240 



formation would reveal nothing more of the Marquis de Yillars and his 

 supposed authorship, I determined to break new ground. Luckily, in 

 the Library of the King's Inns, Dublin, there is one department parti- 

 cularly rich in French historical memoirs. Among these is the His- 

 toire Generale etRaisonnee de la Diplomatic Fran9aise (seconde edition)" 

 Paris, 1811, 7 tomes in 8vo., by M. de Flassan. On turning over the 

 leaves of this book, and consulting the index, the name of the Marquis 

 de Yillars at once rewarded me for departing a little out of the beaten 

 track. I found to my astonishment in vol. 4, from p. 25 to p. 30, an 

 elaborate account of a certain difference which the Marquis de Yillars had 

 with the government at Madrid in reference to the rights and privileges 

 of the Spanish embassy, of which I had a perfect recollection from my 

 reading of the volume of 1733, and Mr. Stirling's volume of 1861. On 

 collating the passages, I found them identical, M. de Flassan's account 

 corresponding almost verlatim with that at pp. 8 and 9, and from 

 p. 127 to p. 136 of the volume of 1733; p. 10, andfromp. 122 to p. 131 

 of Mr. Stirling's book; and in Madame d'Aulnoy's "Memoires de la 

 Cour d'Espagne," part 2, from p. 13 to p. 17. "What appeared to me 

 to be very singular, however, was, that the account was taken, not from 

 the volume of 1 733, in which it had been published to the world seventy- 

 five years previously, nor even from the better known and older published 

 work of Madame d'Aulnoy, whose name, however, would scarcely have 

 been of much weight in the grave investigations of diplomacy, but from 

 a MS., the title of which is thus given — ''Etat de I'Espagne, manuscr. 

 in fol. bibl. de 1' Arsenal" [Paris]. On this discovery, I felt at once 

 that I was on the right track ; and circumstances having led me to the 

 continent in June last, I had the pleasure of examining the MS. during 

 the few hours of the two or three days I was permitted to stay at Paris, 

 that the Library of the Arsenal was open. On inquiry at the Library 

 for the MS. under the name by which it is quoted by M. de Elassan, I 

 learned with dismay that the Library contained no such MS. On ex- 

 amining the catalogue or printed list of MSS., however, I found it under 

 its more appropriate name, Memoires de la Cour d'Espagne," which 

 appears at the top of the front page, as in Mr. Stirling's MS. Why M. 

 de Elassan preferred to call it by a name which does not belong to that 

 portion of the volume from which he quoted, and which only appears in 

 the MS. (a blank page intervening) at folio 106 — if indeed in strictness 

 it appears even there — I cannot say, except that he did so, perhaps from 

 a salutary fear of having his trustworthy authority confounded with the 

 suspicious narrative of Madame d'Aulnoy. 



The MS. is a folio volume, containing 130 leaves, somewhat closely 

 written on both sides. The older forms of spelling, which had become 

 modernized before the time Mr. Stirling's transcript was made, are pre- 

 served throughout. There are no erasures or interlineations by the ori- 

 ginal writer from beginning to end. The MS. does not appear to have 

 been prepared for the press, but seems to be a fair copy of the original 

 draught made by the author himself, whoever he was, for his own ac- 



