A Comparative View of Social Life in England and France (Volume 2); From the Restoration of Charles the Second to the Present Time (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1844. Excerpt: ... ADVERTISEMENT TO THE LETTERS ADDRESSED BY LORD ORFORD TO THE MISS BERRYS.' To the first edition of Lord Orford's works, which was published the year after he died, no Memoir of his Life was prefixed: his death was too recent, his life and character too well known, his works too popular, to require it. His political Memoirs, and the collections of his Letters which have been subsequently published, were edited by persons, who, though well qualified for their task in every other respect, have failed in their account of his private life, and their appreciation of his individual character, from the want of a personal acquaintance with their author. The Life contained in Sir Walter Scott's Biographical Sketches of the English Novelists labours under the same disadvantages. He had never seen Lord Orford, nor even lived much with such of his intimates and contemporaries in society as survived him. First published in Bentley's Chronological Edition of Lord Orford's Letters. Lord Dover, who has so admirably edited the first part of his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, knew Lord Orford only by having been carried sometimes, when a boy, by his father Lord Clifden to Strawberry Hill. His editorial labours with these letters were the last occupation of his accomplished mind, and were pursued while his body was fast sinking under the complication of disease, which so soon after deprived society of one of its most distinguished members, the arts of an enlightened patron, and his intimates of an amiable and attached friend. Of the meagreness and insufficiency of his Memoir of Lord Orford's Life prefixed to the letters, he was himself aware, and expressed to the author of these pages his inability then to improve it, and his regret that circumstances had deprived him...