'THE granddaughter of the distinguished and interesting American worthy, Gouverneur

Morris, apparently moved thereto by family affection, has thought fit to publish in two volumes more than twelve hundred closely printed pages of his diary and letters. It is an enormous mass of matter, which, .carefully sifted and reduced to about one-third of its bulk, would have yielded a valuable product. For the hero of this -colossal pile not only made for himself a niche in the history -of his country, he had excellent opportunities of observing men and things in Europe from 1789 to 1798, as he flitted to and fro in the heart of the great world in France, Germany, :and England, seeing, in turn, nearly all parties during that momentous period. He had much information, keen in did good business, being eminent as a business :sight, on the whole a solid judgment ; and he freely man in private as well as public life. Evidently it was his -employed his pen, jotting down memoranda from day to courtesy, gaiety, cheerfulness, readiness to oblige, and strong day, evidently for his own use, as aids to memory, and

sense which made him so acceptable ; and thus, on one leg, he -not for any public. From the huge heaps of daily

stumped through polite society at the end of the eighteenth .entries and from his letters, an excellent selection might century, playing his part manfully, as became one who, though have been made by an impartial editor, separating tran- not great, was sturdy, shrewd, generous, and honourable, and :sient nothings, floating gossip, scandal, questionable hear- who, when he returned home to find how far political develop. .say, and abounding "passages which lead to nothing," from ments had frustrated the designs and blighted the modest substantial contributions to fact and opinion having a durable value, and worthy of a place in the history of persons, manners, hopes of the best men among the framers of the Constitution,

• The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morrie. Edited by Anne Cory Morris. :2 'vols. London : Keg= Panl and Co. anding in France on the eve of the States-General, strongly

is described to us as " a laughing, dancing, flaxen-haired girl and politics. The affectionate granddaughter having failed pleased to exhibit her pretty figure in a becoming scarlet to do this, the reader must wade through the mass as best he riding-habit a wayward, fantastic, fly-away creature. can, bearing his weariness with such fortitude as he may. We Betsy was generally rather restless at meeting ; and doubt very much whether the diarist would have thought one- on this day, I remember, her very smart boots were a great half his notes and entries, though interesting and useful to amusement to me. They were purple, laced with scarlet.' " him at the time, worth anything ten years after they were Such was Elizabeth Gurney at seventeen ; but that day of the written. With these large qualifications, we may say that purple boots was the last of her thoughtless youth. The there is a respectable heap of wheat in the vast pile of meeting was addressed by Mr. Savery, from America ; and his ephemeral chaff.

words made such an impression on Elizabeth that " from that Gouverneur Morris, born 1752, in the State of New York, day her love of pleasure and of the world seemed gone." Many was brought up to the law. His elder brother remained a years afterwards she writes :—" My dear Rachel, I can say one Royalist, and became a General; but he, after hesitating, took thing,—since my heart was touched at seventeen years old, I the Colonial side, signed the Declaration of Independence, believe I have never awakened from sleep, in sickness or in became to a great extent the financier of the war, and finally health, by night or day, without my first thought being, how had a hand in making the Constitution. During this eventful. best I may serve my Maker." Elizabeth Fry was a good time, leading " the most laborious life that can be imagined," specimen of those characters, and there are many of them, who he kept no diary, being entirely absorbed in public business, are strong and intense, either in good or eviL A vivid imagina- yet having to eke out his exiguous official salary by some -Con, an eager temperament, a nature almost too easily affected private law practice. In after-years, when appealed to, he by music, dancing, or pleasure of any kind, warm sympathies, said he could not furnish any tolerable memoranda of his strong loves and hates, a keen sense of the ridiculous,—all existence, which is to be regretted, since he took an active these, ruled by the love of God, made up the Mrs. Fry of the part in so many critical events, and was in the very heart of prisons, the woman who in perfect calmness and serenity went the business which maintained the army. The self-effacement through scenes into which no woman had voluntarily ventured is creditable to him. One note of him is that from the first

before. When she was under twenty, she wrote :— he took ground against domestic slavery, trying vainly in "I believe I feel much for my fellow-creatures—though I think 1776 to abolish it in the State of New York. His services did I mostly see into the minds of those I associate with, and satirise not secure his second election to Congress, and he migrated their weaknesses : yet I do not remember ever being any time with any one who was not extremely disgusting, but I felt a sort of love to Pennsylvania, setting up as a lawyer in Philadelphia. for them ; and I do hope I would sacrifice my life for the good of There, in 1780, he was thrown out of a carriage, suffered, with rest of his life was spent in his own country ; he served one GO U VERNEUR MORRIS.* term as Senator for New York, but after that gave up public life, married, at the end of 1809, the daughter of an old friend reduced to poverty, and died in 1815, beautifully cheerful and resigned. Altogether, he led a very full, active, and interesting life on both sides of the Atlantic.

During his prolonged sojourn in Europe, he not only saw but was more or less intimate with the people, good, bad, and indifferent, who were making history, except the extreme parties in France, with whom he had no relations. His bias and his tastes were aristocratic ; the violence, savagery, and anarchical tendencies of the democrats were always repulsive ; but he was not blind to the vices of the one set or the virtues of the other. It must be said also that, never mean or grasping, he had a wholesome eye to the "main chance," and still walked in the straight path. predisposed in favour of liberty in that country, he soon fell under a dread apprehension of its utter failure. The depravity of the community appalled him. "There is one fatal principle which pervades all ranks," he wrote to President Washington as early as April. "It is a perfect indifference to the violation of engagements The great mass of the people have no religion but their priests, no law but their superiors, no morals but their interests." It was from such crumbling matter that the edifice of freedom was to be erected. La Fayette told him that the sentiments he so frankly uttered injured the cause. His answer was, that the democracy was "going headlong to destruction," and that the views of that party for the nation were "utterly inconsistent with the materials of which it was

composed." From that belief, so early forced upon him, he never wavered. When, in November, he found from his own talk that La Fayette was aspiring to "-a kind of dictatorship,"

he says,—" This man's mind is so elated by power, already too great for the measure of his abilities, that he looks into the clouds and grasps at the supreme. From this moment every step in his ascent will, I think, accelerate his fall." And it did. In January, 1790, writing to Washington, he gives a very luminous picture of the state of France, ending, as usual, with the phrase,—" The new order of things cannot endure." A year later, he looks far ahead, and through the confusion sees the nation 'working its way to a new state of active energy, which will be displayed as soon as a vigorous Government should establish itself." After the 10th of August, he is still more emphatic. Never having had the least faith in the Constitution made by men who drew their ideas from books, he writes to Mr. Pinckney, in accents of grief, that "in almost any event, this struggle must terminate in despotism." In September, 1792, in a letter to the President, he puts the case in a way not wholly inapplicable to what is passing under our eyes :—

"The character of nations must be taken into consideration on all political questions, and that of France has ever been an en- thusiastic inconstancy. They soon get tired of a thing. They adopt without examination, and reject without sufficient cause. They are now agog of their Republic, and may perhaps adopt some form of government with a huzza! but that they will adopt a good form, or, having adopted, adhere to it, is what I do not believe. The future prospect is therefore involved in mist and darkness."

The late Constitution of this country," he wrote to Alex- ander Hamilton near the end of '92, "has overset, a natural accident to a thing which was all sail and no ballast." And so the strain runs all through. When he travelled and studied persons and politics in Germany—at Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Frankfort—he came to some conclusions bordering closely on prescience. "The Constitution of this Empire," he wrote to Lord Granville in 1797, "is a bubble." There were only two Powers—he calls them Emperors—North and South, meaning really Prussia and Austria. On their jealousy depended the sickly existence of the other States, which "must sooner or later be divided between them,"—not exactly, as we have seen. "Two great Powers," he goes on, "are interested to prevent it, Russia and France, but principally the latter ; and one great Power is interested in promoting it, Britain. The thing is not practicable now." And then he dreams dreams of partitions. But a little further he says :—" Austria and Prussia joined together would form a solid barrier against the further extension of the Russian Empire, a thing worthy of attention." We may say that he naturally began life with feelings hostile to Old England; but European experiences changed his note, and still more after the war of 1812, which he opposed even to the length of favouring secession from the Slave Power :—

" Time," he wrote in 1813, "seems about to disclose the awful secret that commerce and domestic slavery are mortal foes ; and, bound together, one must destroy the other. I cannot blame Southern gentlemen for striving to put down commerce, because commerce, if it survives, will, I think, put them down, supposing always the Union to endure."

He noted, also, that the dominant slave faction would try to increase their majority in the Senate by new States wherever they foresaw the want of them, which actually came to pass. In 1814 he wrote to a nephew, urging him to promote the calling of a convention :—

"Display the power of Great Britain, rendering to her that justice which those who celebrate the success of the Allies have timidly withheld. Dare to hold her up, as she deserves, to general admiration as the shield of mankind against the oppressor's sword, as the nourishing nurse of nations, as pouring out her treasure and her blood for their independence." The language is remarkable from an ancient foe ; but he was indignant with the Government of Madison for making war on behalf of Napoleon and the Slave Power, and he really saw how grand a part the ancient foe had played. Napoleon's mighty exploits were not likely to impose on one who when

the Consul became Emperor, said, the moment he fails, be- falls." There are some anecdotes in these pages which belong

to the class styled piquant ; we cull only one, because the scene described is as humorously grotesque as it is astonishing. Mr. Morris makes a call on a Madame de Flahaut in the Louvre, in order to talk on business with Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, who is the lady's cher anti. This is what he saw :— " Madame being ill, I find her with her feet in warm water, and when she is about to take them out, one of her women being- employed in that operation, the Bishop employs himself in warming- her bed with a warming-pan, and I look on. It is curious enough to see a reverend father of the Church engaged in this pious operation."

We have already said that a great deal of needless copy has been printed ; but any one who can endure the hard labour will meet with fruitful oases in the desert.