servants, carriages, prices, etc., have been entered into between persons in a state of mutual displeasure? Not to mention that his preserving, docketing, and indorsing with his own hand even these slight notes as well as all her subsequent letters, shows that he received nothing which came from her with indifference."

We learn from Mr. Thomas that down to a very late period there are expressions in the letters of Mr. Wortley wholly inconsistent with the idea of separation. There is, indeed, evidence leading to the belief that he originally intended to accompany her; but probably the "one million three hundred thousand," which we are told he died possessed of, suggested to Mr. Wortley that he had better remain and look after it. Lady Mary, therefore, was under the necessity of starting alone. After a run through Italy, she settled down at Avignon. She left Thomas has shown, for the north of Italy, Avignon for very obvious reasons, as Mr. where she was taken dangerously ill. Of course, Horace Walpole and his friends and allies saw in this a profound mystery; and in August, 1751, he thus wrote inquiringly and suggestively to Sir Horace Mann, the English Minister at Florence:

from her friend the Countess of Wacker- graph in a letter to her sister of a much barth. Lady Mary had then been long earlier date (1725) which hints at some such wanting an opportunity to leave Avignon possible future :—

"I have such a complication of things

well know what I do, and if I can't settle my brains, your next news of me will be, that I am locked up by my relations: in the mean time I lock myself up; and keep my distraction as private as possible."

Having thus disposed of the foreign residence and its "obscure histories," what are the facts that remain? We must refer to Mr. Thomas for the result of his inquiries :—

for Northern Italy, which having become, after the unsuccessful rebellion of 1745, more than ever a place of refuge for English both in my head and heart that I do not very Jacobites, was for her, whom they suspected to be a spy, an inconvenient residence. The war then carried on between the Spaniards and the Germans in Italy, made the journey extremely dangerous, and the count, as she informs Mr. Wortley, offers her the escort of himself and his attendants to Brescia. At Brescia, she was received by the count's mother, who invited her to her house till she could find a lodging to her liking. Here Lady Mary fell ill of a dangerous fever, which confined her to her bed two months, and left her in a state of great weakness. The Countess Palazzo,' she writes, on the 24th of November, has taken as much care of me as if I had been her sister, and omitted no expense or trouble to serve me. I am still with her, and, indeed, in no condition of moving at present. On the 18th of January she writes again, in an unpublished letter, that she is still very weak.' The 'detention' referred to must have been of short duration, for in another letter, dated 17th March, N.S., 1746-7, she informs her husband that her health is much mended, and that she is at present in a little house' she has taken some miles from Brescia for the sake of the air.' What had been the grounds of difference between her and the count and his mother in the mean time, does not appear. It is possible that they may have considered that her illness-her 'terrible fit of sickness,' as Lady Mary, in one of her letters, calls it-made it necessary to impose upon her some temporary restraint."

Lady Mary's first feeling was to resent this restraint. She actually had a case drawn up as if she at one time contemplated legal proceeding, and this paper described her as having been detained against her will in a country house inhabited by the count and his mother. She had no objection, therefore, to the facts being known; and this statement was preserved to her death, and was amongst the papers which descended to her daughter. It is probable that she thought better of the conduct of the count and his mother, as she herself became better in health. We have a suspicion that the detention may have been necessary at that time-that in this "terrible fit of sickness," as she calls it, her mind may have been affected. There is a very enigmatical para

"Throughout the correspondence, maintained to the end of Mr. Wortley's long life with a regularity that is remarkable, expressions of respect and affection are frequent on both sides.. Whatever may have been the cause of their separation, there is abundant evidence in the correspondence that it was one which she might have openly avowed without shame. Besides repeated censures upon the ill-conduct of others, which it would be impossible to imagine could be written to a husband by a woman whose own wrongdoing had condemned her, as has been insinuated, to a life-long banishment, there are frequently direct references to her own propriety of conduct and faithful discharge of her duties as a mother and a wife. In one letter to Mr. Wortley she writes, with reference to Lady Bute, I may say with truth that, as even from her infancy I have made her a companion and witness of my actions, she owes me not only the regard due to a parent, but the esteem that ought to be paid to a blameless conduct.' That their separation was never regarded by Lady Mary as necessarily final, is equally evident. On one occasion, among the later letters, she writes to her husband: Having had no opportunity of writing by a private hand, I have delayed some time answering your last letter, which touched me more than I am either able or willing to express. I hope your apprehensions of blindness are not confirmed by any fresh symptoms of that terrible misfortune. If I could be of any service to you, on that or any other occasion, I shall think my last remains of life well employed.' Again, to her daughter, about the same time: 'My life is so near a conclusion, that where or how I pass it, if innocently, is almost become indifferent to me. I have outlived the greatest part of my acquaintance, and, to say the truth, a return to crowd and bustle after my long retirement would be disagreeabl. .o me. Yet, if I could be of

use, either to your father or your family, I
would venture shortening the insignificant
days of your affectionate mother.'
Lady Mary was in Venice in 1761, when the
news reached her of her husband's death,
and she writes upon the subject in terms of
sorrow too deep to have been feigned. She
was now upwards of seventy years of age,
and was in ill health; but her daughter
pressed her, for reasons connected with the
disposition of Mr. Wortley's estate, to re-
turn. I think it my duty,' she writes, to
risk my life if I can contribute to the due
execution of your honored father's last will
and testament.'"

In compliance with the wish of her daughter, she started for England in the severe winter of 1761-2, arrived in January, 1762, and died here in the following August, as

she had foretold.

The reader will best understand the merit of Mr. Thomas' Memoir from the defence which it has suggested of that much calumniated woman who is the subject of it. The volume, however, has other merits. It has been carefully edited, with more labor, we suspect, than will be appreciated or appar

ent, except to the critical.

not have been made at the period when the letter purports to have been written, September 1, 1717, as Pope did not remove thither till at least twelve months later. Nor can this anachronism be explained by supposing an error in copying the figures; because the allusions to public events, in the same letter, clearly relate to a period about the date affixed."

Other proofs might easily be adduced, but, with us, this Twickenham blunder has ever been conclusive. How, then, as to the authenticity of the whole of the "Turkish Letters"? for in Dallaway's edition, published with the sanction of the family, we were informed, that no letter, essay, or poem would be found, "the original manuscript of which is not at this time extant, in the possession of her grandson." Yet therein appears a letter from Pope himself, dated "Twick'nam, Aug. 18, 1716;" and this very exact date re-appears in both Lord Wharncliffe's editions. What was of force against the one volume appeared to us equally so as against the whole collection. Dallaway we might have suspected; he was an accomplished man of letters, but indifferent about that minute accuracy which is essential to a good editor. But Lord Wharncliffe had, apparently, found him out; protested against his omissions, combinations, and adaptations, and gave us the further assurance that, in his edition, "these defects are remedied." Yet it now appears that the only date to the above letter is "Aug. 18," the year and place being a conjecture of Dallaway, published by both Dallaway and Lord Wharncliffe without a note of warning. After a like fashion, other dates were inserted conjecturally, names were reduced to initials, and for initials Turkish Letters" were addressed by Dalnames were inserted. Thus, some of the laway to Miss Skerritt, first the mistress, and then the second wife of Sir Robert Wala pole; whereas it may be shown by a letter of Lady Mar that, so late as 1721, Miss Skerritt was not even known to Lady Mary. Can any one wonder that, with such misleading lights, the more careful and critical the reader, the more he was sure to be perplexed with doubts?

We long since expressed doubts as to the authenticity of the "Turkish Letters." We had proof that in some instances the addresses, the names, the dates, the references were not to be reconciled with known facts. The history of the publication has ever been a mystery, and given rise to much discussion. Three volumes appeared in 1763, and a fourth volume in 1767. Respecting this last volume, though he has very properly inserted the letters in his collection, Mr. Thomas acknowledges that he, too, has doubts:

"It is not improbable that the great success of the three volumes of Lady Mary's letters induced him [Cleland] to fabricate additional letters. No manuscript authority for the letters in his fourth volume has ever been produced; and with the exception of letter and poem, which had found their way into print many years before, and an essay which had also probably been somewhere already printed, there is the strongest reason to suspect that the whole volume was a forgery. The disrespectful manner in which Lady Mary is made to allude to Addison in one of the pretended letters, is altogether inconsistent with the reverence with which she always regarded him; and the allusion to Pope's residence at Twickenham could

66

We could go on with our illustrations through a dozen more columns; but may reserve what further we have to say till the second volume is published.

LETTER FROM W. H. RUSSELL, CORRE-
SPONDENT OF THE TIMES.
THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

says,

of the Northern States, whom they regard as tainted beyond cure by the venom of "Puritanism." Whatever may be the cause, this is the fact and the effect. "The state of South Carolina was," I am told, "founded by gentlemen." It was not established by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel, persecuting fanatics who implanted in the North the standard of Torquemada, and breathed into the nostrils of their newly born colonies all the ferocity, bloodthirstiness, and rabid intolerance of the Inquisition. It is absolutely astounding to a stranger who aims at the preservation of a decent neutrality to mark the violence of these opinions. "If that confounded ship had sunk with those Pilgrim Fathers on board," says one, “we never should have been driven to these extremities!" "We could have got on with the fanatics if they had been either Christians or gentlemen," says another; "for in the first case they would have acted with common charity, and in the second they would have fought when they insulted us; but there are neither Christians nor gentlemen among them!" "Any thing on the earth!" exclaims a third, "any form of government, any tyranny or despotism you will: but ”— and here is an appeal more terrible than the adjuration of all the gods-"nothing on earth shall ever induce us to submit to any union with the brutal, bigoted blackguards of the New England States, who neither comprehend nor regard the feelings of gentlemen! Man, woman, and child, we'll die first.” Imagine these and an infinite variety of similar sentiments uttered by courtly, welleducated men, who set great store on a nice observance of the usages of society, and who are only moved to extreme bitterness and anger when they speak of the North, and you will fail to conceive the intensity of the dislike of the South Carolinians for the Free States. There are national antipathies on our side of the Atlantic, which are tolerably strong and have been unfortunately pertinacious and long-lived. The hatred of the Italian for the Tedesco, of the Greek for the Turk, of the Turk for the Russ, is warm and fierce enough to satisfy the Prince of

CHARLESTON, April 30.-Nothing I could say can be worth one fact which has forced itself upon my mind in reference to the sentiments which prevail among the gentlemen of this state. I have been among them for several days. I have visited their plantations, I have conversed with them freely and fully, and I have enjoyed that frank, courteous, and graceful intercourse which constitutes an irresistible charm of their society. From all quarters has come to my cars the echoes of the same voice; it may be feigned, but there is no discord in the note, and it sounds in wonderful strength and monotony all over the country. Shades of George III., of North, of Johnson, of all who contended against the great rebellion which tore these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus which rings through the state of Marion, Sumter, and Pinckney, and not clap your ghostly hands in triumph? That voice "If we could only get one of the royal race of England to rule over us we should be content." Let there be no misconception on this point. That sentiment, varied in a hundred ways, has been repeated to me over and over again. There is a general admission that the means to such an end are wanting, and that the desire cannot be gratified. But the admiration for monarchical institutions on the English model, for privileged classes, and for a landed aristocracy and gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine. With the pride of having achieved their independence is mingled in the South Carolinians' hearts a strange regret at the result and consequences, and many are they who "would go back to-morrow if we could." An intense affection for the British connection, a love of British habits and customs, a respect for British sentiment, law, authority, order, civilization, and literature, pre-eminently distinguish the inhabitants of this state, who, glorying in their descent from ancient families on the three islands, whose fortunes they still follow, and with whose members they maintain not unfrequently familiar relations, regard with an aversion Darkness, not to speak of a few little pet of which it is impossible to give an idea to one who has not seen its manifestations, the people of New England and the populations

aversions among allied powers and the atoms of composite empires; but they are all mere indifference and neutrality of feel

ing compared to the animosity evinced by the "gentry" of South Carolina for the "rabble of the North."

corrupt, howling demagogy, and in the marts of a dishonest commerce. It is the merchants of New York who fit out ships for the slave trade, and carry it on in Yankee ships. It is the capital of the North which supports, and it is Northern men who concoct and execute, the filibustering expeditions which have brought discredit on the slaveholding states. In the large cities people are corrupted by itinerant and ignorant lecturers-in the towns and in the country by an unprincipled press. The populations, indeed, know how to read and write, but they don't know how to think, and they are the easy victims of the wretched im. postors on all the 'ologies and isms who swarm over the region, and subsist by lecturing on subjects which the innate vices of mankind induce them to accept with cagerness, while they assume the garb of philosophical abstractions to cover their nastiness in deference to a contemptible and

"Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue

flies?

The contests of Cavalier and Roundhead, of Vendean and Republican, even of Orangemen and Croppy, have been elegant joustings, regulated by the finest rules of chivalry, compared with those which North and South will carry on if their deeds support their words. "Immortal hate, the study of revenge" will actuate every blow, and never in the history of the world, perhaps, will go forth such a dreadful va victis as that which may be heard before the fight has begun. There is nothing in all the dark caves of human passion so cruel and deadly as the hatred the South Carolinians profess for the Yankees. That hatred has been swelling for years till it is the very life-blood of the state. It has set South Carolina to work steadily to organize her resources for the struggle which she intended to provoke if it did not come in the course of time. "In-universal hypocrisy. compatibility of temper" would have been sufficient ground for the divorce, and I am satisfied that there has been a deep-rooted Assuredly, the New England demon who design, conceived in some men's minds has been persecuting the South till its inthirty years ago, and extended gradually tolerable cruelty and insolence forced her, year after year to others', to break away in a spasm of agony, to rend her chains from the Union at the very first opportunity. asunder. The New Englander must have The North is to South Carolina a corrupt something to persecute, and as he has hunted and evil thing, to which for long years she down all his Indians, burnt all his witches, has been bound by burning chains, while and persecuted all his opponents to the monopolists and manufacturers fed on her death, he invented abolitionism as the sole tender limbs. She has been bound in a resource left to him for the gratification of Maxentian union to the object she loathes. his favorite passion. Next to this motive New England is to her the incarnation of principle is his desire to make money dismoral and political wickedness and social honestly, trickily, meanly, and shabbily. corruption. It is the source of every thing He has acted on it in all his relations with which South Carolina hates, and of the tor- the South, and has cheated and plundered rents of free thought and taxed manufactures her in all his dealings by villanous tariffs. of abolitionism and of filibustering, which If one objects that the South must have been have flooded the land. Believe a Southern a party to this, because her boast is that her man as he believes himself, and you must statesmen have ruled the government of the regard New England and the kindred states country, you are told that the South yielded as the birthplace of impurity of mind among out of pure good-nature. Now, however, men and of unchastity in women—the home she will have free trade, and will open the of Free Love, of Fourierism, of infidelity, coasting trade to foreign nations, and shut of abolitionism, of false teachings in polit-out from it the hated Yankees, who so long ical economy and in social life; a land sat- monopolized and made their fortunes by urated with the drippings of rotten philoso- it. Under all the varied burdens and misphy, with the poisonous infections of aeries to which she was subjected, the South fanatic press; without honor or modesty; whose wisdom is paltry cunning, whose valor and manhood have been swallowed up in a

held fast to her sheet anchor. South Carolina was the mooring ground in which it found the surest hold. The doctrine of