ed their fathers. We confess we do not belong to this
class. We have little taste for scandal, either in the male or female
great world. We see so much of selfishness, envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness, around us, that their details have not only entirely
lost the charm of novelty, but become absolutely sickening by repetition.
To such readers the first volume of Wraxall's Memoirs must be a precious
morsel. We never doubted that the anecdotes he told were in the main true,
from the moment we saw the _Quarterly_ and _Edinburgh Reviews_ combined
in running him down. Nothing but truth could have produced so portentous
an alliance. They combined in saying that what he said was a libel.
Doubtless they were right, upon the principle, that the greater the truth
the greater the libel. To such readers we would strongly recommend the
_Memoirs and Correspondence of Walpole_. They will find a mass of scandal
adequate to satiate the most voracious appetite; evidence of general
corruption sufficient to satisfy the most vehement political opponent.

It is in the evidence which these volumes afford, of the general
corruption of Great Britain during the greater part of the eighteenth
century, that, in our humble opinion, the most valuable lesson of
political wisdom is to be found which that period conveys. We rise from
the long series of his amusing volumes with the firm conviction, that in
his days all parties were base, and all statesmen in a certain sense
corrupt. They absolutely render the common story credible, that during the
days of Sir R. Walpole, when the members of Parliament were invited to
dine with the prime-minister, each found a L.500 bank-note under his
napkin, when he took it off his plate at dinner. At any rate the long, and
in many respects beneficent, reign of that veteran statesman was
maintained entirely by patronage and corruption. Horace Walpole himself
tells us that it was commonly said, at the accession of George III. in
1761, that the country was governed by two hundred noblemen, who received
more from the government than they gave to it. The influence of these two
hundred noblemen, in their respective counties or boroughs, was maintained
by the most unsparing use, sometimes of actual bribery, always of
government patronage, to secure the adherence of every political partisan,
even of the very lowest grade. With truth it might be said of England at
that time, as it was of France before the Revolutio