of Temple have dignified with the appellation of philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in an old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful appearance in youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who were ready to fight or to suffer martyrdom for their exiled King and their persecuted church.  The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated by these imputations on her lover, defended him warmly behind his back, and addressed to himself some very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue.  On one occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her brothers spoke of Temple.  “We talked ourselves weary,” she says; “he renounced me, and I defied him.”

Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue.  We are not accurately informed respecting Temple’s movements during that time.  But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London.  He made himself master of the French and Spanish languages, and amused himself by writing essays and romances, an employment which at least served the purpose of forming his style.  The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved of these early compositions is by no means contemptible:  indeed, there is one passage on Like and Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of the best things in Montaigne.

Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his mistress.  His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many of them appear in these volumes.  Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt whether his readers will think him justified in inserting so large a number of these epistles.  We only wish that there were twice as many.  Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation is so well worth reading.  There is a vile phrase of which bad historians are exceedingly fond, “the dignity of history.”  One writer is in possession of some anecdotes which would illustrate most strikingly the operation of the Mississippi scheme on the manners and morals of the Parisians.  But he suppresses those anecdotes, because they are too low for the dignity of history.  Another is strongly tempted to mention some facts indicating the horrible state of the prisons of England two hundred years ago.  But he hardly thinks that the sufferings of a dozen felons, pigging together on bare bricks in a hole fifteen feet square, would form a subject suited to the dignity of history.  Another, from respect for the dignity of history, publishes an account of the reign of George the Second, without ever mentioning Whitefield’s preaching in Moorfields.  How should a writer, who can talk about senates, and congresses of sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions, and ravelines, and counterscarps, and battles where ten thousand men are killed, and six thousand men with fifty stand of colours and eighty guns taken, stoop to the Stock Exchange, to Newgate, to the theatre, to the tabernacle?