words of his own invitation, and those also of his own answer! which poor Sir John actually did! For he adds, "I yielded, but not without discovering my insatisfaction to be so peremptorily pressed on, as if he had meant to trip me.'

The Venetian having thus compelled Sir John to con over both invitation and answer, gravely complimented him on his correctness to a tittle! Yet still was the Venetian not in less trouble and now he confessed that the king had given a formal invitation to the French ambassador,-and not to him!

This was a new stage in this important negotiation: it tried all the diplomatic sagacity of Sir John to extract a discovery; and which was, that the Frenchman had, indeed, conveyed the intelligence secretly to the Venetian.

Sir John now acknowledged that he had suspected as much when he received the message; and not to be taken by surprise, he had come prepared with a long apology, ending, for peace sake, with the same formal invitation for the Venetian. Now the Venetian insisted again that Sir John should deliver the invitation in the same precise words as it had been given to the Frenchman. Sir John, with his never-failing courtly docility, performed it to a syllable. Whether both parties during all these proceedings could avoid moving a risible muscle at one another, our grave authority records not.

The Venetian's final answer seemed now perfectly satisfactory, declaring he would not excuse his absence as the Frenchman had, on the most frivolous pretence; and farther, he expressed his high satisfaction with last year's substantial testimony of the royal favour, in the public honours conferred on him, and regretted that the quiet of his majesty should be so frequently disturbed by these punctilios about invitations, which so often "over-thronged his guests at the feast."

Sir John now imagined that all was happily concluded, and was retiring with the sweetness of a dove, and the quietness of a mouse, to fly to the lord chamberlain, when behold the Venetian would not relinquish his hold, but turned on him "with the reading of another scruple, et hinc illæ lachrymæ! asking whether the archduke's ambassador was also invited ?" Poor Sir John, to keep himself clear "from categorical asseverations," declared " he could not resolve him." Then the Venetian observed, "Sir John was dissembling! and he hoped and imagined that Sir John had in his instructions,

that he was first to have gone to him (the Venetian), and on his return to the archduke's ambassador." Matters now threatened to be as irreconcileable as ever, for it seems the Venetian was standing on the point of precedency with the archduke's ambassador. The political Sir John, wishing to gratify the Venetian at no expense, adds, " he thought it ill manners to mar a belief of an ambassador's making," and so allowed him to think that he had been invited before the archduke's ambassador!

This Venetian proved himself to be, to the great torment of Sir John, a stupendous genius in his own way; ever on the watch to be treated al paro di teste coronate-equal with crowned heads; and, when at a tilt, refused being placed among the ambassadors of Savoy and the States-general, &c., while the Spanish and French ambassadors were seated alone on the opposite side. The Venetian declared that this would be a diminution of his quality; the first place of an inferior degree being ever held worse than the last of a superior. This refined observation delighted Sir John, who dignifies it as an axiom, yet afterwards came to doubt it with a sed de hoc quære-query this! If it be true in politics, it is not so in common sense, according to the proverbs of both nations; for the honest English declares, that "Better be the head of the yeomanry than the tail of the gentry;" while the subtle Italian has it," E meglio esser testa di Luccio, che coda di Storione;""better be the head of a pike than the tail of a sturgeon.' But before we quit Sir John, let us hear him in his own words, reasoning with fine critical tact, which he undoubtedly possessed, on right and left hands, but reasoning with infinite modesty as well as genius. Hear this sage of punctilios, this philosopher of courtesies.

"The Axiom before delivered by the Venetian ambassador was judged upon discourse I had with some of understanding, to be of value in a distinct company, but might be otherwise in a joint assembly !" And then Sir John, like a philosophical historian, explores some great public event-" As at the conclusion of the peace at Vervins (the only part of the peace he cared about), the French and Spanish meeting, contended for precedence who should sit at the right hand of the pope's legate an expedient was found, of sending into France for the pope's nuncio residing there, who, seated at the right hand of the said legate (the legate himself sitting at the table's end), the French ambassador being offered the choice

of the next place, he took that at the legate's left hand, leaving the second at the right hand to the Spanish, who, taking it, persuaded himself to have the better of it; sed de hoc quære." How modestly, yet how shrewdly insinuated!

So much, if not too much, of the Diary of a Master of the Ceremonies; where the important personages strangely contrast with the frivolity and foppery of their actions.

By this work it appears that all foreign ambassadors were entirely entertained, for their diet, lodgings, coaches, with all their train, at the cost of the English monarch, and on their departure received customary presents of considerable value; from 1000 to 5000 ounces of gilt plate; and in more cases than one, the meanest complaints were made by the ambassadors about short allowances. That the foreign ambassadors in return made presents to the masters of the ceremonies from thirty to fifty "pieces," or in plate or jewels; and some so grudgingly, that Sir John Finett often vents his indignation, and commemorates the indignity. As thus,-on one of the Spanish ambassadors-extraordinary waiting at Deal for three days, Sir John, "expecting the wind with the patience of an hungry entertainment from a close-handed ambassador, as his present to me at his parting from Dover being but an old gilt livery pot, that had lost his fellow, not worth above twelve pounds, accompanied with two pair of Spanish gloves to make it almost thirteen, to my shame and his." When he left this scurvy ambassador-extraordinary to his fate aboard the ship, he exults that "the cross-winds held him in the Downs almost a seven-night before they would blow him over."

From this mode of receiving ambassadors, two inconve niences resulted; their perpetual jars of punctilio, and their singular intrigues to obtain precedence, which so completely harassed the patience of the most pacific sovereign, that James was compelled to make great alterations in his domestic comforts, and was perpetually embroiled in the most ridiculous contests. At length Charles I. perceived the great charge of these embassies, ordinary and extraordinary, often on frivolous pretences; and with an empty treasury, and an uncomplying parliament, he grew less anxious for such ruinous honours.* He gave notice to foreign ambassadors,

* Charles I. had, however, adopted them, and long preserved the stateliness of his court with foreign powers, as appears by these extracts from manuscript letters of the time:

that he should not any more "defray their diet, nor provide coaches for them," &c. "This frugal purpose "" cost Sir John many altercations, who seems to view it as the glory of the British monarch being on the wane. The unsettled state of Charles was appearing in 1636, by the querulous narrative of the master of the ceremonies; the etiquettes of the court were disturbed by the erratic course of its great star; and the master of the ceremonies was reduced to keep blank letters to superscribe, and address to any nobleman who was to be found, from the absence of the great officers of state. On this occasion the ambassador of the Duke of Mantua, who had long desired his parting audience, when the king objected to the unfitness of the place he was then in, replied, that, “if it were under a tree, it should be to him as a palace."

Yet although we smile at this science of etiquette and these rigid forms of ceremony, when they were altogether discarded a great statesman lamented them, and found the inconvenience and mischief in the political consequences which followed their neglect. Charles II., who was no admirer of these regulated formalities of court etiquette, seems to have broken up the pomp and pride of the former master of the ceremonies; and the grave and great chancellor of human nature, as Warburton calls Clarendon, censured and felt all the inconveniences of this open intercourse of an ambassador with the king. Thus he observed in the case of the Spanish ambassador, who, he writes, "took the advantage of the license of the court, where no rules or formalities were yet established (and to which the king himself was not enough inclined), but all doors open to all persons; which the ambassador finding, he made himself a domestic, came to the king at all hours, and spake to him when, and as long as he would, without any ceremony, or desiring an audience according to

Mr. Mead writes to Sir M. Stuteville, July 25, 1629.

"His majesty was wont to answer the French ambassador in his own language; now he speaks in English, and by an interpreter. And so doth Sir Thomas Edmondes to the French king; contrary to the ancient custom : so that altho' of late we have not equalled them in arms, yet now we shall equal them in ceremonies."

Oct. 31, 1628.

"This day fortnight, the States' ambassador going to visit my lord treasurer about some business, whereas his lordship was wont always to bring them but to the stairs' head, he then, after a great deal of courteous resistance on the ambassador's part, attended him through the hall and court-yard, even to the very boot of his coach."-Sloane MSS. 4178.

the old custom; but came into the bed-chamber while the king was dressing himself, and mingled in all discourses with the same freedom he would use in his own. And from this neverheard-of license, introduced by the French and the Spaniard at this time, without any dislike in the king, though not permitted in any court in Christendom, many inconveniences and mischiefs broke in, which could never after be shut out."*

DIARIES-MORAL, HISTORICAL, AND CRITICAL.

WE converse with the absent by letters, and with ourselves by diaries; but vanity is more gratified by dedicating its time to the little labours which have a chance of immediate notice, and may circulate from hand to hand, than by the honester pages of a volume reserved only for solitary contemplation; or to be a future relic of ourselves, when we shall no more hear of ourselves.

Marcus Antoninus's celebrated work entitled Τῶν εἰς ἑαυτὸν, Of the things which concern himself, would be a good definition of the use and purpose of a diary. Shaftesbury calls a diary, "A fault-book," intended for self-correction; and a Colonel Harwood, in the reign of Charles the First, kept a diary, which, in the spirit of the times, he entitled "Slips, Infirmities, and Passages of Providence." Such a diary is a moral instrument, should the writer exercise it on himself, and on all around him. Men then wrote folios concerning themselves; and it sometimes happened, as proved by many, which I have examined in manuscript, that often writing in retirement, they would write when they had nothing to write.

Diaries must be out of date in a lounging age, although I have myself known several who have continued the practice with pleasure and utility. One of our old writers quaintly observes, that "the ancients used to take their stomach-pill of self-examination every night. Some used little books, or tablets, which they tied at their girdles, in which they kept a memorial of what they did, against their night-reckoning." We know that Titus, the delight of mankind, as he has been called, kept a diary of all his actions, and when at night he

* Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 160.

The Diary of William Raikes, Esq., has only recently been published: it relates to the first half of the present century, and proves that the race of diarists are not extinct among ourselves.