schemes of a great revolution period."[2] Such a description is
singularly applicable to the letters of Walpole; and the care which he
took for their preservation shows that he was not without a hope that
they also would be regarded as interesting and valuable by future
generations. He praises one of his correspondents for his diligence in
collecting and publishing a volume of letters belonging to the reigns of
James I. and Charles I., on the express ground that "nothing gives so
just an idea of an age as genuine letters; nay, history waits for its
last seal from them." And it is not too much to say that they are
superior to journals and diaries as a mine to be worked by the judicious
historian; while to the general public they will always be more
attractive, from the scope they afford to elegance of style, at which
the diary-keeper does not aim; and likewise from their frequently
recording curious incidents, fashions, good sayings, and other things
which, from their apparently trifling character, the grave diarist would
not think worth preserving.

[Footnote 1: D'Israeli has remarked that "the _gossiping_ of a profound
politician, or a vivacious observer, in one of their letters, often by a
spontaneous stroke reveals the individual, or by a simple incident
unriddles a mysterious event;" and proceeds to quote Bolingbroke's
estimate of the importance, from this point of view, of "that valuable
collection of Cardinal d'Ossat's Memoirs" ("Curiosities of Literature,"
iii. p. 381).]

[Footnote 2: The Rev. J.E. Yonge, Preface to an edition of "Cicero's
Letters."]

He, however, was not the first among the moderns to achieve a reputation
by his correspondence. In the generation before his birth, a French