envenomed arrows of Junius been shot* by his hand. His Memoirs of George the Second may be quoted against us; but, besides that, there is a decided difference in the character of the two productions; the order which H. Walpole left for the delay of their publication, showed a timidity or reserve very different from the unfettered and licentious attacks of the other writer. Besides, we think that there are facts still hanging about the history of Sir Philip Francis, more especially the similarity of his writing, and his unaccountable transition from a paltry clerkship of the War-office to a seat in the Board of Control in India, that have not been so explained, as to leave the field quite clear to other characters, if unconnected in any way with him, as H. Walpole appears to have been. We feel convinced that Francis was not the author of the Letters; but we are not persuaded that he was not intimately connected with them. And we wonder that attention has never been directed to the fact, that his father, Dr. Francis, the translator of Demosthenes, was like his son a man of literature and a scholar. Whoever this mysterious writer may prove to be, his reputation for great abilities, for such it is impossible to deny him, will be deeply injured by the very immoral means by which he raised and supported it,

"Nameless the libeller lived, and shot his arrows in darkness,
Undetected he passed to the grave, and leaving behind him
Noxious works on earth, and the pest of an evil example,
Went to the world beyond, where no offences are hidden.
Masked had he been in his life, and now a visor of iron,
Rivetted round his head, had abolished his features for ever.
Speechless the slanderer stood." ‡

Whether this long concealed secret is now approaching towards its disclosure, we cannot say; but our own opinion, judging alone from the internal evidence of the writings, is, that the author will not be found among those who mixed in the arena of public life, or was personally engaged as a senator or statesman in the political parties and contentions of the times: that he was neither a man of rank nor station; for there pervades in more or less proportion the whole correspondence, a strain of unmodified vituperation, of uncompromising violence, of unmitigated rancour, which speak no intimate or personal acquaintance with the characters which the writer attacks. The portraits of the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford might have been drawn for Strafford or Sejanus. Whereas those who are engaged in public life, and come in contact with their opponents, know how much of the sternness and strength of opposition is softened down by a slight acquaintance with the general character of the man and of the sympathies

*The ancient writers used to express an acute saying or bitter sarcasm by the metaphor of a weapon discharged-tanquam telum missum. So Plato Theaetet, p. 190, on the Lacedæmonians, ἄν τίνα τις ἔρη ὠσπὲρ ἐκ φαρέτρας ῥηματίσκια αινιγματώδη ἀνασπῶντες ἀποτοξευουσι. Plutarch de Serà Num. Vindicta. Αλλ' ουδ' εἰ βαλὼν, εἶπεν, ἀπηλλάγη, καλῶς ειχε περιορᾶν τὸ βέλος ἐγκείμενον. Juv. Sat. vii. 157, que veniant diversâ parte sagittæ." And vs. 194, "Jaculator," qui acute quid

dixit.

We are told by a literary friend, that the late Lord Essex, of Cashiobury, was possessed of a letter which Francis wrote when young, to some girl, or young lady, in Hertfordshire; and which so resembled the writing of Junius, that Lord Essex had it lithographed, and gave away copies to his friends, much to Sir Philip's annoyance. See Southey's Vision of Judgment, c. v.

of personal contact. But the scholar and the student may brood over his favourite opinions, uncorrected by actual acquaintance with the world, till they burn and glow with the intensest heat, and are ready to consume all within their reach. In the letters of Junius, there is often more of the vulgar declamation of the rhetorician, than of the severe judgment of the practical statesman; and his strange recantations of opinion, show that he was in some important attacks careless of the correctness of his censures, and the consistency of his character.

BUCKDEN PALACE, co. HUNTINGDON.
(With a Plate.)

BUCKDEN is a small but pleasant village on the great North road, about six miles north of St. Neot's. To this advantage, now almost lost sight of in the general improvement of our means of communication, it probably owed the circumstance of its being selected as a residence by the Bishops of Lincoln, who have had a manor or palace here during many centuries.

'Bugedene" is surveyed in Domesday book among the lands of the Bishop of Lincoln; the arable land was twenty carucates, of which five were in demesne. There is, therefore, no foundation for the statement, which, having been started by Leland,* appears to have been taken for granted by the subsequent writers on the topography of the much neglected county of Huntingdon; that this manor was transferred from the abbey of Ely, by way of compensation, when the latter was first erected into a bishopric in the reign of Henry the First. Leland adds, that 'Rotheram bishop of Lincoln buildid the new brike towr at Bukden. He clene

translatid the Haul, and did much coste there beside."+

The period of the episcopate of Thomas Rotherham (who was afterwards Archbishop of York) in the see of Lincoln was from 1472 to 1480.

The works were continued by John Russell his successor, whose rebus of a throstle remains to the present day in the bosses of the dining room, (as seen in our plate) surrounded with this inscription, Je suis le Ruscellup. It may be remarked that the same motto in his own handwriting is engraved in Nichols's "Royal and Noble Autographs," fol. 1829, pl. 11, from a volume of Latin poetry, by Walter Mapes, &c. formerly in the Bishop's possession, and now in the Cottonian Library.

Our task of rehearsing the further history of this palace, is much facilitated by an excellent“ Account," compiled by the Ven. Henry Kaye Bonney, Archdeacon of Bedford, which was printed at Oundle in 1839, and the substance of which we now, with his kind permission, take the liberty to introduce.‡

"Spaldwik and Bukden," says Leland, were "geven out of the fee of St. Etheldrede to the Bishop of Lincoln, for the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely in Cambridgeshire." Godwin added Biggleswade, "Ad resarciendum damnum sibi inferendum, Rex de alieno corio ludens, largitus est illi et successoribus tria manneria, ad Ecclesiam Eliensem hucusque spectantia, nimirum Spaldwick, Bicclesworth, et Bokden." That Spaldwick was so given is shown by the charter printed in the Monasticon; but it was remarked by Browne Willis, Cathedrals, vol. ii. p. 47, that Biggleswade was given to the church of Ely at a subsequent time, and another charter in the Monasticon shows the grant was made in 1132. Neither had Biggleswade ever belonged to the church of Ely; at the Domesday survey it was the manor of Radulphus de Insula, and the gift to the church of Lincoln came direct from the King. + Itin. iv. 48.

There was no other manor-house of the see of Lincoln nearer than Liddington in Rutland, at a distance of forty miles: regarding which Archdeacon Bonney has ap, pended the following note :

"Like Liddington, the Palace of Buckden was probably, in the beginning, not a GENT. MAG. VOL. XV.

2 I

There was a palace at this place in the time of the memorable Robert Grosstete, who died in it, October the 9th, 1252. Upon a minute examination of the older parts of the structure, as it remains at present, there appears to be no remnant of the house inhabited by this distinguished prelate. The great chamber, which had subsequently been converted into a draw ing-room, passage, and bed-room, is the most ancient part now standing. The finials on the top of each of its gables are simple, and ornamented with a rude volute, and might induce some persons to attribute this building to the thirteenth century. But the coping upon the bay window of the eastern gable, (now the drawing-room window) seems conclusive to the contrary. It rises a very few inches, and shows the commencement of the embattled moulding; and this appears to have been introduced in the succeeding century. With this, the carvings at the ends of the timbers of the roof also agree. In the opinion of some persons, who are no inferior judges of such matters, it may be dated as far back as the very beginning of the fourteenth century.

The other parts of the palace bear testimony to the time of Bishop Russell, who was translated from Rochester to the see of Lincoln September the 9th, 1480, and died January 30th, 1494; fixing the building of the greater part of the structure between these dates. Upon the principal gateway into the court of the palace his armorial bearings (two che

vronels between three roses) is formed by coloured bricks, answering to its proper blazon. The same occurs in the gable of this part of the building towards the kitchen garden; and again, in bold relief, on the boss of the ceiling of the great dining room, in the lower story of the great tower. On another boss of the same ceiling is his rebus, a throstle or thrush, with this old French legend issuing from its beak, "Le Roscelluy je suis, within a border of roses.

*

The character of this part of the palace is that of the square-headed perpendicular, with a drip-stone; excepting the chapel, the windows of which are within a four-centred arch. The fitting-up of the chapel appears to have been done by his successor Bishop Smith, who came to the see November 6th, 1495, and whose arms (a chevron between three roses) are carved in relief on a shield held by an angel, as an ornament for the end of the Bishop's seat. Just below the ceiling of the chapel is a small window into a bed-room, probably designed for the Bishop, through which he was enabled both to hear and see the minister officiating at the altar. There was originally an entrance to the chapel at the bottom of a corkscrew staircase near the Bishop's seat, through which the chaplain entered from his chamber above the chapel. This staircase led up to the lobby, from which both the Bishop and chaplain had access to their sleeping apartments. The room below this lobby and the Bishop's bed-room appears to have been the pre

place of so much importance as it became after Bishop Russell's days. But still, judging from the size of Liddington (at which several documents were signed, and in which Bishop Gynewell died August 4, 1362) it may be supposed to have been more than a mere grange. Liddington Palace, which never assumed the castellated appearance of Buckden, (see a view of it in Gent. Mag. for June, 1796, p. 457,) still retains a large dining-room; at one end of which is a parlour and a small bed-room or oratory; (beyond which was an apartment now demolished;) and at the other, a pantry, butlery, and other offices. Below these was a kitchen, offices, and other rooms, now converted into an hospital; with an octagonal study at an angle of the orchard, still retaining the shelves in recesses. This was built by Bishop Smith, whose arms are on the exterior of the study, and also in the windows and cornice of the dining-room. His effigy, in pontificalibus kneeling, is still in the window of the parlour; the cornice of which, as well as that of the dining-room, consists of a series of small canopies of the richest tracery. Considering that a Bishop of the Romish Church had no family, but only domestics in attendance upon him, we may presume that all his minor palaces were sufficient for him not only to transact diocesan business in them and pass on, but to remain in them for a time and keep up a certain degree of hospitality."

* See Chaucer, 1. 13699.