to and from the place of worship; and Edin-' burgh poured out its thousands, and the neighbouring country contributed all its popula tion, to swell the throng, which such an interesting sight would necessarily bring together. No alteration, however, was affected in the regular service of the Kirk; nor did the minister, the moderator Lamont, in his able, argumentative, and practical sermon, make the slightest allusion to the august personage who was present, or to the peculiar circumstances of this memorable Sabbath. Whilst the minister felt the holiness of the place to be paramount to every earthly consideration; the populace seemed to be equally impressed with the solemnity of the day. All was simple solemnity within the church, and decency and sobriety without its walls; and, notwithstanding the fullness of the congregation, and the immensity of the crowd, not the most trifling disturbance was attempted, nor any noisy expression of feeling heard, to interrupt those quiet associations, which the house of God, and his holy Sabbath, ought ever to inspire. The whole scene was calcu

lated to make a deep impression on the fine feeling, and correct taste, of his Majesty. In fact, it did make such an impression on the royal mind, as the King himself declared would never be obliterated.

GEORGE VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

The late Lord Orford tells us, somewhere in his agreeable miscellaneous volumes, that when his father, Sir Robert Walpole, happened to be confined by the gout, it was frequently his office to amuse the invalid by reading to him; but that he always objected to his son's opening a volume of modern history, as he considered works of this class little better than tissues of misstatements or mistakes. It does not, however, require the shrewdness or experience of the old hacknied prime minister, to bring a reader of common research, and sober reflection, to nearly the same conclusion. The discrepancies in the various relations of

the same facts, which he will meet with at every step of his enquiries; the discordant motives which he will find attributed to the same moral agents in these transactions; the carelessness which he will detect in some of the narrators of them; and the prejudices or party spirit which will appear to have warped the mind, or dimmed the intellectual vision, of others, will soon convince him, that he must not place an implicit reliance on historic statements; that, in many cases, he has not even the shadow of reality to recompense his investigations; and that, in almost all, he must be content to accept of a distant resemblance, in the room of a veritable representation, of actual occurrences. But, by no department of historical composition are we more disappointed in our hope of reposing comfortably in the conviction of truth, than by its biography; the delineation of characters who have taken an active part, or made a prominent figure, in the public transactions of the recorded epoch. Contemporary writers, influenced by the prevalent feelings of their day, naturally enough, throw a tone of colouring over their moral

portraits, harmonizing, not with the real object to be represented, but with their own conceptions of its beauty or deformity. They may be honest enough not to invent or omit facts, nor to assign principles of action to the subjects of their memoirs, which they do not conscientiously believe them to have been influenced by; but the whole picture will be so deeply tinged with their own partialities, or dislikes, that it can afford no fair or satisfactory image of the real character intended to be handed down to posterity. The remark applies particularly to the English historians and memorialists of the seventeenth century; when every writer, being a partisan, those strong feelings which had been excited in him by the interesting events passing without doors, operating in the retirement of the study, and insinuating themselves into the pages on which he was employed, have occasioned such a discordance in the various accounts of the character and conduct of the identical individual, as to leave the modern reader quite in doubt whether he should regard him with esteem or disgust. The real

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character of the Duke of Buckingham is a crux criticorum of this description. Were we to accept him as he is imaged by Sir Henry Wotton, he would stand before us a pattern of all that is great and good, a rare example of temperance and sobriety," "the most glorious star that ever shined in any court," and "to his last never losing any of his lustre"-a man wanting no "privie coat, but (which he never put off) a good conscience;" whom "the same Providence that conveyed him into grace would not suffer to fall, but by such a fate as may determine all the monarchies in the world;" and "whose memory shall have a reverend favour with all posterity and all nations."* On the other

hand, if we are to credit the accounts of contemporary writers of an opposite complexion in politics to Sir Henry, nothing could be more vile or odious than the mind, principles, and habits of this powerful favourite;

* Sir Henry Wotton's exquisite "Parallel and Disparity;" Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, London, 1654, duod. That Clarendon and Eachard should echo the same eulogies, was the natural consequence of their political feelings.