when the king objected to the unfitness of the place he was then in, replied, that "if it were under a tree, it should be to him as a palace."

Yet although we smile at this science of etiquette and these rigid forms of ceremony, when they were altogether discarded, a great statesman lamented them, and found the inconvenience and mischief in the political consequences which followed their neglect. Charles II., who was no admirer of these regulated formalities of court etiquette, seems to have broken up the pomp and pride of the former master of the ceremonies; and the grave and great chancellor of human nature, as Warburton calls Clarendon, censured and felt all the inconveniences of this open intercourse of an ambassador with the king. Thus he observed in the case of the Spanish ambassador, who, he writes, "took the advantage of the license of the court, where no rules or formalities were yet established (and to which the king himself was not enough inclined), but all doors open to all persons; which the ambassador finding, he made himself a domestic, came to the king at all hours, and spake to him when, and as long as he would, without any ceremony, or desiring an audience according to the old custom; but came into the bed-chamber while the king was dressing himself, and mingled in all discourses with the same freedom he would use in his own. And from this never-heard-of license, introduced by the French and the Spaniard at this time, without any dislike in the king, though not permitted in any court in

Christendom, many inconveniences and mischiefs broke in, which could never after be shut out"."

DIARIES-MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.

WE Converse with the absent by letters, and with ourselves by diaries; but vanity is more gratified by dedicating its time to the little labours which have a chance of immediate notice, and may circulate from hand to hand, than by the honester pages of a volume reserved only for solitary contemplation; or to be a future relic of ourselves, when we shall no more hear of ourselves.

Marcus Antoninus's celebrated work entitled Tôr siç avrov, Of the things which concern himself, would be a good definition of the use and purpose of a diary. Shaftesbury calls a diary, "A Fault-book," intended for self-correction; and a Colonel Harwood, in the reign of Charles the First, kept a diary, which, in the spirit of the times, he entitled "Slips, Infirmities, and Passages of Providence." Such a diary is a moral instrument, should the writer exercise it on himself, and on all around him. Men then wrote folios concerning themselves; and it sometimes happened, as proved by many, which I have examined in manuscript, that often writing in retirement, they would write when they had nothing to write.

• Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 160.

Diaries must be out of date in a lounging age; although I have myself known several who have continued the practice with pleasure and utility. One of our old writers quaintly observes, that "the ancients used to take their stomach-pill of self-examination every night. Some used little books, or tablets, which they tied at their girdles, in which they kept a memorial of what they did, against their night-reckoning." We know that Titus, the delight of mankind, as he has been called, kept a diary of all his actions, and when at night he found upon examination that he had performed nothing memorable, he would exclaim, "Amici ! diem perdidimus!" Friends! we have lost a day!

Among our own countrymen, in times more favourable for a concentrated mind than in this age of scattered thoughts and of the fragments of genius, the custom long prevailed; and we their posterity are still reaping the benefit of their lonely hours and diurnal records. It is always pleasing to recollect the name of Alfred, and we have deeply to regret the loss of a manual which this monarch, so strict a manager of his time, yet found leisure to pursue: it would have interested us much more even than his translations, which have come down to us. Alfred carried in his bosom memorandum leaves, in which he made collections from his studies, and took so much pleasure in the frequent examination of this journal, that he called it his handbook, because, says Spelman, day and night he ever had it in hand with him. This manual, as my learned friend Mr. Turner, in his elaborate and philosophical

Life of Alfred, has shown by some curious extracts from Malmsbury, was the repository of his own occasional literary reflections. An association of ideas connects two other of our illustrious princes with Alfred.

age

Prince Henry, the son of James I., our English Marcellus, who was wept by all the Muses, and mourned by all the brave in Britain, devoted a great portion of his time to literary intercourse; and the finest geniuses of the addressed their works to him, and wrote several at the prince's suggestion. Dallington, in the preface to his curious" Aphorisms, Civil and Militarie," has described Prince Henry's domestic life: "Myself," says he," the unablest of many in that academy, for so was his family, had this especial employment for his proper use, which he pleased favourably to entertain, and often. to read over."

The diary of Edward VI., written with his own hand, conveys a notion of that precocity of intellect, in that early educated prince, which would not suffer his infirm health to relax in his royal duties. This prince was solemnly struck with the feeling that he was not seated on a throne to be a trifler or a sensualist: and this simplicity of mind is very remarkable in the entries of his diary; where, on one occasion, to remind himself of the causes of his secret proffer of friendship to aid the Emperor of Germany with men against the Turk, and to keep it at present secret from the French court, the young monarch inserts, "This was done on intent to get some friends. The reasonings be in my desk." So zealous was he to have before him a state of public

affairs, that often in the middle of the month he recals to mind passages which he had omitted in the beginning: what was done every day of moment, he retired into his study to set down.-Even James the Second wrote with his own hand the daily occurrences of his times, his reflections and conjectures. Adversity had schooled him into reflection, and softened into humanity a spirit of bigotry; and it is something in his favour, that after his abdication he collected his thoughts, and mortified himself by the penance of a diary.-Could a Clive or a Cromwell have composed one? Neither of these men could suffer solitude and darkness; they started at their casual recollections :—what would they have done, had memory marshalled their crimes, and arranged them in the terrors of chronology?

When the national character retained more originality and individuality than our monotonous habits now admit, our later ancestors displayed a love of application, which was a source of happiness, quite lost to us. Till the middle of the last century they were as great economists of their time as of their estates; and life with them was not one hurried yet tedious festival. Living more within themselves, more separated, they were therefore more original in their prejudices, their principles, and in the constitution of their minds. They resided more on their estates, and the metropolis was usually resigned to the men of trade in their Royal Exchange, and the preferment-hunters among the backstairs at Whitehall. Lord Clarendon tells us, in his "Life," that his grandfather, in James the First's time,