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52 welcome and admirable reading it would have made! If Lord Hervey had been content to tell us less about government measures, and more about court and country life, his thick volumes would now be the solace of many an idle hour. So keen a wit, so powerful and graphic a touch, have never been wasted upon matters of evanescent interest. History always holds its share of the world's attention. The charm of personal gossip has never been known to fail. But political issues, once dead, make dull reading for all lout students of political economy; and they, browsing by choice amid arid pastures, scorn nothing so much as the recreative. Yet Lord Hervey's epigrammatic definition of the two great parties, patriots and courtiers, as "Whigs out of place and Whigs in place," shows how vital and long-lived is humor; and the trenchant cynicism of his unkind pleasantry is more easily disparaged than forgotten.

On the other hand, we can never be sufficiently grateful that Gouverneur Morris, instead of writing industrious pamphlets on the causes that led to the French Revolution, has left us his delightful diary, with its vivid