lord Palmerston's death, once more attained to the office of Prime Minister. In various con- fidential communications made to Mr. Greville by the Duke of Bedford and Lord Clarendon, are to be found accounts of the Queen's proceedings either in her domestic life or at the time of political changes ; and these display just that amount of interference which would be likely to rub off the asperities arising inevitably at such moments, and to cause the machine of State to work without too much interruption. There are also brief accounts of the Prince Consort, which indicate the tendency of his labours and occupa- tions, and the devotion with which he relieved the Queen of some of the rougher part of her work. Lord Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, himself appears now for the first time on some terms of intimacy with Mr. Greville. Their con- nection seems to have arisen out of transactions in busi- ness for some common friend, and only to have diverged now and then into political talk ; we doubt their ever having been congenial companions; the nonsensical trash which Mr. Disraeli was in the habit of talking, from which only now and then gems of wit and epigram sprung, would have been sure to pro- voke Mr. Greville, as, indeed, it did all the leading conversa- tionalists of the day, few of whom could bear with patience Mr. Disraeli's name. In fact, he did not run in the beaten track, and though what he had to say was original and unexpected, it was so unexpected that it often occurred that listeners failed to appreciate it. Mr. Greville seems to have considered Mr. Disraeli as a man of eccentric genius, but not as a serious politician. Had he lived to witness the occurrences from 1874 to 1880, he would indeed have been astounded.

The first event enlarged upon in these volumes is the forma- tion of the Coalition Government of Lord Aberdeen. The pre- liminary negotiations were carried on at Woburn, where the Dukes of Bedford and Newcastle, Lords Aberdeen, Clarendon, and John Russell, were staying. Neither Mr. Greville himself, who records what passed, nor Mr. Hayward, who would have been willing to record it, were present ; but the former obtained his information from the Duke of Bedford subsequently. The following extracts may serve to show the action of the Court, and of some of those engaged in the transaction. The Duke thus describes to Mr. Greville the feelings of the Court :—

" The Queen is delighted to have got rid of the late Ministers: she felt, as everybody else does, that their Government was disgraced by their shuffling and prevarication : and she said that Harcourt's letter (which was all true) was sufficient to show what they were. As she is very true herself, it was very natural she should disapprove their

conduct."

Next we have given to Mr. Greville, on September 2nd, 1853, the account of the Woburn meeting :—

" Just before the Government broke down, and before that reunion at Woburn of which so much was maid, the Prince gave him [the Duke of Bedford] to understand that they should look to him for advice if anything occurred, which they were every day expecting. The Duke was at Woburn, and one morning when the hounds met there, and half the county was at breakfast in the great hall, word was brought him that a messenger was come from Osborne with a letter for him. He found it was a letter from the Prince, in which he informed him that this was despatched by a safe and trustworthy hand, and nobody was to know of its being sent ; that the Derby Government was at an end, and the Queen and Prince were anxious for his opinion on the state of affairs, the disposition of public men, and what course they had better take. The Doke had recently been in personal communication with all the leaders, with Aberdeen and Lord John, Newcastle, Clarendon, Lansdowne, Palmerston, and others, and he was therefore apprised of all their sentiments and in a condition to give the fall information to the Court. He sat himself down, and with the greatest rapidity (his horse at the door to go hunting) wrote four or five sheets of paper, containing the amplest

details of the sentiments and views of these different statesmen, and ended by advising that the Qaeen should send for Lords Lansdowne and Aberdeen, as she did."

As late as January, 1857, Mr. Greville again recurs to these negotiations in the following terms :—

"At Woburn for two days. I found the Duke entirely occupied with the question (in which he had, of course, a various correspond- ence) whether, when Aberdeen's Government was formed, Aberdeen had at the time imparted to John Russell hie wish and intention to retire as soon as possible, no that John might take his place as Premier." "The matter now is not of much importance, but is worth noticing from the evidence it affords of the difficulty of arriving at truth, and therefore of the fallibility of all history. Though this circumstance is so recent and at the time so important, not one of the parties, neither Lord John nor Aberdeen, nor the other two, can recollect what did pass ; but as they all concur in their impressions that no such engagement was given when the Government was formed, it may safely be concluded that this is the truth."

Whatever the conditions made at the formation of the Coalition Government between the leaders at Woburn were, an Administration then was formed not wholly unsatisfactory to the Liberal Party, and entirely pleasing to the Queen. The consequences of the strenuous and successful opposition to Lord Palmerston's foreign policy carried on by the joint efforts of the Court, the Tories and Peelite Parties, and of foreign Powers, was now to be seen. Lord Aberdeen as Prime Minister, and Lord Clarendon, who had been a consistent critic of Lord Palmerston, undertook the responsibility of carrying out a policy which was bound to differ from that of Lord Palmerston ; and what followed is only too well known. The Democratic Party at that time was wholly devoted to peace and non-intervention. In the solitary instance of the Eastern Question, they were without doubt in the right ; bat they did not argue it on the merits of the Eastern Question, but on intervention in the abstract; and the consequence was that, notwithstanding the whole Peelite Party, the whole Radical Party, and a large section of the Whig Party agreed in deprecating the substance and methods of Lord Palmerston's action, it ended in their having every one of them to accept, and most of them to support, hie opinions, and to resort to measures far more violent than he would originally have advocated. The course of negotiations up to the breaking out of the war does not differ in these memoirs very much from that described by Kinglake; but there is nothing picturesque about it, nothing dramatic, and nothing startling. Lord Aber- deen, with all his manifold advantages, his long experience, his calm and kindly philosophy, stands forth very much as the eager advocate of energy depicted him in 1854.

Lord Stratford is accused of having allowed a spirit of revenge to actuate him in the impediments he placed in the way of what appeared to be a not unworthy compromise, and we confess to an ever-increasing astonishment, which all historical examina- tion tends to increase, at the singular accuracy with which public opinion is often formed upon events of the day, even when all the details are inaccurately brought under public notice. As long as the war was doubtful, all that Mr. Greville says is correct enough. He shows clearly that which is now well known,— namely, that Lord Aberdeen was averse to war, and more espe- cially that he trusted to the assurances of the Emperor Nicholas. Those who attacked Lord Aberdeen never said anything worse of him.

Once the war began, for divers reasons Mr. Greville held it in holy horror. In an earlier volume is found a saying of M. Thiers, to the effect that Mr. Greville was une eponge tramp& dans is liguide de Madame de Lieven ; and this saying is justified by his admission that after the death of Lord Beauvale in 1853, her correspondence with him was intimate and unbroken. We believe that the general tenor of his opinions on foreign affairs was derived from her correspondence ; and her feelings as to the Crimean War may easily be imagined when we con- sider her past love for English society, her then existing habits of Parisian life, and the general fidelity with which she is believed to have served her country. Mr. Greville, like many others, had almost heard the "beatings of the wings of the angel of death." His eldest nephew returned safe from Inkerman, but with a ghastly tale of that which he himself had witnessed.

"Of those whom no trumpet could wake from their slumber, No leader could rally, no signal recall," were the General to whom he was aide-de-camp,—namely, Cathcart; his fellow aide-de-camp, the brilliant and BOSOM. plished Charles Seymour ; and his own young brother, a joyous boy in the Guards. Prom these two causes, the one private. and the other public, Mr. Greville used language habitually about the war far stronger than that which is to be found in these journals, and any influence he possessed, during the negotiations which brought it to a close, was likely to be used in favour of making concessions which in the then temper of the people might very easily have brought them to an untimely end. The fact is, that totally irrespective of the original cause of the quarrel, the war was a duel entrance, and only ended when one of the parties was quite exhausted, and the other, from material wealth and commercial prosperity, ready and willing to begin another campaign with enormous forces and undiminished energy.

Mr. Greville's account of Lord Raglan's career as a whole is quite just; he shared the opinion of the whole Cabinet on Lord Raglan's shortcomings. Mr. Kinglake, in his fitful temper, has attributed this view to Lord Panmure alone; but it is well known that it was concurred in by the Queen and Prince, as well as by the Ministers. When Lord Lyons returned to England, Mr. Greville had an opportunity of listening to him on this subject, and he gradually came to that decision which will, we believe, be the verdict of posterity,—namely, that Lord Raglan was a singularly simple and gallant hero, who, by the help of his character, was able to take the lead among a set of Generals perhaps superior to him in technical knowledge, and to a certain extent in general capacity, but utterly inferior to him in all those qualities which are calculated to impress other men, and to stir them up to great and gallant deeds. When Lord Raglan died, it is absolutely true that the Government had no one to succeed him ; for some reason or other, when General Simpson resigned, it was resolved at all hazard to break the rule of seniority, and the senior officer of the Army in the field, Sir Colin Campbell, was passed over, along with Generals Barnard and Rokeby; the aneodote which Mr. Greville tells, that after the Redan it was seriously proposed by the Cabinet to make General Wind- ham Commander-in-Chief, without any acquaintance with his capacity or professional knowledge, is quite true, and -shows clearly enough the dearth of men to supply the place of the gallant old officer whom the Press had so ruthlessly cried down, and whom the Ministers unanimously believed to be incompetent. If it could have been shown that any of the French Generals were more fit to assume the lead, doubtless they would have obtained it ; but this was not the case; on the contrary, as long as Lord Raglan was alive, it was to him and him only, that the French Emperor, as well as the English Government, looked for truthful and sufficient reports on the state of the armies. At last the peace was made, the terms of which turned out so onerous to Russia that they would have required a perpetual alliance of France, England, and Turkey to keep them in force; luckily, they are now modified.

Of the chief characters in this great drama, the greatest is Lord Palmerston. It does not appear that Mr. Greville ever surmounted his prejudice against him; but after the complete failure of Lord Aberdeen's policy, as contradistingnished to that of Lord Palmerston, Lord Clarendon and the Court seem to have come round, and to have recognised his power. Lord Clarendon, as Foreign Secretary in the Coalition and first Government of Lord Palmerston, was brought into daily and hourly communications with the two rival chiefs ; and having once seen the consequences of Lord Aberdeen's methods, he became a most faithful adherent to Lord Palmerston for thereat of that statesman's life. He first rendered, him important services by persuading the Court to receive him back into their favour, and this was a service which no one else could have rendered. Throughout all these volumes, as we have shown, Lord John Russell's pretensions to become once more Prime Minister never ceased. Often as he was rebuffed, often as he went in, and out again, the game of passing Lord Palmerston in the race was never interrupted. On the other hand, Lord Clarendon had the suggestion several times made to him, both by the Court and by some of his numerous friends, that to be the successor to Lord Palmerston was a very legitimate object for his ambition. To these suggestions he always made the same answer, as he did, indeed, after the death of Lord Palmerston,—that he felt, from his want of touch with the parties in the House of Commons, he was unsuitable for the task. The absence of any desire on his part to obtain the Premiership enabled him to point out to the Queen all the better parts of Lord Palmerston's character. Mr. Greville's prophecies in many cases in these volumes have been very unfortunate. He says in one place that "the apparently vast popularity of Lord Palmerston in

the country looks as if it was of a very shadowy, unsubstantial kind, and would very likely be found wanting at a General Election." For three General Elections after this prophecy the people returned a majority in his favour. In the next page he says :—

" Nothing short of some loud explosion will make the mass of people believe that any serious danger ean threaten a Constitution like ours, which has passed through so many trials and given so many proofs of cohesion but we have never seen such symptoms as are now visible, sash a thorough confusion and political chaos, or the public mind so completely dissatisfied and so puzzled how to arrive at any just conclusions as to the past, the present, or the future."

This was in 1855, and for nine years afterwards the people were content with the man then at the heed of affairs.

In the summer of 1855, Mr. Greville pays a visit to Paris, and dines with the Emperor twice, once at the Tuileries and once at Villeneuve l'Etang. He tells us nothing new of the Emperor, whose life and habits have been so often described. He was struck with" his extreme simplicity and the easiness of his inter- course, but also with his appearance being so very mesquin." The death of Lord Raglan takes place during his visit to Paris, and he is able to hear what was said of his character by the Imperial Court. The month of December of the same year witnesses the visit of the King of Sardinia to England. Lord Ellesmere said of him "that he looked at Windsor more like a chief of the Heruli or Longobardi, than a modern Italian Prince ; and the Duchess of Sutherland declared that of all the Knights of the Garter she had seen, he was the only one who seemed as if he would have the best of it with the dragon." Daring the nego- tiations at Paris in the spring of 1856, Mr. Greville again went to Paris, and was lodged at the Embassy. He remained there till the birth of the Prince Imperial, which he describes as having been received" with good-will, but without the least enthusiasm." After the Crimean War, the two hostile Parliamentary divisions against Palmerston—namely, the Chinese division, followed by a dissolution so triumphant for him in the defeat of the Peace Party, and that on the Conspiracy to Murder Bill, which inaugurated Lord Derby's Second Administration—are both well described in the second volume. The Indian Mutiny and the Italian War were the military events of that period. Upon the restoration of Lord Palmerston to office in 1859, as we ventured to remark in our previous notices of these journals, there is not a shadow of an idea in Mr. Greville's mind of the great popular movements, the foundations of which were being laid at that time. He speaks rather with contempt of what he considers the mania of Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, and Mr. Gladstone in favour of Italian unity. Few, if any, of the public men seem to have contemplated the impending revolution in Germany arising out of the question of the Danish Duchies ; and although the Americans were on the eve of their great civil war, the subject is never even mentioned by Mr. Greville.

At the close of the second volume, there are two accounts of Gladstone. In the first, we find "Gladstone is said to have become subject to much excitement, and more bitter in controversy in the House of Commons than was his wont. The severe working of his brain, and the wonderful success he has obtained, may account for this." "Clarendon, who watches him, and has means of knowing his disposition, thinks he is moving towards a Democratic union with Bright." The second, which is one of the last entries in this collection, recites the opinion of an aged statesman who can still be referred to ;— "July 1.71h.--I met Charles Villiers at dinner at the Travellers' last night, and had some talk with him about Gladstone : he thinks is far better that he should not resign [that is, upon the paper-duties], as he could, and probably would, be very mischievous out of office : he says people do not know the House of Commons, and are little aware that there is an obscure but important element in it of a radioel complexion, and that there are sixty or seventy people who would constitute themselves followers of Gladstone and urge him on, to every sort of mischief." "It is impoesible to calculate on the course of a man so variable and impulsive, bat at present it looks as if he had made up his mind to swallow his mortification and disappoint- ments and to go on with his present colleagues, though Charles Villiers says that he is very dejected and uneasy in his mind and very gloomy in the Cabinet.'

There is but one further entry after this of any importance, and then Mr. Greville gives up the attempt to continue it, and concludes with an expression of "regret that he had not made better use of the opportunities he had had of recording some- thing more worth reading." Mr. Greville lingered on the scene for a few years more; but his infirmities increased, and beyond seeing his usual friends and taking an intermittent interest in what passed, he cannot be considered to have exercised any further influence on political affairs. In conclusion, we venture to record our belief that Mr. Greville, although debased by some sordid faults, had a better side to his character, in which a love of truth was the most conspicuous feature ; and that this love of truth, com- bined with the unequalled means he had of obtaining informa- tion, will confer a value on this work, both as an element of historical study and as a chronicle of the three reigns in which lie lived, which no other work of the kind can be shown in possess.