19875 DIARY ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TIMES OF GEORGE THE FOURTH, INTERSPERSED WITH ORIGINAL LETTERS FROM THE LATE QUEEN CAROLINE, THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE, AND FROM VARIOUS OTHER DISTINGUISHED PERSONS. By Lady Charlotte Bury. EDITED BY JOHN GALT, ESQ. EDITOR'S PREFACE. "THE present work ought not to have appeared for the next fifty years." Such is the general remark made on this publication. Granted; but it has been so harshly and so unjustly dealt with by critics and reviewers, and they have conveyed so totally false an impression of it to all who pin their faith on the dictum of those literary autocrats, that if the book could have been suppressed, or consigned to the "contempt" and "oblivion " which they affirm to be its desert, it must have met that fate long ago; whereas the reverse is the case. It is a curious circumstance, that not one of the clever pamphlets and reviews which this work, so " insignificant" and " contemptible," 66 has elicited from some of the most distinguished |