Russian Miklucko Macklay and the Italians d'Albertis and Beccari, they are purely scientific, and not connected with any dynastic influences. If we add to this that a great portion of the south coast is little better than a continuous mangrove swamp and proverbially malarious, while the natives in the north, as in Traitors' Bay, are ferocious and hostile, besides being numerous, we think, that for some time to come, our duty to New Guinea is to let it alone. The Challenger' when she touched a year ago at Port Humboldt on the north-east coast, found the savages in all their native and naked grandeur,' armed with spears and bows, and standing with arrows drawn to the head against landing parties. The day may arrive when, as the Tyber overflowed into the Orontes, so Australia, filled with a superabundant population, will throw herself for sheer want of room on New Guinea; but that day is, humanly speaking, ages off; and it will be time enough to consider the question when it arises. We say this with the highest respect for Captain Moresby's geographical discoveries, and for the patience with which he has carried out his explorations in the New Guinea waters in the face of many obstacles. It is only with his political and annexing notions that we are inclined to quarrel; let him be content with having advanced geographical knowledge, not one step, but many steps. Those steps of science can never be retraced. They never lead back, but ever onward. But political speculations on the future destiny of New Guinea are uncertain and likely to prove illusory, for the very good reason that they are based on hazy speculations and ardent anticipations which rest on no surer basis than the lively imaginations out of which they have sprung. It will be quite enough for England and Australia if the new highway to China, which Captain Moresby has undoubtedly discovered, be made secure by the occupation of a cape or an island or two which command the channel through the Louisiade Reef; but as for the colonisation and occupation of New Guinea, they are likely to burn the fingers of any Power that attempts them.

ART. X.-Memoir of Viscount Althorp, Earl Spencer. By the late Sir DENIS LE MARCHANT, Bart. 8vo. London: 1876.

THIS is a book of great merit. Avoiding the fault of modern biographers, that of flooding their pages with correspondence, which has lost its interest, Sir. Denis Le Marchant has compressed within a single volume the life of one of the most prominent statesmen of modern times, and has not omitted, or unduly abridged, a single circumstance of interest which the subject comprised. The work was long retained in an incomplete state by its late accomplished author, and we were permitted to quote from the then unfinished fragment some years ago in reviewing the autobiography of Lord Brougham. The present editor, Sir Henry Le Marchant, is responsible for a small portion of the latter part of the book, and he has executed his part with care and fidelity.

. The subject of this memoir was best known by his courtesy title of Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons in the memorable Government of Earl Grey. Lord Althorp was the son of the Earl Spencer whose administration at the Admiralty during the earlier years of the revolutionary war distinguished him as one of the few statesmen of capacity who served under Mr. Pitt. Earl Spencer was moreover a scholar, and a man of science; he read Cicero with Gibbon in the library at Althorp, and would have succeeded Sir Joseph Banks in the chair of the Royal Society, had not his modesty led him to decline the honour. He had lived,' says Lord Brougham, with the very best 'society all his life, foreign as well as English. He was full ' of anecdote accordingly, and his mode of relating was excel'lent, being both succinct and accurate, and so were all his 'political recollections, of which he had the richest store of almost any man I have known.' Lord Althorp's mother is described by Gibbon as a charming woman, who, with sense and spirit, has the playfulness and simplicity of a child.' At Spencer House, men eminent in literature and science, mingled with statesmen and courtiers, formed a society not less attractive than that of Holland House in the next generation.

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John Charles, Viscount Althorp, and third Earl Spencer -the subject of this memoir-was born at Spencer House on May 30, 1782. It had once been the intention of Lord Spencer to be his own biographer. My intention,' he says, "is to write down literally my own recollections..... I intend to state,

'without any reserve, my opinion of the characters and motives ' of those whose actions will be brought under view; and among others, I shall most unreservedly state my opinion of 'myself, and avow all the motives, as far as I know them, which have operated on my conduct. In doing this, I shall ' endeavour to divest myself of all partiality, and I hope that the temper of my mind is such that I am not likely to put a " worse construction upon the motives of others than their ' apparent conduct requires. I shall begin with my earliest ' recollections. These, of course, will apply to a period of life 'which can be but little interesting; but even this may be useful, as it will lead to a better appreciation of my own 'character, and may perhaps point out why it has been, that a man without education, and possessed of such very slender ́ natural abilities, should have risen to such high eminence as I have, and should have possessed the power, which up to 'the period of my quitting the House of Commons it was my 'fate to enjoy.' This plan, however, for some reason which is unexplained, was not carried into execution. Two brief paragraphs containing the writer's recollections of his grandfather and grandmother follow the passage we have quoted, and with them the intended but unexecuted memoir abruptly termi

nates.

Sir Denis Le Marchant has endeavoured to supply the place of the work thus abandoned at the commencement. His long friendship with Lord Althorp, and his personal knowledge of the political transactions in which Lord Althorp bore so conspicuous a part, rendered Sir Denis peculiarly qualified for such a task; while the judgment and good taste with which it has been executed remove the objection which sometimes exists to the publication of contemporary political memoirs. The events which form the principal subject of this memoir are precisely the same, in point of time, as those which are described with even greater minuteness in Mr. Charles Greville's Journals; but as forty years or more have now elapsed since they occurred, we cannot regard such disclosures as premature, and they may now be discussed without any of the passion and prejudice, from which more remote periods of history are not yet free. There is probably more difference of opinion at this day about the Revolution of 1688 than the Revolution of

1830.

The family papers placed at his disposal enabled Sir Denis to furnish many particulars of the early years of Lord Althorp. According to the custom of the times, his childhood was much neglected. He was taught to read by a Swiss footman;

in his eighth year he was sent to Harrow, and after remaining there ten years without distinction, he was sent to Cambridge. At that time young men of rank entered the University under great disadvantages. They were entitled to their degrees without examination; they were not required to attend college lectures; they were not permitted to compete for honours; and they were practically exempted from discipline. Nevertheless, with the aid of an able tutor, Mr. Allen, afterwards Bishop of Ely, in his second year of residence, our young Viscount obtained the first place in the first class at Trinity with such competitors as Parke, afterwards Lord Wensleydale, and Mr. Pryme. Having achieved this distinction, Lord Althorp closed his books. The last year of his residence at the University was given up to hunting, racing, and betting; and when he left college on taking his master's degree in 1802, his debts amounted to several thousand pounds. During the short peace of Amiens, he was sent upon the ordinary Continental tour; but from an almost rustic indifference to polite company, he refused to avail himself of his introductions, and even boasted, on his return to England, of being unable to speak French.

In 1804, at the instance of Mr. Pitt, Lord Althorp was returned to Parliament for the close borough of Okehampton; but he seemed to have as little taste for public life as for fashionable pursuits. He took no part in debate, and seldom attended a division. Yet his father's efforts to push him forward were unabated. In 1806, when the Whigs returned to power with Lord Grenville on the death of Pitt, Lord Spencer, having joined the new administration as Secretary of State, obtained for his son the place of a Lord of the Treasury, and induced him to stand for the vacancy in the representation of Cambridge University. It is a notable example of the loose cohesion of the several parties which contributed to the formation of the broad-bottomed Government that a Cabinet Minister should send his son, also a member of the administration, to oppose his principal colleague; the other Whig candidate for the University being Lord Henry Petty, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Such a proceeding in these days would be considered hardly consistent with decency or good faith, even under the most casual and temporary coalition of parties; but in the last century it was a common practice for members of an administration to oppose each other, not only on the hustings, but in Parliament. Mr. Fox, indeed, in defending the appointment of the Chief Justice, Lord Ellenborough, to this very Cabinet, vehemently denied the responsibility of the

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Cabinet Council as a collective body for the measures of administration. The contest for the University ended in the return of the Chancellor of the Exchequer by a majority of more than two to one over his official subordinate. At the general election which took place a few months after, Lord Althorp was returned for Northamptonshire, a seat which he retained until his succession to the Upper House. The Ministry scarcely survived their first year of office. The death of Mr. Fox in the autumn of 1806 had disclosed the inherent weakness of the Coalition; a feeble and hesitating attempt on the part of the Whigs to deal with a fragment of the Catholic question afforded the King, with the assistance of the Tory section of the Cabinet, the opportunity which had been eagerly watched of putting a period to its existence. The Ministers were required by his Majesty to pledge themselves in writing, not only not to renew the measure of partial relief which they had abandoned, but never more to propose anything connected with the Catholic question. A demand so inconsistent with the duty of constitutional advisers of the Crown was only an offensive form of dismissal; and the Whigs retired, after having rendered their single year of office for ever memorable by the abolition of the Slave Trade.

The first occasion on which Lord Althorp took an active part in the proceedings of the House of Commons was the inquiry into the conduct of the Duke of York, when, at the instance of Mr. Whitbread, he moved and carried a resolution that in consequence of the Duke having resigned the command of the army, the inquiry, so far as it referred to the conduct of his royal highness, should not be pursued. The speech, in which he dealt with a subject which had given rise to so much scandal and controversy, was short, sensible, and moderate. Up to this time Lord Althorp had formed no party attachment. He had been educated as a Tory, and his father had been a staunch adherent and faithful colleague of Mr. Pitt. When he went to Cambridge, he had been enjoined by his mother to beware of Whigs;' but it so happened that his friends and associates at the University were connected with the Opposition; and Lord Spencer himself, after the death of his great chief, inclined to the sect of latitudinarian Tories who rejected the infallibility of the Addingtons and the Percevals. Mr. Fox became an occasional visitor at Spencer House; and the charm of the Whig leader could hardly fail to make an impression on a youth of unfixed opinions and candid temper. Among Lord Althorp's contemporaries and friends who inherited the traditions of the old Opposition