could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which, however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even _a priori_, greater fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved himself to be utterly destitute of every military quality--of whose general repute the following lines, quoted by Shelburne (from a newspaper of the time of the Seven Years' War), with the caustic commentary, "It is feared there was too much foundation for what is insinuated, and more need not be said," are a sufficiently suggestive indication?-- All pale and trembling on the Gallic shore, His lordship gave the word, but could no more: Too small the corps, too few the numbers were, Of such a general to demand the care. To some mean chief, some major or a brig.,[D] He left his charge that night, nor cared a fig. 'Twixt life and scandal, honor and the grave, Quickly deciding which was best to save, Back to the ships he ploughed the swelling wave. Our view of Shelburne would be but a one-sided one if it regarded him solely and wholly as a public character, and took no count of the domestic and private side of him. We are proportionately grateful for some extracts from a diary kept at the time by his wife, Lady Shelburne, which her great-grandson has been able to lay before us. They picture to us a quietly-ordered, rather serious home, pretty constantly frequented, however, by company, as one would expect from the many interests and associations of its busy-minded master. He seems to have been in the habit of treating his wife, in private, to solid readings in history, politics and theology. One morning breakfast is followed by some chapters of Thucydides, the next by part of one of Abernethy's sermons, another day "Lord Shelburne read to us a paper concerning the Stamp Act in America;" while on a fourth occasion Lady Shelburne, after dining at the French ambassador's and going to a couple of gossipy assemblies afterward, comes home to her lord, who very appropriately reads to her "a sermon out of Barrow against judging others--a very necessary lesson delivered in very persuasive and pleasing terms." More of Lord Shelburne's private life we shall no doubt learn in the second volume of his biography, in which we are promised "a picture of the society of which Bowood [Lord Shelburne's country-seat in Wiltshire] was the centre during the latter part of the century." Here, for the present, we conclude by registering once more our cordial appreciation of the service that is rendered to history by the publication of such biographies of leading men as that treated of in this paper. Documentary