d by myself; and my strong attachment and
gratitude to him for numberless acts of kindness and marks of
confidence bound me by every consideration to obey and execute
the wishes of my late friend.

In the discharge of this trust I have been guided by no other
motive than the desire to present these Memorials to the world in
a manner which their Author would not have disapproved, and in
strict conformity with his own wishes and injunctions. He
himself, it should be said, had frequently revised them with
great care. He had studiously omitted and erased passages
relating to private persons or affairs, which could only serve to
gratify the love of idle gossip and scandal. The Journals contain
absolutely nothing relating to his own family, and but little
relating to his private life. In a passage (not now published) of
his own writings, the Author remarks:--

'A journal to be good, true, and interesting, should be
written without the slightest reference to publication,
but without any fear of it: it should be the transcript
of a mind that can bear transcribing. I always
contemplate the possibility that hereafter my journal
will be read, and I regard with alarm and dislike the
notion of its containing matters about myself which
nobody will care to know' (January 2nd, 1838).

These notes were designed chiefly to preserve a record of the
less known causes and details of public events which came under
the Author's observation, and they are interspersed with the
conversations of many of the eminent men with whom he associated.
But it must be borne in mind that they are essentially what they
profess to be--a _contemporary_ record of facts and opinions, not
altered or made up to square with subsequent experience. Hence
some facts may be inaccurately stated, because they are given in
the shape they assumed at the time they were recorded, and some
opinions and judgments on men and things are at variance (as he
himself acknowledges and points out) with those at which the
writer afterwards arrived on the same persons and subjects. Our
impressions of what is passing around us vary so rapidly and so
continually, that a contemporary record of opinion, honestly
preserved, differs very widely from the final and mature judgment
of history: yet the judgment of history must be based upon
contemporary evidence. It was remarked by an acute observer to
Mr. Greville himself, that the _nuances_ in political soc