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 204, as politics and literature." We learn also—what we half suspected before—that Madame de Stäel was so greedy of admiration that she was capable of purchasing "any quantity of anybody at any price, and among other prices by a traffic of mutual flattery;" and that she was never satisfied unless she could have the whole conversation to herself, and be the centre of every company.

Now, it is hardly to be expected that the letters of a great statesman and the letters of an obscure clerk in the India House should reveal precisely the same interests and information, any more than it is to be expected that the letters of the statesman—who was, after all, a statesman and no more—should equal in literary charm and merit the letters of the clerk who was in addition an immortal genius. But when we think how profoundly England was shaken and disturbed by the discords and apprehensions of those troubled times, how wars and the rumors of wars darkened the air, and stirred the blood of country bumpkins and placid rural squires, it seems a little strange that Lamb, who lived long years in the heart of London, and must have heard