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writers of the day, has given the lie to one single fact stated in its pages. A few errors in dates, a few discrepancies of time and place, (which do not impugn the authenticity of the matter,) are the only blunders those critics have substantiated; and not one of them, from the "Quarterly" down to Sir Herbert Taylor's "Remarks on the Edinburgh Review," has been able to defend the cause which he espoused.

There is one circumstance worthy of notice in Lord Brougham's criticisms on the work in the Edinburgh Review,-namely, that the passages which refer personally to the supposed author of the Diary are feeble compared with the rest, and assume the expression of mere female malice,—in a style, too, quite unworthy of his lordship's vigorous pen, and strangely at variance with that of the rest of the article.

All the vituperation which has been lavished on the Diary has, however, served to give the book a marked consequence, which leads us to consider it dispassionately, both in a literary and moral point of view.

In the first place, it is evident that the book

is not the work of any one individual, but a selection from various documents-all, however, bearing internal evidence of their being genuine.

In the second place, it has been asserted that the work betrays and traduces Queen Caroline. This accusation is decidedly false. The character of that unfortunate Princess has for the first time been drawn with truth in these pages; she is neither eulogised beyond her deserts, as some have essayed to do, nor condemned with the injustice shown her by others.

The persons who compiled the work appear to have been unbiassed by party, or by any political creed whatever. Whig and Tory, Radical and Conservative, all are impartially reviewed, not so much in the light of politicians as of private individuals. Hence it may be inferred that the information to be gathered from these pages is more likely to be true, than which has yet transpired on the same subject. journalists evidently wrote with perfect freedom, and without contemplating the possibility of their remarks and statements ever coming before the public, they would not have withheld any circumstance, which had come to their knowledge,

any

And as the

SCHULZE, PRINTER, POLAND STREET.

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," has elicited from some of the most distinguished

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writers of the day, has given the lie to one single fact stated in its pages. A few errors in dates, a few discrepancies of time and place, (which do not impugn the authenticity of the matter,) are the only blunders those critics have substantiated; and not one of them, from the "Quarterly" down to Sir Herbert Taylor's "Remarks on the Edinburgh Review," has been able to defend the cause which he espoused.

There is one circumstance worthy of notice in Lord Brougham's criticisms on the work in the Edinburgh Review,-namely, that the passages which refer personally to the supposed author of the Diary are feeble compared with the rest, and assume the expression of mere female malice, in a style, too, quite unworthy of his lordship's vigorous pen, and strangely at variance with that of the rest of the article.

All the vituperation which has been lavished on the Diary has, however, served to give the book a marked consequence, which leads us to consider it dispassionately, both in a literary and moral point of view.

In the first place, it is evident that the book

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