his forty-eighth year, or 1770-the last paragraph he was able to write being that on Lord North and the American war. The volume possesses that peculiar freshness and fascination which belong to anecdotes told at the fireside, by some chatty old gentleman of much social culture and uncommon memory. We see everything through his spectacles with beautiful distinctness, just as he sees it. His style is simple and direct, clear and idiomatic, with the spice of occasional Scotticims. Through this transparent medium we have curious glimpses of the leading celebrities of those times, as they appeared to cotemporary and familiar eyes. Hume and Robertson, John Home and Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith and Dr. Blair, with many other historical characters, were his intimate friends. He softens for us the skepticism of Hume, praises Ferguson's Roman History, gives us sketches of Simson and M'Laurin, the mathematicians, of Charles Townshend, the statesman, and of the leading dignitaries of the Scotch Church. Through him we catch glimpses of Pitt, Dundas, Lord Clive, and Lord North; of Dr. Franklin, Gen. Charles Lee, and John Witherspoon-our Dr. Witherspoon, of revolutionary memory-who was his classmate at Edinburgh. We grow familiar with Smollett and with Garrick, with John Gregory and Dr. Armstrong, with the literary clubs of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London, and with Lords and Ladies of the first ilk. We get into clerical convivial assemblies, are taken to the opera house and theater, and even look on at clerical card tables: for the tone of manners and morals, at that day, in Scotland, would seem to have been scarcely of the puritanical stamp, and our good Doctor was evidently not of the straightest sect, even of his own kirk. He was an accomplished dancer, in his youth, and in later years, when a minister, initiated Dr. Robertson, the historian, and Dr. Blair, the divine and rhetorician, into the mysteries of card playing. "Having been bred," he says, "at a time when the common people thought to play with cards or dice was a sin, and everybody thought it an indecorum in clergymen, they [Robertson and Blair] could neither of them play at golf or bowls, and far less at cards or backgammon, and on that account were very unhappy when from home in friends' houses in the country in rainy weather. As I had set the first example of playing at cards at home with unlocked doors, and so relieved the clergy from ridicule on that side, they both learned to play at whist after they were sixty. Robertson did very well: Blair never shone." At one time he turned pamphleteerer in defense of William Pitt, at another on militia affairs, and at another in behalf of the stage and his friend John Home's tragedy of Douglas: this last, an act of championship which gets him into trouble; for he is summoned to answer for it before his Presbytery, and ultimately before the General Assembly; and quite an ecclesiastical storm is raised against him, and some of his fellow clergymen, friends of the poet, for having attended the representation of this then popular Scotch tragedy. Dr. Carlyle makes an important correction of Dr. Doddridge's story of the conversion of the celebrated Colonel Gardiner, who was a parishioner of his father's at Prestonpans. He confirms the narrative in its leading outlines, but strips it very summarily of the miraculous features which have contributed so much to give it celebrity and interest. As Dr. Carlyle tells the story, Colonel Gardiner, who was a great rake, while waiting an appointment in an intrigue with a surgeon's wife, when at Paris with the British ambassador, thought he would pass the time in turning over the leaves of a book-Gurnall's Christian in Complete Armor-which his mother had put in his trunk many years before. "He was so taken with this book that he allowed his hour of appointment to pass, never saw his mistress more, and from that day left off all his rakish habits, which consisted in swearing and whoring, (for he never was a drinker), and the contempt of sacred things, and became a serious good Christian ever after." A few sentences of Dr. Carlyle's criticism of Doddridge we cannot forbear quoting: "Dr. Doddridge has marred this story, either through mistake or through a desire to make Gardiner's conversion more supernatural; for he says that his appointment was at midnight, and introduces some sort of meteor or blaze of light that alarmed the new convert. But this was not the case; for I have heard Gardiner tell the story at least three or four times, to different sets of people— for he was not shy or backward to speak on the subject, as many would have been. But it was at midday, for the appointment was at one o'clock; and he told us the reason of it, which was, that the surgeon, or apothecary, had shown symptoms of jealousy, and they chose a time of day when he was necessarily occupied about his business. I have also conversed with my father upon it, after Doddridge's book was published, who always persisted in saying that the appointment was at one o'clock, for the reason mentioned, and that Gardiner, having changed his lodging, he found a book when rummaging an old trunk to the bottom, which my father said was Gurnall's Christian Armor, but to which Doddridge gives the name of The Christian Soldier; or, Heaven Taken by Storm, by Thomas Watson. Doddridge, in a note, says that his edition of the story was confirmed in a letter from a Rev. Mr. Spears, in which there was not the least difference from the account he had taken down in writing the very night in which the Colonel had told him the story. This Mr. Spears had been Lord Grange's chaplain, and I knew him to have no great regard to truth, when deviating from it suited his purpose; at any rate, he was not a man to contradict Doddridge, who had most likely told him his story. It is remarkable that though the Doctor had written down everything exactly, and could take his oath, yet he had omitted to mark the day of the week on which the conversion happened, but if not mistaken thinks it was Sabbath. This aggravates the sin of the appointment and hallows the conversion. The Colonel, who was truly an honest, well-meaning man, and a pious Christian, was very ostentatious; though, to tell the truth, he boasted oftener of his conversion than of the dangerous battles he had been in. As he told the story, however, there was nothing supernatural in it; for many a rake of about thirty years of age has been reclaimed by some circumstance that set him a thinking, as the accidental reading of this book had done to Gardiner." To our mind, this gossiping and most interesting autobiography needs no other commendation than a taste of its quality. The reader who once dips into it will scarcely fail to explore it to the end, and will then most heartily regret that the author had not lived to write his reminiscences of the remaining thirty-five years of his life. Though written so long ago, and known by the literary world to be in existence-such men as Sir Walter Scott having earnestly desired its publication-it has only now just seen the light; but it will be read with none the less interest, that it carries us back to times so long past. THACKERAY'S FOUR GEORGES.*-Many of our readers undoubtedly have very pleasant recollections of the lectures which Mr. Thackeray gave a few years ago in several of our cities on the four Georges. In our judgment they are the best of all his literary productions. They were printed some time ago in the Cornhill Magazine, then in Littell's Living Age, and now the Messrs. Harpers have given them to the public in a handsome volume, *The Four Georges. By W. M. THACKERAY. 1860. 12mo. pp. 241. Sketches of Manners, Morals, Court and Town Life. which is illustrated with some amusing and very appropriate wood-cuts. A fairer mark for the satire of such a man as Mr. Thackeray cannot be found than the story of the lives of those four sovereigns who for more than a hundred years were Kings of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and "Defenders of the Faith." The style in which the lectures are written is conversational. There is no affectation of the dignity of history, and no attempt to go into details. They are just the talk of a good-humored man of the world, who aims by a few bold strokes to hit off the manners and morals of those four sovereigns and their courts. No student of course will go to such lectures for the history of the period; but whoever will turn aside for a few moments from graver reading to these' piquant pages-our word for it-will be amused and refreshed, and find himself able to go back to his work all the stronger for the pleasant relaxation. We make room for two short quotations from the lecture on George I. "Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop of Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his church, with Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grinning behind the defender of the faith. Here is my Lord Duke of Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of all times; he who betrayed King William-betrayed King James II-betrayed Queen Annebetrayed England to the French, the elector to the Pretender, the Pretender to the elector; and here are my Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just tripped up the heels of the former, and, if a month's more time had been allowed him, would have had King James at Westminster. The great Whig gentlemen make their bows and congés with proper decorum and ceremony; but yonder keen old schemer knows the value of their loyalty. 'Loyalty,' he must think, 'as applied to me-it is absurd! There are fifty nearer heirs to the throne than I am. I am but an accident, and you fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not for mine. You Tories hate me; you archbishop, smirking on your knees, and prating about heaven, you know I don't care a fig for your Thirty-nine Articles, and can't understand a word of your stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford-you know you were conspiring against me a month ago; and you, my Lord Duke of Marlborough-you would sell me, or any man else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, my good Melusina, come, my honest Sophia, let us go into my private room, and have some oysters and some Rhine wine, and some pipes afterward; let us make the best of our situation; let us take what we can get, and leave these bawling, brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, and cheat in their own way!" pp. 52-54. "Delightful as London city was, King George I liked to be out of it as much as ever he could; and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, one hundred years afterward, when the bold old reiter looked down from St. Paul's, and sighed out, Was für Plunder! The German women plundered; the German secretaries plundered; the German cooks and intendants plundered; and even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get was the old monarch's maxim. He was not a lofty monarch, certainly; he was not a patron of the fine arts; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revengeful, was not extravaga gant. Though a despot in Hanover, he was a moderate ruler in England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as possible, and to live out of it as much as he could. His heart was in Hanover. When taken ill on his last journey, as he was passing through Holland, he thrust his livid head out of the coach-window, and gasped out, 'Osnaburg, Osnaburg! He was more than fifty years of age when he came among us: we took him because we wanted him, because he served our turn; we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at him. He took our loyalty for what it was worth; laid hands on what money he could; kept us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. I, for one, would have been on his side in those days. Cynical and selfish as he was, he was better than a king out of St. Germain's, with the French king's orders in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in his train." pp. 64–66. HISTORICAL PICTURES RETOUCHED.*-Mrs. Dall is a vigorous writer, an independent thinker, and an earnest champion of her sex. The volume here presented consists of two parts, entitled respectively, "Studies" and "Fancies." The "Studies" are careful and vigorously written biographical sketches of distinguished women, whose characters the fair author thinks it fitting that the world should contemplate as they appear to woman's eye and in the light of woman's judgment, rather than in the light-so often false and discoloring-in which they are usually presented. Among the characters discussed are Aspasia, Hypatia, the Countess Matilda, Cassandra Fedele, the women of the House of Montefeltro, Marie Cunitz, the Mathematician, Madame De Stael, Margaret Fuller, etc., with disquisitions on the Women of Bologna, on the Contributions of Women to Medical Science, and on The Duties and Influence of Women. These "Studies" are valuable for their literary research and for their historical criticisms. The "Fancies" are half a dozen well written stories, two of them— Long Lane and Pepperell House-founded, as the author tells us, on the traditions which cluster around the semi-historic name of Mary Stevens-the mother of the younger and the wife of the elder Buckminster. The volume closes with an appreciative sketch * Historical Pictures Retouched; A volume of Miscellanies. Part I. Studies. Part II. Fancies. By Mrs. DALL, Author of to Labor." Boston: Walker, Wise & Co. 1860. pp. 402. In Two Parts, Woman's Right |