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NEW WORK BY JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON
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The QUEEN of NAPLES and LORD

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WORKS OF COUNT TOLSTOI. Mr. WALTER SCOTT has the pleasure to announce that he is now publishing in Monthly Volumes a series of translations of works of the eminent Russian novelist, Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. Το those unfamiliar with the charm of Russian fiction, and especially with the works of Count Tolstoï, these volumes will come as a new revelation of power.

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A MISSING LETTER FROM THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON; THE FALL IN PRICES; LIEUT.-COL. R. D. OSBORN THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY'; SALE; THE SIZES OF BOOKS

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LITERARY GOSSIP
SCIENCE-MATHEMATICAL SCHOOL-BOOKS; ASTRONΟΜΙ-

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he proves that Maria Carolina, far from being a monster of wickedness and vice, was a good, well-meaning, clever woman, a loving wife, a devoted mother, and, above all, an energetic and zealous queen.

From her first coming to Naples she had set her mind on acquiring political power. By her marriage contract she became entitled to a seat in the Council after she had given birth to a son; but in the years which passed before she attained that seat she had studied her husband's mind, and had rendered him her willing slave. She was thus queen in fact as well as in name; for more than twenty years she was the sovereign ruler; she favoured men of intellect and the aspirations for freedom and reform that showed themselves in most 544-546 European monarchies, and her reign was both popular and successful. The credit was, indeed, assigned by the people to her husband Ferdinand, or, as they preferred to call him, Nasone-Nosey-who had, in truth, nothing to do with the measures which she put in force beyond meekly sanctioning them. Among the higher class, however - among the nobles, and especially among the lawyers - there were several who felt aggrieved by the abolition of privileges, by the reforms which put an end to cherished abuses or to profitable even if iniquitous vested interests; who recognized the queen's hand in the changes which vexed them; and who nurtured a spirit of discontent no less bitter because it was necessarily secret. Still on the whole the popularity of the king was shared by the queen, and previous to 1790 no voice was raised in her dispraise. The French revolutions and the fierce outburst of Jacobinism which followed and spread over Europe put an end to all this. The queen became alarmed; she conceived that her liberal policy had but nurtured the scorpion now ready to sting her; and the news of the executions of her brother-inlaw and of her luckless sister Marie Antoinette confirmed her in the adoption of reactionary and repressive measures. Hence the savage fury with which she was regarded-a fury which for the moment was powerless to injure, but was strong to insult. The queen had early learnt to admire the English constitution, and to look for moral support from the English Government; now she turned to it for sympathy and material assistance; and it was just at this time, when, surrounded by enemies and spies, her correspondence with the English minister would have been constrained, if not difficult, that fortune threw in her way a valuable intermediary. This was Emma, the celebrated wife of Sir William Hamilton.

THIS work must be considered as, in the main, a supplement to the author's 'Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson,' which we reviewed some eighteen months ago; but, unlike most continuations, it is a distinct improvement on its precursor. Mr. Jeaffreson has now examined the MSS. in the British Museum, which he had previously neglected, and, thanks to recent additions to the rich Morrison collection, has elucidated several doubtful points in his former narrative. But it is not merely for this that he has undertaken the present work. His avowed aim has been to refute the libellous allegations and misrepresentations made by M. Gagnière in his 'La Reine Marie Caroline de Naples.' That he has done so is patent to every candid reader, though it may be doubted whether M. Gagnière or his book were worth the trouble bestowed on them. 'La Reine Marie Caroline' is a bad specimen of the worst type of historical writings, put together with slight knowledge, but much assumption, some literary skill, and a large amount of venomous spite. Englishmen, at any rate, are little likely to place much value on a book which portrays their darling hero in colours such as M. Gagnière has thought it not unseemly to use; and to demolish it is not, indeed, to break a butterfly, but may be more aptly compared to crushing a "painted child of dirt that stinks and stings." Nevertheless Mr. Jeaffreson has rendered good service to the cause of historical truth by this defence of the unfortunate Queen of Naples. She has had many and bitter enemies; and from her own time down to the present day so much mud has been unscrupulously thrown on her name and memory that, in the proverbial course of nature, some of it has stuck. Probably no sovereign of modern times, assuredly no queen, has such a foul reputation; and though it may have occurred to many to wonder, in a lazy sort of way, what the misdeeds were which have so besmirched her fair fame, there are few indeed who have questioned their reality or have doubted her iniquity. But this is the very point which Mr. Jeaffreson traverses. He asserts and

Into the early history of this remarkable woman Mr. Jeaffreson examined at length in his previous work 'Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson,' and now with fuller knowledge and more ample materials is able to confirm his former judgments; that he has found so very little to modify or correct speaks loudly in praise of his critical acumen. But the main interest here centres round the queen, not round Lady Hamilton, and a large portion of these volumes is devoted to an examination of the correspondence of the queen with Lady Hamilton, much of which has been preserved and is now in the British Museum. Of the other side of the correspondence, the

letters from Emma to the queen, Mr. Jeaffreson has found no sample, and he conjectures that they were destroyed one by one as they were received. This is quite probable, for many of them may have been compromising, even if only acknowledgments of confidential notes, and were, besides, valueless as soon as they had been read. But in any case, if they, or any of them, still exist, it is not in England that they must be looked for. Many years ago we were told at Naples that there was in the monastery of La Cava a large mass of correspondence between Maria Carolina, Lady Hamilton, and Lord Nelson. Unfortunately we were not then able to verify this statement; but whether correct or not, it would seem certain that if any such correspondence exists, it must be in some Neapolitan deposit. It would be a happy consequence of the present inquiry if Neapolitan scholars should be led to institute a search and to publish the results, instead of nursing their prejudices on such gross food as has been provided for them by Signor Palumbo or M. Gagnière; for the striking feature of all the letters which we yet know-of the letters of the queen to Lady Hamilton-is their purity. The relations between the two have been vulgarly supposed to be so much the opposite that this has excited suspicion ; and M. Gagnière, writing in the bitterest partisan spirit, has not scrupled to assert that all the licentious letters have been weeded out and destroyed, and, with the most delicious logic, argues that as this weeding out could only have been done for money, and as the queen's wicked letters must have been worth a good deal, the payment of these large sums is incontrovertible evidence of the terribly gross and compromising nature of the destroyed letters. As matter of simple fact there is not a tittle of evidence that any money whatever was paid for the return or destruction of any letters, or that any letters such as M. Gagnière presupposes were ever written. On the contrary, every letter that we know of is such as, but for the sins against syntax and orthography, might be used for a reading lesson in a convent. Some of the letters are familiar chit-chat; but for the most part they are messages to Sir William Hamilton, frequently enclosing copies of documents of political importance. The correspondence was virtually with Hamilton; his wife was but a go-between, who received and passed these letters coming under the guise of mere friendly notes.

Flattered by the queen's recognition and intimacy, Lady Hamilton, whose vanity was excessive, conceived the idea that she, not the queen, was the ruling spirit, and pleased herself in after days by describing the various things which she, by her personal influence, had induced the queen to do. According to her story, it was she who obtained the letter announcing the King of Spain's intention to declare war against England; it was she who prevailed on the queen to give Nelson an order for the admission of the English fleet into Syracuse; it was she who, by her immediate exertions, relieved the distress of the famishing Maltese. These and other similar assertions are, as Mr. Jeaffreson has ably shown, greatly exaggerated, if not altogether apocryphal-are the product of

what Mr. Jeaffreson speaks of as her "emotional faculty," but which in every-day language is commonly called a habit of telling lies-culminating, in her case, in the extraordinary statement of her claims, formally drawn up and signed. Mr. Jeaffreson now, for the first time, publishes the text of this statement, though the sense of it was given to the world by Pettigrew some forty years since. It is so wild and so crowded with outrageous blunders of chronology and known fact, that Pettigrew, having omitted to name his authority, was very commonly supposed to have written without one. By those who knew or inquired into Pettigrew's antecedents such a supposition could not be maintained, though they might and did maintain that his judgment was uncritical, and that he had attached too much weight to worthless evidence. Mr. Jeaffreson has now incidentally cleared Pettigrew's reputation of the last remnant of lurking suspicion, though it must still stand as a charge against him that he accepted without investigation a statement teeming with palpable errors of date.

But though her supposed licentious intercourse with Lady Hamilton has been one of the charges against Maria Carolina, it has been only one out of many. She has been accused of every vice which a woman, and of most crimes which a man, is capable of-of combining the worst features in the characters of Messalina and of Nero; whilst in the way of investigation has stood the very serious difficulty that the accusations were general; it was almost impossible to reduce them to definite particulars. The charge which is perhaps most accessible, and which in England has perhaps weighed most heavily on her memory, is that of blood-guiltiness in the matter of the execution of rebels after the retreat of the French from Naples-after the annulling of the capitulation by Nelson, who has, in fact, been also charged with so annulling it in deference to the queen's expressed wishes. Into this charge against Nelson Mr. Jeaffreson does not enter: it has been so fully examined and so completely exploded by Sir Harris Nicolas, and, popularizing his arguments, by Mr. Paget, that it was unnecessary for him to do so. No one who has paid any attention to the subject, and who is intellectually capable of appreciating his torical evidence, can now believe that Nelson acted under foreign influence, or from any motive but his own sense of right; and his complete acquittal carries with it so far that also of the queen. It does not, however, touch the charge of blood-thirstiness levelled against her, and to the examination of this Mr. Jeaffreson has properly devoted one of his most interesting and important chapters. It is notoriously difficult-in most cases it is impossible--to prove a negative; and by all the usages of argument and evidence Mr. Jeaffreson would have been justified in calling on the accusers to prove their charges. But whilst loud and vehement assertion has so well served their purpose it is useless to expect that they will do so; and Mr. Jeaffreson, stepping beyond what we may speak of as the legal requirements, has not shunned meeting the accusers on their own chosen ground. He begins by quoting a letter of June 11th, 1799, written by the queen to

Naples. The actual words of this letter, so far as relates to this question, are :

"Je vous reccomande L'Ingrat Naples ou J'ai ete Si meconue et que margre tout J'aime encore J'espere que la force imposante de merr come d'etre entoure de tous cotes les fera rentrer dans leurs devoirs sans que la force les y oblige Car Je desire que cella ne coute point de Sang celui de mes Enemis meme m'etant precieux."

This, Mr. Jeaffreson justly observes, " is not
the language of a cruel woman longing to
wreak her vengeance on her fallen enemies."
Was it, then, a mere blind? As she knew
that Nelson would refuse to be the tool of her
sanguinary fury, was it a mere pretext to
preserve his esteem, whilst she personally,
or through the medium of a subservient
husband, wreaked a bloody revenge on the
patriots whom she denounced as traitors?
M. Gagnière escapes the difficulty by the
simple process of ignoring the letter, as
he does many other letters which bear evi-
dence against his libellous accusations. Mr.
Jeaffreson, on the other hand, adduces these
letters, and shows by them-1, that justice
was administered and the executions ordered
by Ferdinand alone, the queen being at the
time at Palermo; 2, that consequent on
her erroneous prevision of events succeeding
the flight from Naples, the queen had, for
the time being, lost her influence with the
king, who, jealous of his unwonted liberty,
was resolutely bent on not permitting her
interference; and, 3, that being thus unable
to interfere, the queen did, through the
medium of Lady Hamilton, plead the cause
of several, the king in many detailed in-
stances granting to Emma's lovely face and
piquant conversation what he was in no
humour to yield to the prayers or entreaties
of his wife. If ever there was a triumphant
vindication of a character from a general
charge it is here; whilst in the few cases
which have been named the refutation is, if
possible, still more complete. And though
this refutation, this vindication, is primarily
meant for the queen, it includes Lady Hamil-
ton, who has been subjected to the same
aspersions, and has been described as a
monster of wickedness and cruelty; whereas
she appears, by the light of this very large
body of evidence, as an instrument of mercy
as a very real woman, who, with faults in
plenty and vices not a few, was absolutely
free from that tigerish thirst for blood of
which she has been accused.

Into the other class of accusations space will not permit us to enter. If Mr. Jeaffreson's refutation of these is not so clear as it is in respect of those which we have just discussed, it is that from the nature of things it scarcely can be, unless the charges are defined with the precision of the Divorce Court. One particular charge he does, however, very positively refute - the charge, namely, of the queen being the mother of a child of which Nelson was the father: a charge which was repeatedly made, with more or less directness, by Lady Hamilton. Mr. Jeaffreson shows this to have been a downright and wicked falsehood, for Lady Hamilton was herself the mother of the child. This point, on which much argument has been wasted and many curious contradictions put forward, may now be considered as positively settled by the dis

Nelson as he was leaving Palermo forcovery of the letter to "My own dearest

wife for such you are in my eyes and in the face of heaven": a holograph letter quoted by Pettigrew, much doubted by readers suspicious of Pettigrew's honesty or judgment, and now actually in the Morrison collection, where, in addition to Mr. Jeaffreson and many capable judges, we ourselves have seen it, and can assert our unhesitating belief in its genuineness. Mr. Jeaffreson adduces a great deal of other evidence, without in reality strengthening his case; for the one letter is in itself sufficient and convincing. Incidentally, Mr. Jeaffreson brings forward a fact till now, we think, unknown and unsuspected that Horatia was not the only child of Nelson and Lady Hamilton; that another, also a daughter, and named apparently Emma, was born towards the end of 1803 or the beginning of 1804, but died within a few months, in March, 1804.

We should not be doing our duty were we to conclude without remonstrating with Mr. Jeaffreson on publishing such a book as this a book essentially controversial and crowded with matters of detail-without an index. We thought the days for such an enormity had passed, and every reader should protest against this reversion to a primitive type.

The Battle Abbey Roll, with some Account of the Norman Lineages. By the Duchess of Cleveland. 3 vols. (Murray.)

THERE are few books more difficult to review than those which treat of a special subject requiring special knowledge, but are composed by writers whom one is compelled, for want of a better term, to describe as amateurs. For while, from one point of view, their authors may be deserving of much praise for doing so well with limited knowledge, they challenge, on the other, invidious comparisons by meeting specialists on their own ground, and lead the critic to regret that so much industry and not inconsiderable ability should be devoted to works which, from the nature of the case, can scarcely advance our knowledge of the subject with which they deal.

In selecting for her task the reinstatement of the Battle Abbey Roll the Duchess has, indeed, shown no small courage; and we may add at the outset that she has made a brave and skilful fight on behalf of this discredited document. It is so long since any one has had a good word for what Dugdale terms "this antient catalogue," that many may be tempted to dismiss at once a work which takes it quite seriously. Yet we hope to show that its study is not devoid of interest; while even if her Grace must be deemed to have failed in her avowed object, she has given us three volumes of pleasant and entertaining dissertation, in which she has shown herself well informed, in no ordinary degree, on the history of our ancient families.

To have accumulated the mass of materials which the writer presents must have required industry and time. Printed works have been ransacked, record indexes examined, and the writings of genealogists, old and new, consulted without stint. But all this is, unfortunately, of little avail without the possession of that critical spirit which is above all things needful when dealing with