had any hand in this book, Heaven forbid ! she is all gratitude, pure gratitude, depend upon it. She would not go for to blacken her old frend and patron's carrickter, after having been so outragusly faithful to her? she wouldn't do it, at no price, depend upon it. How sorry she must be that others a'nt quite so squemish, and show up in this indesent way the follies of her kind, genrus, foolish bennyfactris."

This recalls the lines written about another indiscreet chronicler :

For fifty years he listened at the door,

And heard some secrets and invented more;

These he wrote down, and statesmen, queens, and kings

Were all degraded into common things.

Though most have passed away, some still remain

To whom such scandal gives a needless pain;
And though they smile and say, "'Tis only Greville,"
They wish him, Reeve and Longman at the devil.

Lady Charlotte Susan Maria Campbell, who was born in 1775, was the youngest child of John Campbell, fifth Duke of Argyll, by his wife, Elizabeth, the younger of the beautiful Gunning sisters, who had married, first, James Hamilton, sixth Duke of Hamilton. She inherited much of the beauty and charm of her mother, and kept her looks for many a long year. "Everybody admires the youngest daughter's person and understanding," Walpole wrote to the Misses Berry in 1791; and there is a note by Croker: "Thought by the bestjudging of her contemporaries the most beautiful creature ever seen. I saw her in 1801, still magnificent, whole theatres turning round to look at her; but twenty years later she had grown coarse, and one of the most mortifying spectacles of dilapidated, but still pretentious beauty I could imagine."

At the age of twenty-one, Lady Charlotte married Colonel John Campbell (eldest son of Walter Campbell of Schawfield, by his first wife, Eleanor Kerr), who interested himself in politics and was for some time in the House of Commons as member for Ayr Burghs. The early years of her married life were spent at Edinburgh, but from 1803 they made their headquarters at Hartwell, in Buckinghamshire.

After his death in 1809, which left Lady Charlotte in uneasy financial circumstances, in order to provide for her nine children, she had to do something to increase her income, and regarded herself as happy in securing a post as Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess of Wales. It was, of course, during these years that she kept the notorious Diary.

To the deep regret of her friends, Lady Charlotte married secondly the Rev. Edward John Bury, Rector of Lichfield, Hampshire, a man fifteen years her junior, who had been tutor to her son. "I am afraid that at Florence the circumstances of Lady Charlotte's marriage, which has given so much disgust to her friends, must have considerably diminished your enjoyment," Professor John Playfair wrote to Mary Berry, in August 1818. After all, it is an action on her part more unwise than wrong, and I think ought not to be visited with a continuance of indignation and reproach. It brings her down a step below the heroic level to which her conduct and her beauty (for this last had its full share in fixing our opinions) had raised her in the estimation of the world, but she still remains at a height much above the common run of men and women even of her own rank." Bury died in 1832, thus predeceasing his wife by nearly thirty years.

Lady Charlotte always had a taste for letters. In her

teens she wrote verses, and when she was two-and-twenty she published anonymously a little volume, Poems on Several Occasions. In the thirties of the nineteenth century she wrote a number of novels, with such titles as Self-Indulgence, Flirtation, Separation, The Exclusives, The Two Baronets, and the like. They are all long since forgotten, but they had some vogue in their day, and she received as much as £200 for some of them.

She was fond of correspondence, and the following letter to Mary Berry may be given as an example of her style. It is dated Inveraray Castle, January 21, 1810, just before she took up her appointment as Lady-inWaiting to the Princess of Wales.

DEAR BERRINA,-I am quite grieved to think you thought it necessary to write to me because you had intended to do so. I feel sure of your regard, and do not require any forms to keep alive the steady and warm good will I entertain for you. In this mutual security of mutual kindness, no such ceremonies are necessary, and remember, tho' I hasten to answer your note, I do not mean to wheedle you into a correspondence. All I intend to do, is to stir the Fire of your Friendship by messages, and then, when we meet, have a care of your self, for I mean to set you in a perfect blaze. It is rather an awful thing to write to you, at all, considering what you are, and what you are engaged in, but I trust to my being Charlotte Maria Campbell to obtain some favor in your Sight whether it be on Paper, or in Propria Persona. I like your Account of my future Mistress and her agreeable dinners, and feel sure you will always say Amen, to a good-natured speech, at least about me.

HL

"I hope I shall love Madame du Deffand more