And toward the end of the volume he pronounces it, a fortunate discovery' that has enabled him to lay this series of letters before the public.'

They are preceded by a genealogical account of the Radcliffes, who resided in Lancashire, and were, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and her successor, a religious family, somewhat tinctured with the prejudices of Puritanism. This appears in the characteristic fondness of that party for Old Testament names, as Josliua, Jeptha, Jonas, Caleb; all of which occur, and some more than once, in the compass of two generations.'George Radcliffe was born in 1593, in the West Riding of the county of York, lost his father when about six years old, and was brought up under the care of a pious and excellent mother, to whose instruction and example was owing, under Providence, the serious and religious turn of mind which in youth and age, as well as under great diversities of fortune, the son appears to have maintained with undeviating constancy.' It is to her that a large portion of the series of letters are addressed.

The series commences from school, in the early part of the writer's fourteenth year, and goes on, with great sobriety and filial decorum, to a length of almost a hundred letters, recording his life and adventures up to the age of twenty-four. There is then a chasm of seven years, which we wonder greatly that Dr. Whitaker has not endeavoured to account for. The admirers of the preceding epistolary course will regret this blank as a very serious loss and misfortune; for it is probable the letters written during this interval would have afforded if they had appeared, very accurate and interesting information concerning the cost of five or six suits of clothes-concerning the price of lodgings-nay possibly even the rent of a house or houses; for in this interval he was twice married. His second wife was cousin-german to Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Lord Strafford, with whom he now commenced a friendship, which continued to his Lordship's death, and was, Dr. W. says, equally useful and honourable to both parties.' He was become, in this interval, an eminent practising lawyer;' and, as appears from a series of letters to his wife, who remained in Yorkshire while he attended at Westminster during the terms, had a great deal of business on his hands. He was much em

ployed and trusted in the private concerns of Wentworth ; was constituted king's attorney in the Court of York when Wentworth was lord president; and when at length Wentworth became Lord Deputy of Ireland, he immediately obtained for Radcliffe the situation of principal secretary, an office regarded as equivalent to prime minister.' About the year 1645, when

the king's affairs were quite desperate, Sir George withdrew to France.

During his abode at Paris, years, anxiety, and want of those accom modations which his earlier habits had rendered necessary to him, brought on a stroke of the palsy; which had happily no effect on his understanding, and, as appears, very little on his spirits With one side torpid and half dead, this faithful exile continued to the last actively employed, in providing for his master's present wants, and promoting his restorati n. That event, the object of all his hopes, and the cause of bitter disappointment to his surviving friends, he was not permitted to see: the particulars of his journey from Paris, and the immediate occasion of his death (most probably the journey itself), are nowhere related; but it is certain that he expired at Flushing, May 25, 1657, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and was accom panied to his burial at that place by the Royal Party."

He was most indefatigable as a man of business, and appears to have been eager to occupy as many departments of it as possible. That he evinced no ordinary ability in this capacity, there could not be a more decisive proof than his being employed in preference to all other men by Strafford. In adverting to the foolish extravagance of praise bestowed on his eloquence by some former writer, and indeed in the general estimate of his talents, Dr. W. is really more sober than could have been expected from an antiquarian editor. He considers Sir George as a man of sound, clear sense, and as making the utmost of that inestimable endowment by invincible diligence; but as not participating in any degree the commanding genius of Strafford, to whom it should seem that he maintained, with inviolable fidelity, that dutiful allegiance which correctly measured and expressed their relation to each other, in point of talent. The editor notes one remarkable difference between them. Radcliffe, when transacting or writing upon business, was always grave and intent. Strafford, while pursuing his purpose with an energy and an efficiency scarcely ever surpassed, could di ert into easy vivacities; as if an eagle, in darting towards its object, should make a number of flourishes and gyrations from the pure excess and ebullition of energy. For conscientious integrity, it would seem that Sir George's character was invulnerable,-except on the political side. In one or two letters to Strafford, we were pleased to see him possessing principle and courage enough to take upon him to admonish that formidable personage, on some points of moral propriety and religious importance. We are told that Strafford sometimes actually made him a kind of confessor, and unreservedly disclosed to him such matters as oppressed his con science. It is evident that the principles of religion had been early and seriously inculcated on Sir George's mind, and that he retained through a busy political life such a recollection of

them and promptitude to avow them, as have long since been out of fashion in his class.

But the biographical portion of this very slender volume (not, however, constructed, as the editor positively assures us, for the purpose of making a book,") is very brief, the substance of it consisting of Sir George's letters; with a number from Strafford, which, though for the greater part on topics of no great interest, and written in an incorrect, negligent, and almost rude.phraseology, display all his characteristic sagacity, dectsion, and daring impetuosity. As to Radcliffe's letters, we think that after Dr. W.'s expressions about the good fortune of their discovery shall have been duly echoed by a few antiquaries, in the tone of felicitation to their editor, there will be nearly a perfect consent of all other readers that nothing more totally insipid and useless has ever yet been set to occupy a little space about the centre of modern quarto pages. They consist chiefly of little notices, in the driest style, of the most ordinary matters in the passing circumstances of life; such as the want or receipt of small sums of money, the costs of diet, the purchase of apparel, disappointments caused by carriers, the meeting with acquaintance, the perversity of my uncle, accompanied indeed with expressions of kindness, but generally in much the same form of words, to his mother. At a more advanced stage there are expressions of affection for his wife and son, deliberations whether they had better come to him in London, or stay for him to return to them in Yorkshire, notices of the load of unpleasant business in the management of some old lady's estates, an account of a slight imprisonment which he suffered for refusing to pay his share of the forced loan with which Charles made an experiment on the nation in 1627, with a piece or two of casuistry about how far he ought to persist in incurring inconvenience or danger in a resistance to the iniquity of government,-which deliberation ended in resolving, with the advice of friends, that if his Majesty should continue peremptory, Mr. Radcliffe should not. There no where appears any remarkable force of understanding, any brilliance or even sprightliness of thought, any ardour of sentiment, any striking narration. When writing from the college be never gives any account of his studies, or signifies any par ticular interest in any subject or book. In short, the matters he writes about seem to be generally, with the exception of his family, the least things he can be supposed to have to write about. It is true, as the editor observes, and gives the obser vation in a tone of importance it will not support, that a number of particulars characteristic of the times are afforded by such letters; as for instance, the prices of particular kinds of food and apparel-the much greater measure of frugality preVol. VIII.

2 U

vailing in those times than in the present, and some particular modes of it-the extreme slowness in the conveyance of letters between distant parts of the country, it requiring a much greater number of weeks than it does now of days for a communication between friends in the north and the south of England-and the manner of addressing and looking up to parents in those times, so much more expressive of deference than that prevailing in this age of licence, premature mannishness, and wasteful expense; this age of which, like Dr. W., we should be most passing glad to exchange the fops, the beardless coxcombs, the bucks, blades, and profligate prodigality, for even something several degrees less decorous in character, and economical in modes of living and amusement, than what is here exemplified in the youth and early manhood, the school and college life, of Sir G. Radcliffe. In good truth there is not the smallest occasion for the editor's appeal to even a modern father of rank and fortune, whether he can lay his hand on his heart and say that, as the companion and comfort of his old age, he would not prefer a son like George Radcliffe, to a disciple of our great classical seminaries at present, who brings away with him a much greater horror of inelegance than of vice.' It is admitted, we say, that these letters mark incidentally some few features of the simplicity, the frugality, the deference to elders and instructors, which that age may boast against the present, (for which, by the way, that age was in no small degree indebted to that Puritanism which Dr.W. detests); but at the same time we think there cannot well be a more striking exemplification of the utter contempt in which we are now come to hold that same lauded frugality, than that, in order to afford us a very few extremely slight incidental notices of the manners of those times, a quantity of as trivial letters as it is possible to conceive an educated person to write, should be made to constitute the substance of a guinea quarto. What amazement at any similar doings would not have been testified by the worthy George Radcliffe, and his tutor, and his kind mother, who were so exact and careful, even to the penny, about the cost of every thing! What total incredulity, and what scorn of the fortune-teller's silliness they would have felt, if such a destiny had been predicted of the homely written messages about health and the sundry little matters of business, which people who had occasion to eat, and wear clothes, necessarily had often on their hands. Besides, we have plenty of printed memoirs, letters, and anecdotes, illustrative of the state and manners of those times. Or if we had not, it would have been worth while to wait for the discovery of some other old trunk or bureau' than that of which the contents are here disembogued; and it would have been tolerably safe that none

of them could have thrown a stronger ridicule on the gravity with which an editor should announce their discovery as a fortunate event for the literary world.

As specimens we will transcribe two or three letters, chosen rather at random than with any pointed aim to verify what we have said of the collection.

The following was written in his fifteenth year:

• Good Mother,

you

April 7th, 1607. • You might think it a very unnatural part in me, having so good op. portunitie, if I would not write unto you; but lest should thinke so, I' could not at this tyme but write, although I have but small matter whereof to write. I received of George Armitage the carrier my hat, and the **** and the cloth that you carried the piggeons in. My master hath sent for some books to London, which will cost above twenty shillings, but I can not be without them. I have sente you heere your knife, which my master has caused to be new dressed, and a which

my mistress saith is yours, and gave it to me to send unto you. I hope to see my unkle come to day, and my uncle Lockwood said that if he could call on him he would come too. I would gladly see my cousin Charles; I hope to see him ere long; if he come he shall not come before he be looked for. I pray you commend me to my brothers and sisters, and all our good friends. Thus desyringe your dailye blessings I take my leave. • Your obedient sonne G. R.

We

e pass over several of just the same sort, to extract the ninth, p. 22...

The opportunitie of this bearer at the long intermission of my letters, my deare and lovynge Mother, made me, att this tyme that I could not omitte this so fitt an opportunitie. These, therefore, are to give you most humble and earty thanks for all your kindnes towards mee, having no better recompence to render for the same. We are all in good healthe (praysed be God!) here at Oldham. Mr. and Mrs. Hunte remember themselves unto you, and to my brothers and sisters, most kindly. I received by Thomas Donford, this bearer, a 6, 7, and 8 prints of gingerbreade, one to me, another to Robert, and another to Jerimye, and 5 peares to my cousin Robert and mee from you, and 1 peare and 2 apples for Jerimye from you. We desire greatlye to see you at Oldham, ac cording to your promise, for we..... My cousin Robert is well (God be thanked!) and remembereth his dutie most humbly unto you, and his most carefull parents. Thus, with my humble dutie and commendations to my kyne brother and sisters, desyringe your dalie prayers, 1 take my leave. Your most lovynge and obedient sonne G. R

The epistles are not in the least improved in importance after the writer has attained the age of twenty, and, after having studied at college, has entered on his legal course at Gray's Inn. The following are perfectly fair samples:

Lovinge Mother,

J

May 29th, 1619. I have received two letters from you, with a handkerchiefe from my sister Nettleton, which I have delivered to Mrs. Longley; she is now