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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis. Edited, with Notes, by Charles Ross, Esq. 3 vols. London, 1858.

THE

HE career of the Marquis Cornwallis was in many respects a remarkable one. Without lofty ambition or shining talents, without being a hero, an orator, or a statesman of the first class, he filled effectively the most prominent place on four conspicuous stages at four of the most trying epochs of British history. He commanded the army which, from no fault of his, gave, by its surrender at York Town, the first clear glimpse of coming independence to the United States. He was Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in India from 1786 to 1794, when our Indian policy required the nicest and most judicious handling. He was Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland during the agitation of the Union, the passing of that momentous measure, and the rebellion and invasion which preceded it. As British ambassador, he negotiated the peace of Amiens in 1801. He also held the post of Master-General of the Ordnance in 1795, after having had the refusal of the seals of Secretary of State from Mr. Pitt. When the mutinous spirit of the officers of the Bengal army began to excite serious alarm, Lord Cornwallis, at the earnest request of the Premier, was on the point (Jan. 1797) of proceeding a second time to India to supersede Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth), who was thought deficient in firmness; and the same high appointment was a third time pressed upon him and accepted in 1805, in the October of which year he died, from over-eagerness in the discharge of his public duties, at Ghuznee.

The Correspondence of a man who was employed in this manner, who was trusted to this extent, who inspired unabated confidence in his judgment, courage, and integrity to his dying day, can hardly fail to be replete with interest and instruction, although whether to the full extent of three bulky octavo volumes, may be questioned by that class of readers who prefer being fed with essences and, from dread of being bored, attempt to skim Vol. 105.-No. 209.

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the cream of a heavy-looking publication by skipping every other page, as dogs, from fear of crocodiles, lap water from the Nile as they run. Uninviting as it may appear to some, this work contains so large a quantity of authentic information, and affords such ample materials for the correction of contemporary annals, that it may be regarded as indispensable to the student of modern history, and (to adopt the stereotyped phrase) as emphatically one of those books which no gentleman's library should be without. It will take rank with the best political memoirs or compilations that have appeared within living memory, with the marked advantage of being far better edited than most of them. There is hardly an allusion, a reference, a dubious passage, or a disputed fact, in the three volumes, which has not been pointed, explained, or decided by Mr. Ross; hardly a patronymic to which, on its first occurrence, he has not appended a brief account of the owner. We are regularly informed when, where, and how all and each of Lord Cornwallis's family, friends, acquaintance, and correspondents, of high or low degree, were born, married, and died; not unfrequently how many contested elections they stood, and how many votes they polled. The index is copious and minute, so that we may confidently refer to the work as a repertory of biographical details touching most of the political and social notabilities who flourished, and many of the illustrious obscure who did not flourish, between 1776 and 1805.

Mr. Ross is the son of General Ross, the life-long friend and for some time the aide-de-camp of Lord Cornwallis, to whom most of the confidential letters now printed are addressed. The editor of the papers is moreover married to Lady Mary, third daughter of the second Marquis. He was a member of the House of Commons from 1822 to 1837, a Lord of the Admiralty in 1830, and of the Treasury in Sir Robert Peel's administration of 1835. He is now one of the Commissioners of Audit. His opportunities have been excellent, and his own personal observations and reminiscences are sometimes amusingly interwoven with the notes. For example, in reference to the first Lord Malmesbury, we find :

His correspondence, published by the present Lord Malmesbury, proves that, in his anxiety to obtain information, he was not always very scrupulous as to the means. One anecdote, not given there, is, it is believed, quite authentic. When minister at —, it was of great importance to obtain possession of the secret instructions given to one of his colleagues. All other means having failed, he carried to a successful issue an intrigue with Madame de a near relation of the

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minister in question, and through her obtained the papers.'

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days should upon this principle have included Ovid's Art of Love' as well as Wheaton on International Law.' A smart repartee of Mr. Coutts is given thus:

'Messrs. Coutts were during many years bankers to George III., George IV., and almost all the Royal Family. The Duke of York, dining in company with Mr. Coutts, gave the health of the latter, as "my banker for upwards of thirty years." "I beg your Royal Highness's pardon," said Mr. Coutts, "it is your Royal Highness who has done me the honour to keep my money for thirty years.'

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The better version makes the Duke say, 'my banker, who has kept my money for thirty years;' to which the rejoinder was,'I beg your Royal Highness's pardon, it is your Royal Highness who has kept my money all the time.'

Secretaries to the Treasury appear sometimes to have been as little scrupulous in their particular line as Lord Malmesbury was in his. An intimate friend of the Premier applied to Sir George Rose for some petty office for a constituent, but said a civil answer would suffice; upon which Rose instantly dashed off and handed him a letter in these words :

“MY DEAR SIR,-Immediately upon receiving your most pressing application I went to the Premier, and I vow I never saw a man so distressed as he was at having just previously promised the place for which you had made such urgent application. Believe me, &c.,

GEORGE ROSE."

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In one or two instances Mr. Ross has been seduced into a hardly allowable digression, as in telling us, apropos of an allusion to Lord Carhampton :

Lord Carhampton spent the latter years of his life at his beautiful residence, Painshill in Surrey. This is probably the only place in England where, within the memory of man, wine in considerable quantities has been made from grapes growing in an open vineyard. The Editor has tasted this wine, which was of really good quality, and of the colour of pale sherry.'

It is a long and a bold leap from Lord Cornwallis to the homemade wine of Painshill; but if we were to insist invariably on a strict, logical connection between the anecdotes of an annotator and his text, we should deprive some of the pleasantest books in the language of their principal attraction. The notes to Mr. Croker's edition of Boswell's 'Johnson' would lose incalculably by the curtailment of their discursiveness; and in Sir Walter Scott's miscellaneous writings, the reminiscences into which he wanders, often far away from the main thread of his argument or narrative, are their purple patches and their gems. We are, therefore, seldom disposed to quarrel

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for his digressions with an editor whose memory is stored with curious matter; and if Mr. Ross should be accused of drawing rather too liberally on Debrett and Burke, let us at the same time avow our gratitude to him for placing immediately within reach everything we can wish to know touching all the personages to whom we are introduced in these volumes. He has also connected and prefaced the principal epochs of Lord Cornwallis's public services by historical summaries, which enable us to track his Lordship's course and appreciate his views of passing events without the smallest trouble in research or reference. We shall imitate Mr. Ross's example in this respect, and give a brief biographical notice of the Marquis.

The pedigree of the Cornwallis family is easily carried back to the fourteenth century, and there are traces of its existence amongst the landed gentry at a much earlier date. The ninth possessor of their Suffolk estates, Sir Thomas, was made a Privy Councillor and Treasurer of the Household, as a reward for assisting to suppress Wyatt's insurrection in 1553. He had once been Treasurer of Calais, and was suspected of having betrayed his post. One of the lampoons of the period runs thus:

'Sir Thomas Cornwallis, what got ye for Calais?
Brome Hall, Brome Hall, as large as a palace.'

His grandson was created a baronet in 1627, and raised to the peerage for his loyalty, by the title of Baron Cornwallis, in 1661. The fifth baron was made Earl Cornwallis and Viscount Brome, June 30th, 1753. His eldest son, the subject of these pages, was born December 31st, 1738, and was sent to Eton at an early age,' which cannot be precisely ascertained. The most memorable incident in his Eton career was a blow in the eye, received whilst playing at hockey, which produced a slight but permanent obliquity of vision.* Sydney Smith's positive averment that the Archbishop of Canterbury knocked him down with a chessboard when they were at Westminster School together, may be open to a doubt; but there seems none whatever that the damage to the future Governor-General and LordLieutenant's eye was inflicted by an embryo prelate the Honourable Shute Barrington, afterwards Bishop of Durham, whom Mr. Ross rewards by a note.

On leaving Eton, Lord Brome entered the army as ensign in

*The injured eye is said to have contracted a perpetually-oscillating motion. It was one of Curran's favourite anecdotes, that, when Lord Cornwallis was about to leave Ireland, a Roman Catholic bishop, at the head of the clergy of his diocese, produced a general titter by beginning an address thus: Your Excellency has always kept a steady eye upon the interests of Ireland.'

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