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Essentials of Clinical Pathology 2nd Edition Shirish M.
Kawthalkar Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Shirish M. Kawthalkar
ISBN(s): 9789386150691, 9386150697
Edition: 2
File Details: PDF, 70.68 MB
Year: 2018
Language: english
 Essentials of
Clinical Pathology

00 Prelims.indd 1 3/28/2018 10:11:20 AM

00 Prelims.indd 2 3/28/2018 10:11:20 AM
 Essentials of
Clinical Pathology
Second Edition

Shirish M Kawthalkar
MBBS MD (Pathology)
Associate Professor
Department of Pathology
Government Medical College
Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

The Health Sciences Publisher

New Delhi | London | Panama

00 Prelims.indd 3 3/28/2018 10:11:20 AM

 Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers (P) Ltd

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Essentials of Clinical Pathology
First Edition: 2010
Reprint 2012; 2017
Second Edition: 2018
ISBN: 978-93-86150-69-1

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 Preface to the Second Edition
The clinical laboratory plays a vital role in health care by providing accurate and timely results of tests ordered by the clinician,
which will help in making decisions regarding diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of patient’s condition. Clinical pathology
or laboratory medicine is a rapidly evolving science and in recent years, there has been a virtual explosion of technological
advances in medical laboratory science with the availability of thousands of laboratory tests. This has dramatically impacted
the practice of medicine with numerous tests being available for diagnosis to the practitioner; however, with the long battery
of tests in the field, it is necessary to be aware of which test to use in a given setting, what information it is likely to provide,
cost-effectiveness, limitations of a particular test, time required for result, reliability of the laboratory, how the test is going
to affect the diagnosis, and how the patient will be benefitted. This book is an attempt to help the students of medicine and
the practitioners in this decision-making process. In the second edition of Essentials of Clinical Pathology, I have tried to
present the current knowledge about clinical laboratory tests that are commonly used and also those which are more complex
and advanced ones. The book is mainly designed to meet the needs of undergraduate and postgraduate medical students,
particularly those appearing for pathology. It will also be an aid to medical laboratory technicians and of students of medical
laboratory technology, as it provides theoretical principles of tests and conditions in which they are indicated. All the chapters
have been updated to incorporate the recent advances and some new chapters have been added. Illustrations have been
increased and appendices have been added at the end of the book to serve as ready reckoners.
The currently available books on clinical pathology are either too short or sketchy and fail to provide theoretical concepts
for understanding, or are too voluminous which may make it time-consuming and difficult for the students to extract the
relevant information. The purpose of this edition continues to be to outline the basic concepts in laboratory medicine, to
present the underlying theory of laboratory procedures, and also to present the subject in a concise manner which will help
the students as well as practitioners.
I am fortunate to receive guidance and blessings of my parents, unwavering support of my wife Dr Anjali, and valuable
inputs from my two sons Dr Ameya and Dr Ashish all of whom have made this book a reality. I would like to thank Shri Jitendar
P Vij (Group Chairman), Mr Ankit Vij (Managing Director) and their talented and hard-working team of M/s Jaypee Brothers
Medical Publishers (P) Ltd, New Delhi, India, for being patient with me during the preparation of the manuscript and presenting
this information in a very effective visual form which is before you. I am also thankful to Dr Abhimanyu K Niswade, Dean,
Government Medical College, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India, and Dr WK Raut, Professor and Head, Department of Pathology,
Nagpur, for their support and encouragement.
This book is a summary of my professional experience as a pathologist and as a teacher, and distillation of vast medical
information available. I hope that this second edition will meet the expectations and requirements of readers and feedback
regarding contents will be highly appreciated.

Shirish M Kawthalkar

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 Preface to the First Edition
The major aims of this book are discussion of: (i) use of laboratory tests in the investigation and management of common
diseases, and (ii) basic biochemical and pathological principles underlying the application of laboratory tests. The book has been
written keeping in mind mainly the curricula of undergraduate students of pathology. It should also prove to be appropriate
for postgraduate residents and students of medical laboratory technology. The laboratory tests that are demonstrated to and
performed by medical students in pathology practical class and during university examination are given in more detail. To
keep pace with new knowledge and advances, principles of currently performed techniques in clinical laboratory practice
have also been outlined. Most of the chapters are followed by reference ranges and critical values for ready access. Critical
values or action values are those laboratory results that require immediate attention of the treating clinician. While interpreting
results of laboratory tests, it is necessary to follow two fundamental rules of laboratory medicine: (i) diagnosis should never
be made from a single abnormal test result (since, it is affected by a number of preanalytical and analytical factors), and
(ii) try to arrive at a single diagnosis (rather than multiple diagnoses) from all the abnormal test results obtained.
Clinical pathology is the second major subdivision of the discipline of pathology after anatomic pathology. It is concerned
with laboratory investigations for screening, diagnosis, and overall management of diseases by analysis of blood, urine,
body fluids, and other specimens. The specialties included under the discipline of clinical pathology are clinical chemistry,
hematology, blood banking, medical microbiology, cytogenetics, and molecular genetics. However, scope of this book does
not allow microbiology and genetics to be included in this book.
I must appreciate and recognize the unstinting support of my parents, my beloved wife Dr Anjali, and my two children,
Ameya and Ashish during preparation of this book. I am thankful to Dr HT Kanade, Dean, Government Medical College, Akola;
Dr Smt Deepti Dongaonkar, Dean, Government Medical College, Nagpur; Dr BB Sonawane, Professor and Head, Department of
Pathology, Government Medical College, Akola, and Dr WK Raut, Professor and Head, Department of Pathology, Government
Medical College, Nagpur, for encouraging me in undertaking this project for the benefit of medical students.
I express my thanks to Shri Jitendar P Vij and his outstanding team of M/s Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers (P) Ltd,
New Delhi, India, for undertaking to publish this book, being patient with me during the preparation of the manuscript, and
bringing it out in an easy-to-read and reader-friendly format.
Although I have made every effort to avoid any mistakes and errors, some may persist and feedback in this regard will be
highly appreciated.

Shirish M Kawthalkar

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 Contents

Section 1: Clinical Chemistry and Other Laboratory Tests

1. Basic Principles of Laboratory Medicine 3
•• Preanalytical Phase 3
•• Analytical Phase 8
•• Postanalytical Phase 8
•• Gaussian Distribution and Reference Ranges 8
•• Interpretation of Laboratory Tests 8
•• Test Performance Specifications 9
•• Diagnostic Value of a Test 10
•• Quality Assurance 11
•• Quality Control 12
•• Credentials of a Laboratory 13
•• Point of Care Testing 13
•• Safety in the Clinical Laboratory 14
2. Examination of Urine 16
•• Composition of Normal Urine 16
•• Indications for Urinalysis 16
•• Collection of Urine 16
•• Changes Which Occur in Standing Urine at Room Temperature 17
•• Physical Examination 18
•• Chemical Examination 20
•• Microscopic Examination 33
3. Renal Function Tests 42
•• Structure and Function of Kidney 42
•• Factors Affecting Renal Function 44
•• Indications for Renal Function Tests 44
•• Classification of Renal Function Tests 44
•• Tests to Evaluate Glomerular Function 45
•• Tests to Evaluate Tubular Function 49
•• Renal Biopsy 51
4. Laboratory Tests in Diabetes Mellitus 54
•• Metabolic Actions of Insulin 54
•• Classification of Diabetes Mellitus 54
•• Prediabetes 57
•• Metabolic Alterations in Diabetes Mellitus 57
•• Long-term Complications of Diabetes Mellitus 58
•• Role of Laboratory in Diabetes Mellitus 59
5. Liver Function Tests 66
•• Functions of Liver 66
•• Indications and Limitations of Liver Function Tests 67
•• Classification of Liver Function Tests 68
•• Tests that Assess Excretory Function of the Liver 68
•• Tests Which Assess Synthetic and Metabolic Functions of Liver 71
•• Tests Which Assess Hepatic Injury (Liver Enzyme Studies) 73
•• Tests that Assess Clearance if Exogenous Substances from the Liver 75
•• Interpretation of Liver Function Tests 76
•• Liver Biopsy 77
•• Types of Liver Biopsy 77

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 x Essentials of Clinical Pathology
6. Laboratory Tests in Disorders of Lipids 81
•• Physiology 81
•• Classification of Lipoprotein Disorders 83
•• Laboratory Tests for Lipoprotein Disorders 84
7. Biochemical Cardiac Markers 87
•• Acute Coronary Syndrome 87
•• Biochemical Cardiac Marker Studies 89
•• Other Cardiac Injury Markers 91
•• Cardiac Markers with Prognostic Significance 91
•• Cardiac Marker for Congestive Cardiac Failure 92
8. Examination of Cerebrospinal Fluid 93
•• Composition of Normal Cerebrospinal Fluid in Adults 93
•• Circulation of Csf 93
•• Functions of Cerebrospinal Fluid 93
•• Collection of Cerebrospinal Fluid 93
•• Indications for Lumbar Puncture 94
•• Complications of Lumbar Puncture 95
•• Contraindications to Lumbar Puncture 95
•• Laboratory Examination of Cerebrospinal Fluid 95
9. Examination of Serous Body Fluids and Synovial Fluid 104
•• Serous Fluids 104
•• Synovial Fluid 111
10. Examination of Sputum 116
•• Collection of Sputum 116
•• Appearance of Sputum 116
•• Microbiological Examination 116
•• Examination of Sputum for Mycobacterium tuberculosis 117
•• Examination for Other Organisms 119
•• Cytological Examination of Sputum 119
11. Examination of Feces 121
•• Uses of Laboratory Examination of Feces 121
•• Microscopic Examination 122
•• Chemical Examination 131
12. Gastric Analysis 134
•• Normal Gastric Anatomy and Physiology 134
•• Indications for Gastric Analysis 135
•• Contraindications to Gastric Analysis 136
•• Method of Gastric Analysis 136
•• Other Tests for Gastric Analysis 138
13. Tests for Malabsorption and Pancreatic Function Tests 139
•• Malabsorption Syndromes 139
•• Pancreatic Function Tests 144
14. Thyroid Function Tests 149
•• Anatomy and Physiology of Thyroid 149
•• Disorders of Thyroid 150
•• Thyroid Function Tests 153
15. Laboratory Tests in Pregnancy 157
•• Pregnancy Tests 157
•• First and Second Trimester Screening for Cytogenetic Defects and Neural Tube Defects 160

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 Contents xi
•• Assessment of Risk of Preterm Labor 162
•• Determination of Fetal Lung Maturity 162
•• Amniotic Fluid Bilirubin 163
•• Laboratory Evaluation of Diseases During Pregnancy 163
•• Laboratory Tests in Recurrent Pregnancy Loss 164
16. Infertility 166
•• Male Infertility 166
•• Female Infertility 168
17. Semen Analysis 174
•• Indications for Semen Analysis 174
•• Collection of Semen for Investigation of Infertility 174
•• Examination of Seminal Fluid 175
•• Examination for the Presence of Semen in Medicolegal Cases 179
•• Examination of Semen to Check the Effectiveness of Vasectomy 179
18. Pyrexia of Unknown Origin 180
•• Pathogenesis of Fever 180
•• Classic Pyrexia of Unknown Origin 181
•• Nosocomial Causes of Puo 184
•• Neutropenic Puo 184
•• Human Immunodeficiency Virus-related Puo 184

Section 2: Laboratory Hematology

19. Hematopoiesis 187
•• Red Blood Cells 189
•• White Blood Cells 191
•• Thrombopoiesis 194
20. Collection of Blood 196
•• Skin Puncture 196
•• Venous Blood Collection 196
•• Anticoagulants 198
•• Sequence of Filling of Tubes (Order of Draw of Blood Collection Tubes) 199
•• Common Sources of Error in Collection of Blood Sample 199
•• Special Situations 200
•• Use of Plasma vs Serum 201
21. Automated Complete Blood Cell Count 202
•• Principles of Working of Hematology Analyzer 203
•• Data Presentation 204
•• Collection of Blood for Complete Blood Count 204
•• Parameters Measured by Hematology Analyzers 204
•• Flagging 207
•• Histograms 207
•• Causes of Erroneous Results on Automated Cbc 208
•• Newer Parameters Available on Select Hematology Analyzers 208
•• Advantages of Hematology Analyzers 210
•• Limitations of Hematology Analyzers 211
•• Interpretation of Complete Blood Count 211
22. Estimation of Hemoglobin 213
•• Indications for Hemoglobin Estimation 213
•• Methods for Estimation of Hemoglobin 213
•• General Remarks 216

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 xii Essentials of Clinical Pathology
23. Packed Cell Volume 217
•• Uses of Packed Cell Volume 217
•• Macromethod (Wintrobe Method) 217
•• Micromethod 218
•• General Notes 219
24. Total Leukocyte Count 220
•• Manual Method 220
•• Automated Method 222
25. Reticulocyte Count 223
•• Uses 223
•• Method 223
26. Platelet Count 226
•• Manual Method 226
•• Automated Method 227
27. Blood Smear 228
•• Uses 228
•• Preparation of Blood Smear (Wedge Method) 228
•• Fixation of Blood Smear 229
•• Staining of Blood Smear 229
•• Examination of Blood Smear 230
28. Red Cell Indices 241
•• Uses of Red Cell Indices 241
•• Manual Methods 241
•• Automated Methods 242
29. Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate 243
•• Stages of Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate 243
•• Factors Affecting Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate 243
•• Significance of Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate 243
•• Indications for Measurement of Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate 244
•• Methods for Estimation of Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate 244
•• Acute Phase Reactants 246
30. Examination of Bone Marrow 248
•• Normal Bone Marrow 248
•• Indications for Bone Marrow Examination 248
•• Contraindications 249
•• Sites for Bone Marrow Aspiration or Biopsy 249
•• Method 250
•• Complications of Bone Marrow Aspiration and/or Biopsy 251
•• Processing of Marrow Specimens 251
•• Examination of Marrow Specimens 252
31. Hematology of Infectious Diseases 256
•• Malaria 256
•• Lymphatic Filariasis 264
•• Visceral Leishmaniasis 266
•• Bacterial Infections 269
•• Dengue Fever (Df) and Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (Dhf) 269
•• Hematological Changes in Hiv/Aids 271
32. Laboratory Tests in Anemia 273
•• Classification of Anemias 273
•• Anemias due to Decreased Production of Red Blood Cells 273
•• Hereditary Disorders of Hemoglobin 281
•• Disorders of Red Cell Membrane 285

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 Contents xiii
•• Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency 286
•• Immune Hemolytic Anemias 287
•• Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria 291
•• Microangiopathic and Macroangiopathic Hemolytic Anemia 291
•• Hypersplenism 292
•• Acute Blood Loss Anemia 292
•• Approach to Diagnosis of Anemia 292
33. Laboratory Tests in Hematological Malignancies 304
•• Acute Leukemias 304
•• Myelodysplastic Syndromes 310
•• Myeloproliferative Neoplasms 311
•• Mature B- and T-Cell Neoplasms 312
•• Plasma Cell Neoplasms 313
34. Laboratory Tests in Bleeding Disorders 319
•• Physiology of Hemostasis 319
•• Bleeding Disorders 322
•• Approach to the Diagnosis of Bleeding Disorders 328
35. Laboratory Tests in Thrombophilia 340
•• Inherited Thrombophilia 341
•• Acquired Thrombophilia 343
•• Association of Thrombophilia with Clinical Presentation 344
•• Tests for Thrombophilia 345
•• Indications for Thrombophilia Testing 345
•• Diagnosis of Thrombophilia 345
•• Diagnosis of Deep Venous Thrombosis 346
•• Diagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism 346
36. Laboratory Tests in Porphyrias 348
•• Introduction and Classification 348
•• Clinical Features 349
•• Laboratory Diagnosis 350
37. Flow Cytometry and Immunohistochemistry in Hematopathology 352
•• Flow Cytometry 352
•• Immunohistochemistry 357

Section 3: Practical Blood Transfusion

38. Blood Group Systems 363
•• ABO System 363
•• The Rh System 367
•• Other Blood Group Systems 369
39. Blood Grouping 370
•• ABO Grouping 370
•• Identical Blood versus Compatible Blood 374
•• RhD Grouping 374
40. Collection of Donor Blood, Processing and Storage 376
•• Types of Blood Donors 376
•• Criteria for Selection of Blood Donors 377
•• Collection of Donor Blood 378
•• Collection of Blood by Apheresis 380
•• Processing of Donor Blood 381
•• Autologous Donation 381
•• Directed Donation 382
•• Therapeutic Phlebotomy 382

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 xiv Essentials of Clinical Pathology
41. Screening Tests for Infections Transmissible by Transfusion 383
•• Organisms Transmissible by Transfusion 383
•• Viruses 384
•• Bacteria 386
•• Parasites 386
42. Antibody Screening and Identification 387
•• Antibody Screening 387
•• Antibody Identification 388
43. Compatibility Test 390
•• Steps in Compatibility Testing 390
44. Whole Blood, Blood Components and Blood Derivatives 393
•• Whole blood 393
•• Blood Components 394
•• Plasma Components 396
•• Plasma Derivatives 397
•• Recombinant Factor Concentrates 397
45. Adverse Effects of Transfusion 398
•• Acute Hemolytic Transfusion Reaction 398
•• Febrile Non-hemolytic Transfusion Reaction 399
•• Bacterial Contamination of Donor Unit 399
•• Transfusion-associated Lung Injury 399
•• Delayed Hemolytic Transfusion Reaction 399
•• Anaphylactic Reaction 399
•• Allergic Reaction 399
•• Transfusion-associated Circulatory Overload 400
•• Iron Overload (Transfusion Hemosiderosis) 400
•• Post-transfusion Purpura 400
•• Transmission of Infections 400
•• Transfusion-associated Graft-versus-Host Disease 401
•• Complications Associated with Massive Transfusion 401
•• Recognition and Investigation of a Transfusion Reaction 401
Appendices
Appendix A: Association of Laboratory Test/Finding with Disease(s) or Condition(s) 405
Appendix B: Normal Reference Ranges in Adults 409
Appendix C: Critical Values 412
Index 413

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 section 1
Clinical Chemistry and
Other Laboratory Tests
1. Basic Principles of Laboratory Medicine 10. Examination of Sputum
2. Examination of Urine 11. Examination of Feces
3. Renal Function Tests 12. Gastric Analysis
4. Laboratory Tests in Diabetes Mellitus 13. Tests for Malabsorption and Pancreatic
5. Liver Function Tests Function Tests
6. Laboratory Tests in Disorders of Lipids 14. Thyroid Function Tests
7. Biochemical Cardiac Markers 15. Laboratory Tests in Pregnancy
8. Examination of Cerebrospinal Fluid 16. Infertility
9. Examination of Serous Body Fluids and 17. Semen Analysis
Synovial Fluid 18. Pyrexia of Unknown Origin

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Ch-01.indd 2 3/16/2018 3:33:09 PM
 Chapter
1 Basic Principles of
Laboratory Medicine

Introduction or biological factors as well as specimen collection, handling,

storage and transport. Preanalytic variables are listed in Table
A clinical pathology or a medical laboratory is a place where 1.1. The majority of problems associated with laboratory
specimens from human body are collected, processed, test results are due to errors in preanalytic phase.
examined or analyzed. Clinical laboratory specimens include
whole blood, plasma, serum, urine, cerebrospinal fluid, feces,
body fluids, etc. Various clinical laboratory departments
Patient Identification Procedure
include hematology, clinical chemistry, immunohematology, This is the most important step before specimen collection.
urinalysis, microbiology, parasitology, coagulation, cytology Incorrect patient identification before specimen collection
and anatomic pathology. Laboratory testing plays a major can result in misdiagnosis or even fatality due to subsequent
role in the clinical decision making by the physician and incorrect treatment based on laboratory report. Ideally, two
in the overall patient management. The main functions of methods should be used for patient identification. Acceptable
laboratory testing are: patient identification methods are, (1) patient’s name (if
•• Screening for disease: This refers to examination or patient is not able to communicate verbally, verification
testing for presence or absence of a subclinical disease. from armband or from nursing staff ), (2) date of birth, (3)
Types of screening include, (a) Population (or mass) patient’s unique registration number in a hospital setting,
screening or screening done on a large population, (b) and (4) driver’s license or picture identification. If there is a
Selective (or targeted) screening or screening done in a suspicion of wrong laboratory results and if there is another
high-risk population, (c) Individual screening, and (d) patient with a corresponding wrong set of results, crossover
Opportunistic screening, i.e. screening of patients who of labels between patients may be the cause and the problem
consult the health practitioner for some other purpose. should be investigated.
•• Confirmation or rejection of clinical diagnosis
•• Monitoring course of disease and response to therapy Patient Preparation
•• Assessment of severity of disease
There is increasing dependence on clinical laboratory Timing of collection of sample is important in some cases,
services by the healthcare system. However, results of e.g. therapeutic drug monitoring, measurement of cortisol,
these laboratory tests are affected by various preanalytical, glucose, etc. Test for blood glucose and lipid profile must
analytical, and postanalytical factors. Awareness about be done after patient has fasted overnight. Diurnal variation
these factors can minimize their interference and reduce and posture should be taken into consideration for certain
or remove the likelihood of errors. Evidence indicates analytes (see below). Oral glucose tolerance test needs patient
that most of the laboratory errors occur in preanalytical preparation as outlined in Chapter 4 “Laboratory tests in
(62%) and postanalytical (23%) phases as compared to the diabetes mellitus”.
analytical (15%) phase. About 25% of such results can have Smoking before collection of specimen can cause increase
consequences for the patient care. in WBC count, glucose, cortisol, growth hormone, cholesterol
The total testing process of a specimen comprises of three and triglycerides. Chronic smoking may be associated with
distinct phases: raised red cell count and hemoglobin levels; decreased arterial
•• Preanalytical phase: All procedures or processes occurring pO2 and increased carbon monoxide stimulate erythropoietin
before the actual testing of the specimen release and cause secondary polycythemia.
•• Analytical phase: All procedures or processes related to
actual testing of the specimen. Table 1.1: Preanalytical variables affecting laboratory test results
•• Postanalytical phase: All procedures or processes involved
following test performance 1. Patient identification
All laboratory tests pass through all the three phases. 2. Patient preparation
3. Selection of specimen type
4. Specimen collection
Preanalytical phase 5. Labeling of specimen
6. Transport of specimen
Before the specimen is analyzed, certain factors can affect the 7. Identification of specimen
test result, i.e. these errors are introduced before the analysis 8. Handling and processing of specimen at the testing site
of the sample. The preanalytic phase consists of physiological 9. Physiological variables

Ch-01.indd 3 3/16/2018 3:33:09 PM

 4 Section 1: Clinical Chemistry and Other Laboratory Tests

Table 1.2: Commonly used specimen collection tubes, their Specimen Collection
contents, and uses
Types of blood specimen include serum, plasma and whole
Stopper color Additive/Anticoagulant Uses blood.
1. Lavender or K2EDTA spray-dried Complete blood count Serum: After removal from the body, serum is the fluid
purple portion remaining after blood has clotted (after about 30-60
2. Pink Spray-dried K2EDTA Blood bank pre-transfusion minutes). Most chemistry, immunology and serology tests
testing are performed on the serum. In a fasting state, serum appears
3. Light blue Sodium citrate Coagulation tests clear and pale yellow. In contrast to plasma, it is devoid of
4. Gray Sodium fluoride and Glucose, lactate, blood fibrinogen, and therefore it contains less protein than plasma.
potassium oxalate alcohol Potassium in serum is also slightly higher than in plasma
5. Green Sodium heparin, lithium Chemistry, osmotic fragility, because some potassium is released from platelets during
heparin blood gases, electrolytes, clotting. Serum should be obtained by centrifugation only
ionized calcium after the sample is clotted completely.
Plasma: The liquid portion of anticoagulated blood sample is
6. Black Buffered sodium citrate ESR (Westergren)
called as plasma. Many laboratory tests can be done on either
7. Yellow Sterile containing sodium Serum for microbiology plasma or serum. Coagulation tests cannot be performed
polyanethol sulfonate culture
on serum (since coagulation factors are consumed during
8. Royal blue None; free from trace Trace metal analysis clotting) and are done on plasma. Plasma is preferred
elements and heavy
sample for estimation of potassium and ammonia (since
metal
these substances are released by cells during clotting). Also,
9. Red None (plain tube) Chemistry, blood bank,
if immediate report is required, plasma sample is preferred
serology or immunology
since blood sample can be immediately centrifuged to
10. Gold or red- Clot activator separation Chemistry
separate plasma.
gray gel
Abbreviations: K2EDTA, ethylenediaminetetra-acetic acid dipotassium; ESR, erythrocyte Whole blood: Most hematology tests are performed on
sedimentation rate. anticoagulated whole blood sample.
Sources of blood specimen include arterial, venous, or
capillary blood.
Selection of Appropriate Specimen for the
Arterial blood: This is used for measurement of blood gases
Test that is Ordered (partial pressure of oxygen and carbon dioxide) and pH.
Correct specimen, specimen container and anticoagulant For collection of arterial blood, syringes are used instead of
should be chosen for the test that is ordered. (Table 1.2 and evacuated tubes because of the pressure in an artery. The
Fig. 1.1). usual arteries are radial, brachial, and femoral.

Fig. 1.1: Stopper colors of sample collection tubes, contents, and uses
Abbreviations: EDTA, ethylenediaminetetra-acetic acid; ESR, erythrocyte sedimentation rate.

Ch-01.indd 4 3/16/2018 3:33:09 PM

 Chapter 1: Basic Principles of Laboratory Medicine 5
Venous blood: Most chemistr y and hematological Clenching or pumping of fist during venepuncture is of
investigations are done on venous blood. no use and should be avoided.
Capillary blood: Capillary blood is obtained from infants and 7. Evacuated tube system or syringe method of collection:
small children. Blood is collected from a vein either using a needle
attached to a syringe or a stoppered evacuated tube.
Venepuncture: If veins are small, fragile, or hard to find, a winged or
1. Proper antiseptic must be used for cleaning and butterfly infusion set is used usually in infants and small
disinfecting the venepuncture site. Isopropyl alcohol children. Evacuated tubes are sample collection tubes
wipes can contaminate the sample for blood alcohol with a premeasured vacuum that automatically draws
determination. If proper disinfection is not done or if the volume of blood depicted on the label. The evacuated
infection is present at the site of puncture, contamination tube system is better since blood is collected directly
of blood cultures can occur. from the vein into the tube, thus reducing contamination
2. Intravenous (IV) line: Blood should never be collected of specimen and minimizing hazard of exposure of blood
from the IV line, especially above the IV access site, to the collector. If syringe method is used, needle should
since IV fluids can dilute or contaminate the sample be detached before transferring blood from the syringe
and affect test results. Dilution of blood sample with into the tube to avoid hemolysis.
intravenous fluids will cause spuriously low blood cell 8. Tube additives and order of draw: Specimen collection
counts. Depending on the type of intravenous fluid, tubes may contain additives or are additive-free. If the
increased levels of glucose, potassium, sodium, and additive contains an anticoagulant, clotting will be
chloride and a decrease in other analytes like urea and inhibited; all other additives and additive-free tubes are
creatinine will occur. If intravenous line is in place, blood used to obtain serum. These are outlined in Chapter 20
is drawn from the opposite arm or blood is collected “Collection of Blood”.
from the fingerstick. If not possible, then IV line is turned Incorrect anticoagulation or contamination from
off for 2 minutes, tourniquet is applied below IV line incorrect order of draw can produce incorrect results.
insertion site, and a different vein below the IV line is For example, (a) if sample in K2 EDTA is collected before
used for collection of sample. Location of IV line, type serum or heparin tubes, calcium and magnesium levels
of fluid being infused, and site of venepuncture should are reduced and potassium levels are increased, and
be documented. (b) contamination of citrate tube with clot activator will
3. Presence of sclerosed veins, edema, hematoma, scars, produce incorrect coagulation test results.
burns, and tattoos: Another site should be selected for Additive contamination is possible if bottom of tube is
venepuncture. not held lower than top during collection.
4. Mastectomy: Drawing blood from the arm on the Collection tube should be filled up to ±10% of
same side as a mastectomy should be avoided. recommended volume.
Mastectomy involves lymph node removal and can cause 9. Mixing of specimen: After collection, blood should be
lymphostasis or stoppage of lymph flow, thus making the completely mixed with anticoagulant by 3–8 inversions
arm vulnerable for swelling and infection. of tube depending on the additive in the tube. Inversion
5. Heparin or saline lock: These are catheters connected to refers to gently inverting a specimen upside down
a stopcock through which medication is given or blood and then back right side up. If not immediately and
is drawn. These are often flushed with heparin to keep thoroughly mixed, microclots may form in the tube with
them from clotting. If blood is drawn from such a site, an anticoagulant, while clotting may be incomplete in
then contamination with heparin can occur. If blood is the tube containing clot activator. Microclots, fibrin and
to be collected, first 5 mL of blood should be discarded platelet clumping will induce erroneous results. Shaking
or blood may be collected below heparin lock if nothing or vigorous mixing should be avoided as it may lead to
is being infused. hemolysis or foaming making the sample unsuitable for
6. Tourniquet: Prolonged application of tourniquet should testing.
be avoided before collection of venous blood since it
causes stasis of blood flow, hemoconcentration, and
increased concentration of analytes bound to cells or
Specimen labeling and Transport
proteins. If tourniquet is applied for too long, if patient After collection, specimen tube should be promptly labeled
excessively clenches his fist, or if exercises his arm in front of the patient and then sent to the laboratory with
before venepuncture, potassium may be released from the request form. If the specimen is collected in a hospital
cells and cause artefactual hyperkalemia. If tourniquet and analyzed in a laboratory within that hospital, time for
needs to be applied, then it should be applied for less transportation may not be a factor. However, if the specimen
than one minute. Prolonged tourniquet application can is to be sent to a distant laboratory for analysis, care must
also increase levels of hematocrit, proteins and lactic be taken while shipping the specimen. Tubes without
acid. Fist pumping during venepuncture will increase anticoagulant should be kept in a vertical position to allow
potassium, lactic acid, calcium and phosphorous. complete clotting and reduce stopper contamination.

Ch-01.indd 5 3/16/2018 3:33:09 PM

Other documents randomly have
different content
numbers were small: their general was gone: their hearts failed
them, and they were proceeding to evacuate the fort. Peterborough
received information of these, occurrences in time to stop the
retreat. He galloped up to the fugitives, addressed a few words to
them, and put himself at their head. The sound of his voice and the
sight of his face restored all their courage, and they marched back to
their former position.
The Prince of Hesse had fallen in the confusion of the assault; but
every thing else went well. Stanhope arrived; the detachment which
had inarched out of Barcelona retreated; the heavy cannon were
disembarked, and brought to bear on the inner fortifications of
Monjuich, which speedily fell. Peterborough, with his usual
generosity, rescued the Spanish soldiers from the ferocity of his
victorious army, and paid the last honours with great pomp to his
rival the Prince of Hesse.
The reduction of Monjuich was the first of a series of brilliant
exploits. Barcelona fell; and Peterborough had the glory of taking,
with a handful of men, one of the largest and strongest towns of
Europe. He had also the glory, not less dear to his chivalrous temper,
of saving the life and honour of the beautiful Duchess of Popoli,
whom he met flying with dishevelled hair from the fury of the
soldiers. He availed himself dexterously of the jealousy with which
the Catalonians regarded the inhabitants of Castile. He guaranteed
to the province in the capital of which he was now quartered all its
ancient rights and liberties, and thus succeeded in attaching the
population to the Austrian cause. The open country now declared in
favour of Charles. Tarragona, Tortosa, Gerona, Lerida, San Mateo,
threw open their gates. The Spanish government sent the Count of
Las Torres with seven thousand men to reduce San Mateo. The Earl
of Peterborough, with only twelve hundred men, raised the siege.
His officers advised him to be content with this extraordinary
success. Charles urged him to return to Barcelona; but no
remonstrances could stop such a spirit in the midst of such a career.
It was the depth of winter. The country was mountainous. The roads
were almost impassable. The men were ill-clothed. The horses were
knocked up. The retreating army was far more numerous than the
pursuing army. But difficulties and dangers vanished before the
energy of Peterborough. He pushed on, driving Las Torres before
him. Nules surrendered to the mere terror of his name; and, on the
fourth of February, 1706, he arrived in triumph at Valencia. There he
learned that a body of four thousand men was on the march to join
Las Torres. He set out at dead of night from Valencia, passed the
Xucar, came unexpectedly on the encampment of the enemy, and
slaughtered, dispersed, or took the whole reinforcement. The
Valencians could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the
prisoners brought in.
In the mean time the Courts of Madrid and Versailles, exasperated
and alarmed by the fall of Barcelona and by the revolt of the
surrounding country, determined to make a great effort. A large
army, nominally commanded by Philip, but really under the orders of
Marshal Tessé, entered Catalonia. A fleet under the Count of
Toulouse, one of the natural children of Lewis the Fourteenth,
appeared before the port of Barcelona. The city was attacked at
once by sea and land. The person of the Archduke was in
considerable danger. Peterborough, at the head of about three
thousand men, inarched with great rapidity from Valencia. To give
battle, with so small a force, to a great regular army under the
conduct of a Marshal of France, would have been madness. The Earl
therefore made war after the fashion of the Minas and Empecinados
of our own time. He took his post on the neighbouring mountains,
harassed the enemy with incessant alarms, cut off their stragglers,
intercepted their communications with the interior, and introduced
supplies, both of men and provisions into the town. He saw,
however, that the only hope of the besieged was on the side of the
sea. His commission from the British government gave him supreme
power, not only over the army, but, whenever he should be actually
on board, over the navy also. He put out to sea at night in an open
boat, without communicating his design to any person. He was
picked up, several leagues from the shore, by one of the ships of the
English squadron. As soon as he was on board, he announced
himself as first in command, and sent a pinnace with his orders to
the Admiral. Had these orders been given a few hours earlier, it is
probable that the whole French fleet would have been taken. As it
was, the Count of Toulouse put out to sea. The port was open. The
town was relieved. On the following night the enemy raised the
siege and retreated to Roussillon. Peterborough returned to Valencia,
a place which he preferred to every other in Spain; and Philip, who
had been some weeks absent from his wife, could endure the misery
of separation no longer, and flew to rejoin her at Madrid.
At Madrid, however, it was impossible for him or for her to remain.
The splendid success which Peterborough had obtained on the
eastern coast of the Peninsula had inspired the sluggish Galway with
emulation. He advanced into the heart of Spain. Berwick retreated.
Alcantara, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Salamanca fell, and the conquerors
marched towards the capital.
Philip was earnestly pressed by his advisers to remove the seat of
government to Burgos. The advanced guard of the allied army was
already seen on the heights above Madrid. It was known that the
main body was at hand. The unfortunate Prince fled with his Queen
and his household. The royal wanderers, after travelling eight days
on bad roads, under a burning sun, and sleeping eight nights in
miserable hovels, one of which fell down and nearly crushed them
both to death, reached the Metropolis of Old Castile. In the mean
time the invaders had entered Madrid in triumph, and had
proclaimed the Archduke in the streets of the imperial city. Arragon,
ever jealous of the Castilian ascendency, followed the example of
Catalonia. Saraoossa revolted without seeing an enemy. The
governor whom Philip had set over Carthagena betrayed his trust,
and surrendered to the Allies the best arsenal and the last ships
which Spain possessed.
Toledo had been for some time the retreat of two ambitious,
turbulent, and vindictive intriguers, the Queen Dowager and Cardinal
Porto Carrero. They had long been deadly enemies. They had led the
adverse factions of Austria and France. Each had in turn domineered
over the weak and disordered mind of the late King. At length the
impostures of the priest had triumphed over the blandishments of
the woman; Porto Carrero had remained victorious; and the Queen
had fled in shame and mortification, from the court where she had
once been supreme. In her retirement she was soon joined by him
whose arts had destroyed her influence. The cardinal, having held
power just long enough to convince all parties of his incompetency,
had been dismissed to his See, cursing his own folly and the
ingratitude of the House which he had served too well.
Common interests and common enmities reconciled the fallen
rivals. The Austrian troops were admitted into Toledo without
opposition. The Queen Dowager flung off that mournful garb which
the widow of a King of Spain wears through her whole life, and
blazed forth in jewels. The Cardinal blessed the standards of the
invaders in his magnificent cathedral, and lighted up his palace in
honour of the great deliverance. It seemed that the struggle had
terminated in favour of the Archduke, and that nothing remained for
Philip but a prompt flight into the dominions of his grandfather.
So judged those who were ignorant of the character and habits of
the Spanish people. There is no country in Europe which it is so easy
to overrun as Spain: there is no country in Europe which it is more
difficult to conquer. Nothing can be more contemptible than the
regular military resistance which Spain offers to an invader; nothing
more formidable than the energy which she puts forth when her
regular military resistance has been beaten down. Her armies have
long borne too much resemblance to mobs; but her mobs have had,
in an unusual degree, the spirit of armies. The soldier, as compared
with other soldiers, is deficient in military qualities; but the peasant
has as much of those qualities as the soldier. In no country have
such strong fortresses been taken by surprise: in no country have
unfortified towns made so furious and obstinate a resistance to great
armies. War in Spain has, from the days of the Romans, had a
character of its own it is a fire which cannot he raked out; it burns
fiercely under the embers; and long after it has, to all seeming, been
extinguished, bursts forth more violently than ever. This was seen in
the last war. Spain had no army which could have looked in the face
an equal number of French or Prussian soldiers; but one day laid the
Prussian monarchy in the dust; one day put the crown of France at
the disposal of invaders. No Jena, no Waterloo, would have enabled
Joseph to reign in quiet at Madrid.
The conduct of the Castilians throughout the War of the
Succession was most characteristic. With all the odds of number and
situation on their side, they had been ignominiously beaten. All the
European dependencies of the Spanish crown were lost. Catalonia,
Arragon, and Valencia had acknowledged the Austrian Prince.
Gibraltar had been taken by a few sailors; Barcelona stormed by a
few dismounted dragoons. The invaders had penetrated into the
centre of the Peninsula, and were quartered at Madrid and Toledo.
While these events had been in progress, the nation had scarcely
given a sign of life. The rich could hardly be prevailed on to give or
to lend for the support of war; the troops had shown neither
discipline nor courage; and now at last, when it seemed that all was
lost, when it seemed that the most sanguine must relinquish all
hope, the national spirit awoke, fierce, proud, and unconquerable.
The people had been sluggish when the circumstances might well
have inspired hope; they reserved all their energy for what appeared
to be a season of despair. Castile, Leon, Andalusia, Estremadura,
rose at once; every peasant procured a firelock or a pike; the Allies
were masters only of the ground on which they trod. No soldier
could wander a hundred yards from the main body of the invading
army without imminent risk of being poniarded. The country through
which the conquerors had passed to Madrid, and which, as they
thought, they had subdued, was all in arms behind them. Their
communications with Portugal were cut off. In the mean time,
money began, for the first time, to flow rapidly into the treasury of
the fugitive king. “The day before yesterday,” says the Princess
Orsini, in a letter written at this time, “the priest of a village which
contains only a hundred and twenty houses brought a hundred and
twenty pistoles to the Queen. ‘My flock,’ said he, ‘are ashamed to
send you so little; but they beg you to believe that in this purse
there are a hundred and twenty hearts faithful even to the death.’
The good man wept as he spoke; and indeed we wept too.
Yesterday another small village, in which there are only twenty
houses, sent us fifty pistoles.”
While the Castilians were everywhere arming in the cause of
Philip, the Allies ware serving that cause as effectually by their
mismanagement. Galway staid at Madrid, where his soldiers
indulged in such boundless licentiousness that one half of them were
in the hospitals. Charles remained dawdling in Catalonia.
Peterborough had taken Requena, and wished to march from
Valencia towards Madrid, and to effect a junction with Galway; but
the Archduke refused his consent to the plan. The indignant general
remained accordingly in his favourite city, on the beautiful shores of
the Mediterranean, reading Don Quixote, giving balls and suppers,
trying in vain to get some good sport out of the Valencia bulls, and
making love, not in vain, to the Valencian women.
At length the Archduke advanced into Castile, and ordered
Peterborough to join him. But it was too late. Berwick had already
compelled Galway to evacuate Madrid; and, when the whole force of
the Allies was collected at Guadalaxara, it was found to be decidedly
inferior in numbers to that of the enemy.
Peterborough formed a plan for regaining possession of the
capital. His plan was rejected by Charles. The patience of the
sensitive and vainglorious hero was worn out. He had none of that
serenity of temper which enabled Marlborough to act in perfect
harmony with Eugene, and to endure the vexatious interference of
the Dutch deputies. He demanded permission to leave the army.
Permission was readily granted; and he set out for Italy. That there
might be some pretext for his departure, he was commissioned by
the Archduke to raise a loan in Genoa on the credit of the revenues
of Spain.
 From that moment to the end of the campaign the tide of fortune
ran strong against the Austrian cause. Berwick had placed his army
between the Allies and the frontiers of Portugal. They retreated on
Valencia, and arrived in that province, leaving about ten thousand
prisoners in the hands of the enemy.
In January, 1707, Peterborough arrived at Valencia from Italy, no
longer bearing a public character, but merely as a volunteer. His
advice was asked, and it seems to have been most judicious. He
gave it as his decided opinion that no offensive operations against
Castile ought to be undertaken. It would be easy, he said, to defend
Arragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, against Philip. The inhabitants of
those parts of Spain were attached to the cause of the Archduke;
and the armies of the House of Bourbon would be resisted by the
whole population. In a short time the enthusiasm of the Castilians
might abate. The government of Philip might commit unpopular acts.
Defeats in the Netherlands might compel Lewis to withdraw the
succours which he had furnished to his grandson. Then would be the
time to strike a decisive blow. This excellent advice was rejected.
Peterborough, who had now received formal letters of recall from
England, departed before the opening of the campaign; and with
him departed the good fortune of the Allies. Scarcely any general
had ever done so much with means so small. Scarcely any general
had ever displayed equal originality and boldness. He possessed, in
the highest degree, the art of conciliating those whom he had
subdued. But he was not equally successful in winning the
attachment of those with whom he acted. He was adored by the
Catalonians and Valencians; but he was hated by the prince whom
he had all but made a great king, and by the generals whose fortune
and reputation were staked on the same venture with his own. The
English government could not understand him. He was so eccentric
that they gave him no credit for the judgment which he really
possessed. One day he took towns with horse-soldiers; then again
he turned some hundreds of infantry into cavalry at a minute’s
notice. He obtained his political intelligence chiefly by means of love
affairs, and filled his despatches with epigrams. The ministers
thought that it would be highly impolitic to intrust the conduct of the
Spanish war to so volatile and romantic a person. They therefore
gave the command to Lord Galway, an experienced veteran, a man
who was in war what Moliere’s doctors were in medicine, who
thought it much more honourable to fail according to rule, than to
succeed by innovation, and who would have been very much
ashamed of himself if he had taken Monjuich by means so strange
as those which Peterborough employed. This great commander
conducted the campaign of 1707 in the most scientific manner. On
the plain of Almanza he encountered the army of the Bourbons. He
drew up his troops according to the methods prescribed by the best
writers, and in a few hours lost eighteen thousand men, a hundred
and twenty standards, all his baggage and all his artillery. Valencia
and Arragon were instantly conquered by the French, and, at the
close of the year, the mountainous province of Catalonia was the
only part of Spain which still adhered to Charles.
“Do you remember, child,” says the foolish woman in the Spectator
to her husband, “that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon that
our careless wench spilt the salt upon the table?”
“Yes, my dear,” replies the gentleman, “and the next post brought
us an account of the battle of Almanza.” The approach of disaster in
Spain had been for some time indicated by omens much clearer than
the mishap of the saltcellar; an ungrateful prince, an undisciplined
army, a divided council, envy triumphant over merit, a man of genius
recalled, a pedant and a sluggard intrusted with supreme command.
The battle of Almanza decided the fate of Spain. The loss was such
as Marlborough or Eugene could scarcely have retrieved, and was
certainly not to be retrieved by Stanhope and Staremberg.
Stanhope, who took the command of the English army in
Catalonia, was a man of respectable abilities, both in military and
civil affairs, but fitter, we conceive, for a second than for a first
place. Lord Mahon, with his usual candour, tells us, what we believe
was not known before, that his ancestor’s most distinguished exploit,
the conquest of Minorea, was suggested by Marlborough.
Staremberg, a methodical tactician of the German school, was sent
by the emperor to command in Spain. Two languid campaigns
followed, during which neither of the hostile armies did any thing
memorable, but during which both were nearly starved.
At length, in 1710, the chiefs of the Allied forces resolved to
venture on bolder measures. They began the campaign with a
daring move, pushed into Arragon, defeated the troops of Philip at
Almenara, defeated them again at Saragossa, and advanced to
Madrid. The King was again a fugitive. The Castilians sprang to arms
with the same enthusiasm which they had displayed in 1700. The
conquerors found the capital a desert. The people shut themselves
up in their houses, and refused to pay any mark of respect to the
Austrian prince. It was necessary to hire a few children to shout
before him in the streets. Meanwhile, the court of Philip at Valladolid
was thronged by nobles and prelates. Thirty thousand people
followed their King from Madrid to his new residence. Women of
rank, rather than remain behind, performed the journey on foot. The
peasants enlisted by thousands. Money, arms, and provisions, were
supplied in abundance by the zeal of the people. The country round
Madrid was infested by small parties of irregular horse. The Allies
could not send off a despatch to Arragon, or introduce a supply of
provisions into the capital. It was unsafe for the Archduke to hunt in
the immediate vicinity of the palace which he occupied.
The wish of Stanhope was to winter in Castile. But he stood alone
in the council of war; and, indeed, it is not easy to understand how
the Allies could have maintained themselves, through so
unpropitious a season, in the midst of so hostile a population.
Charles, whose personal safety was the first object of the generals,
was sent with an escort of cavalry to Catalonia in November; and in
December the army commenced its retreat towards Arragon.
But the Allies had to do with a master-spirit. The King of France
had lately sent the Duke of Vendome to command in Spain. This
man was distinguished by the filthiness of his person, by the
brutality of his demeanour, by the gross buffonery of his
conversation, and by the impudence with which he abandoned
himself to the most nauseous of all vices. His sluggishness was
almost incredible. Even when engaged in a campaign, he often
passed whole days in his bed. His strange torpidity had been the
cause of some of the most serious disasters which the armies of the
House of Bourbon had sustained. But when he was roused by any
great emergency, his resources, his energy, and his presence of
mind, were such as had been found in no French general since the
death of Luxembourg.
At this crisis, Vendome was all himself. He set out from Talavera
with his troops, and pursued the retreating army of the Allies with a
speed perhaps never equalled, in such a season, and in such a
country. He marched night and day. He swam, at the head of his
cavalry, the flooded stream of Henares, and, in a few days, overtook
Stanhope, who was at Brihuega with the left wing of the Allied army.
“Nobody with me,” says the English general, “imagined that they had
any foot within some days’ march of us; and our misfortune is owing
to the incredible diligence which their army made.” Stanhope had
but just time to send off a messenger to the centre of the army,
which was some leagues from Brihuega, before Vendome was upon
him. The town was invested on every side. The walls were battered
with cannon. A mine was sprung under one of the gates. The
English kept up a terrible fire till their powder was spent. They then
fought desperately with the bayonet against overwhelming odds.
They burned the houses which the assailants had taken. But all was
to no purpose. The British general saw that resistance could produce
only a useless carnage. He concluded a capitulation; and his gallant
little army became prisoners of war on honourable terms.
Scarcely had Vendôme signed the capitulation, when he learned
that Staremberg was marching to the relief of Stanhope.
Preparations were instantly made for a general action. On the day
following that on which the English had delivered up their arms, was
fought the obstinate and bloody fight of Villa-Viciosa. Staremberg
remained master of the field. Vendome reaped all the fruits of the
battle. The Allies spiked their cannon, and retired towards Arragon.
But even in Arragon they found no place of rest. Vendome was
behind them. The guerrilla parties were around them. They fled to
Catalonia; but Catalonia was invaded by a French army from
Roussillon. At length the Austrian general, with six thousand
harassed and dispirited men, the remains of a great and victorious
army, took refuge in Barcelona, almost the only place in Spain which
still recognised the authority of Charles.
Philip was now much safer at Madrid than his grandfather at Paris.
All hope of conquering Spain in Spain was at an end. But in other
quarters the House of Bourbon was reduced to the last extremity.
The French armies had undergone a series of defeats in Germany, in
Italy, and in the Netherlands. An immense force, flushed with victory,
and commanded by the greatest generals of the age, was on the
borders of France. Lewis had been forced to humble himself before
the conquerors. He had even offered to abandon the cause of his
grandson; and his offer had been rejected. But a great turn in affairs
was approaching.
The English administration which had commenced the war against
the House of Bourbon was an administration composed of Tories.
But the war was a Whig war. It was the favourite scheme of William,
the Whig King. Lewis had provoked it by recognising, as sovereign of
England, a prince peculiarly hateful to the Whigs. It had placed
England in a position of marked hostility to that power from which
alone the Pretender could expect efficient succour. It had joined
England in the closest union to a Protestant and republican state, to
a state which had assisted in bringing about the Revolution, and
which was willing; to guarantee the execution of the Act of
Settlement. Marlborough and Godolphin found that they were more
zealously supported by their old opponents than by their old
associates. Those ministers who were zealous for the war were
gradually converted to Whiggism. The rest dropped off, and were
succeeded by Whigs. Cowper became Chancellor. Sunderland, in
spite of the very just antipathy of Anne, was made Secretary of
State. On the death of the Prince of Denmark a more extensive
change took place. Wharton became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and
Somers President of the Council. At length the administration was
wholly in the hands of the Low Church party.
In the year 1710 a violent change took place. The Queen had
always been a Tory at heart. Her religious feelings were all on the
side of the Established Church. Her family feelings pleaded in favour
of her exiled brother. Her selfish feelings disposed her to favour the
zealots of prerogative. The affection which she felt for the Duchess
of Marlborough was the great security of the Whigs. That affection
had at length turned to deadly aversion. While the great party which
had long swayed the destinies of Europe was undermined by
bedchamber women at St. James’s, a violent storm gathered in the
country. A foolish parson had preached a foolish sermon against the
principles of the Revolution. The wisest member of the government
were for letting the man alone. But Godolphin, inflamed with all the
zeal of a new-made Whig, and exasperated by a nickname which
was applied to him in this unfortunate discourse, insisted that the
preacher should be impeached. The exhortations of the mild and
sagacious Somers were disregarded. The impeachment was brought;
the doctor was convicted; and the accusers were ruined. The clergy
came to the rescue of the persecuted clergyman. The country
gentlemen came to the rescue of the clergy. A display of Tory
feelings, such as England had not witnessed since the closing years
of Charles the Second’s reign, appalled the Ministers and gave
boldness to the Queen. She turned out the Whigs, called Harley and
St. John to power, and dissolved the Parliament. The elections went
strongly against the late government. Stanhope, who had in his
absence been put in nomination for Westminster, was defeated by a
Tory candidate. The new Ministers, finding themselves masters of
the new Parliament, were induced by the strongest motives to
conclude a peace with France. The whole system of alliance in which
the country was engaged was a Whig system. The general by whom
the English armies had constantly been led to victory, and for whom
it was impossible to find a substitute, was now, whatever he might
formerly have been, a Whig general. If Marlborough were discarded
it was probable that some great disaster would follow. Yet, if he
were to retain his command, every great action which he might
perform would raise the credit of the party in opposition.
A peace was therefore concluded between England and the
Princes of the House of Bourbon. Of that peace Lord Mahon speaks
in terms of the severest reprehension. He is, indeed, an excellent
Whig of the time of the first Lord Stanhope. “I cannot but pause for
a moment,” says he, “to observe how much the course of a century
has inverted the meaning of our party nicknames, how much a
modern Tory resembles a Whig of Queen Anne’s reign, and a Tory of
Queen Anne’s reign a modern Whig.”
We grant one half of Lord Mahon’s proposition: from the other half
we altogether dissent. We allow that a modern Tory resembles, in
many things, a Whig of Queen Anne’s reign. It is natural that such
should be the case. The worst things of one age often resemble the
best things of another. A modern shopkeeper’s house is as well
furnished as the house of a considerable merchant in Anne’s reign.
Very plain people now wear finer cloth than Beau Fielding or Beau
Edgeworth could have procured in Queen Anne’s reign. We would
rather trust to the apothecary of a modern village than to the
physician of a large town in Anne’s reign. A modern boarding-school
miss could tell the most learned professor of Anne’s reign some
things in geography, astronomy, and chemistry, which would surprise
him.
The science of government is an experimental science; and
therefore it is, like all other experimental sciences, a progressive
science. Lord Mahon would have been a very good Whig in the days
of Harley. But Harley, whom Lord Mahon censures so severely, was
very Whiggish when compared even with Clarendon; and Clarendon
was quite a democrat when compared with Lord Burleigh. If Lord
Mahon lives, as we hope he will, fifty years longer, we have no doubt
that, as he now boasts of the resemblance which the Tories of our
time bear to the Whigs of the Revolution, he will then boast of the
resemblance borne by the Tories of 1882 to those immortal patriots,
the Whigs of the Reform Bill.
Society, we believe, is constantly advancing in knowledge. The tail
is now where the head was some generations ago. But the head and
the tail still keep their distance. A nurse of this century is as wise as
a justice of the quorum and custalorum in Shallow’s time. The
wooden spoon of this year would puzzle a senior wrangler of the
reign of George the Second. A boy from the National School reads
and spells better than half the knights of the shire in the October
Club. But there is still as wide a difference as ever between justices
and nurses, senior wranglers and wooden spoons, members of
Parliament and children at charity schools. In the same way, though
a Tory may now be very like what a Whig was a hundred and twenty
years ago, the Whig is as much in advance of the Tory as ever. The
stag, in the Treatise on the Bathos, who “feared his hind feet would
o’ertake the fore,” was not more mistaken than Lord Mahon, if he
thinks that he has really come up with the Whigs. The absolute
position of the parties has been altered; the relative position remains
unchanged. Through the whole of that great movement, which
began before these party-names existed, and which will continue
after they have become obsolete, through the whole of that great
movement of which the Charter of John, the institution of the House
of Commons, the extinction of Villanage, the separation from the see
of Rome, the expulsion of the Stuarts, the reform of the
Representative System, are successive stages, there have been,
under some name or other, two sets of men, those who were before
their age, and those who were behind it, those who were the wisest
among their contemporaries, and those who* gloried in being no
wiser than their great grandfathers. It is delightful to think, that, in
due time, the last of those who straggle in the rear of the great
march will occupy the place now occupied by the advanced guard.
The Tory Parliament of 1710 would have passed for a most liberal
Parliament in the days of Elizabeth; and there are at present few
members of the Conservative Club who would not have been fully
qualified to sit with Halifax and Somers at the Kit-cat.
 Though, therefore, we admit that a modern Tory bears some
resemblance to a Whig of Queen Anne’s reign, we can by no means
admit that a Tory of Anne’s reign resembled a modern Whig. Have
the modern Whigs passed laws for the purpose of closing the
entrance of the House of Commons against the new interests
created by trade? Do the modern Whigs bold the doctrine of divine
right? Have the modern Whigs laboured to exclude all Dissenters
from office and Power? The modern Whigs are, indeed, at the
present moment, like the Tories of 1712, desirous of peace, and of
close union with France. But is there no difference between the
France of 1712 and the France of 1832? Is France now the
stronghold of the “Popish tyranny” and the “arbitrary power” against
which our ancestors fought and prayed? Lord Mahon will find, we
think, that his parallel is, in all essential circumstances, as incorrect
as that which Finellen drew between Macedon and Monmouth, or as
that which an ingenious Tory lately discovered between Archbishop
Williams and Archbishop Vernon.
We agree with Lord Mahon in thinking highly of the Whigs of
Queen Anne’s reign. But that part of their conduct which he selects
for especial praise is precisely the part which we think most
objectionable. We revere them as the great champions of political
and of intellectual liberty. It is true that, when raised to power, they
were not exempt from the faults which power naturally engenders. It
is true that they were men born in the seventeenth century, and that
they were therefore ignorant of many truths which are familiar to
the men of the nineteenth century. But they were, what the
reformers of the Church were before them, and what the reformers
of the House of Commons have been since, the leaders of their
species in a right direction. It is true that they did not allow to
political discussion that latitude which to us appears reasonable and
safe; but to them we owe the removal of the Censorship. It is true
that they did not carry the principle of religious liberty to its full
extent; but to them we owe the Toleration Act.
 Though, however, we think that the Whigs of Anne’s reign, were,
as a body, far superior in wisdom and public virtue to their
contemporaries the Tories, we by no means hold ourselves bound to
defend all the measures of our favourite party. A life of action, if it is
to be useful, must be a life of compromise. But speculation admits of
no compromise. A public man is often under the necessity of
consenting to measures which he dislikes, lest he should endanger
the success of measures which he thinks of vital importance. But the
historian lies under no such necessity. On the contrary, it is one of
his most sacred duties to point out clearly the errors of those whose
general conduct he admires.
It seems to us, then, that, on the great question which divided
England during the last four years of Anne’s reign, the Tories were in
the right, and the Whigs in the wrong. That question was, whether
England ought to conclude peace without exacting from Philip a
resignation of the Spanish crown?
No Parliamentary struggle, from the time of the Exclusion Bill to
the time of the Reform Bill, has been so violent as that which took
place between the authors of the Treaty of Utrecht and the War
Party. The Commons were for peace; the Lords were for vigorous
hostilities. The queen was compelled to choose which of her two
highest prerogatives she would exercise, whether she would create
Peers or dissolve the Parliament. The ties of party superseded the
ties of neighbourhood and of blood. The members of the hostile
factions would scarcely speak to each other, or bow to each other.
The women appeared at the theatres bearing the badges of their
political sect. The schism extended to the most remote counties of
England. Talents, such as had seldom before been displayed in
political controversy, were enlisted in the service of the hostile
parties. On one side was Steele, gay, lively, drunk with animal spirits
and with factions animosity, and Addison, with his polished satire,
his inexhaustible fertility of fancy, and his graceful simplicity of style.
In the front of the opposite ranks appeared a darker and fiercer
spirit, the apostate politician, the ribald priest, the perjured lover, a
heart burning with hatred against the whole human race, a mind
richly stored with images from the dunghill and the lazar-house. The
ministers triumphed, and the peace was concluded. Then came the
reaction. A new sovereign ascended the throne. The Whigs enjoyed
the confidence of the King and of the Parliament. The unjust severity
with which the Tories had treated ‘Marlborough and Walpole was
more than retaliated. Harley and Prior were thrown into prison;
Boling-broke and Ormond were compelled to take refuge in a foreign
land. The wounds inflicted in this desperate conflict continued to
rankle for many years. It was long before the members of either
party could discuss the question of the peace of Utrecht with
calmness and impartiality. That the Whig Ministers had sold us to the
Dutch; that the Tory Ministers had sold us to the French; that the
war had been earned on only to fill the pockets of Marlborough; that
the peace had been concluded only to facilitate the return of the
Pretender: these imputations and many others, utterly unfounded,
or grossly exaggerated, were hurled backward and forward by the
political disputants of the last century. In our time the question may
be discussed without irritation. We will state, as concisely as
possible, the reasons which have led us to the conclusion at which
we have arrived.
The dangers which were to be apprehended from the peace were
two; first, the danger that Philip might be induced, by feelings of
private affection, to act in strict concert with the elder branch of his
house, to favour the French trade at the expense of England, and to
side with the French government in future wars; secondly, the
danger that the posterity of the Duke of Burgundy might become
extinct, that Philip might become heir by blood to the French crown,
and that thus two great monarchies might be united under one
sovereign.
The first danger appears to us altogether chimerical. Family
affection has seldom produced much effect on the policy of princes.
The state of Europe at the time of the peace of Utrecht proved that
in politics the ties of interest are much stronger than those of
consanguinity or affinity. The Elector of Bavaria had been driven
from his dominions by his father-in-law; Victor Amadeus was in arms
against his sons-in-law; Anne was seated on a throne from which
she had assisted to push a most indulgent father. It is true that
Philip had been accustomed from childhood to regard his
grandfather with profound veneration. It was probable, therefore,
that the influence of Lewis at Madrid would be very great. But Lewis
was more than seventy years old; he could not live long; his heir
was an infant in the cradle. There was surely no reason to think that
the policy of the King of Spain would be swayed by his regard for a
nephew whom he had never seen.
In fact, soon after the peace, the two branches of the House of
Bourbon began to quarrel. A close alliance was formed between
Philip and Charles, lately competitors for the Castilian crown. A
Spanish princess, betrothed to the King of France, was sent back in
the most insulting manner to her native country; and a decree was
put forth by the Court of Madrid commanding every Frenchman to
leave Spain. It is true that, fifty years after the peace of Utrecht, an
alliance of peculiar strictness was formed between the French and
Spanish governments. But both governments were actuated on that
occasion, not by domestic affection, but by common interests, and
common enmities. Their compact, though called the Family
Compact, was as purely a political compact as the league of Cambrai
or the league of Pilnitz.
The second danger was that Philip might have succeeded to the
crown of his native country. This did not happen: but it might have
happened; and at one time it seemed very likely to happen. A sickly
child alone stood between the King of Spain and the heritage of
Lewis the Fourteenth. Philip, it is true, solemnly renounced his claim
to the French crown. But the manner in which he had obtained
possession of the Spanish crown had proved the inefficacy of such
renunciations. The French lawyers declared Philip’s renunciation null,
as being inconsistent with the fundamental law of the realm. The
French people would probably have sided with him whom they
would have considered as the rightful heir. Saint Simon, though
much less zealous for hereditary monarchy than most of his
countrymen, and though strongly attached to the Regent, declared,
in the presence of that prince, that, he never would support the
claims of the House of Orleans against those of the King of Spain. “If
such,” he said, “be my feelings, what must be the feelings of
others?” Bolingbroke, it is certain, was fully convinced that the
renunciation was worth no more than the paper on which it was
written, and demanded it only for the purpose of blinding the English
Parliament and people.
Yet, though it was at one time probable that the posterity of the
Duke of Burgundy would become ex tinct, and though it is almost
certain that, if the posterity of the Duke of Burgundy had become
extinct, Philip would have successfully preferred his claim to the
crown of France, we still defend the principle of the Treaty of
Utrecht. In the first place, Charles had, soon after the battle of Villa-
Viciosa, inherited, by the death of his elder brother, all the dominions
of the House of Austria. Surely, if to these dominions he had added
the whole monarchy of Spain, the balance of power would have
been seriously endangered. The union of the Austrian dominions and
Spain would not, it is true, have been so alarming an event as the
union of France and Spain. But Charles was actually Emperor. Philip
was not, and never might be, King of France. The certainty of the
less evil might well be set against the chance of the greater evil.
But, in fact, we do not believe that Spain would long have
remained under the government either of an Emperor or of a King of
France. The character of the Spanish people was a better security to
the nations of Europe than any will, any instrument of renunciation,
or any treaty. The same energy which the people of Castile had put
forth when Madrid was occupied by the Allied armies, they would
have again put forth as soon as it appeared that their country was
about to become a French province. Though they were no longer
masters abroad, they were by no means disposed to see foreigners
set over them at home. If Philip had attempted to govern Spain by
mandates from Versailles, a second Grand Alliance would easily have
effected what the first had failed to accomplish. The Spanish nation
would have rallied against him as zealously as it had before rallied
round him. And of this he seems to have been fully aware. For many
years the favourite hope of his heart was that he might ascend the
throne of his grandfather; but he seems never to have thought it
possible that he could reign at once in the country of his adoption
and in the country of his birth.
These were the dangers of the peace; and they seem to us to be
of no very formidable kind. Against these dangers are to be set off’
the evils of war and the risk of failure. The evils of the war, the
waste of life, the suspension of trade, the expenditure of wealth, the
accumulation of debt, require no illustration. The chances of failure it
is difficult at this distance of time to calculate with accuracy. But we
think that an estimate approximating to the truth may, without much
difficulty, be formed. The Allies had been victorious in Germany,
Italy, and Flanders. It was by no means improbable that they might
fight their way into the very heart of France. But at no time since the
commencement of the war had their prospects been so dark in that
country which was the very object of the struggle. In Spain they
held only a few square leagues. The temper of the great majority of
the nation was decidedly hostile to them. If they had persisted, if
they had obtained success equal to their highest expectations, if
they had gained a series of victories as splendid as those of
Blenheim and Ramilies, if Paris had fallen, if Lewis had been a
prisoner, we still doubt whether they would have accomplished their
object. They would still have had to carry on interminable hostilities
against the whole population of a country which affords peculiar
facilities to irregular warfare, and in which invading armies suffer
more from famine than from the sword.
We are, therefore, for the peace of Utrecht. We are indeed no
admirers of the statesmen who concluded that peace. Harley, we
believe, was a solemn trifler, St. John a brilliant knave. The great
body of their followers consisted of the country clergy and the
country gentry; two classes of men who were then inferior in
intelligence to decent shopkeepers or farmers of our time. Parson
Barnabas, Parson Trulliber, Sir Wilful Witwould, Sir Francis
Wronghead, Squire Western, Squire Sullen, such were the people
who composed the main strength of the Tory party during the sixty
years which followed the Revolution. It is true that the means by
which the Tories came into power in 1710 were most disreputable. It
is true that the manner in which they used their power was often
unjust and cruel. It is true that, in order to bring about their
favourite project of peace, they resorted to slander and deception,
without the slightest scruple. It is true that they passed off on the
British nation a renunciation which they knew to be invalid. It is true
that they gave up the Catalans to the vengeance of Philip, in a
manner inconsistent with humanity and national honour. But on the
great question of Peace or War, we cannot but think that, though
their motives may have been selfish and malevolent, their decision
was beneficial to the state. But we have already exceeded our limits.
It remains only for us to bid Lord Mahon heartily farewell, and to
assure him that, whatever dislike we may feel for his political
opinions, we shall always meet him with pleasure on the neutral
ground of literature.
 HORACE WALPOLE. (1)
(Edinburgh Review, October, 1833.)

W
e cannot transcribe this titlepage without strong feelings of
regret. The editing of these volumes was the last of the
useful and modest services rendered to literature by a
nobleman of amiable manners, of untarnished public and private
character, and of cultivated mind. On this, as on other occasions,
Lord Dover performed his part diligently, judiciously, and without the
slightest ostentation. He had two merits which are rarely found
together in a commentator. He was content to be merely a
commentator, to keep in the background, and to leave the
foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to illustrate. Yet,
though willing to be an attendant, he was by no means a slave; nor
did he consider it as part of his duty to see no faults in the writer to
whom he faithfully and assiduously rendered the humblest literary
offices.
The faults of Horace Walpole’s head and heart are indeed
sufficiently glaring. His writings, it is true, rank as high among the
delicacies of intellectual epicures as the Strasburg pies among the
dishes

(1) Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir

Horace Mann, British Envoy at the Court of Tuscany. Now
first published from the Originals in the Possession of the
Earl of Waldgeark. Edited by Lord Dover. 2 vols. 8vo.
London: 1838.

described in the Almanach des Grourmands. But as the pâté-de-

foie-gras owes its excellence to the diseases of the wretched animal
which furnishes it, and would be good for nothing if it were not
made of livers preternaturally swollen, so none but an unhealthy and
disorganised mind could have produced such literary luxuries as the
works of Walpole.
He was, unless we have formed a very erroneous judgment of his
character, the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious,
the most capricious of men. His mind was a bundle of inconsistent
whims and affectations. His features were covered by mask within
mask. When the outer disguise of obvious affectation was removed,
you were still as far as ever from seeing the real man. He played
innumerable parts, and over-acted them all. When he talked
misanthropy, lie out-Timoned Timon. When he talked philanthropy,
he left Howard at an immeasurable distance. He scoffed at courts,
and kept a chronicle of their most trifling scandal; at society, and
was blown about by its slightest veerings of opinion; at literary fame,
and left fair copies of his private letters, with copious notes, to be
published after his decease; at rank, and never for a moment forgot
that he was an Honourable; at the practice of entail, and tasked the
ingenuity of conveyancers to tie up his villa in the strictest
settlement.
The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little
seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.
Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious
business. To chat with blue stockings, to write little copies of
complimentary verses on little occasions, to superintend a private
press, to preserve from natural decay the perishable topics of
Ranelagli and White’s, to record divorces and bets, Miss Chudleigh’s
absurdities and George Selwyn’s good sayings, to decorate a
grotesque house with pie-crust battlements, to procure rare
engravings and antique chimney-boards, to match odd gauntlets, to
lay out a maze of walks within five acres of ground, these were the
grave employments of his long life. From these he turned to politics
as to an amusement. After the labours of the print-shop and the
auction-room he unbent his mind in the House of Commons. And,
having indulged in the recreation of making laws and voting millions,
he returned to more important pursuits, to researches after Queen
Mary’s comb, Wolsey’s red hat, the pipe which Van Tromp smoked
during his last sea-fight, and the spur which King William struck into
the flank of Sorrel.
In every thing in which Walpole busied himself, in the fine arts, in
literature, in public affairs, he was drawn by some strange attraction
from the great to the little, and from the useful to the odd. The
politics in which he took the keenest interest, were politics scarcely
deserving of the name. The growlings of George the Second, the
flirtations of Princess Emily with the Duke of Grafton, the amours of
Prince Frederic and Lady Middlesex, the squabbles between Gold
Stick in waiting and the Master of the Buck-hounds, the
disagreements between the tutors of Prince George, these matters
engaged almost all the attention which Walpole could spare from
matters more important still, from bidding for Zinckes and Petitots,
from cheapening fragments of tapestry and handles of old lances,
from joining bits of painted glass, and from setting up memorials of
departed cats and dogs. While he was fetching and carrying the
gossip of Kensington Palace and Carlton House, he fancied that he
was engaged in politics, and when he recorded that gossip, he
fancied that he was writing history.
He was, as he has himself told us, fond of faction as an
amusement. He loved mischief: but he loved quiet; and he was
constantly on the watch for opportunities of gratifying both his
tastes at once, lie sometimes contrived, without showing himself, to
disturb the course of ministerial negotiations and to spread
confusion through the political circles. He does not himself pretend
that, on these occasions, he was actuated by public spirit; nor does
he appear to have had any private advantage in view. He thought it
a good practical joke to set public men together by the ears; and he
enjoyed their perplexities, their accusations, and their recriminations,
as a malicious boy enjoys the embarrassment of a misdirected
traveller.
About politics, in the high sense of the word, he knew nothing,
and cared nothing. He called himself a Whig. His father’s son could
scarcely assume any other name. It pleased him also to affect a
foolish dislike of kings as kings, and a foolish love and admiration of
rebels as rebels: and perhaps, while kings were not in danger, and
while rebels were not in being, he really believed that he held the
doctrines which he professed. To go no further than the letters now
before us, he is perpetually boasting to his friend Mann of his
aversion to royalty and to royal persons. He calls the crime of
Damien “that least bad of murders, the murder of a king.” He hung
up in his villa an engraving of the death-warrant of Charles, with the
inscription “Major Charta.” Yet the most superficial knowledge of
history might have taught him that the Restoration, and the crimes
and follies of the twenty-eight years which followed the Restoration,
were the effects of this Greater Charter. Nor was there much in the
means by which that instrument was obtained that could gratify a
judicious lover of liberty. A man must hate kings very bitterly, before
he can think it desirable that the representatives of the people
should be turned out of doors by dragoons, in order to get at a
king’s head. Walpole’s Whiggism, however, was of a very harmless
kind. He kept it, as he kept the old spears and helmets at Strawberry
Hill, merely for show. He would just as soon have thought of taking
down the arms of the ancient Templars and Hospitallers from the
walls of his hall, and setting off on a crusade to the Holy Land, as of
acting in the spirit of those daring warriors and statesmen, great
even in their errors, whose names and seals were affixed to the
warrant which he prized so highly. He liked revolution and regicide
only when they were a hundred years old. His republicanism, like the
courage of a bully, or the love of a fribble, was strong and ardent
when there was no occasion for it, and subsided when he had an
opportunity of bringing it to the proof. As soon as the revolutionary
spirit really began to stir in Europe, as soon as the hatred of kings
became something more than a sonorous phrase, he was frightened
into a fanatical royalist, and became one of the most extravagant
alarmists of those wretched times. In truth, his talk about liberty,
whether he knew it or not, was from the beginning a mere cant, the
remains of a phraseology which had meant something in the mouths
of those from whom he had learned it, but which, in his mouth,
meant about as much as the oath by which the Knights of some
modern orders bind themselves to redress the wrongs of all injured
ladies. He had been fed in his boyhood with Whig speculations on
government. He must often have seen, at Houghton or in Downing
Street, men who had been Whigs when it was as dangerous to be a
Whig as to be a highwayman, men who had voted for the Exclusion
Bill, who had been concealed in garrets and cellars after the battle of
Sedgemoor, and who had set their names to the declaration that
they would live and die with the Prince of Orange. He had acquired
the language of these men, and he repeated it by rote, though it
was at variance with all his tastes and feelings; just as some old
Jacobite families persisted in praying for the Pretender, and in
passing their glasses over the water decanter, when they drank the
King’s health, long after they had become loyal supporters of the
government of George the Third. He was a Whig by the accident of
hereditary connection; but he was essentially a courtier; and not the
less a courtier because he pretended to sneer at the objects which
excited his admiration and envy. His real tastes perpetually show
themselves through the thin disguise. While professing all the
contempt of Bradshaw or Ludlow for crowned heads, he took the
trouble to write a book concerning Royal Authors. He pryed with the
utmost anxiety into the most minute particulars relating to the Royal
family. When he was a child, he was haunted with a longing to see
George the First, and gave his mother no peace till she had found a
way of gratifying his curiosity. The same feeling, covered with a
thousand disguises, attended him to the grave. No observation that
dropped from the lips of Majesty seemed to him too trifling to be
recorded. The French songs of Prince Frederic, compositions
certainly not deserving of preservation on account of their intrinsic
merit, have been carefully preserved for us by this contemner of
royalty. In truth, every page of Walpole’s works bewrays him. This
Diogenes, who would be thought to prefer his tub to a palace, and
who has nothing to ask of the masters of Windsor and Versailles but
that they will stand out of his light, is a gentleman-usher at heart.
 He had, it is plain, an uneasy consciousness of the frivolity of his
favourite pursuits; and this consciousness produced one of the most
diverting of his ten thousand affectations. His busy idleness, his
indifference to matters which the world generally regards as
important, his passion for trifles, he thought fit to dignify with the
name of philosophy. He spoke of himself as of a man whose
equanimity was proof to ambitious hopes and fears, who had
learned to rate power, wealth, and fame at their true value, and
whom the conflict of parties, the rise and fall of statesmen, the ebb
and flow of public opinion, moved only to a smile of mingled
compassion and disdain. It was owing to the peculiar elevation of his
character that he cared about a pinnacle of lath and plaster more
than about the Middlesex election, and about a miniature of
Grammont more than about the American Revolution. Pitt and
Murray might talk themselves hoarse about trifles. But questions of
government and war were too insignificant to detain a mind which
was occupied in recording the scandal of club-rooms and the
whispers of the back-stairs, and which was even capable of selecting
and disposing chairs of ebony and shields of rhinoceros-skin.
One of his innumerable whims was an extreme unwillingness to be
considered a man of letters. Not that he was indifferent to literary
fame. Far from it. Scarcely any writer lias ever troubled himself so
much about the appearance which his works were to make before
posterity. But he had set his heart on incompatible objects. He
wished to be a celebrated author, and yet to be a mere idle
gentleman, one of those Epicurean gods of the earth who do
nothing at all, and who pass their existence in the contemplation of
their own perfections. He did not like to have any thing in common
with the wretches who lodged in the little courts behind St. Martin’s
Church, and stole out on Sundays to dine with their bookseller. He
avoided the society of authors. He spoke with lordly contempt of the
most distinguished among them. He tried to find out some way of
writing books, as M. Jourdain’s father sold cloth, without derogating
from his character of Gentilhomme. “Lui, marchand? C’est pure
médisance: il ne la jamais été. Tout ce qu’il faisait, c’est qu’il était
fort obligeant, fort officieux; et comme il se connaissait fort bien en
étoffes, il en allait choisir de tous les côtés, les faisait apporter chez
lui, et en donnait à ses amis pour de l’argent.” There are several
amusing instances of Walpole’s feeling on this subject in the letters
now before us. Mann had complimented him on the learning which
appeared in the “Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors;” and it is
curious to see how impatiently Walpole bore the imputation of
having attended to any thing so unfashionable as the improvement
of his mind. “I know nothing. How should I? I who have always lived
in the big busy world; who lie a-bed all the morning, calling it
morning as long as you please; who sup in company; who have
played at faro half my life, and now at loo till two and three in the
morning; who have always loved pleasure haunted auctions.... How
I have laughed when some of the Magazines have called me the
learned gentleman. Pray don’t be like the Magazines.” This folly
might be pardoned in a boy. But a man between forty and fifty years
old, as Walpole then was, ought to be quite as much ashamed of
playing at loo till three every morning as of being that vulgar thing, a
learned gentleman.
The literary character has undoubtedly its full share of faults, and
of very serious and offensive faults. If Walpole had avoided those
faults, we could have pardoned the fastidiousness with which he
declined all fellowship with men of learning. But from those faults
Walpole was not one jot more free than the garreteers from whose
contact he shrank. Of literary meannesses and literary vices, his life
and his works contain as many instances as the life and the works of
any member of Johnson’s club. The fact is, that Walpole had the
faults of Grub Street, with a large addition from St. James’s Street,
the vanity, the jealousy, the irritability of a man of letters, the
affected superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton.
His judgment of literature, of contemporary literature especially,
wars altogether perverted by his aristocratical feelings.
No writer surely was ever guilty of so much false and absurd
criticism. He almost invariably speaks with contempt of those books
which are now universally allowed to be the best that appeared in
his time; and, on the other hand, he speaks of writers of rank and
fashion as if they were entitled to the same precedence in literature
which would have been allowed to them in a drawing-room. In these
letters, for example, he says that he would rather have written the
most absurd lines in Lee than Thomson’s Seasons. The periodical
paper called “The World,” on the other hand, was by “our first
writers.” Who, then, were the first writers of England in the year
1758? Walpole has told us in a note. Our readers will probably guess
that Hume, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Johnson, Warburton,
Collins, Akenside, Gray, Dyer, Young, Warton, Mason, or some of
those distinguished men, were in the list. Not one of them. Our first
writers, it seems, were Lord Chesterfield, Lord Bath, Mr. W. Whithed,
Sir Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Coventry.
Of these seven personages, Whithed was the lowest in station, but
was the most accomplished tuft-hunter of his time. Coventry was of
a noble family. The other five had among them two seats in the
House of Lords, two seats in the House of Commons, three seats in
the Privy Council, a baronetcy, a blue riband, a red riband, about a
hundred thousand pounds a year, and not ten pages that are worth
reading. The writings of Whithed, Cambridge, Coventry, and Lord
Bath are forgotten. Soame Jenyns is remembered chiefly by
Johnson’s review of the foolish Essay on the Origin of Evil. Lord
Chesterfield stands much lower in the estimation of posterity than he
would have done if his letters had never been published. The
lampoons of Sir Charles Williams are now read only by the curious,
and, though not without occasional flashes of wit, have always
seemed to us, we must own, very poor performances.
Walpole judged of French literature after the same fashion. He
understood and loved the French language. Indeed, he loved it too
well. His style is more deeply tainted with Gallicism than that of any
other English writer with whom we are acquainted. His composition
often reads, for a page together, like a rude translation from the
French. We meet every minute with such sentences as these, “One
knows what temperaments Annibal Caracci painted.”
 “The impertinent personage!”
“She is dead rich.”
“Lord Dalkeith is dead of the small-pox in three days.”
“It will not be seen whether he or they are most patriot.”
His love of the French language was of a peculiar kind. He loved it
as having been for a century the vehicle of all the polite nothings of
Europe, as the sign by which the freemasons of fashion recognised
each other in every capital from Petersburg to Naples, as the
language of raillery, as the language of anecdote, as the language of
memoirs, as the language of correspondence. Its higher uses he
altogether disregarded. The literature of France has been to ours
what Aaron was to Moses, the expositor of great truths which would
else have perished for want of a voice to utter them with
distinctness. The relation which existed between Mr. Bentham and
M. Dumont is an exact illustration of the intellectual relation in which
the two countries stand to each other. The great discoveries in
physics, in metaphysics, in political science, are ours. But scarcely
any foreign nation except France has received them from us, by
direct communication. Isolated by our situation, isolated by our
manners, we found truth, but we did not impart it. France has been
the interpreter between England and mankind.
In the time of Walpole, this process of interpretation was in full
activity. The great French writers were busy in proclaiming through
Europe the names of Bacon, of Newton, and of Locke. The English
principles of toleration, the English respect for personal liberty, the
English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good, were
making rapid progress. There is scarcely any thing in history so
interesting as that great stirring up of the mind of France, that
shaking of the foundations of all established opinions, that uprooting
of old truth and old error. It was plain that mighty principles were at
work whether for evil or for good. It was plain that a great change in
the whole social system was at hand. Fanatics of one kind might
anticipate a golden age, in which men should live under the simple
dominion of reason, in perfect equality and perfect amity, without
property, or marriage, or king, or God. A fanatic of another kind
might see nothing in the doctrines of the philosophers but anarchy
and atheism, might cling more closely to every old abuse, and might
regret the good old days when St. Dominic and Simon de Montfort
put down the growing heresies of Provence. A wise man would have
seen with regret the excesses into which the reformers were
running; but he would have done justice to their genius and to their
philanthropy. He would have censured their errors; but he would
have remembered that, as Milton has said, error is but opinion in the
making. While he condemned their hostility to religion, he would
have acknowledged that it was the natural effect of a system under
which religion had been constantly exhibited to them in forms which
common sense rejected and at which humanity shuddered. While he
condemned some of their political doctrines as incompatible with all
law, all property, and all civilisation, he would have acknowledged
that the subjects of Lewis the Fifteenth had every excuse which men
could have for being eager to pull down, and for being ignorant of
the far higher art of setting up. While anticipating a fierce conflict, a
great and wide-wasting destruction, he would yet have looked
forward to the final close with a good hope for France and for
mankind.
Walpole had neither hopes nor fears. Though the most Frenchified
English writer of the eighteenth century, he troubled himself little
about the portents which were daily to be discerned in the French
literature of his time. While the most eminent Frenchmen were
studying with enthusiastic delight English politics and English
philosophy, he was studying as intently the gossip of the old court of
France. The fashions and scandal of Versailles and Marli, fashions
and scandal a hundred years old, occupied him infinitely more than a
great moral revolution which was taking place in his sight. He took a
prodigious interest in every noble sharper whose vast volume of wig
and infinite length of riband had figured at the dressing or at the
tucking up of Lewis the Fourteenth, and of every profligate woman
of quality who had carried her train of lovers backward and forward
from king to parliament, and from parliament to king during the
wars of the Fronde. These were the people of whom he treasured up
the smallest memorial, of whom he loved to hear the most trifling
anecdote, and for whose likenesses he would have given any price.
Of the great French writers of his own time, Montesquieu is the only
one of whom he speaks with enthusiasm. And even of Montesquieu
he speaks with less enthusiasm than of that abject thing, Crébillon
the younger, a scribbler as licentious as Louvet and as dull as Rapin.
A man must be strangely constituted who can take interest in
pedantic journals of the blockades laid by the Duke of A. to the
hearts of the Marquise de B. and the Comtesse de C. This trash
Walpole extols in language sufficiently high for the merits of Don
Quixote. He wished to possess a likeness of Crebillon; and Liotard,
the first painter of miniatures then living, was employed to preserve
the features of the profligate dunce. The admirer of the Sopha and
of the Lettres Athéniennes had little respect to spare for the men
who were then at the head of French literature. He kept carefully out
of their way. He tried to keep other people from paying them any
attention. He could not deny that Voltaire and Rousseau were clever
men; but he took every opportunity of depreciating them. Of
D’Alembert he spoke with a contempt which, when the intellectual
powers of the two men are compared, seems exquisitely ridiculous.
D’Alembert complained that he was accused of having written
Walpole’s squib against Rousseau. “I hope,” says Walpole, “that
nobody will attribute D’Alembert’s works to me.” He was in little
danger.
It is impossible to deny, however, that Walpole’s writings have real
merit, and merit of a very rare, though not of a very high kind. Sir
Joshua Reynolds used to say that, though nobody would for a
moment compare Claude to Raphael, there would be another
Raphael before there was another Claude. And we own that we
expect to see fresh Humes and fresh Burkes before we again fall in
with that peculiar combination of moral and intellectual qualities to
which the writings of Walpole owe their extraordinary popularity.
 It is easy to describe him by negatives. He had not a creative
imagination. He had not a pure taste. He was not a great reasoner.
There is indeed scarcely any writer in whose works it would be
possible to find so many contradictory judgments, so many
sentences of extravagant nonsense. Nor was it only in his familiar
correspondence that he wrote in this flighty and inconsistent
manner, but in long and elaborate books, in books repeatedly
transcribed and intended for the public eye. We will give an instance
or two; for without instances, readers not very familiar with his
works will scarcely understand our meaning. In the Anecdotes of
Painting, he states, very truly, that the art declined after the
commencement of the civil wars. He proceeds to inquire why this
happened. The explanation, we should have thought, would have
been easily found. He might have mentioned the loss of a king who
was the most munificent and judicious patron that the fine arts have
ever had in England, the troubled state of the country, the distressed
condition of many of the aristocracy, perhaps also the austerity of
the victorious party. These circumstances, we conceive, fully account
for the phænomenon. But this solution was not odd enough to
satisfy Walpole. He discovers another cause for the decline of the
art, the want of models. Nothing worth painting, it seems, was left
to paint. “How picturesque,” he exclaims, “was the figure of an
Anabaptist!”—as if puritanism had put out the sun and withered the
trees; as if the civil wars had blotted out the expression of character
and passion from the human lip and brow; as if many of the men
whom Vandyke painted had not been living in the time of the
Commonwealth, with faces little the worse for wear; as if many of
the beauties afterwards portrayed by Lely were not in their prime
before the Restoration; as if the garb or the features of Cromwell
and Milton were less picturesque than those of the round-faced
peers, as like each other as eggs to eggs, who look out from the
middle of the periwigs of Kneller. In the Memoirs, again, Walpole
sneers at the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Third, for
presenting a collection of books to one of the American colleges
during the Seven Years’ War, and says that, instead of books, His
Royal Highness ought to have sent arms and ammunition; as if a war
ought to suspend all study and all education; or as if it was the
business of the Prince of Wales to supply the colonies with military
stores out of his own pocket. We have perhaps dwelt too long on
these passages; but we have done so because they are specimens
of Walpole’s manner. Everybody who reads his works with attention,
will find that they swarm with loose, and foolish observations like
those which we have cited; observations which might pass in
conversation or in a hasty letter, but which are unpardonable in
books deliberately written and repeatedly corrected.
He appears to have thought that he saw very far into men; but we
are under the necessity of altogether dissenting from his opinion. We
do not conceive that he had any power of discerning the finer
shades of character. He practised an art, however, which, though
easy and even vulgar, obtains for those who practise it the
reputation of discernment with ninety-nine people out of a hundred.
He sneered at everybody, put on every action the worst construction
which it would bear, “spelt every man backward,” to borrow the Lady
Hero’s phrase,

"Turned every man the wrong side out,

And never gave to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.”

In this way any man may, with little sagacity and little trouble, be
considered by those whose good opinion is not worth having as a
great judge of character.
It is said that the hasty and rapacious Kneller used to send away
the ladies who sate to him as soon as he had sketched their faces,
and to paint the figure and hands from his housemaid. It was in
much the same way that Walpole portrayed the minds of others. He
copied from the life only those glaring and obvious peculiarities
which could not escape the most superficial observation. The rest of
the canvas he filled up, in a careless dashing way, with knave and
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