BOOKS.

MR. GREVFLLE'S " JOURNALS."*

THAT this is the most readable book of the season may be stated at once, and is small praise. Mr. Greville was born an aristocrat, of the Grevilles, Earls of Warwick, and Bentincks, Dukes of Portland ; was appointgd in 1821 Clerk of the Council, perhaps the most confidential of all permanent offices under the Crown ; held his appointment for nearly forty years; was regarded during that time as a kind of nexus among politicians, being a Whig by party, and a Conservative by intellectual proclivities ; wrote down his experiences steadily, though at intervals, and desired that they might be published early. That they are interesting may be ad- mitted at once, but we are not quite so sure that they are valuable. The facts may be important, but we have a doubt as to the im- portance of the judgment on the facts. "The two leading qualities in the mind of Mr. Greville," says his admiring editor, Mr. Reeve, "were love of truth and love of justice,"—and, on the whole, and with a lingering suspicion, we may admit that in his mature age and his declining years, Mr. Reeve, who knew Mr. Greville well, may have understood him right. The softest judgment is always * The Grerille Memoirs. Edited by Henry Reeve. 3 vols. London.: Longman',

the wisest, but to us, who know Mr. Greville only from this book, which ends in 1838, more than 27 years before his death, the de- scription in the preface seems imperfect. He reveals himself inthese Journals to us as a man who was English aristocrat to the bone, honourable, principled, and self-contained ; eager for pleasure of

the kind he loved, which was mild gambling; with a conscience of a keeniah, but sleepy kind—for example, he hated his sinecure, the Secretaryship of Jamaica, as an unjust job, but exerted himself to keep it, because he wanted the income ;---with an intellectual temper acidulated by a sense of the difference between what he was

and what he thought he ought to have been, with an exaggerated notion of the importance of individuals as compared with events ; and, as a consequence of these mental peculiarities, with a bitter hatred of Royalty and all connected with it, a hatred which ex- tends itself to great aristocrats, whom Mr. Greville, simply because they are unusually prosperous, is glad to see incommoded. A temper of this kind does not fit a man to judge men well, unless he has singular insight, and Mr. Greville had not singular insight. He was deceived by individuals, Russian agents particularly;. by surface-appearances, by manner, and especially by eccentricity. He thought George Br. and William IV. nearly mad, and Lord Brougham quite mad, and felt a sort of annoyance at individuality which is the sure mark of a narrow brain. It is true he often formed sounder judgments after long study, and was very truthful in recording his own blunders ; true that he recognised at least one man of genius, Canning ; and true also that he had the oddest, splenetic-humorous flashes of insight into himself, his own passion

for horse-racing, and his own tendency to wonderfully stupid and solemn moralising about events, but 6n the whole he does not leave on us any impression of insight. His astounding stories about the Royal family may be true. His own patron, the Duke of York, whose paid racing " confederate " he was for years—to the great advantage of the Duke, be it added—may have been the Squire Western he depicts, and his wife, a Princess of

Prussia, the eccentric woman he describes, who never went to bed, but lay about, who listened with calm serenity to the broadest stories, and who liking her husband, still ordered into the stable =rides which he had ordered out. George IV. may have expressed in his pages' hearing his wish "that somebody would assassinate Knighton," yet cower before the intriguing doc- tor; and William IV. may have been the coarse, vulgar old Admiral he depicts, who could not restrain a wish to walk down Pall Mall, or to insult his sister-in-law, or to exalt his illegitimate children —Greville is as savage as St. Simon about "the bastards," and their ascendancy at Windsor—but there is no evidence in Mr.

Greville's intelligence that this was so. What is the use of a man's judgment who writes like this of the coolest brain of his age, a man who undoubtedly had proposed to himself to govern England through his wife, the Princess Charlotte, and who did govern the most difficult of peoples,—Leopold of Belgium, as we now call him ?—

" He is very dull and heavy in his manner, and seems overcome with the weight of his dignity. This Prince will not succeed here ; every- body is civil to him, from the interest he excited at the time of the Princess's death,—an interest which has not yet subsided. There seems to be no harm in him, but everybody contrasts his manners with those of the Duke of York, and the comparison is not to his

advantage."

This was in 1820. In 1830, Mr. Greville is shrewd enough to detect Leopold's anxiety for the throne of Greece, but despises him for it, though, as Leopold said, if "I had taken it, I should have been Emperor of Constantinople." But in 1831 he writes in undoubting faith :—

" Lord Lansdowne told me that Leopold is inconceivably anxious to be King of Belgium, that short of going in direct opposition to the wishes and advice of all the Royal Family and of the Government, he would do anything to be beking'd, and, what is equally absurd, that the others cannot bear that he should be thus elevated."

—the fact being that Leopold was near declining the throne, be- cause the Constitution left him too little power. And even when Leopold had consented, his observer was so taken in by a Russian agent that he wrote

When Leopold received the offer of the Crown, he only consented to take it upon an understanding that the Belgians would agree to the terms prescribed by the Allies ; but before the whole thing was settled he took fright and began to repent, and it was with some difficulty he was at last persuaded to go by the Belgian deputies with assurances that these terms would be complied with. Go, however, he did, and that unaccompanied by any person of weight or consequence from this country. Matuscewitz told me that he went on his knees to Palmer- ston to send somebody with him who would prevent his getting into scrapes, and that Talleyrand and Feick, by far the best heads among them, had both predicted that Leopold would speedily commit some folly the consequences of which might be irreparable. Our Govern- ment, however, paid no attention to these remonstrances, and he was suffered to go alone. Accordingly he had no sooner arrived than, in- toxicated with the applause he received, he forgot all that had occurred here and all the resolutions of the Allies, and flourished off apeeches in direct contradiction to them, and announced his determina- tion to comprehend the disputed provinces in his new kingdom."

Mr. Reeve cannot stand this, and corrects the misstatements in a. note ; but the error of judgment remains, and is due, so far as we can perceive, solely to the fact that Leopold was a man of reserved manners, and not of the manners Mr. Greville liked, which were those of the "fine old English gentleman," given to horses, good wine, and broad stories. His first judgment of Sir James Graham, as "a man with some cleverness and plenty of fluency,' is positively silly, as is also his opinion of Lord Althorp, a man who, though undoubtedly weak somewhere—he was a hypo- chondriac at heart, always wanting to kill himself, from a convic- tion of incompetence—had a distinct faculty, derived rather froni moral character than brain, for leading the House of Commons :—

" Everybody talking yesterday of Althorp's exhibition in the House of Commons the night before (for particulars of which see newspapers. and Parliamentary debates). It is too ludicrous, too melancholy, to. think of the finances of this country being managed by such a man what will not people endure ? What a strange medley politics pro- duce; a wretched clerk in an office who makes some unimportant blunder, some clerical error, or who exhibits signs of incapacity for- work, which it does not much signify whether it be well or ill done, is got rid of, and here this man, this goad-natured, popular, liked-and-- laughed-at good fellow, more of a grazier than a statesman, blurts out his utter ignorance before a Reformed Parliament, and people lift up. their eyes, shrug their shoulders, and laugh and chuckle, but still on: he goes."

Or what are we to say of his early account of Palmerston, his opinion of whom he took, as he took his opinion of Leopold, front a mere Russian agent, whose business it was to discredit the- British Foreign Office ?—

" Madame de Lieven told me that it was impossible to describe the- contempt as well as dislike which the whole corps diplomatique had for- Palmerston, and pointing to Talleyrand, who was sitting close by, Bur- tout lui.' They have the meanest opinion of his capacity, and his. manners are the reverse of conciliatory. She cannot imagine how his. colleaguesbear with him, and Lord Grey supports him vehemently. The only friend he has in the Cabinet is Graham, who has no weight.. His unpopularity in his own office is quite as great as it is among the foreign ministers, and he does nothing, so that they do not make up in respect for what they want in inclination."

Mr. Reeve says Mr. Greville's opinions are not valuable for their- accuracy, but for the sincerity with which they reflect the opinions. of the day, but where is the proof of that? They are contrary to all evidence, which shows that British statesmen thought Leopold_ ought to land in Belgium alone, that they raised Lord Althorp to their head, and that they placed Palmerston, an Irish pauper peer, with no influence, except from his capacity, in the Foreign Office. That Mr. Greville corrected many of his opinions by experience is true—anybody not a fool would do that—but to give his opinion or information at any time much weight seems to us ridiculous.. He saw a great deal, and was very inquisitive, and tried to bet very truthful, but even when he did not dislike, which was very seldom, he had as little original insight as a man of his opportuni- ties could well possess.

With this proviso, we quote a few of his summaries of the men and women in whom the Englishmen still take a living interest,. avoiding those already quoted everywhere. He had a perfect detestation of Queen Adelaide

The Queen came to Lady Bathurst's to see the review and hold a. sort of drawing-room, when the Ministers' wives were presented to her,. and official men, to which were added Lady Bathurst's relations ; everybody was in undress except the officers. She is very ugly, with a.. horrid complexion, but has good manners and did all this (which she. hated) very well. She said the part as if she was acting, and wished the green curtain to drop."

"He sent for the Queen, who came with the Landgravine and one oE the King's daughters, Lady Augusta Erskine, the widow of Lora Cassilis's son. She looked at the drawings, meant, apparently, to he- civil to me in her ungracious way, and said she would have none of our crowns, that she did not like to wear a hired crown, and asked me if L thought it wai right that she should. I said, 'Madam, I can only say that the late King wore one at his coronation.' However she said, do not like it, and I have got jewels enough, so I will have them made up myself: The King said to me, Very well ; then you will have to.

pay for the setting.' 'Oh, no,' she said ; shall pay for it all myself.'"

He hints the existence of scandals (wholly unfounded) about the Queen, and derides the "beggarly country" and poor palace from which she came, yet cannot help acknowledging her won- derful kindliness to the King's natural children, who repaid it by incessant impertintnces. Her sin in the popular eye was her dislike to the Reform Bill, but Mr. Greville, who disliked that Bill as much as she did, seems to have disliked her mainly for being ugly. The Princess Charlotte, for whom all England mourned, turns out, in his memoirs, as in Lady Charlotte Bury's, and incidentally in Stockmar's, a flighty, imprudent girl, who writes silly letters to Captain Hess, a dependent of her mother's, and makes violent love to Prince Augustus of Prussia :—

" I met at Brighton Lady Keith [Madame de Flahaut], who told us a great deal about French politics, which, as she is a partisan, was not worth much, but she also gave us rather an amusing account of the early days of the Princess Charlotte, at the time of her escape from Warwick House in a hackney coach and taking refuge with her mother, and of the earlier affair of Captain Hess. The former escapade arose om her determination to break off her marriage with the Prince of 0: singe. and that from her falling suddenly in love with Prince Augustus of Prussia, and her resolving to marry him and nobody else, not know- ing that he was already married de la main gauche in Prussia. it seems that she speedily made known her sentiments to the Prince, and he (notwithstanding his marriage) followed the thing up, and had two itterviews with her at her own house, which were contrived by Miss Knight, her governess. During one of these Miss Mercer arrived, and Miss Knight told her that Prince Augustus was with the Princess in be: room, and what a fright she (Miss Knight) was in. Miss Mercer, who evidently had no mind anybody should conduct such an affair for the Princess but herself, pressed Miss Knight to go and interrupt them, which on her declining she did herself. The King (Regent as he was then) somehow heard of these meetings, and measures of coer- cion were threatened, and it was just when an approaching visit from him had been announced to the Princess that she went off. Miss Mercer was in the house at the time and the Regent, when he came, found her there. He accused her Of being a party to the Princess's flight, but afterwards either did or pretended to believe her denial, and sent her to fetch the Princess back, which after many pourparlers and the intervention of the Dukes of York and Sussex, Brougham, and the Bishop of Salisbury, her preceptor, was accomplished at two in the morning."

He says of Lord Melbourne, what is certainly not generally known, that his "excellent scholarship and universal information remarkably display themselves in society, and he delivers himself with an energy which shows how deeply lfis mind is impressed with literary subjects ;" that he was greatly addicted to theology and theological reading ; decides the Norton action against him to have been urged on for political purposes ; and leaves gene- rally a most favourable impression of his powers. He gives, however, no summary of his character, though he takes immense trouble to draw up one of Peel, as he judged him in 1833 :-.-

" Under that placid exterior he conceals, I believe, a boundless am- bition, and hatred and jealousy lurk under his professions of esteem and political attachment, His is one of those contradictory characters, containing in it so much of mixed good and evil, that it is difficult to strike an accurate balance between the two, and the acts of his politi- cal life are of a corresponding description, of questionable utility and merit, though always marked by great ability. It is very sure that he has been the instrument of great good, or of enormous evil, and apparently more of the latter. He came into life the _child and champion of a political system which has been for a long time crumbling to pieces; and if the perils which are produced by its fall are great, they are mainly attributable to the manner in which it was upheld by Peel, and to his want of sagacity, in a wrong estimate of his 1:110EMEI of defence and of the force of the antagonist power with which he had to contend. The leading principles of his political conduct have been constantly erroneous, and his dexterity and ability in supporting them have only made the consequences of his errors more extensively pernicious. If we look back through the long course of Peel's life, and inquire what have been the great political measures with which his name is particularly con- nected, we shall find, first, the return to cash payments, which almost everybody now agrees was a fatal mistake, though it would not be fair to visit him with extraordinary censure for a measure which was sanc- tioned by almost all the great financial authorities ; secondly, opposition to reform in Parliament and to religious emancipation of every kind, the maintenance of the exclusive system, and support, untouched and uncorrected, of the Church, both English and Irish. His resistance to alterations on these heads was conducted with great ability, and for a long time with success ; but he was endeavouring to uphold a system which was no longer supportable, and having imbibed in his career much of the liberal spirit of the age, he found himself in a state of no small perplexity between his old connections and his more enlarged propensities. Still he was chained down by the former, and conse- quently, being beaten from all his positions, he was continually obliged to give way, but never did so till rather too late for his own credit and much too late for the interest at stake. Notwithstanding, there- fore, the reputation he has acquired, the hold he has had of office, and is probably destined to have again, his political life has been a con- siderable failure, though not such an one as to render it more probable than not that his future life will be a failure too. He has hitherto been encumbered with embarrassing questions and an unmanageable party. Time has disposed of the first, and he is divorced from the last ; if his great experience and talents have a fair field to act upon, he may yet, in spite of his selfish and unamiable character, be a distin- guished and successful minister."