the letters are rather flat, it gives the Mulgrave version of the
business. The most valuable part of the book, and which was, indeed,
well worthy of separate publication, is a diary that Mr. Ward kept
through a considerable portion of his official life, beginning in
June 1809, and continuing with a short interruption till the death
of Perceval, when it ceased till 1819; after which it was maintained
to a later period than Mr. Phipps thinks it proper to publish it.
This diary consists of gossip, anecdote, on dits, and confidential
communications made to Mr. Ward on various occasions and at critical
times, together with his own observations and reflections on affairs,
or remarks on characters. As he was much in the confidence of
Perceval, saw a good deal of the Duke of Wellington, (Master-General
of the Ordnance during the era of the Manchester massacre and
Sidmouth's spy doings,) and was continually behind the scenes, the
diary is both curious and amusing. Allowance must of course be made
for the writer's position as a partisan, and some of his later
notions are those of the "laudator temporis acti," speaking without
responsibility; but it is sufficiently interesting to raise a desire
for the whole, published as a diary, and not mixed up with other
matters to which it has small relation.

The diary begins with Canning's intrigue against Castlereagh; and
Canning is occasionally brought forward in the earlier period,
and painted with a good deal of shadow, (he was then in a sort of
opposition to Perceval,) and altogether a very different personage
from the Wentworth of _De Vere_. Lord Palmerston, then a "very fine
young man," and a promising candidate for place, with no other faults,
in Mr. Ward's estimation, than what he has certainly got rid of long
since--nervousness and modesty!--also figures in the pages, and at a
critical conjuncture of his fortunes.