THE LIFE AND RECOLLECTIONS OF THE HON GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1368, 4 March 1865, Page 2

THE LIFE AND RECOLLECTIONS OF THE HON GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY.

(From the Timet, Dev. 16.)

This is a book which is, in one respect, as unlike the ordinary range of books as anything we have had in this generation. It is scandalous in its candour as respects both the living and the dead, while it presents the unusual spectacle of a scion of a noble house denouncing his kith and kin, and especially his own parents, for an alleged conspiracy to deprive hi in of his just inheritance. It is such a book as any other person in a similar predicament would hesitate to have written, but which we regard as perfectly consistent on the part of a Berkeley against Berkeleys. As the history of a quarrel of that combative house, it is such a book as we might naturally look for, though it would be difficult to find its parallel in the case of any other family, at any other time near or remote, so unrivalled is its position in the range of modern literature. The backbone of this book, then, being the story of a personal grievance and the Iliad of a wrong, whether real or imaginary, thus protracted or resented from childhood to old age, does not require our own investigation, or any expression of opinion on our part, because it is not a matter of public concern, but concerns the Berkeleys, and the Berkeleys alone. As a personal statement it is their business to answer it for themselves, if they incline to do so, and if they can. But we abdicate none of our jurisdiction, as a literary tribunal, if we decline altogether participation in this controversy, and put these family pleadings aside as foreign to our own appropriate function. We only care, and are only at liberty, to consider the book in its innocent aspects, as a contribution to our anecdotical literature, as a picture of the author's experiences, a,nd especially as a retrospect of his sporting life, which is on the face of it genial and expansive. "We have, therefore, only a commonplace task before us, and we set about it complacently and at our ease. Mr. Grantley Berkeley's first recollection of a responsible existence dates from the year 1806, when he was just six years of age, and was able to turn the key in the shrubbery gate at Berkeley Castle. But his historic sketch of the Castle, which he elsewhere terms "the oldest inhabited castle in the world," is particularly slight, while of the Berkeley family itself he leaves out entirely its most remarkable performance, arising out of the challenge of Lord Lisle, which the Berkeleys answered by meeting their foe at short notice in feudal array on .Nibley-green, where they fought " the Chevy Chace " of the west, and in which very lively battle Lord Lisle was slain, whereupon the Berkeleys victorious walked into his homestead. The writer, however, tells a good story of the wrath of the Lord of Berkeley in the days of Elizabeth, who entertained herself and Leicester at his castle by slaying "27 stagges," besides others that were " stolen and havocked;" whereupon the said Lord of Berkeley, " having much set his delight in his game, sodainly and passionately disparked the ground." He also tells us of James the sixth Lord Berkeley, who made one David Woodbourne, a suopoena server, eat a writ, " wax, parchment, and all," standing over him while he did so; and he remembers that a savage American deer attacked his father in the park and threw him upon the ground, when, but for the present member for Bristol, then a lad like himself, bringing his pocket knife to the rescue, the old Earl might have found the deer too much for him; and he remembers how the family escocheon fell to the ground as Sir Samuel Wathen, with whom his father had a feud, entered the castle gate soon after that father's funeral. But his pleasanter reminiscences are of a later date, when he spent some of his younger days at Brighton, while George, not yet the Pourth, was disporting himself at the Pavilion with the fair 3?itzherbert and his less grave and excusable surroundings. These were not only the days of Pox, Holland, and Grey, and of Duchesses of Devonshire, Gordon, and Rutland, but there was an Irish element of Colonels Hanger and M'Mahon, General Pitzpatrick, Lord Barrymore, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, which was given to drinking and high play beneath the lustre of the Royal chandeliers, and sometimes, we suspect, of rolling under the Royal mahogany. Here is a softer and more feminine element in the picture:— "Prominent among my earliest Brighton reminiscences are those of old Lady Clermont, who was a frequent guest at the Pavilion. Her physician had recommended a moderate use of stimulants to supply that energy which was deficient in her system, and brandy had been suggested in a prescribed quantity, to be mixed with her tea. I remember well having my curiosity excited by this, to me, novel form of taking medicine, and holding on by the back of a chair to watch the modus operandi. Very much to my astonishment, the patient held a liqueur bottle over a cup of tea and began to pour out its contents, with a peculiar purblind look, upon the back of a teaspoon. Presently she seemed suddenly to become aware of what she was about, turned up the spoon the right way, and carefully measured and added the quantity to which she had been restricted. The tea so strongly' laced' she then drank with great apparent gusto. Of course it was no longer ' the cup that cheers but not inebriatesbut what seemed inexplicable to my ingenuous mind was the unvarying recurrence of the same mistake of presenting the back of the spoon instead of the front. I was aware that it did not arise from defect of sight. Lady Clermont could see almost as distinctly as myself. Nevertheless, the cordial was permitted to accumulate in the tea till the old lady chose to adopt a better measurer, and then she most conscientiously took care not to exceed the number of teaspoonsful the obliging doctor had prescribed. I was not then aware that this was a case in which the remedy was the reverse of worse than the disease. Lady Clermont liked brandy as a medicine, and made this bungle in measuring it by way of innocent device for securing a much larger dose than she had been ordered. The gravity with which she noticed her apparent mistake, without attempting to correct it, and her little exclamation of surprise, so invariably uttered, amised me so much that when she quitted the Pavilion the best part of my day's entertainment seemed to have departed with her." Lady Haggerstone, who was doubtless often at Brighton, for reasons which we ourselves will explain presently, without much assistance from Mr. Grantley Berkeley, is thus represented as the actress in a singular spectacle:— "On this occasion, to which I more immediately refer, she atttempted to charm his Royal Highness by assuming a rustic dress that would have satisfied the taste of a VVatteau in the rural picturesque At her residence she had a miniature farmyard and three pretty little Alderneys. When the Prince and his friends and attendants had arrived, her Ladyship came forward from a side wicket as a milkmaid, for the purpose of making a syllabub for the Prince! She had a silver pail in one hand and an ornamental stool in the other. Lady Haggerstone tripped along, with ribands flying from her dainty little niiikinghat that hung on one side her graceful head, and the smallest little apron tied below her laced stomacher till she came opposite his Royal Highness, to whom she dropped a rurally graceful curtsey. Then passing,..lightly over the beautifully plaited straw- ■. ' —— «" *My Life and Recollections. By the Hon. Grantley F. Berkeley. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett, 1865.

her tucked-up gown showing her neat ankle as well as her coloured stockings, she placed her stool and pail conveniently for use Leaning against the flank of one of the crossest-looking of the Alderneys, was attempting to commence her rustic labours, but not having selected the right sex, the offended animnl did not seem to fancy such masquerade, for he first kicked out and then trotted away, nearly upsetting stoo, pail, and Lady Haggerstone, who then, covered with confusion, made a hasty retreat back into her little dairy, whence she did not appear again. Notwithstanding the impossible-to-be-restrained bursts of laughtef around him, the Prince of Wales never moved a muscle of his face ; but graciously directing the attention of his fair companions to the beauty of the day, praised the neatness of the farmyard. His lioyal Highness then led the way back into the villa, and shortly after to the carriages, as the good breeding,—at least what in those days was called so, —of ' the best bred gentleman in England' and lus own good sense told him that after such signal discomfiture to her prettily imagined purpose Lady H. would be more pleased with his absence than with his presence, surrounded as she was by smiling witnesses. Now, we do not gather that Mr. G-rantley Berkeley professes to have been a witness of this milking miscarriage, but it is certainly singular that he should describe the scene withjso many and such precise particularities of detail, and that both in substance and accessories he should be so totally in the wrong. In the first place, let us consider the theory of the story, which implies that Lady Haggerstone was setting her cap at the Regent, and reflect for a moment who Lady Haggerstone really was. Lady Haggerstone was the wife of Sir Carnaby Haggerstone, the plump, little plain wife of a rather lax baronet, and the probability of her coming into the Regent's company at any time consists in her relationship to Mrs. Fitzherbert, of whom she was the sister, and certainly not a promising or even a possible rival. Lady Haggerston, we believe, never milked nor tried to milk, the pretty Alderney, for the reason that the incident thus described really occurred at a farm which then stood at the bottom of the present Grosvenor-place, and in which the mistaken milkmaid, who was the victim of a little plot, was none other than the then Lady Buckinghamshire. Mr. Grantley Berkeley probably confuses his recollections of this date with a narrative of this incident which he heard in town subsequently. _ But at this date he must have been a very indistinct observer, for he refers to his interest in Wigley's toyshop at Brighton, and speaks of Jackson, the gentlemanly pugilist, teaching him to use his then " very small fists," and " holding up his huge palms for him to hit at." It is obvious that he could have had very little authentic knowledge of the people around him at this period of life, and that he was but a child until he revisited Brighton after his boyish experiences at Berkeley-house and at Cranford. To these early days at their town residence, which then stood in Spring-gardens, he assigns his observations of many of the characters who were caricatured by Gilray. He says that he remembered Beau Bruqjmel, G-eorge Selwyn, and Horace Walpole, though all on the wane, and the four Barry mores (Newgate, Cripplegate, Hellgate and Billingsgate) ; but the inference is still that he was very young, if the Duke of Clarence had to call at Berkeley house about this time, and to complain to his mother that he and his brothers had pelted him and the Duke of Cambridge from their garden walls as they were proceeding out of the park by the then narrow passage of Spring-gardens. "You young dogs!" his Royal Highness cried, as if in a tremendous passion, "if I had not ducked. you would have hit ifie. I escaped, but Cambridge got a terrible blow in the eye. As the mother of the culprits got angry at this recital, the good-natured Duke begged them off, saying it was only his fun, for both he and the Duke of Cambridge were too kind-hearted to distress even a child. I

Among our visitors at Berkeley-house, I have a distinct recollection of Sir Philip Francis, because he used to speak to my brothers and myself in a rough Hibernian accent, and was singularly thin in appearance. One day, on his coming into the dining-room, when my mother was giving us some wine and water, he exclaimed, on purpose to amuse us, ' Oh, blood, Lady Berkeley, how those boys drink!' I know that he was supposed to have written the letters of Junius, which have been fathered upon so many of his eminent contemporaries. So, also, he saw much of Mrs. Fitzherbert, who had been a frequent guest at Springgardens in the zenith of her celebrity ; but there was certainly some considerable interval between this experience and the request of Eeynolds Mansel, the editor of the Keepsake, that he would act for him as second in a duel with Count D'Orsay, which he discreetly got Mansel out of, and which speaks for his own approaching maturity, or perhaps even is a very much later incident of his life. His remonstrance with Lord Fitzhardinge, however, on behalf of a near lady relative, which occurs in close juxtaposition with the above, show 3 that at all events he had reached the years of discretion at that date, and that he is reverting to still earlier days when he takes us to Oranford house, or that he exchanged the one residence for the other, to and fro, of which, though the facts are well remembered, the chronology is forgotten. At Cranford he had the first enjoyments of a boy let loose into the country with a brother for a companion. "All day," he says, "we were together fishing, shooting, setting traps for vermin, rat hunting,—in short, seeking sport wherever it was attainable." This, as he suggests, was Dot exactly the orthodox way of bringing up a boy as he should go, but he is certain that it laid the foundation of his after-success as a sportsman. Among other incidents of these days, he broke his collar bone and dislocated his shoulder, and, among other exercises popular in his time, he became familiar with Cribb, Figg, and other heroes of the then " ring," and derived from them as much pugilistic science as they could impart to a young, active, and enthusiastic pupil. At Cranford, moreover, he enjoyed a little private bullbaiting, but that was confessedly more on the account of his brother Augustus, or his brother Augustus's dog,than himself. "Bull," which was the name of the latter, was an eager and extempore 'performer in this department of the writer's education. At length " Bull" and Augustus left Ghrantley and Moreton to their own resources. ( As we proceeded along the high road, nearing the spot of our separation, we were overtaken by a respectable tradesman, as he appeared, driving his wife towards the neighbouring town in a buggey. jt was Augustus's last chance of inducting us into a row, and not to be lost; so he made some most insulting remark upon these unoffending passengers, which so provoked the female that she unfortunately took up the casus belli, and, with other abuse, called her assailant a ' barber's clerk.' He replied,' I know I am a barber, and I have shaved you.' When the man heard this wordy war he joined in it. On this my brother told him that, 'if it was not for his woman he would pull him out of his rattletrap and tread on him.' Here was a circumstance that caused my boyish mind considerable speculation. Hard names and some swearing seemed not much to insult the man in the buggey; but on hearing the female at his ■ side called his * woman,' his wrath knew no bounds. With the exclamation, ' My woman, you rascal! she

is my wife!' he set to work lashing my brother with his gig whip, commencing a sort of artillery duelat long practice, not in accordance with the cavalry arm of my brother, nor with his way of lighting. A charge upon the buggey was therefore made by him, keeping his right side open' for mischief; and lti the obscure darkness I could hear the crown of the hat of the driver get ten blows for one, for his long weapon was useless at close quarters. The female, wife or woman, whichever she was, very quickly saw that the combat was all one way, for with a very much damaged crown, her king crouched down on the cushion at her side; so that she awakened up the heath with shrieks of 'MurderJ', 'Be off, as hard as you can split,' was then the order to us from the offender. We obeyed, as we heard the heels of his horse speed on far in advance of the buggey. To give Mr. G-rantley Berkeley fair credit, he condemns the recklessness of such robust | adventures, but he pleads that such was the practice in the days when he was raised; and to his own advantage, as he admits, he was summarily recalled to a more quiet regimen by the sudden appearance of a tutor, who required from him other exercises. Nevertheless, his stories of little private fights with the sons of the Vicar of Berkeley and one of the keepers, which are very amusing, show that in stable and backyards he enjoyed consolations, though he declares that this was done chiefly for the amusement of his brother Henry, who used to invite him to the stable with the gloves to fight one of the boys above mentioned, when the battle always ended by his knocking the head of his opponent into the manger. I remember that for months during these, to my brother, amusing combats my lips were sometimes so cut against my teeth that I could not eat any salad with vinegar, the acid occasioned so muph smarting. I could lick my antagonist as far as^ the fight with the gloves was permitted to go, but in a' few days at the word of command the lad was ready for another licking, so that week after week I had no peace, and had to lick him again; nor had I resolution enough to withstand the taunts of being vanquished, if I had refused to set to, although my superior proficiency had been a hundred times asserted. All things must have an end; every day

strengthened my tall and growing limbs, and everyday my power over my antagonist increased, when, for some ill conduct, he lost his service and these, to him, not very agreeable encounters. My brother then for a time lost his amusement; ' Othello's occupation was gone,' for nothing came into service at Cranford that approached the age of a boy. A new footman was, however, inducted, a grown man and not a little one, but a cross-grown lout of a fellow; and, mere boy as I was, we were ordered to the stable, in front of my brother's usual , throne, the corn-bin, and'there desired to do battle. By this time I had got into such habits of pugnacious obedience that if a bear had been introduced, and'l; bad been told that the beast was to vanquish me, I should at once have boxed with him. The combat [ am now alluding to was not unlike one of a boy md bear. I stepped back, put in, and then gave tray successfully, for a short time; but at last the nan met me with a half round blow, and hit me :lean down on the rough stones of the stable. Henry lid not seem to care much; but Moreton, who was

jresent, spoke out loudly against the shame of jutting such a boy to fight with a grown man, and I )elieve, feeling slightly annoyed at the way he had >vermatched me, our elder brother stopped any urther assault on my part, and suggested that Peter hould put the gloves on with his own servant, a veil-built, active little fellow, whom he had daily hrashed into one of the most expert boxers of his ize. Peter, all agreeable, set to with Shadrach, rhen the former caught such a right-hander in the ace as sent him as if he had been shot upon the table stones. He rose crying, and deprived of all rish for another blow—my fall very sufficiently .venged. I have often wondered why I was not owed by all this brutality, or why I ever took to hose more gentle accomplishments in life that used o get me the name,of 'dandy' among some of my ougher compeers. However, time wore on; I fought hrough the stableboys and menservants, and had ense enough not to acquire any rudeness of manner, or dislike to more refined occupations." Then came the days when he was to be ent to the .Royal Military .College at Sandlurst, and hia brother M6reton was taken way to go to Corpus, Oxford. He speaks ery tenderly of this parting—how with a addened heart he went the rounds of the raps, and did all that Moreton had left him o do with a minuteness as if he thought Moreton could see him; and he was left by is mother to follow out the bent of his in- , clinations. Indulgent mother! Affectionate brother! The day after his brother left he came on the well-known impression of his brother's foot, left, as he remembered, on the day before, when they together came home that way. He had borne his boyish bereavement in sadness and in silence until this minute; " but now, at this remembrance thus unexpectedly presented to me, I burst into tears, and sat for a long, long time crying bitterly under a lime tree that then grew on the edge of that wide old walk." At Sandhurst, whither he was himself sent

shortly after this, he had to undergo the usual torments which the students there were permitted to inflict on each other from the want of adequate control on the part oi the authorities. Having remained a year, he calculates that when he came away he must have been about 15 years of age. At the age of 16 the Prince, afterwards George IV.; presented him with a commission in the Coldstream Guards, and for some time he did duty in London, in Windsor, and. at Chatham. In those days he distinguished himself in pigeon matches at the Battersea Bed House, and in the races on Hounslowheath, which were confined to gentlemen riders. He and his brother Henry kept a few couple of hounds in the old kennel at Cranford, and hunted hare, bagfox, or fallow deer, whichever they could get, and by degrees a few hunting men clustered about them, and they succeeded in making a very respectable field. Cranford adjoined Houn-slow-heath, at that time still the haunt of highwaymen, and the incidents for which it long retained a terrible celebrity were often canvassed in the writer's hearing. He tells a story of one Hawkes, commonly called th« "Plying Highwayman," who in the disguise of a Quaker, at an inn, observed the movements of an unsuspicious ; traveller, and the places on his person where he disposed his valuables, &c.; and who actually, while this person's back was turned, removed the priming from his pistols, and then, at their next rencontre, plundered him conveniently and pleasantly of every thing. It appears that the highwayman himself was captured shortly afterwards, at a country inn, by two adroit Bow street runners, who were themselves disguised as clodhoppers, and the mannier in which they surprised him makes a very telling story, which, as it extends to. at least eight pages, is too long, therefore, for quotation in our' columns. There is a very curious supplement to this interesting narrative, in the statement that the eccentric Lord Coleraine paid a visit to this highwayman, when in Newgate, and offered him a handsome price for his horse. The highwayman responded warmly, « Sir, I am as much obliged to you tor your proposal as for your visit. But," he added, in a tone and with a manner which implied his increasing confidence, " the mare won't suit you, perhaps, if you want her for the road. It is not every man that can get her up to a carriage!" Lord Coleraine was so pleased with this little trait of professional sympathy, that he ' advanced * him £50 tb effect his escape, but in this the highwayman tailed; so he honourably returned the money as of no use, and submitted to his fate Following this, Mr. Grantley Berkeley

commences a narrative of what he supposes to have been a supernatural appearance. "It wa& before I left the Guards, if I remember rightly, when my brother Moreton and myself saw the ghost at Cranford." His father had seen something similarin the same house, or at least something almost as inexplicable, and both stories are worth the attention of the professed ghost-hunter. Reverting from his ghost stories to his stories of highwaymen, Mr. Grantley Berkeley recounts the cir- , cumstances under which Lord Berkeley shot a highwayman, who stopped him in 1774-5, and the recital of which he heard from Lord Berkeley himself 1 , this being very- different Trom the description in the Gentleman's Magazine, and that published in the memoirs of Mr. Berkeley's aunt, the Margravine of Anspach. Mr. Berkeley hints further that no less a person than the Lord Bishop Twysden, of Baphoe, was given to these marauding enjoyments,some twenty years previously to the attack on his father, and that he was the Bishop who was shot through the body on Hounslow-heath, and for whom the inquiry was gently made in the Gentleman's Magazine—" Was this the Bishop who was taken ill on Hounslow-heath, and carried back to his friend's house, where he died of an inflammation of the bowels ?" This episcopal highwayman was the father of the celebrated Lady Jersey, notorious for her friendship with the Prince of Wales. The author then gives some anecdotes of the persons who visited the Cranford-bridge Inn at this time, most of them for shooting or hunting, and such is the penalty which j one gentleman still alive must pay for his presence on one of these occasions, that Mr. Berkeley stigmatizes him as a most dangerous companion to shoot with, as he was nearly peppering his (Mr. B.'s) legs and those of the Duke of York. Liston and Dowton, the comedians, used also to come to the Cran-ford-bridge Inn, and Mr. Berkeley tells a characteristic story of the latter. The astonishment of John Yarley, the artist, who taught his sisters drawing, at a man on horse, clearing a fence in his presence, is depicted with a dash of humour, and it is evident from what Mr. Berkeley says of Varley in other respects that he must have been well acquainted with his various eccentricities.

Mr. Berkeley turns to the town talk and the manners of his day, and among his collection of experiences we again find some amusing anecdotes:— On two occasions I remember that the late Lord Rokeby went to Greenwich behind a pair of posters, and that in coming back the postboy, excessively drunk, upset him on the road. He was much too good natured to insist on the man's discharge, and, peihaps because he liked a glass of wine himself, he was inclined to forgive a lad overcome by porter; so the carriage was righted and no notice taken of the matter. It so happened that some time after Lord Rokeby had again to go Greenwich, and when his carriage and pair of posters came' to the door he saw in the saddle the same postboy who had brought him to grief. 'Oh, you're there, are you!' he said, in that ! dear, good-natured way he had of speaking. ' Now mind, my good fellow, you had your jollification last time ; it's my turn now, so I shall get drunk, and you must keep sober.' The postboy touched his hat in acquiescence with this reasonable proposition ; he brought back my friend in safety, at all events, and, I dare say, in a veryjhappy state of mind. The writer also remembers a dinner at the Ship, where there were a good many ladies, and when D'Orsay was of the party, during which his attention was directed to a centre pane of glass in the bay window over the Thames, where some one had written in large letters, with a diamond,- D'Orsay's name in improper conjunction with a celebrated G-erman danseuse then fulfilling an engagement at the Opera. With characteristic readiness and sang froid, he took an orange from a dish near him, and, making some trifling remark on the excellence of the fruit, tossed it up once or twice, catching it his hand again. Presently, as if by accident, he gave it a wider cant, and sent it through the window, knocking the offensive words out of sight into the Thames. Cockfighting in those days was still in existence, and Lord Sefton, Sir George Dash wood, Lord Waterford, the present Lord Sefton, and the writer were the last who kept up the sport. The writer got into various difficulties through his enthusiasm in this behalf. He was

trapped by a most perfidious friend, and ; might have been committed fco the treadmill > for a month in default of payment of the fine of i £5 inflicted upon him for being present at the particular cockfight to which he was ' insidiously decoyed by the friend alluded to. Again, we come upon some of his hunting experiences in the neighbourhood of Cranford, such as those shared with Lord Alvanley, who, in answer to the question " What sport ?" at White's replied, " me l° n and asparagus beds were devilish heavy—up to our hocks in glass all day ; and all Berkeley wanted was a landing net to get his deer out of the water." It was with Gh B. also, that the late Sir George Wombwell, having missed his second horse, spoke to one of the surly cultivators of that stiff vale thus:—" I say, farmer, it, have you seen my fellow?" The man, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, eyed his questioner in silence for a minute, and then exclaimed, "No, upon my soul I never did!" Hunting about Harrow became very expensive from the damage it did to the farmers in that district, and the claims for compensation which it entailed upon Mr. Berkeley and his friends. The result of this* he says, at once became evident; a mine of wealth would soon have been insufficient to cover the cost of a single run over the Har. row vale, and " reluctantly I saw that if I intended to keep hounds I must go further from the metropolis, and seek a wilder scene in which to hunt a fox instead of stag, and thus take a higher degree in the art of hunting." Accordingly, negotiations were entered into for his becoming the master of hounds to the Oakley Glub in Bedfordshire' for £1000 a year, the club taking all the j cost of the earth-stopping upon themselves i and other incidental expenses. The depre- j ciation of West Indian property, which oc- < curred about this time, and the larger ex- ] penses contingent on taking a country in which to hunt a fox four days a week, made ( him resolve to give up his seasons in London i and settle down quietly to a country life, t thus avoiding every unnecessary expenditure. ] His arrangements, in spite of opposition f from some members of the club, appear to 1 have been satisfactory and eventually popu- ] lar, until the sport of his last season there s was positively brilliant, when in Yard ley s Chase alone he found 17 foxes, and killed 14 f of them with a run. c He had taken the mastership of the Oak- a ley hounds in 1829, and in 1832 he wns v invited by his brother, Colonel Berkeley, to come forward at the next dissolution of o Parliament for the western division of G-lo- is cestershire, and this, when he was elected, n was the commencement of his Parliamentary p career. But the conditions and circum- 1 stances attending his- various contests, his n:

( open breach with his brother, his ) triumph in opposition to him, and his una • retirement from the House of Commons, are • all so mixed up and identified with the long 1 family feud to which we have already adverted, and on which it is not our intention to comment, that we pass nearly all ot them by, only observing that the reader will nnd some amusing episodical stories about Lord William Lennox on pp. 353-6 of the first volume, and that the same volume, before it closes, contains an account of Mr. Berkeley s own endeavours, which were at last successful, to obtain a gallery for the ladies in the House of Commons, which made him at the time very popular for his gallantry. Towards the commencement of his second volume Mr. Berkeley speaks very sensibly on the subject of the qualifications of a good sportsman: — Men who have but one idea seldom, bring' it to perfection. A good sportsman ought to have a great many ideas, for if he has not an extensive and keen observation it is impossible that he can either match the craft of the sensible fox and hunt him down, or kill with hounds the timid and curiously shifting hare. He will not know the likely spots and the likeliest time for finding the feathered game, nor the sort of weather that usually fixes their whereabout. Neither will he know how to baflle the far-scenting nose of the deer, nor how to shut out the large, the lustrous, and the curious eye that, directed by that nose, ranges the hills from the plain to the very ' skyline' on the horizon, and takes notice of everything in motion, even catching alarm from the scared cry of a bird or the run of a disturbed hare. Then we hear of Mrs. Crouch, Mrs. Jordan, and other syrens ; then of Mrs. Salmon, of Adelaide Kemble, and Miss Hawes, whom the authoradmired, and with whom he associated, with much enjoyment of their musical performances ; and his gossip leads him up to his intimacy with certain literary people, and, among others, to the incidents which brought about his attack upon Fraser and his duel with Maginn. According to his narrative, a lady conceived the idea of asking for his assistance, though she knew him only by repute, in a delicate difficulty, in which none of her own friends were able to assist her; and we learn that he did take up her quarrel, upon excellent grounds, and with very immediate and considerable effect. The culprit in the case was the well-known Dr. Maginn, who, having the lady in his power, from his then influence as a literary critic, was pressing upon her, as the price of averting his hostility, a dishonourable compliance with desires which were at once base and mercenary. Mr. Berkeley boasts that he succeeded in taking Dr. Maginn's intended prey out of his paws, though he was afterwards warned by Lady Blessington, who was subsequently made cognizant of the circumstances, that Maginn would watch for an opportunity of having his revenge. The opportunity which came was the publication, some time afterwards, of a novel by Mr. G-rantley Berkeley, which Dr. _Maginn took the oppertunity of criticizing in Fraser*s Magazine, not, however, with a fair criticism, but with a malignant insinuation against Lady Euston (the present DowagerDuchess of Grafton, and the cousin of the author), to whom he had, very naturally, dedicated the work. It would have been reasonable that any man, at whose lady relative a scandalous insult was thus pointed, should feel a little tingling of the blood in consequence, and, accordingly, Mr. G-rantley Berkeley, accompanied by his brother Craven, and armed with a stout horsewhip, waited on Mr. Fraser, the publisher of the magazine, to demand the name and address of the author of the article in question. The author was Dr. Maginn, but, as Mr. Fraser declined to name him, Mr. Berkeley assumed that he might hold Mr. Fraser himself responsible, and thereupon he hauled him out by the collar, and administered a most severe chastisement. For the moment it was treated as a police case, but it was soon converted into the subject of a civil action, and, in the meantime, Dr. Maginn, though with no exceeding alacrity, threw himself in the way of Mr. Berkeley, and arrangements were made for a hostile meeting. The duel which thereupon took place is described in this volume. Neither of the combatants fought with his own pistols ; though both of them fought with Mr. Grantley Berkeley's choice gunpowder, to his own extreme disgust. They fired three shots at each other, Mr. Berkeley aiming at his antagonist's legs, but only succeeding in hitting the heel of his boot, and the hinge of his own brother Henry's pistol case on which it rested. We remember hearing at the time that the latter, who had followed his brother on horseback

. to the field, and was looking on from behind I the nearest hedge, was by no means gratified - by this damage to his property, and that his 1 disgust at this incident was almost the only - sentiment he expressed upon this occasion. , At all events, no further damage was done in the encounter, except what appears to have been the dispersion of some cotton wad- ; ding under Dr. Maginn's shirt front, by the i third and last shot from Mr. G-rantley Berkeley's pistol. Mr. Fraser was Dr. Maginn's second, and Major Fancourt was i that of Mr. Berkeley. Subsequent to this a , a counter-action for libel was brought by ' Mr. Berkeley against Mr. Fraser in the Exi chequer, but the litigation on both sides was compromised by the simple payment of Mr. Eraser's doctor's bill. Mr. Henry Berkeley subsequently had a correspondence with Dr. Maginn on another occasion, when he again assailed the honour of the Berkeley family, in which, metaphorically, the wadding flew out of the doctor a second time. After a visit to the French forests Mr. Berkeley went to the prairies of the Far West, passed a month, he says, with his waggons in the desert, killed 20 bison, all old bulls but two, had some splendid wildfowl shooting, and gave two well-attended lectures at St. Louis and St. Joseph," returning home in time to warn England of the immediately impending civil war." In America, too, he saw and made the acquaintance of Heenan before he came over to the great contest with Tom Sayers. His augury of Heenan's chance was even then unfavourable, and he maintains that the facts, especially Heenan's subsequent defeat by King, proved how right he was in his judgment. He has another chapter on fishing experiences, another on a visit- to the Highlands, where he rejoiced himself with Lord Breadalbane, Prince and Priucess Leningen, the [ Due d'Aumale, Lord Rokeby, &c.; and he nnally concludes with a chapter on beths and bathing, Banting, Bournemouth, his dog rutus, and last of all, with an entomological study of a beetle, whose ingenuity in preserving a spider he had slaughtered for a uture dinner, and resolute determination in carrying him to his larder, are described quite as well as anything we have ever read in the f works of the most accomplished naturalist. *

Lhus we have a picture in the recollections ? a living man of a state of society which y is now superseded, and of which very few b i elics still remain to be illustrated l>y the 11 pens oi a Raikes, a G-ronow, or a Berkeley. a here is a common aspect about these * memoirs which speaks for the general accu- i s

racy of their representations. There i • them all the taint of the Regency, and tJ 11 aroma of the lees of the old Saturn*] Such times, such incidents, such characte*' are now obsolete, and though no one cares to resuscitate them, they may serveT amuse us, and to reconcile us more cordiall° to the change which society has since under" gone. There is a certain manliness ahrJ some of these old " Bucks," though it <] e generated oftentimes into a simply robust ruffianism. In the present case there i 3 allowance to be made for the resentment rightly or wrongly entertained, for what the author considered to be a family plot and persecution. On the other hand, his k eeQ appreciation of natural objects, his thorough intimacy with his dogs and his horses, i s not only an evidence of his powers of observation, but a creditable testimony to his p os ! session of some of the higher humanities Like William the Conqueror, it is clear that he " loved the tali deer as if he were their father," and we cannot but be tolerant of a true sportsman, who might have played a better part if he had had a better education and better opportunities.