of the patrician letter-writer.  In his epistles are to be seen, even in more vivid tints than those of Watteau, these splendid creatures in all the pride of their beauty and of their wardrobe, pluming themselves as if they never could grow old, and casting around them their piercing glances and no less poignant raillery.  But Horace Walpole is not content with thus displaying his dazzling bevy of heroines; he reveals them in their less ostentatious moments, and makes us as familiar with their weaknesses as with the despotic power of their beauty.  Nothing that transpired in the great world escaped his knowledge, nor the trenchant sallies of his wit, rendered the more cutting by his unrivalled talent as a raconteur.  Whatever he observed found its way into his letters, and thus is formed a more perfect narrative of the Curt-of its intrigues, political and otherwise-of the manoeuvres of statesmen, the cabals of party, and of private society among the illustrious and the fashionable of the last century, at home and on the continent-than can elsewhere be obtained.  And how piquant are his disclosures! how much of actual truth do they contain! how perfectly, in his anecdotes, are to be traced the hidden and often trivial sources of some of the most important public events!  “Sir Joshua Reynolds,” say the Edinburgh reviewers, “used to observe, that, though nobody would for a moment compare Claude to Raphael, there would be another Raphael before there was another Claude; and we own, that we expect to see fresh Humes and fresh Burkes, before we again fall in with that peculiar combination of moral and intellectual qualities to which the writings of Horace Walpole owe their extraordinary popularity.”

As a suitable introduction, prefixed to the whole collection of letters, are the author’s admirable “Reminiscences of the Courts of George the First and Second,” which were first narrated to, and, in 1788, written for the amusement of Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry.  To the former of these ladies the public is indebted for a curious commentary on the Reminiscences, contained in extracts from the letters of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, to the Earl of Stair, now first published from the original manuscripts.  Of the Reminiscences themselves it has been truly observed, that, both in manner and matter, they are the very perfection of anecdote writing, and make us better acquainted with the manners of George the First and Second and their Courts, than we should be after perusing a hundred heavy historians.

Of the most valuable of all Walpole’s correspondence-his letters to Sir Horace Mann-the history will appear in the following Preface to that work, from the pen of the lamented editor, the late Lord Dover:-

“In the Preface to the ’Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George ii. by Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford,’ published in the year 1822, is the following statement:-

“’Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death of Lord Orford, was the following memorandum, wrapped in an envelope, on which was written, Not to be opened till after my will.”