MRS. OSBORN'S LETTERS.* MumoIns are the back-stairs of history; and

up this modest flight Miss Osborn conducts us very agreeably. Her ancestress, whose letters are here presented, was Sarah Byng, daughter of the first Lord Torrington, and sister of the unfortunate Admiral Byng. She was born in 1693, at Southill, in Bedford- shire, and married in 1710 her next-door neighbour, Mr. John Osborn, son and heir of Sir John Osborn, of Chicksa,nds. Mr. Osborn died a year before his father, and in 1720 his little boy succeeded to the baronetcy as Sir Danvers. Mrs. Osborn became her son's guardian. She had the entire management of his estate, and a great portion of these letters is occupied with details of domestic administration. In 1740, Sir Danvers married Lady Mary Montague, daughter of Lord Halifax ; but she died after three years of married life. Her husband lived till 1753, when be died at New York, of which be had just been appointed Governor. He left two sons, George and John; and on his death, his mother, now sixty years old, found herself for a second time burdened with the care of children and the guardianship of a landed property. She lived to see both her grandsons grown up, and a son and heir born to the elder of them. She died in 1775. The letters of which this book is composed are addressed, in earlier days to her brothers, in middle life to her son, and in old age to her younger grandson. A few extracts will give a good notion of their scope and manner. The correspondence opens in 1721 at Bristol, where the young widow seems quite able to enjoy the pleasures of life. She visits "Mr. Southwell's place," King's Weston; " Vanburg was the Architeck and a clumsy lump of building it is little doors, windows and starecase, a prodigious large house, but all the room taken up in thick walls and clumsy pillars." She attends a ball at the " Custome House," where the belle is "Mrs. Bloomer, a parson's wife, young, pretty, and silly." From Bristol she goes to Bath, where "french dames" and " Ginea commerce" are the fashionable amusements. "Gray y° poet lodges in our house, so he has supt with us." From Bath she goes to London, and has her son inoculated ; but in spite of this compliance with medical tyranny, Mrs. Osborn was an anti-vaccinator before her time. " His swelling under his arm is still open, that is the wound that was made there by it being lanced, it is now held open by a pea I would ten thousand times sooner send them into a room to catch the small-pox than poyson their blood in this manner, since there is no knowing when the accidents will end that comes by this pernicious practice."

Mrs. Osborn was not too much engrossed by domestic cares to go a little into the great world. " Munday last was a great Court at St. James's, and most people very fine, but I believe the gentlemen will ware petty-cotes very soon, for many of their Coats were like our Mantuas. Lord Essex had a silver tissue Coat, and pink colour lutestring wascote, and several had pink colour and pale blue padeswoy Coats, whicA looked prodigiously effeminate. The three young •Prin- cesses dansed, which is a signe they got over their inocu- lating very well, for I am sure my son could as soon fly as dame." But beyond what she sees for herself, Mrs. Osborn declines to report. She reads "the public prints," but as "no men belong to me, so of course can have no news that is authentick,"—an unexpected but most just compliment to the accuracy of the ruder sex. From her brother's house of Southill, she writes chatty letters, full of agreeable pictures of country life. They have acquired a new neighbour, Mrs. Beacher "She was a good fortune, tho a Brewer's daughter at Hackney, so you may • Political and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Centurv,1721-1771. Edited by Emily F. D. Osborn. With 4 Mustratione. London and Sydney Griffith, Farren, Okoden, and Well,.

imagine she is nothing extraordinary, but Mr. Beacher will have money to build a new house, and those are, they say, the chief e ingredients towards a happy life." The following extract from a letter from Chilbolton, near Stockbridge, gives a curious view of the educational practice of the time. One can scarcely picture Dr. Fearon out hunting at the head of a party of modern Wykehamists ; but in an age of revivals, even this is poseible :— "Last Munday we were porticulerly well pleased, for by in- vitation we had Dr. Burton, the Master of Winchester School, and his ten young noblemen's sons that live with him, for which ho has .4200 a year for each, and is as a private Goveriaour to them, and they also have the advantage of a publick school at the same time, which surely must be a fine way of educating them. These with 4 other young gentlemen of the School met us in the ffeild a Hunting, they and their attendance and ours made in all 40 people, and after very good sport all came home to dine here. Indeed I have not seen a finer sight than these boys and

their Master together. Deorhurst and his 2 Brother ,Coventrys, Lord {Anniston, Lord Brook, Master Duncomb and Sir Robert Burdet, Master Grevillo, Master Wallop (144 Lyming- ton's son), Master Tryon, also Lord Drumlannich the Duke of Queensherry's son, who is under his peculiar care tho not in the house because ho would not exceed his fixed number. Last week we spent 3 or 4 days at Lord Lymington's which is a fine place, and they very agreable people."

This "fine place" is Hurstbourne, which was burnt down this w inter.

Mrs. Osborn's son, Sir Danvers, is by this time an under- graduate at Cambridge. "He has kept very ill hours ever eince he went down, and consequently cannot study next day, but makes him very indolent. Two o'clock in the morning is very improper horn's They think women and parsons don't know the world, and that it is manly to keep such hours!'

On April 27th, 1734, Mrs. Osborn thus describes the marriage which conveyed the great estates of the Dukes of Kingston to Mr. Meadows, great-grandfather of the present Lord Manvers : —" The long expected match of Lady Ffany Pierpoint and Phil! Meadows was concluded last Tuesday from the Opera. She pretended to be ill and went out, neither servants nor

chair of her own could be found at that time, and so in a hack ,chair she went directly to Lady Meadows in Priory Garden, where was Parson, License, Husband, and all ready. Next day he and she went out of town to his sister Buldstrodes at Hounslough. She was of age the day before."

In 1736, Sir Danvers came of age, and his mother's letters are full of domestic details attendant on this event. Here is a curious bit of statistics : "When I live by myself I generaly spend in what I call housekeeping, which is only eatables, 30 shillings a week. If company or any unforseen thing happens it ,onereases according to that, but never is wider, 80 that I recon

myself and Five Servants at that rate When I live alone I only have a slice of the servants' joynt, without any adition whatever." This frugal turn of mind received a severe shock when Mrs. Osborn dined at Court : "Wine in Ice, Creams, Pheasant with Eggs, and Pheasant poulte which is sham efull."

Mrs. Osborn's brother, Robert Byng, from whom Lord Strafford descends, held an appointment in the Civil Service, and had some pleasant little pickings to bestow. To hint his sister writes : "Many thanks for a cargo of paper come on Thursday If it is not too late for your alma-stacks, I should be oblidged to you for one, and a large ruler, with pencils, a little red Ink, a little Pounce, a piece of tape, for

I am much employed at present in what I am distressd for these things, and can get nothing here (Chicksands), not so

much as a penknife to scratch and if any of your clerka are at leisure, could you employ one to rule twenty sheets of the enclosed large paper P

The marriage of Sir Danvers to Lady Mary Montague .caused Mrs. Osborn a vast amount of motherly anxiety.

"My heart goes pit-a-pat for fear you will come before we are in order." She buys an " extream handsome ifrench bureau" (which is still at Chieksands) for 221 5s. The "wood-holes must be fluid, the evenings grow cool." "Shovel and tongs came on Thursday. What did they send a poker for ? " "The

poor chicks are fat, and from this time will grow large and lean again. But they must frigacy or do something." Well may the poor lady add; "1 feel like Martha, careful' and

troubled about many things." It is satisfactory to know that, as regards the climate of London in winter, we are no worse off than our forefathers. In 1706: "We have had the most severe winter with foggs and all the variety of Bad weather

that the Heavens could pour down upon us." And again "England this year is Muscovy, so severe a climate has not been since the year 1740. Intense cold and snow so deep no communication of roads, that even the post is day beyond the usal time, and the streets in London almost impassable." "Every mortal (has) terrible coughs, with oppression." And in the following May "We have still fires and still must call it winter." Then as now meteorology: and politics were topics of equal interest. Mrs. Osborn's political views were of a critical, not to say captious, type. She is severe on men who "got on the Horse of Liberty to ride into places, and then put their Horse in the stable ; " decries the elder Pitt as "quite a Harlequin ; " and denounces "the mongrel curs of the present times," who "shrink and creep and fall down at his footstool:" She deplores the deteriora- tion of Parliament, for all the world like an old-fashioned lady of the present day : "Nabobs, contractors, silversmiths, bankrupts are in high luck ; there will hardly be 200 real gentlemen in the House. The landed interest died with the last Parliament." "You will hardly credit it when I tell you Wilks is chose for Middlesex." At a change of Government, she quotes a proverb of homely diction but perennial truth, "Those out, pout, and those in, grin ; " and she sums up with the melancholy conclusion that "there is no spirit but what newspapers spit forth." There are some letters of graver in- terest, about the trial and execution of Admiral Byng, and a forcible epitaph which Mrs. Osborn composed for this ill- starred brother. On p. 153 we detect an error. The pocket- borough which was given to Lord Hertford for his political services, was not Oxford, but Orford in Suffolk. 'Orford returned nominees of Lord Hertford's until its disfranchise- ment by the Reform Act of 1832.