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guilty of great injustice, were they not to recommend him strongly for some especial mark of honour, for the heavy claim he has established on the gratitude of the high dignitaries, and of the brotherhood in general. They cannot close this well-deserved tribute of respect for him, without expressing their regret at his indisposition, with their best wishes for his recovery.

"W. B. F., Chairman."

"9th. Lieutenant-colonel Fairman states, that soldiers from the garrison in the castle, were admitted, in their regimentals, to the lodges he held in Edinburgh whilst on his tour of inspection; that he granted a new military warrant to the 6th Dragoons at Sheffield; and, as a matter of course, he and his predecessor, the former deputy grand secretary, exchanged many old Irish military warrants for English ones, without inquiry. At Rochdale, it was publicly and generally known, that the military belonged to the Orange Associations. In Malta, the existence of Orangeism in the army was generally known by officers and men; and Mr. Nucella was recognised by them openly as a COMMISSIONER from the Duke of Cumberland, the Imperial Grand Master of the Loyal Orange Association of England. Mr. Nucella remonstrated with the commanding officer of the 42nd regiment, on the subject of his suppressing the lodge in that regiment; and he afterwards attended the meetings of other military lodges there, although he knew they were being held contrary to the order of the commander of the forces.

"Your Committee therefore submit to The House these details, as some of the many proofs which have been brought before them, of the manner in which the Orange Lodges in the army have, from time to time, come under the notice of the grand committee, and of the grand lodge; and, when it is also known that, at almost every meeting of the grand lodge since his appointment, the imperial grand master and the deputy grand master for Great Britain have been present, Your Committee must repeat, that they find it most difficult to reconcile statements, in evidence before them, with ignorance of these proceedings on the part of Lord Kenyon, and by His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland."

If our exhausted space did not warn us, that on these remarkable disclosures, we at present can make no comment, we should almost, from other and more painful motives, hesitate to inquire, how far they are consistent with the declarations of illustrious individuals, to which we have already referred. But the revelations made by the report, and the apparently conflicting declarations of these distinguished personages, are both before our fellow countrymen,-they are thus enabled to form their own opinion.

POSTSCRIPT.

SINCE our observations on the Chancellorship were printed, an end has been put to the provisional state of the Court of Chancery, by the nomination of Lord Cottenham as Chancellor. In this appointment, and in that of Mr. Bickersteth to the Rolls, with a peerage—which will enable him to render permanent assistance to the cause of law reform where it is most wanted—we find most acceptable pledges of the determination of Ministers to fulfil their promise of last session, and to render the Chancellor henceforth a permanent judge, unencumbered with political duties.

We have also to notice a pamphlet by Mr. Lynch, which has just appeared on the subject, which we have discussed. We regret that it is impossible for us to give any lengthened notice of this excellent work, in which we have been much gratified to find that our own views are sanctioned. From the coincidence that will be observed between Mr. Lynch's pamphlet and our own article, we are inclined to infer that the plan, which has thus been simultaneously suggested, by two writers who have had no communication, must be one, for the adoption of which, circumstances have long been preparing the way, and which the public mind is likely to receive favourably. We wish we had met with Mr. Lynch's pamphlet earlier, that we might have extracted from it, some of his very striking illustrations of the great practical evils of the present system. But the reader will, both for these, and its suggestions of amendment, find it well worth perusal.

END OF No I. VOL. II.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY T. BRETTELL, RUPERT STREET, HAYMARKET.

THE

BRITISH AND FOREIGN

REVIEW.

ARTICLE I.

Mémoires inédits de Louis Henri de Loménie, Comte de Brienne, Secrétaire d'Etat sous Louis XIV.: 2 tomes: Paris.

Mémoires secrets et inédits de Madame la Comtesse du Barri: 4 tomes: Paris.

Mémoires du Comte Alexandre de Tilly, pour servir à l'histoire des mœurs de la fin du 18ème siècle: 4 tomes: Paris.

THE literature of memoirs is of French origin, and has flourished most luxuriantly in its native soil. Among the antients there were no memoirs-at least in the better times of antiquity. The two great incentives to modern memoir writing-selfconceit, and secret intrigue-were wanting. Talent, merit, and faction-the eloquence of wisdom, virtue, and the passions-rank corruption and lawless force-variously decided the strife of ambition in the democracies of Greece and Italy. The machinery of government was simple and unveiled; and though selfish passions were in fierce activity, public spirit, and public objects, greatly predominated. The actors would transmit their names by inscribing them in the public temple of renown. They had no thought of leaving behind them testamentary packets of egotism or defamation, to be unsealed by posterity. The vices and crimes of the imperial courts, it is true, afforded all the encitements to private memoir-writing; but inventive capacity was exhausted

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or what remained of it, was employed-with some rare and bright exceptions-in corrupting what had been invented before. Tacitus, however, mentions memoirs of Agrippina, of which he made use in his annals; and Adrian is said to have left memoirs of his life under the name of one of his secretaries*.

The court of France, and its coteries, have been the chosen foci of scandal, vanity, frivolity, every pursuit of ambition, and every species of intrigue; and the French language, from the point, flexibility, and finesse of its turns of expression, is peculiarly adapted to a species of writing, of which the great staple is satire, pleasantry, conceit, and trifling. Hence the countless brood of French memoirs from Philippes de Commines, Brantôme, Sully, to De Retz, Joly, Dangeau, Rochefaucault, La Fare, St. Simon, Noailles, Montgon, &c.;-from the quaint egotism and gossipping philosophy of Montaigne to the eloquent, melancholy, and most degrading confessions of Rousseau; and down still lower to the coxcomb profligacies of Lauzun and Tilly; the rechauffée of court depravity, pretending to be "memoirs of herself, by Madame du Barri;" the spurious stories of Napoleon and his court, published under the name of a lady notoriously precluded, by her position, from acquaintance with the imperial court and its circles; and the libertine effrontery of that contemporaine, whom the Parisians have aptly styled, " la veuve de la grande Armée.”

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General history has been benefited by the better order of these productions. They have been still more useful to the history of morals and manners. It is in the nature of the most debased human creature to try to recover its level by revenge, and accordingly slaves and sycophants to a despotic, capricious, or vicious will, have sometimes avenged their debasement on its

The diaria mentioned in Tacitus were a species of newspaper, rather than private journal; and as to the chronicles of court news and imperial depravity, kept by freedmen, eunuchs, and other courtiers, so little is known of them, that it is not possible to judge how far they approached the modern form of journals or memoirs. Augustus is stated by Suetonius to have written “aliqua de vita sua;" probably identical with what Appian, in the "Illyrics," assigns to him, under the title of "πоμνηрaтa,” and his successor, Tiberius, perhaps in imitation of him, according to the same writer, " commentarium de "vita sua summatim breviterque composuit."

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