CRAIR'S ROMANCE OP THE PEERAGE. * THE third volume of this

work confirms the opinion we expressed in no- ticing the second—that Mr. Craik selected his title rather with refer- ence to its sound than his subject. " Curiosities of the Peerage " is more accurately descriptive of the book than "Romance " ; but the truest title would have been "Notices of the more Remarkable Families and Per- sons connected with the Peerage." This non-perception of the true scope of his undertaking has sometimes, we think, induced Mr. Craik to encumber his book with persons that might have been spared, and to avoid families whose stories would have quite as much interest as his nar- ratives of numerous children, or of political and love intrigue.

The chief subjects of the present volume are Sir Robert Dudley, the "base-born " son of Elizabeth's favourite Leicester; whose career was a tissue of adventure, animated by spirit, energy, and science, but tainted by bigamy (abroad); Bess of Hardwicke, an ancestress of the Devonshire family, who is popularly known for a reputed prophecy that she should not die while she continued to build, and who expired at an advanced age during a frost which suspended her buildings and her breath ; the Whar- ton and Stuart and the Brace and Sackville duels, with the trial and execution of Lord Sanquhar for the murder of Turner the fencing-master, —all more or less known to the reader of books on historical manners ; the story of the Earldom of Monteith, of which an elaborate account was given by the late Sir Harris Nicolas seven years ago, and fully noticed in our columns.f Besides these more important curiosities of family his- tory, there is an essay on the hereditary principle, in which Mr. Craik defends aristocracy against the march of mind and modern demo- cracy; a notice of Charles Brandon's fourth wife, the successor to Mary Tudor, Henry the Eighth's sister ; with several sketches of the fortunes of noble families, whose names would suggest little distinc- tive to the general reader.

The most striking pictures of men and manners are furnished by the duel between Lords Sackville and Bruce, and the trial of Sanquhar : the most interesting piece of family history is the Monteith Peerage case ; but they are too well known to have the attraction of novelty. The life of Sir Robert Dudley is the most interesting as a biography ; for Dudley was a man of spirit and ingenuity, ifnot of genius. At an early age he sailed to the Spanish main, and contemplated a voyage to the Pacific, which was forbidden by Elizabeth ; some years afterwards, he left wife, family, and fortune, to elope with Miss Southwell, in the .disguise of a page ; and having married her abroad, he became obnoxious to the criminal law, and his property was confiscated on his neglecting a royal summons to return. But Dudley's nature was buoyant: he carried his plausible and practical arts to Florence, where he entered the service of the Duke, as an en- gineer, maritime surveyor, and dock-superintendent. In that service he remained till his death ; having got a liberal income from his master, a dispensation from the Pope to marry Miss Southwell, and permission from the Emperor to call himself Duke of Northumberland.

The most elaborate notice in the volume is devoted to Bess of Hard- wicke; and we think the length and minuteness injudicious. Bess was a hard, pushing, indefatigable woman, who married four husbands, got property by all, families by three, and was the ancestress of several noble houses. Her last husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, figures in history as a keeper of Mary Queen of Scots and one of her judges. His wife too was mixed up with the story of the unfortunate Queen ; for they were at one time hot friends, then bitter enemies, and Mary professed to believe that the Countess had defamed her character by spreading reports of something improper between the royal captive and the gouty old Lord Shrewsbury. The husband and wife also quarrelled, and their differences were submitted to Queen Elizabeth, in a lengthy correspondence: so tbat, what with Queen Mary's letters, and the epistles of the Talbot family, there is no lack of matter relating to Bess of Hardwicke—the foundress of Chatsworth and other mansions, begun, as the vulgar still believe, to keep death at bay. But the matter is rather overdone, and yet it is fragmentary. The letters concerning Mary only touch a part of her story ; those which relate to the Talbots are too remote, and have too little interest in their subject to be very attractive, unless when the cha- racter of the writer is marked. The following household directions by Bess relative to Chatsworth, and to a troublesome tenant, have interest for the glimpse they furnish of society under the Tudors, and of the mental occupations of a lady of the court three hundred years ago.

• The Romance of the Peerage, or Curiosities of Family History. By George Lillie Cdr. Vol. III. Published by Chapman and Hall.

Spectator, 1042; page 328. " The earliest specimen that we have of her is a letter written by her in No- vember 1552 from London, where she was with her husband, to a person who had been left in charge at Chatsworth. She desires him to look well to all things there till the coming home of her aunt, which she hopes would be shortly. 'Let the weaver,' she goes on, ' Make beer for me forthwith, for my own drinking and your master; and see that I have good store of it ; for if I lack either good beer, or charcoal, or wood, I will blame nobody so much as I will do you. Cause the floor in my bedchamber to he made even, either with plaster, clay, or lime; and

all the windows where the glass is broken to be mended; and all the chambers to

be made as close and warm as you can.' It is the style of the mistress of a house, thoroughly understanding what comfort is, but at the same time as much alive to the dutie3 as to the rights of her position. An unmarried sister, who has ap- parently been ill, has come to stay for a time at Chatsworth. hear,' she cou-

tinnes, 'that my sister Jane cannot have things that are needful for her to have amongst you: if it he true, you lack a great honesty as well as discretion, to deny her anything that she hath a mind to, being in case as she bath been. would be loth to have any stranger so used in my house; and then assure your-

self I cannot like it to have my sister so used. Like as I would not have any superfluity or waste of anything, so likewise would I have her to have that which is needful and necessary. At my coming home I shall know more, and then I

will think as I shall have cause.' Though a careful and economical manager, she was given rather to magnificence of living and expenditure than to avarice or meanness. Cavendish afterwards began a new house at Chatsworth, but whether he lived to get into it is not clear. The old one, with its undulating floors and breezy apartments, was pulled down as soon as it could be dispensed with; and the completion of the other occupied his relict for a great part of her life. The biographical wife of her descendant the first Cavendish Duke of Newcastle says she had heard that it cost, first and last, above 80,0001. sterling. "Another of her letters, also writteu from the Court after she had become the wife of Saint Lee, supplies some additional characteristic strokes. It is addressed to another confidential or upper servant. She insists upon a troublesome tenant, one Worthy, who had engaged to; 'avoid,' or leave, at Lady Day ensuing, being made to give an obligation, or formal undertaking under a penalty, that he would do so; for sure,' she says, 'I will trust no more to his promise.' And when

he doth tell you,' she adds, 'that he is any penny behind for work done to Mr. Cavendish [perhaps her late husband's brother] or me, he doth lie like a false knave. Then, after some directions about her works' and her building,' comes this expressive sentence—'I perceive Sir James is much misliked for his religion; but I think his wisdom is such that he will make small account of that matter.' Sir James, conjectured to be Sir James Foljambe, was evidently a Catholic."

To modern ideas, familiar with capital so plentiful as to be wasted as a drug in all kinds of foolish and fraudulent schemes, nothing is more striking than the parsimony of high rank in old times. Shrewsbury was probably what is called " close-fisted " by nature ; but his complaints of the cost of keeping the Queen, or the " woman" as he styles her, is curious for its minuteness and urgency. The passage is from a letter to Burghley, in July 1580.

"'I do not know what account is made of my charges sustained in the keeping of this woman, but assuredly the very charge of victual of my whole household,

with the entertainment I do give to my household servants, is not defrayed with the allowance I have from her Majesty; besides the which, I dare be bold to say, the wine, the spice, and the fuel, that are spent in my house yearly, being valued, come not under 1,0001. by the year. Also the loss of plate, the buying of pewter,

and all manner of household stuff, which by them is exceedingly spoiled and wilfully wasted, stand me in 1,0001. by the year. Moreover, the annuities I have

given to my servants, to the end to be more faithfully served by them, and to pre- vent any corruption that by want they might be provoked unto, come to above 4001. by the year; yet do I not reckon the charges to all those soldiers I keep

over that which her Majesty doth allow for them, which being but sixpence per

day, [it] may be well considered that men in household, being employed in such painful and careful service, will not be so entertained. I do leave out an infinite number of other hidden charges, which I am driven unto by keeping this woman, for troubling you over long; but I do trust that her Majesty, of her own consi- deration, will so well think of these things, that she will not abridge anything

of that which she hath hitherto allowed. I have, in these eleven years' service in

this charge, not pestered her Majesty with any suits; neither have I lamented the heavy burden my mind has borne in providing for her safety, and that my body has sustained, being thereby weakened, only for that I do reckon myself happy

and fortunate in living to do her Majesty true and loyal service.' In a letter which his Lordship writes to his London agent, Thomas Baldwin, in the follow- ing February, he professes to have been reduced to the greatest straits by his ex- penditure on account of the Scottish Queen. After describing the charge im- posed upon him as too heavy a burden for him to sustain any longer, he desires Baldwin to lose no time in ascertaining what decision her Majesty means to come to about his allowance, that he may the better answer some of his creditors. And then, as if, upon reading over his letter, he had found it not strong enough, he adds this postscript—' I would have you buy me glasses to drink in. Send me word what old plate yields the ounce; for I will not leave me a cup of silver to drink in, but I will see the next term my creditors paid.'"