A few years after their marriage Mr. Montagu, already affluent, received a great accession of fortune in the shape of colliery property in the north of England. This enabled his wife to entertain very liberally, and, in conjunction with her talents and high connections, gave her a commanding place in society. They took a large house in Hill street, then the extremity of the West End, which became the resort of that class who, being anxious to put an end to eternal card-playing and introduce rather more of the intellectual into social intercourse, received from a chance circumstance the name of "blue-stockings." There were to be seen Burke, Fox, Hannah More, Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, etc. Subsequently, Mrs. Montagu fitted up a room whose walls were hung with feathers, and thence came Cowper's well-known lines and Macaulay's passage: "There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu." After her husband's death a great deal of business devolved on her in the management of his estates, and here she showed those qualities which are singularly conspicuous in Englishwomen of rank. She went down to Northumberland, inspected her farms, visited her colliers, and made acquaintance with her tenants. She seems particularly to have appreciated the people in Yorkshire, and her descriptions of them recall in no slight degree some of those of the sisters Bronté. Her principal seat was at Sandleford in Berkshire, where she spent large sums in improvements under the celebrated landscape-gardener "Capability Brown." She survived her husband twenty-five years, and about twenty years before her death removed to a fine house which she had erected in a then new part of London, Portman Square, and which is still known as Montagu House. But the entertainments there given were, though more splendid, less notable than in the humbler mansion in Hill street, for Mrs. Montagu herself was getting into years, and many of those who had been the brightest ornaments of the Hill street parties were passing away. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, at the age of seventy. She was of an affectionate disposition, but had somewhat less sensibility perhaps than most men would like to see in a woman; yet, on the whole, she played her part in life extremely well, being wise, generous and true. The book is particularly interesting for the rich aroma of association around it, and would have been far more so had Dr. Doran taken the trouble to give a few notes, of which there is not a single one in the whole book--a serious drawback, more especially to American readers. * * * * * The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the Discussions relating thereto. By Caleb Cushing. New York: Harper & Brothers.