r«fr. I T *> ODD Rnnk ,u(o \i MADAME Dl 1)1.11 AND'8 LETTER '• Ml, all but truth, dro|>$ still-born from the Prc«8." tmWft I i 'ist U !■> tibutltnot. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, REEn OKME, BROWN, AND GREEN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1828. -DA no IS U Library of Congress By transfer from State Department •* v » ** PREFACE While the great moral principles upon which all social order in an advanced state of civilisa- tion is necessarily formed, remain at all times nearly the same, the modifications imposed by law, or induced by custom, in different eras of society — the duties exacted by the one, and the licence often obtained by the other — produce occasional, accidental ebbs and flows in the morals as well as in the manners of private life. These form an interesting and not unuseful subject of contemplation to such minds as, in society, by an intimate acquaintance with their contemporaries, have been enlightened, not con- tracted; who have learnt, in and from the world, indulgence to its follies without participation in its thoughtlessness, and a severe adherence to general principles, with great lenity to individual deviations from them. It is of such characters that La Bruyere says, " lis peuvent hair les " hommes en general ou il y a si peu de vertu, VI " mais ils excusent les particuliers ; ils les aiment " meme par des motifs plus releves, et ils s'etu- " dient a meriter le moins qu'ils peuvent une " pareille indulgence." (1) Some considerations are here ottered on the changes which have taken place, and the fluc- tuations observable in the two countries which, for above a century, may be said to have divided between them the social world of Europe. The period chosen is one from authentic sources, still within our observation. Details of more distant times, from the great scarcity of mate- rials, would be rather addressed to the curiosity of the antiquary, than to the feelings and reflec- tion of the general observer of human nature. Individual characters are sometimes brought forward, as the best authority for the senti- ments and conduct of the period to which they belong ; and sketches sometimes given of the biography of such as have been distinguished in social life, although little noticed in history. (1) Caracteres de la Bruy^re, torn. ii. p. 8' vu In the instance of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, their political importance and superiority was too closely interwoven with the whole tissue of their lives, to be separated from them ; but in the following pages their characters are touched on, not as the leaders of political parties, but, as to the effect which those characters produced on their associates, and on the times in which they lived. The Author has endeavoured to avoid all recapitulations of well-known circumstances, anecdotes, and characters belonging to a period so familiar to the reading world, or at least to that part of it here addressed. All great political speculations, all military and financial details, are left to more impor- tant and more voluminous works. Nothing is here attempted but a review of social life and manners, from materials open to every one as well as to the Author, and therefore supposed to be possessed by them. To this are added some observations suggested by a long inter- course with society in both countries. A First Volume is now offered to the public : vin should it amuse the leisure of those whose more enlarged and more profound knowledge of the times recorded gives them an interest in their social details ; should it assist in suggesting those associations of ideas always an agreeable exercise to the human mind, the aim of the Author is fulfilled. A Second Volume, attempting to re- cord the changes produced, and the altered spirit prevailing in both countries subsequent to the French Revolution, might perhaps prove more interesting, from approaching nearer to our contemporaries. But if only a series of insig- nificant circumstances are found to be here related, all previously familiar to the reader; if these circumstances are found unaccompanied by any comment which may lead to greater and more general views of human life and character ; and if they produce no speculations beyond the mere matter of fact recorded ; if such is the unerring decision of that portion of the public into whose hands the following pages may fall, then the future amusement of the Author will not be further intruded on the public. April, 1828. / CONTENTS. Introduction .... Page I CHAPTER I. Conduct of the Royal Family at the Restoration. — Duke of Buckingham. — Inferiority of the Taste, Manners, Literature, and social Habits of England, to those of France at this Period. — Reasons for it. — Effects of the bad Taste of the Times on Morals and on Society. — Lord Rochester Excessive Drinking. — King's bad Example Memoires de Grammont, Atalantis, Duchess of Cleveland - - - - -53 CHAPTER II. Effects of the Restoration on Female Manners and so- cial Existence. — Marriages of the young Nobility. — The Talents of Women entirely neglected in their Edu- cation. — Lady Falkland. — Duchess of Newcastle. — Infrequency and Dulness of Private Letters. — Diary of the first Lady Burlington. — Letters of Lady Russell and Lady Sunderland. — Cards and Play confined to the Court. — False Idea of the Manners of England given by the Writers of the Day - - - - 98 a CHAPTER III. French Memoirs and Private Correspondence, their Advan- tages over our early Chronicles. — State of Society in France during the Regency of Anne of Austria. — Cha- racter of her Court. — Madame de Chevrcuse. — Made- moiselle de Hautefort. — Mademoiselle de la Fayette. — Cardinal Mazarin. — Contrast between the Motives and Conduct of the contemporary Civil Wars of France and England. — The Fronde, and its Effects on the Social Life and Manners of France. — The Duchesse de Longue- ville ..... Page 125 CHAPTER IV. Much Purity of Conduct and Excellence of Female Cha- racter contemporary with the Heroines of the Fronde. — Madame de Sevigne. — Mademoiselle de Vigean. — The Duchesse de Navailles. — The Amusements of Society in England and in France. — The Theatre Comparison of that of France with that of England - - 162 CHAPTER V. Influence of the first Years of the Majority of Louis the Fourteenth on the Society and social Habits of France. — St. Evremond. — Duchesse de Mazarin. — Ninon de l'Enclos. — Hotel de Rambouillet. — Fetes at Versailles. — Change which took Place during the Reign of Louis the Fourteenth. — State of Society at the Time of his Death --._.. 206 CHAPTER VL The Change of Manners which took Place in England after the Revolution of 1688. — King William. — Queen Mary. — The Amusements and Habits of social Lite during the Reigns of King William and of Queen Anne. XI — Duchess of Norfolk's Divorce. — Duchess of Marl- borough. — Lady Masham. — Queen Anne. — Lady Betty Germaine. — Duchess of Queensbury. — Lady M. W. Montague. — Bolingbroke. — Pope. — Swift. — Steele. — Gay. — Prior. — Congreve. — Degraded State of the Fine Arts - - Page 259 CHAPTER VII. Ignorance of the Government of Louis the Fourteenth. — Theological Disputes. — Suspicions of Poison. — Madame de Brinvilliers. — Jesuits and Jansenists. — Voltaire. — Regent's Government hurried on the Revolution Con- duct of the French Nobility and of the Popular Party at the Beginning'of the Revolution.— State of the public Mind in Europe. — Rousseau, Effects produced by his Writings in France. — Absence of all Regard to Moral Truth. — Madame du Chatelet. — St. Lambert. — Madame de Grafigny. — Madame d'Epinay, her Society, Rousseau's Conduct in it. — Madame d'Houdetot - - 330 CHAPTER VIII. The Tribunals of France, their disgraceful Conduct. — The Pretensions of the Parliaments Political Discussion becomes general in Society. — Effects produced by the Genius and Writings of Voltaire on the Character of his Country. — State of Society at Paris immediately pre- ceding the Revolution. — The Influence of Women on the Opinions and Circumstances of the Times. — Remark- able Difference in the Conduct of England and France under Circumstances of popular Excitation. — Execution of Foulon. — Mixture of Atrocity and Folly in the suc- cessive Demagogues of French Liberty. — Chaumette. — Trial of the Queen. — Hebert. — Couthon. — St. Just. — Collot D'Herbois Strange Insensibility to Death. — Frivolous Discussions of the Convention - -381 Xll CHAPTER IX. State of England from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the Beginning of the French Revolution. — Accession of George the Third. — His early Character and Conduct. — Prosperous State of the Country. — American War, its Effects. — Mr. Pitt. — His Conduct respecting the French Revolution. — Its Social and Political Effects on England. — Mr. Fox. - - - Page 434 INTRODUCTION. In considering and comparing the manners and habits, the opinions and prejudices, of England and France, it is remarkable that two nations so contiguous, so long and so intimately con- nected, and having always, either as friends or as enemies, seen so much of each other, should still continue so essentially dissimilar. Like country neighbours, of uncongenial cha- racters, we have never, during our hereditary and necessary intercourse with each other, con- tinued long upon good terms, and have gene- rally fallen out when any attempts have been made to increase our intimacy or unite us more closely. Even when upon the most friendly footing, we have neither of us disliked hearing our neighbours abused, their peculiarities laughed at, and their weaknesses exaggerated, and have B H" 2 seldom been disposed to do them justice, except when we conceived that we had humbled and worsted them. The two nations may be considered as having been in a state of the most entire alienation from each other at the period of the restoration of Charles the Second. A space of twenty years, joined to bur insular situation, would be more than enough, at any time, to wear out almost every vestige of foreign fashions or manners ; but these intervening years had, besides, been marked by political struggles, which, in calling forth our national peculiarities, exhibited them in the greatest possible contrast to the French character of that period, not only as to religion and politics, but as to every public and private sentiment, both national and individual. The intermediate events which took place in both countries, mutually fortified and increased all these distinctive differences. The great and decisive stand made by the English nation, first in the senate, and then in the field, against the arbitrary plans of the misguided Charles, plans, which, whether of resistance or accommodation, were always (and too truly) connected in public opinion with foreign counsels and foreign aid. The temporary settlement which took place under Cromwell ; the abortive and ill-concerted attempts subsequently made for the establish- ment of a republic, — all these national exer- tions were equally grounded upon a determined resistance to foreign interposition, and to any change in the laws and customs considered as peculiarly English. Indeed it is a circumstance which must strike all those who have looked much into our earliest annals, not in compiled histories, but in contemporary writers, and in the still subsisting records of the time, that the English seem always to have been a chosen people, for the deposit of political truth and civil liberty ; not of romantic visions, impos- sible from the nature of man to be realised, but of plain practical doctrines, long acted upon, often opposed, sometimes reversed, al- ways ultimately triumphant. No regularly con- structed constitution of government subsisted in the times here referred to ; but the common law of England, the unwritten record of time immemorial, proves that this principle of civil liberty, of individual independence, of resist- ance to all oppression at home, and all inter- vention from abroad, existed long before ; and what is more remarkable, during, and in de- fiance ofi the alternate rule of the Yorks and the Lancasters, the succession of Tudors and b 2 4 of Stuarts. (1) It was, in fact, kept alive, by their successive efforts to subdue it ; was en- lightened, strengthened, and systematised, by the effects of the civil war, and by all the energy of mind, and excellence of understand- ing, which those times called forth, and was permanently established at the Revolution, which secured the throne to the house of Brunswick. The aversion the people of England ever evinced to foreign connections was by no means shared by their princes, especially those of the race of Stuart. The short-sighted policy, and puerile eager- ness with which James the First sought the al- liance, first of Austria, and then of France, by the marriage of his son, seems rather to have been the effect of early prejudice, imbibed in (1) This is sufficiently proved by many of the public papers in the curious selection made by the late Mr. Lysons, while keeper of the records in the Tower, where we find (among many other similar facts) Henry the Fifth, during his victorious campaign in France, receiving and answering petitions from the meanest of his subjects, complaining of encroachments on their property or rights. His letter missive to his chancellor is there preserved, desiring him to see immediate justice done to a miller, who had com- plained to the king of a neighbouring convent of monks having obstructed his mill-stream, and otherwise oppressed and injured him. Scotland, which taught him always to look to a powerful connection on the Continent for sup- port, than to any decided project for introducing the Roman Catholic religion, which in those days formed too much an Imperiam in Imperio, to have been relished by his weak, self-sufficient, and despotic mind. Even the letter of his son Charles to Pope Gregory the Fifteenth, which has been so fre- quently cited against its writer, appears rather a measure of formal civility in those punctilious times, than an intimation of that early bias, in favour of the religion of the pontiff he addresses, which was afterwards supposed to be detected in it. In the early part of his subsequent reign there are many particulars recorded in the memoirs of the times, which exhibit the incongruity of the habits and feelings of the two nations, even while immediately connected by the marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria. (1) A year had not elapsed after this marriage, when the whole train of French attendants, who had accompanied the Queen from Paris, were suddenly dismissed from her service ; a large (1) She was married by proxy at Notre Dame, at Paris, on the 31st of May, 1626. B 3 sum of money and magnificent presents (1) were distributed among them, but their immediate departure insisted on and enforced. The letter or declaration of Charles to his brother-in-law, Louis the Thirteenth, justifies, in a very spirited and sensible manner, the conduct he had been obliged to adopt, both towards his queen and her attendants. (2) Their imper- tinence and arrogance, the meddling insolence of their priests, and the pretensions and complaints which they all combined in suggesting to their mistress, had become intolerable, not only to the English court, but to the King himself; to that king, the subsequent strength and unshaken con- stancy of whose attachment to his wife forms so conspicuous a part of his disastrous history, and an interesting excuse for some of his mis- conduct. (3) (1) They received above 11,000/. in money, and 20,000/. worth of jewels. (2) A copy of this declaration was first published with the letters found in the king's cabinet, taken at the battle of Nasby. Whether this paper was really among them may admit of a doubt; but the parliament having it, by whatever means, in their possession, no doubt can exist of their rea- sons for publishing what coincided so entirely with all the popular prejudices against the queen. (3) " The king's affection to the queen was of a verv " extraordinary alloy, a composition of conscience and lo\o. The Marechal de Bassompierre, it is known, came as ambassador extraordinary to England, to settle these differences, or rather to insist on the re-establishment of the Queen's French household and priests. Lord Carleton, who had carried to France the letter from Charles, announcing their dismissal, was very ill received by Louis ; and Montagu, who was sent soon after with a compliment on the marriage of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, the King's brother, was ordered to leave Paris immediately, without being even admitted to an audience. The detailed account which Bassompierre " and generosity and gratitude, and all those noble affec- " tions which raise the passion to the greatest height ; in- " somuch as he saw with her eyes, and determined by her "judgment; and did not only pay her this adoration, but " desired that all men should know that he was swayed by " her, which was not good for either of them. The queen " was a lady of great beauty, excellent wit and humour, " and made him a just return of noblest affections, so that " they were the true idea of conjugal affection in the age " in which they lived. When she was admitted to the " knowledge and participation of the most secret affairs 11 (from which she had been carefully restrained by the " Duke of Buckingham whilst he lived), she took delight in " the examining and discussing them, and from thence in a making judgment of them, in which her passions were " always strong." — Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, vol. i. p. 155. B 4 8 gives in his memoirs of his first interview with Charles, shows how much the King was irritated at the conduct of the court of France on this occasion, and how determined he was to main- tain his own dignity, and resist any foreign in- tervention in his affairs. He had insisted on Bassompierre's not enter- ing on the subject of his mission at his first public audience at Hampton Court, where the Queen was at his side, and, as the ambassador tells us, " la compagnie etoit superbe et Pordre " exquis," but admitted him to a private inter- view of two hours, within three days afterwards, at the same place ; " en laquelle," Bassom- pierre reports to Louis the Thirteenth, "j'ai " trouve tant de rudesses, et si peu de desir de " contenter votre majeste, que je ne m'en S9aurois " assez estonner, car apres m'avoir longuement " escoute, il me dit que je n'accomplisois pas la " charge que Pon lui avoit mande, que j'avois " de lui declarer la guerre de votre part. Je " luy dit que je n'avois pas Poffice de herault, " pour luy aim oncer la guerre, mais bien celuy " de Marechal de France, pour Pexecuter quand c< votre majeste Pauroit resolue, et que jusques a " present, vous fustes avec lui com me avec un " frere. II me dit, que si cela etoit, votre majeste " devoit le laisser en repos et en liberte en sa ♦maison, en laquelle, ni vous, ni personne, n'avez 1 qu'a voir que la religion de votre sceur, etoit « assuree, que directement ni indirectement il ' ne tacheroit de luy faire changer, et qu'au 1 reste, il ne vouloit pas que la reyne sa femme at- ( tendist protection d'aucun autre que de luy ; ' qu'il avoit este force de chasser ses officiers 1 Francois, pour leur mauvais deportement, et ' les brigues et monopoles qu'ils faisoient en « l'etat, qu'ils luy divertissoient le cceur et ' 1'affection de la reyne sa femme, laquelle ils 1 obsedoient pour l'empecher de faire cas des * Anglois et Angloises, la destournant d'ap- * prendre la langue, et faisant qu'elle ne se 6 portoit envers luy comme elle devoit, dont il 1 avoit auparavant fait donner avis a votre ' majeste et a la reyne mere. Que maintenant, ' etdepuis qu'il les a esloignes,la reyne sa femme, * vit mieux avec lui, et qu'il a l'esperance 1 qu'a l'avenir, elle luy donnera toute sorte de ' contentement. Qu'il n'est pas resolu de * rentrer en la meme peine ou il a ete pour le 6 passe, et dont il est sorty, et que si votre ' majeste aime son repos comme son beau ' frere qu'elle ne le doit point presser a cela, ' et qu'il ne le fera point. Qu'il a donne e a la reyne votre sceur un train digne de sa 6 qualite, ou il y a quelques catholics, qu'il la * traitera en reyne, mais qu'il veut qu'elle se 10 " comporte avec lui comme elle doit, et qu'elle " luy defere et obeisse comme sa femme." In addition to this account given directly to Louis the Thirteenth, a part of Bassompierre's Memoirs contains a journal of his iife day by day, which embraces the whole period of his embassy to England, from the 2d of October to the 18th of December, 1626. In this we find a remarkable instance of the familiar footing, which the Duke of Bucking- ham maintained with the king, and of a lesson of etiquette given to the Duke by the ambas- sador, of which he seems to have been too little aware to have much profited. Bassompierre, describing this his first interview with Charles in a gallery at Hampton Court, says, " Je vis la line grande hardiesse, pour ne " pas dire efFronterie, du Due de Boukingham, " qui fut, que lorsqu'il nous vit les plus echauffes, " il partit de la main, et se vint mettre en " tiers avec le roy et moy, disant je viens faire le " holaentrevousdeux. Lors, j'ostaymonchapeau, " et tant qu'il fust avec nous, je ne le voulus re- " mettre quelqu'instances que le roy et luy m'en " fissent. Puis, quand il fust retire, je le remis " sans que le roy me le dit. Quand j'eus acheve, " et que le due put parler a moy, il me dit, " pourquoi je ne m'etois pas voulu couvrir luy " y-etant, et que luy n'y-etant pas, je m'etois si 11 " franchement couvert? Je luy repondis que je " l'avois fait pour luy faire honneur, et par ce " qu'il ne le fust pas couvert, et que je Feusse " ete, dont il me S9Ut bon gre, et le dit depuis " plusieurs fois, en me louant. Mais j'avois encore n une autre raison pour le faire, qui etoit, que ce " n'etoit plus audience, mais conversation par- " ticuliere, puis ce qu'il l'avoit interrompue se " mettant en tiers." Buckingham, however, it seems was the mediator in this whole business. He professed to Bassompierre an aversion to all the severities of the Puritans against the Catholics, and the greatest desire to satisfy the Queen by the recall of her French household, although he had hitherto been on no very friendly terms with her, and she was supposed to dread his influence with the King. He now, however, (as Madame de Motteville tells us,) seconded an imprudent scheme, which the Queen's ill humour at the dis- missal of her French servants had suggested, of making a visit to her mother, accompanied by Buckingham. To this, however, neither Mary of Medicis nor Louis the Thirteenth would consent. Buckingham was now in the height of his ro- mantic passion for Anne of Austria, and was equally averse to war between the two countries, or, to their settling their differences without his immediate interference ; he therefore announced himself to Bassompierre as the person intended 12 to be sent ambassador from Charles to Paris, and in his quality of lord high admiral to settle the maritime disputes between the two countries. Bassompierre was obliged to deter him by every means in his power from seeking the appointment of ambassador on this occasion ; having received positive instructions from Louis the Thirteenth to prevent his coming, and even to tell him he would not be received, till every point, both with respect to the Queen's household, and to the maritime disputes, was settled. Louis, in his letter to his ambassador on the subject, says, " Je remets a votre prudence et adresse, de luy " escrire sur ce sujet, en telle sorte qu'il ne " puisse pas dire, comme il a fait en Hollande, " que je luy ai fait defendre de venir en France, " et en tout cas, s'il arrivoit que par ces cooside- " rations le dit Due de Buckingham ne fut arret£ " de faire le dit voyage, j'entens que vous luy " faisiez scavoir par homme expres et de creance, " que vous envoyerez vers luy, qu'il reculera les « affaires de son maitre, plutot que de les avancer " en cette sorte, et que je n'aurois point agre- *' able de le voir que toutes choses ne soient " entitlement accommodees entre nous."(l) It was pique at this aversion of the court of France to receiving him, which made Buckingham in- (1) Mt'moires de Bassompierre. 13 sist on the command of the unfortunate expedi- tion to La Rochelle, where he had flattered him- self, he was first to have humbled the arms of France, and then, as a conqueror, to be sent to Paris to negotiate a necessary peace. Happy had it been for Henrietta Maria and her family, if, along with her French attendants, she could have dismissed the mistaken ideas she had received from her French education ; or that the misfortunes and disgrace of the latter part of her mother's life(l) had taught (1) Mary of Medicis, the widow of Henry the Fourth, died in exile and neglect at Blois, after having long main- tained against the Cardinal de Richelieu an unequal combat for that power, which they were both equally disposed to abuse. She had been three years in England on a visit to her daughter, from the year 1638 till 1641. Her arrival and her departure is thus mentioned by a contemporary writer : — " In anno 1638, the queen-mother of France and mother " unto the English queen, widow of Henry the Fourth, King " of France, landed in England, and came unto London the " 31st of October. She was very meanly accompanied, " and had few persons of quality attending her. The King " most humanely and generously receives and entertains " her, though all men were extremely against it ; for it was " observed, that wherever or unto whatever country this " miserable old queen came, there followed immediately " after her either the plague, war, famine, or one misfortune " or other. ***** " In the same month of August, 1641, I beheld the " old queen-mother of France departing from London, in 14 her the dangers of political intrigue and political power, even in France, already long accustomed to the influence of women in the most serious affairs. (1) From the time of the dismissal of her French attendants, we find her living in perfect harmony with Charles, and from the death of the Duke of Buckingham two years afterwards, in 1628, exercising such unbounded influence over him, that his subsequent fortunes must " company of Thomas, Earl of Arundel ; a sad spectacle " of mortality it was, and produced tears from mine eyes " and many other beholders, to see an aged, lean, de- " crepit, poor queen, ready for her grave, necessitated " to depart hence, having no place of residence in this " world left her, but where the curtesy of her hard fortune " assigned it. She had been the only stately and mag- " nificent woman of Europe, wife to the greatest king " that ever lived in France, mother unto one king and unto " two queens." — Several Observations on the Life and Death of King Charles the First, by William Lilly, first published, July, 1651. (1) Sir Edward Stafford ambassador at Paris in 15S8, gives a curious account to Queen Elizabeth of the ladies who had the most political influence in the court of Henry the Fourth, in the following words : — " For Your Majesty " may assure yourself that there are four women in the " court, Mesdames de Villeroy, Retz, Princesses of Condi lt and Nevers, that have all the news and most secretest " devices of the court ; for there is not one of these, or at " least among these four, that hath not either a lover, an " honourer, or a private friend of the secretest council of " the court, that will almost hide nothing from them." 15 necessarily have much depended on her charac- ter. Unfortunately for them both, her ideas of government and religion, of the rights of princes, and of the means to be employed to maintain or retrieve them, were no less contrary to our laws, than foreign to our habits, and obnoxious to our dispositions. This was so well understood by the nation, that Clarendon tells us from the first public demonstrations of discontent, the universal pre- judice was against the queen (1); and as early as the year 1641 in the memorable petition and remonstrance which was presented to the King at Hampton Court, immediately after his return from Scotland, he is requested to let such per- sons only near him, in places of trust, as his parliament may confide in, and that in his princely goodness to his people, he will " reject " and refuse all mediation and solicitation to the " contrary, how powerful and near so ever." (1) Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. 109. She was so aware of this herself, that in a letter to the King, of March 29. 1644-, she says, " If you make a peace " and disband your army before there is an end to this " perpetual parliament, I am resolved to go to France, not " being willing to fall again into the hands of those people, " being well assured, that if the power remain with them, " that it will not be well for me in England." — Kings Cabinet opened, p. 28. 16 These early expressed suspicions, her sub- sequent conduct was too well calculated to con- firm and increase. Her ill-timed visit to France, in the year 1642, her binding her husband by a solemn promise to make no peace, nor any com- promise with his discontented subjects during her absence (1 J, and the difficulties which it is known she afterwards threw in the way of any attempts at accommodation, were the acts of a mind as incapable of rising above the prejudices of her own country, as of estimating the force and effect of those of the country she wished to govern. It is recorded that when she returned after the Restoration to take possession of So- merset House, her former residence, she ex- claimed, that if she had known the temper of the people of England some years past, as well as she did then, she had never been obliged to leave that house. (2) During the first fifteen peaceable years of Charles's reign, we must suppose that her influence was not entirely con- fined to her husband. Beautiful in her person, lively in her manners and conversation, brought up in a court around which the popular character of her father Henry the Fourth had thrown a (1) Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. 156. (2) Well wood's Memoir, p. 134. 17 fresh lustre, and belonging to a nation not back- ward in appreciating its own advantages, her example and the frequent intercourse with France which her establishment here must have occasioned, probably contributed to introduce many French fashions and customs into her court (1) ; but the influence of that court hardly extended beyond the precincts of Whitehall. The character and situation of the gentry of England in those days were too respectable and too independent to be easily influenced by power, or altered by caprice. The wise provisions of Elizabeth had enabled our foreign commerce materially to assist the agriculture and the manufactures of the country; these, a long and uninterrupted peace of above (1) Among others, that of suppers in society, which, Clarendon says, became universal with the court-party during the troubles. If we may believe Bassompierre, however, this court, at the beginning of the reign of Charles the First, was rather magnificent than gay. He says, in a letter to the Marechal de Schomberg, from London, in October, 1626," Je verray ce qu'en reussira, dans " peu de jours que je passeray comme les precedens, avec " grande melancholie dans ce pays. Un homme bien recu " s'y pourroit ennuyer, a plus forte raison moy a qui la " commission, et les autres precedentes actions de Carleton, " et de Montaigu, rendent de tres-mauvais offices. Nean- " moins je trouve force courtoisie avec les seigneurs." — Mem. de Bassompierre, vol. ii. p. 148. C 18 forty years (however ignobly maintained by James the First) fostered and increased. Perhaps during the period of which we are now speaking, in spite of some habits of homely economy in the highest ranks, which would shock the wasteful refinement and splendid poverty (1) of the present day, a general ease in circumstances, and a plentiful enjoyment of the comforts of life, were more universal, and pinching want and sordid poverty less fre- quent, than in any former or any subsequent period of our history. (2) When the King was (1) It may be objected to this, that the comfortable luxuries of life are more generally diffused now than at any former period, and that the term splendid poverty is ill applied to any order of persons in the present day. I allow that all those in the possession of property of any sort spend more of it in procuring for themselves what must be called the luxuries of life than they ever did before ; but does not the general prosperity of the state, and its power of making great pecuniary exertions, bear so hard (in proportion) on all orders of people, that if those only can be called opulent who have the absolute command of more than their ordinary habits of life require, much splendid poverty will, I think, be found among those, whose forefathers would start at the wasteful refinement of one month's expence in the mansions, both in town and country. which their descendants (with a few overgrown exceptions) find it sometimes inconvenient to maintain ? (2) The author is proud to find this opinion confirmed in the Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 540., where 19 at Nottingham with his troops, in the first of his ill-judged campaigns, he applied for money (as Clarendon tells us), to two rich misers in the country, who each, separately, denounced his neighbour, the one as having twenty thou- sand pounds always by him, and the other, a trunk full of coin, which both advised the King to take, although they would give nothing of their own. A hundred pounds was with dif- ficulty obtained from another gentleman of that county, from whom the Parliament, soon after, took five thousand, which he always kept in his bedchamber. It was this ease, and its concomitant leisure, which allowed the thinking part of the nation to observe and to oppose the steps they saw taking to deprive them of advantages which they valued so highly, and privileges to which they were so justly attached. The terrors of the Star Chamber, of the High Commission Court, and of the Court of Wards and Liveries, with all their long train of abuses, could have fallen but on few, comparatively with the great bulk of the people, who, procul d Jove, procid a Julmine, the idea is enlarged on, and the causes of this prosperity- specified, with all the accustomed acuteness of the author. C 2 20 prosecuted their labours, and enjoyed the fruits of them in peace. The acute and accurate author of the Con- stitutional History of England says, on occasion of the trial of the five knights, for refusing to contribute to the forced loan in 1626, " No " year, indeed, within the memory of any one " living, had witnessed such violation of public "liberty as 16%7." But still these violations fell chiefly on the upper orders of society, and were so modified, before they touched the people at large, and the working classes, and were at the same time so consonant with the antecedent habits of the country, that they could scarcely have been felt. There is an account of the house and way of living of Mr. Hastings, of Woodlands, in Hampshire, the second son of an Earl of Hun- tingdon, said to have been drawn up by the first Earl of Shaftesbury, and published many years ago in a periodical paper. (1) It gives the following curious picture of the sporting life and rude habits of an English country gentleman, of a date somewhat antecedent to that of which we are speaking : — " In the year 1658 lived (1) The Connoisseur, vol. iii. No.81. 21 " Mr. Hastings, by his quality son, brother, and " uncle to the Earls of Huntingdon. He was, " peradventure, an original in our age, or rather " the copy of our ancient nobility, in hunting, u not in warlike times. "He was low, very strong and very active ; " of a reddish flaxen hair. His cloaths always " green cloth, and never all worth (when new) " five pounds. " His house was perfectly of the old fashion, " in the midst of a large park, well stocked with " deer ; and near the house rabbits to serve his " kitchen ; many fish ponds, great store of wood " and timber, a bowling green in it, long but " narrow, full of high ridges, it being never " levelled since it was ploughed. They used " round sand bowls, and it had a banquetting " house like a stand, built in a tree. " He kept all manner of sport hounds, that " ran buck, fox, hair, otter, and badger ; and " hawks, long and short winged. He had all " sorts of nets for fish. He had a walk in the " New Forest, and the manor of Christ Church. " This last supplied him with red deer, sea " and river fish. And indeed all his neighbours 11 grounds and royalties were free to him, who " bestowed all his time on these sports, but " what he borrowed to caress his neighbours c 3 22 " wives and daughters; there being not a woman " in all his walks, of the degree of a yeoman's " wife or under, and under the age of forty, " but it was extremely her fault if he was not " intimately acquainted with her. This made " him very popular, always speaking kindly to " the husband, brother, or father ; who was, to " boot, very welcome to his house whenever he " came. There he found beef, pudding, and " small beer in great plenty ; a house not so " neatly kept as to shame him, or his dirty shoes ; " the great hall strow'd with marrow bones, " full of hawks perches, hounds, spaniels, and " terriers ; the upper side of the hall hung with " fox-skins of this and the last year's killing; " here and there a pole-cat intermixt ; game- " keepers and hunters poles in great abundance. " The parlour was a large room, as properly " furnished. On a great hearth paved with " brick lay some terriers, and the choicest " hounds and spaniels. Seldom but two of the " great chairs had litters of young cats in them, " which were not to be disturbed, he having " always three or four attending him at dinner ; "and a little white round stick of fourteen " inches lying by his trencher, that he might " defend such meat as he had no mind to part " with to them. The windows (which were 23 " very large) served for places to lay his arrows, " cross-bows, stone-bows, and other such like " accoutrements. The corners of the room full " of the best chose hunting and hawking poles. " An oyster table at the lower end, which was " of constant use twice a day all the year round. " For he never fail'd to eat oysters before " dinner and supper through all seasons : the " neighbouring town of Pool supplied him " with them. " The upper part of the room had two small " tables and a desk, on the one side of which " was a church Bible, and on the other the " Book of Martyrs. On the tables were hawks, " hoods, bells, and such like ; two or three old " green hats, with their crowns thrust in, so as " to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a " pheasant kind of poultry he took much care " of, and fed himself. Tables, dice, cards, and " boles were not wanting. In the hole of the " desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had " been used. " On one side of this end of the room was " the door of a closet, wherein stood the strong " beer and the wine, which never came thence " but in single glasses ; that being the rule of the " house exactly observed : for he never exceeded " in drink, or permitted it. c 4 24 " On the other side was the door into an old 11 chapel, not used for devotion ; the pulpit, as " the safest place, was never wanting of a cold " chine of beefi venison, pasty, gammon of " bacon, or great apple-pie with thick crust, " extremely baked. " His table cost him not much, though it was " good to eat at ; his sports supplied all but " beef and mutton, except Fridays, when he had " the best salt fish (as well as other fish) he " could get, and was the day his neighbours of " best quality most visited him. He never " wanted a London pudding, and always sung it " in with, My part lies therein-a. He drank a " glass or two of wine at meals ; very often " syrup of giliflower in his sack, and had always " a tun-glass without feet stood by him, holding " a pint of small beer, which he often stirred " with rosemary. " He was well natured but soon angry, calling " his servants bastards, and cuckoldy knaves, in " one of which he often spoke truth to his own " knowledge, and sometimes in both, though of " the same man. He lived to be an hundred ; " never lost his eye-sight, but always wrote and " read without spectacles, and got on horseback " without help. Until past fourscore he rode to " the death of a stag as well as any." 25 Of the situation, manners, and habits of the gentry of England, of what on the continent of Europe would obtain the name of untitled nobility, immediately before and during the civil wars, the admirable biographical works of Lord Clarendon, of Mrs. Hutchinson, the Diary of Mr. Evelyn, and several other contemporary writers of less celebrity, give us many details; and certainly none of the refinements of later days can prevent our looking back with pride, if not with envy, to their acquirements, to their senti- ments, and to their conduct. The interesting relation given by Clarendon of his own early life, and that of his friends, of their studies, their pursuits, and their pleasures ; the particulars we receive from Mrs. Hutchinson, of her education, the number of her masters, the attention paid to her accomplishments, and the share she was allowed to have in the instructions given to her brothers, can hardly be exceeded even in this educating age, when every thing that can be learned is supposed to be easily obtained by any body able to pay for the most popular instructor. On one subject only, that of religious opinions, the daily increasing prejudices of the age were essentially inimical to the enlargement of the human mind, and to the formation of characters capable of rising superior to those prejudices. 26 Foreign travel, which had been very general among the nobility, and the upper order of the gentry in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, was now, from an increased dread of the Roman Catholic religion, little resorted to. The inevitable effects of this great omission, combined with our insular situation, became immediately observable in all the most distin- guished characters, for sense and abilities, that arose during the ensuing struggle. Lord Cla- rendon himself spoke no French, nor any other modern language. (1) It is easy to suppose the disadvantages to which such a deficiency must often have subjected him, during the long course of his public services, both before and after the Restoration. This entirely home education, this confine- ment to one spot, then little visited by strangers, (1) " It was on account of his unskilfulness in languages, " and his not understanding foreign affairs," that he refused being secretary of state at Oxford, in the year 1643. (See Life of Clarendon, vol. i. p. 141.) Later in life, and during his retreat at Montpellier, he says, " He resolved to im- " prove his understanding of the French language, not " towards speaking it, the defect of which he found many " conveniences in, but for the reading of any books, and to *' learn Italian, towards both of which he made a competent "progress." — Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 905. 27 was the source of more essential deficiences than a want of modern language. It allowed no opportunities of getting rid of early and inevitable prejudices, no means of acquiring that general knowledge of man in a social state, which nothing but the actual practice and experience of various manners, habits, and systems of society can supply. To the want of this intimate acquaintance with the world and with their contemporaries, which existed more among the republicans than the royalists, may be attributed much of the narrowness and violence of their religious prejudices. To the same want of knowledge of mankind must be referred the strange, mistaken attempts they made at the re-establishment of a republic, after the retirement of Richard Cromwell, and the recall of the Long Parliament. To believe for a moment that the triumphant leaders of their forces would be contented never to aspire to any command in chief, but continue to receive all their commissions from the Speaker of the House of Commons, — a House of Commons over which they themselves had just exercised their own omnipotence, — betrayed such an ig- norance of human nature in general, and of civil history in particular, as proved them inadequate to the permanent government of the country, 28 whose wrongs they had so justly felt, and whose rights they had so nobly asserted. (1) That the imaginary perfections of a republic should have misled the minds of those who had recently smarted under the evils of an ill-defined and ill-administered monarchical government, cannot surprise. But it would seem, that even in our own days the science of politics was still in its infancy, or else that the early-acquired pre- judices of some individuals had prevented their drawing any comprehensive or practical deduc- tions from the lessons which have been already furnished by experience. In this light, it must be confessed, appear to the author those who (1) The editor of Mrs. Hutchinson's life of her husband, upon this subject, observes, that it was a great oversight, the army not having from the first received commissions from the Speaker of the House of Commons, instead of receiving them from the successive generals, and adds, that this method succeeded at first in France during the Revolution, " till some of the members of the executive " power leagued themselves with some of the military com* " manders." And was it ever otherwise ? Can it be other- wise ? Such are the judgments formed on events only, without referring to those first principles of human nature from which they must necessarily be deducted. These principles, if once well seized and defined by the mind, will prevent mistaken judgments on effects apparently militating against them, but which, in fact, will always be found to confirm and elucidate the general principle under which thev class. 29 can still prefer a republic to a limited monarchy, as the best mode of government, in the present advanced state of European society. It would seem that in estimating the advantages of the one, and the disadvantages of the other, all modern as well as all ancient history were forgotten, and that the last thirty years, which have, in fact, been a series of practical experiments in government* had been thrown away. Our own republican fit yielded to thefirst " soldatheureux" who had the boldness to seize the reins of power, and constitute himself a sovereign, with- out any legal restraint on his authority, or any check upon his will, but the habits of moderation acquired in other days. Much about the same time, the republic of Holland, after struggling for twenty-two years, in a state of fretful independ- ence, (sullied, too, by some frightful crimes,) ended by the re-establishment of the house of Orange in a limited power. But in less than a century, the republican leaven again at work, caused that country to be the first to adopt the mad doctrines of the French revolutionists, to reject with scorn the assistance of England, and finally delivered it up, bound hand and foot, the first subsidiary kingdom in Napoleon's great sys- tem of European subjection. The principal advantage of a monarchy, (a 30 constitutional, representative monarchy, always understood,) appears to be the calling into activity, and profiting by all the abilities of its subjects, without any fear of the exercise of those abilities, or of their success, making their possessors in- dependent of) or dangerous to the state. Had the Bill of Rights, and the positive obligation to the yearly assembly of parliaments, existed in Cromwell's time, Cromwell would have been a valiant soldier, or a bold and artful statesman, in the service of his country, without even har- bouring an idea of putting himself at the head of it. Had England succeeded in establishing herself as a commonwealth, w T ho could have ensured the Duke of Marlborough, triumphant over Lewis the Fourteenth, successful in his negotiations, powerful by his popularity on the Continent, and supported by a great party at home ; who, in a republic, could ensure his suffering himself to be deprived of his command, shorn of all his long-accustomed honours, and returning to the condition of any other ennobled citizen ? In our own immediate times, a still stronger instance occurs, of a still greater leader, successfully opposed to a still greater enemy, and placed in still more flattering and more intoxicating circumstances of power. Long as- sociated to the sovereigns, and commanding the 31 commanders of combined Europe ; finishing this career of glory by a battle, where the equally-poised struggle of moral as well as phy- sical courage was probably greater than in any of its bloody antecedents recorded in the history of the world : — who, in a republic, could have ensured this man, falling back into the ranks of common e very-day life, without either dis- turbing the country he belonged to, or being exiled from it ? Can any one still suppose, that the perpetual popular agitations of the ancient republics, and their perpetual and necessary jealousy of all their distinguished citizens, was the best method of calling forth and employing the time and ac- tivity of the lower orders of the state, or the mind and abilities of the upper orders ? However nobly, however patriotically any citizen of a republic may begin his career, if the circumstances of the times have called his abilities into action, if those abilities have been seconded by fortune, and supported (as must always be the case in all republics) by a party, good or bad — the most virtuous republican may begin to think, that the power which he sees (or fancies he sees) abused, would, for the mere good of his country, be better placed in 32 his hands, than left in those of the unworthy possessors, from whom he has wrested it. While our commonwealth's men were wholly intent on securing the independence of their etsablishments, from the possibility of a second surprise by any future Cromwell, the monarchical party were beginning to recover from some of those religious as well as political prejudices, which, before the civil war, they had shared in common with all the respectable part of the na- tion. Party-spirit, too, and the sort of contempt which the royalists wished to fix on the homely manners and puritanical cant of their adversaries, would alone have induced them, in their own manners and habits, and in the education of their children, to adopt every thing that could distin- guish them from their political opponents. To these causes were superadded the residence on the Continent not only of the unfortunate family to whose cause they were attached, but that of many of their own relatives, connections, and in- timates ; of all who were either in the im- mediate service of the prince, or had chosen to expatriate themselves, rather than acknowledge a government, which, however administered, they truly considered as usurped. We rind, therefore, during the protectorate, all the young 33 nobility sent to travel abroad, as a part of their education. The journals of Cromwell's parlia- ments are crouded with permissions for persons of distinction to go " beyond seas." And here we must admire the ease, we may almost say the noble confidence, with which these permissions were granted to persons of whose sentiments and wishes the Protector must have been well aware ; aware that they left their own country to join those, yet more eager than themselves to return to it by the destruction of his authority, by the restoration of their prince to his throne, and of themselves to their political importance. (1) Re- ligious disputes, and religious fears, had a yet greater share than political grievances in the dis- (L) Not less to be noticed is the manner in which all the nobility, even those who had taken the most active part before the settlement under Cromwell, were left by him unmolested in the enjoyment of their property and estates, so long as they abstained from open attempts against his authority. This was at least equal to the mercy and for- bearance shown at the Restoration by the opposite party. The well-known story of Cromwell telling some one who, upon his return to England, denied having seen Charles Stuart while abroad, that it was true the person in question had been blindfolded during the interview, is only a con- firmation of the fact that the vigilance of his government obviated the necessity of its cruelty. Compare this with the Revolution in France, during its whole progress from the reign of Louis the Sixteenth to that of Buonaparte. D 34 turbances of the times, and are always the most powerful motive of action in popular insur- rections. The parliamentary leaders, therefore, became almost all, during their long struggle, either zealots or hypocrites; their manners as- sumed a ferocity, their minds contracted an in- tolerance, and their language a jargon unknown, except among a few fanatics and polemical di- vines before the civil wars. During the tem- porary quiet under Cromwell, every one, even of those whose manners and tastes had been formed in better times, and whose minds were above the vulgar prejudices of the day, were yet obliged to conform to their dictates. All the troublesome observances prescribed, and all th eyestrain ts exacted by their clergy, were complied with, and all the nonsense they ut- tered was swallowed, for fear of the suspicion of a secret attachment to Popes, Kings, or Bishops. (1) (1) We shall hardly wonder at any subsequent dereliction of common sense in obedience to their injunctions, when we advert to the language of the pulpit in the years 1642 and 1643, when, in the metropolis of the country, and before the House of Commons, they announced, that ; < the "fresh remembrance of sin is like a pea in an issue, that " keeps it open, and makes it run." (Sperstow's Fast Sermon before the House of Commons, 21st July, 1643.) " That 35 In vain the elegant and accomplished mind of Mrs. Hutchinson, laments the puerile quarrels of the sectaries among themselves, the wretched company they were obliged to keep, and the little vexations and tyrannies to which they were obliged to submit ; she complains of all this, as proceeding from the misgovernment of Oliver, whom all the honest republicans abhor- red, and sees not, or sees not sufficiently clearly, that they were the evils which the political state of the country, joined to its peculiar character and insular situation, inevitably occa- sioned. Nothing, indeed, could be so intolerable " satan, prelates, papists, malignants, shall be under-workmen, " and kitchen servants to him who hath his Jire in Sion, and " his furnace at Jerusalem, to purify and refine the vessels of " mercy for the Lord's house." (Rutherford's Sermon before the House of Commons, 31st January, 164-3.) That, " when- " ever the children are come to the birth, and there is no "strength to bring them forth, all the world cannot furnish "you with such another midwife as prayer." (Edward Rey- nolds's Fast Sermon before the House of Commons, 27th July, 1643.) And asked, if " we shall, like tame fools, " suffer every body to wipe our noses of God." (Ambrose Perne's Fast Sermon before the House of Commons, 31st May, 1643.) It is difficult to conceive, that such degrad- ing nonsense could have been contemporary with the dig- nified and sonorous periods of Clarendon, the pure English diction of Hooker, and the keen logical deductions of Barrow. D 2 36 to any cultivated mind, and where such minds existed, so impossible to last, as the state of manners and society then in England. The nation, proud of its victorious struggle for civil liberty and independence, and anxious to enjoy the fruits of it, found itself tyrannised over and dictated to, in all the details of social life, by a fanatical clergy. The extraordinary circum- stances of the times, and the nearly balanced parties of Puritans and Presbyterians, had lifted both into an authority little less arbitrary, and much more individually oppressive, than that of the Roman Catholic religion. To check the supposed advances of that religion, under the cover of episcopacy, had been the single point of union between two sects, both equally hating each other, and both equally intolerant. The proscription of every thing that would bear the name of amusement, in which the Presbyterians exceeded even the Puritans, left the people no place of public resort but the church. Here their preachers laboured continually to perpetuate the influence of those violent pre- judices, on which alone their own authority was founded. They excluded from the minds of their auditory every liberal idea, every enlight- ened and elegant pursuit, and endeavoured to confine their views of human nature, and the 37 affairs of men, within the narrow circle de- scribed by the particular creed of their own sect. Under these circumstances, the Restoration was welcome to the hearts of the people, from the moment Cromwell died, in spite of all the political objections to it, and all the integrity and abilities which supported these objec- tions. (1) The dull time-serving mind of Monk, would, otherwise, never have accomplished the recal of monarchy (2) ; nor would the sound understand- ings of those days, have allowed it to take place without endeavouring at some restrictions, on the future conduct of the returning monarch. The proposal for a committee to consider of such restrictions, when brought forward by Sir Matthew Hale in the Convention Par- (1) Neither the causes nor the effects of the Restoration are here considered in a political light, but merely as they affected the social habits and manners of the nation. (2) The author of the Constitutional History of England thus expresses himself: — " But it can hardly be said that " the King's Restoration was rather owing to him (Monk), " than to the general sentiments of the nation ; and almost " the necessity of circumstances, which had already made " every judicious person anticipate the sole termination of " our civil discord which they had prepared." — Hallam t vol. ii. p. 14-2. D 3 38 liament, was over ruled, without any farther de- bate. A mere declaration of Monk's, that he would not answer for the quiet, either of the army or the nation, if the recal of the King was delayed, proved sufficient to hush all fears, but those designedly excited. The author of the Constitutional History indeed says, that any re- strictions, previous to the King's being restored to a legal existence, were impossible, and blames the Convention Parliament, rather than the an- tecedent proceedings. Such, we know, was the universal joy expressed at the return of Charles, that he exclaimed, that it must have been his own fault, not coming sooner, since every body seemed so glad to see him. (1) An idea has been started lately by some per- sons, of no mean authority, that the Restoration materially injured the literature of England, It is certainly much easier to prove that it materially injured its morals. Those who had connected in their minds all the disgraceful pro- fligacy of the court of James the First, and all the arbitrary measures of his son, with Popery and Episcopacy ; those who abhorred the one, and aimed at abolishing the other, necessarily (1) See Clarendon, vol. v. p. 6. 39 professed a purity of morals, a sanctity of manners, and a severity of life, neither affected by their opponents themselves, nor exacted by them from their followers. During the excitation of the civil wars, and the powerful effects of that moral atmosphere, common to all great bodies of men, met together for one purpose, and intent on one object, the sanctified became severe, the severe zealots, the zealots enthusiasts. An army thus composed was invincible to its enemies, and certainly much less obnoxious to its friends than such bodies usually are. The ill conceived and destructive piety, which led them to deface and mutilate many of the beautiful public buildings that adorned their country, must ever be regretted. While we own they were in general guiltless of that licence, and those outrages on the persons and property of their fellow citizens, which are the usual concomitants, and one of the most af- flicting scourges of war (1) ; the newspapers of (1) Their serious and regular deportment must have made the greater and more favourable impression on the public mind, because one of the last armaments the country had witnessed, about fifteen years before, was that sent out on the unfortunate expedition to the isle of Rhe, under the Duke of Buckingham, in 1627. These troops returning to London, discontented, ill paid, and idle, are reported, by D 4 40 the day, then first resorted to as a vehicle for the expression of party feelings, and like all suc- ceeding party writings, often exaggerating the truth; — even these newspapers, on both sides, show how little violence was used on either, ex- cept at the actual moment of contention, or when the spirits of men had been soured and roused by some long and obstinately disputed siege. Lady Fairfax, who was taken prisoner on the retreat of her husband from Bradford to Leeds, in 1643, with the officer of dragoons behind whom she rode, was a very few days after sent back to Leeds, in the coach of the Earl of New- castle, the commander of the King's troops. (1) Instances might even be given, when in the heat of contest, those who had neither abilities nor disposition to take any active part in it, were left by their neighbours in the undisturbed possession of " the humble blessings of the life they loved." In a journal kept by a Yorkshire squire, an ancestor of the family of Daronev, who lived in the immediate neighbourhood of all their contemporaries, to have filled the metropolis with riots and disorder. (1) See " Short's Memorial of Thomas, Lord Fairfax," published in " Select l^racts relative to the Civil Jl'ars in " England, by Baron Maseres," vol. ii. p. 428. 41 Marston-Moor, during the period of the civil war, we find a memorandum of his going out hunting on the very day of that memorable engagement, which mentions every particular of the chase, without a single allusion either to the battle or to the state of the country about him, excepting as it related to his sport. The women remained universally unmolested, and attached to their domestic duties. They appeared in their only appropriate sphere of action, as the friends, helpmates, and com- panions of the families to whom they belonged. No woman started out of her sphere into un- seemly notice. No heroine excited a moment- ary enthusiasm at the expence of the more difficult virtues of her sex. The distinguished abilities of Mrs. Hutchinson were not unveiled to the public eye, till above a century after she died, and we may fairly suppose that many other females, whose natural endowments were not inferior, and who acted not less honourable parts, remain unknown to us. It is worthy of observation, and strongly corroborative of the entire alienation of the two countries, which had taken place previous to the Restoration of Charles the Second, that during his subsequent reign, while France attained a degree of eminence in literature, 42 which she has never since surpassed, while her dramatists excelled in the purity of their lan- guage, and the good taste of their compositions, the poets of England (with one splendid excep- tion) should have been so remarkably deficient in both these qualities. That the social life of France seems to have united in no common degree the gallantry of a former age, with the gaiety and freedom of later days, while our own country, relieved from the puritanical cant imposed by the sectaries, and already possess- ing the immortal works which had honoured the reigns of Elizabeth and James, should have fallen so much below her neighbours in every thing amenable to the laws of taste. That her wit should have continued so coarse, her pleasures have become so vulgarly licentious, and her restored theatre never have risen to a level with its former self. The truth is, that in France, the age of Louis the Fourteenth, as it has since been denominated, with all its in- creased luxuries and licence, had been imme- diately preceded by the romance, the enthusiasm, and the high tone of the age of chivalry, which had scarcely ended with Louis the Thirteenth. During the intermediate period, France had been under the control of two despotic ministers, who had so established the power of the crown, 43 and increased the influence of the court, that it became not only a centre from which the national taste emanated, but a standard to which all the nation endeavoured to conform. Thus their manners, their amusements, their gallantries, all partook of a strain of elevation, of romance, and of dignified restraint, which was more that of the preceding age than of their own. In England the case was far otherwise. In England the end of the age of chivalry was dis- graced by the contemptible character of James the First. The base profligacy of the sovereign, and his court, had degraded the character of princes, their favorites, and their adherents, and left behind such a legacy of disgust, as prevented the really elegant taste and pure manners of his son from acquiring that influence on the taste and manners of the country, which they would otherwise have obtained. This disgust rapidly increasing by the ill advised measures of Charles, both in church and state, soon settled into an abhorrence of every thing connected with a court, and, consequently, of that amenity and refinement of manners which ought to adorn and ennoble it. The circumstances which, for the twenty years preceding the Restoration, had served totally to alienate England from France, were at 44 the same time laying the foundation of an un- usually close connection between them. The Restoration sent home numbers, of whom some had been educated, and others had spent the youngest and gayest years of their life in France. They had necessarily adopted much of her man- ners, habits, and amusements. Those they found established in their own country, were certainly not likely to have superseded them, even if the enthusiasm of the moment had not been thrown into the scale in their favour. But such was the spring which the public mind had received, from the removal of the forced and unnatural pressure of the sectaries upon every unaffected feeling and innocent amusement, that the nation started at once from primness into profligacy, and from sobrietv to excess. The serious man- ners and moral habits of England were derided at the court as fanatical, and stigmatised in the country as disloyal. A religion which re- quired no other test from its followers than loving plum-porridge, and hating long prayers, and a loyalty which was to be distinguished by drinking, bonfires, and holiday-making, were certain of becoming immediately popular. From the Prince whose return they thus hailed, much might certainly have been ex- pected, even without the enthusiasm in his 45 favour, unavoidably excited by the circum- stances of the times. He had enjoyed the advantage of such an education as, perhaps, had never before fallen to the lot of any one born to a throne, and ascending that throne when the powers of his mind and body were in their fullest vigour. At the age of fourteen, he had been sent out of the reach of the triumphant forces of the Parliament, under the care and di- rection of the illustrious Clarendon. The next sixteen years of his life, were spent in various residences on the continent, at a time when the transactions of the countries which he inhabited were peculiarly interesting and instructive. He had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with many of the princes, and most of the states- men then acting a distinguished part in Europe. Instead of having passed his youth in the unin- structive or debasing intercourse with mankind, too common among princes, instead of being sur- rounded by flatterers fore-stalling his wishes, and acquiescing in his opinions, he had been early called upon to make personal exertions, and to submit to personal privations, inconveniences, and mortifications. He had been obliged to so- licit favour, instead of receiving flattery, and often to put up with slights and neglect from the ruling characters in all the states that witnessed his 46 long, destitute, and almost hopless exile. The little court which followed his desperate fortunes was full of the disputes, factions, and opposition, natural to men in circumstances, where every one was willing to lay upon his neighbour the blame of misfortunes which they all felt it difficult to bear. He had opportunities, seldom offered to princes, to prove the character of his friends, and to discover and study those of his enemies. In Scotland he had been obliged to submit to the most humiliating and offensive conditions imposed on his government, and to the most ar- bitrary and vexatious tyranny exercised upon himself. In England he had been exposed to almost every want, and every danger which hu- man nature can experience, and he owed, not only his liberty, but his life, to the fidelity and honour of some of the meanest of his subjects. In France he had to deal with hollow profes- sions of friendship, and powerful, though secret enmity, from Cardinal Mazarin. He had been an eye witness of all the petulant follies of the Fronde, and all the childish animosity of its abettors, against the person of an artful minister. Contemptible squabbles for undue authority, so destitute of rational end or aim, that to the sober eye of history, they more resemble the riots of schoolboys, than the steady resolves of men, to 47 pursue some distinct object of public utility, by serious means. With these advantages, Charles was recalled to a throne, which the vigorous mea- sures of a successful usurper had restored to him with a lustre and a respectability in the eyes of surrounding nations which it had seldom be- fore attained. He returned to a country, en- nobled by its exertions, and enlightened by its experience, and found himself in a situation, in which he might have profited by all the abilities that had been exerted, not only for but against the cause of his family ; by the keen piercing mind, great talents, and powerful eloquence of Anthony Ashley Cooper, ripened in twenty tur- bulent years of active employment ; and by the acknowledged integrity, tried affection, and pa- triotic loyalty of the virtuous Southampton, who, in proud unsubmitting retirement, had rejected every advance from Cromwell. He brought back with him the capacious in- tellect of Hyde, the tutelary genius of his exile ; who seeing, or thinking he saw, in a monarchical government, and the strict and equal admi- nistration of justice, his idea of the perfection of social order, would have continued to uphold, and support all, and more than all, the power we have since found can be safely invested in 48 any crown. (1) But all these advantages seem, like the good seed in the parable, which fell upon (1) The opinion contained in this sentence as to the bent of Lord Clarendon's politics, the author hopes will satisfy a lively and accomplished friend, who has lately submitted the character of Clarendon to the severe scrutiny of his accurate and discriminating mind. That the chancellor may, in some instances, have been involved in the rapacious measures of the day, his censurer has succeeded in proving. The only palliation which such measures can admit of, was the pecuniary uncertainties and difficulties in which every body had passed the twenty pre- ceding years, during which all delicacy on the subject of money, or presents offered or received, seems to have been shaken even in honourable minds. The persecuting spirit of the chancellor in religious opinions, which his critic next dwells on so severely, may fairly admit of the same palliation — the persecuting fa- shion and spirit of the times. In this spirit every sect of Christians had (to their disgrace) participated and rivalled each other. That the distinguished abilities and many virtues of Clarendon, did not enable him to soar above all the vices and all the prejudices of his age, must be a matter of regret ; for lowering an historical character no longer able to redeem its frailties, is taking away from the joint stock company of human nature a portion of those abilities, of that virtue, and of the fair fame attending on the exer- cise of both, which constitutes the value, and which elevates the tone of national character. The same indulgence cannot be allowed to prevent the detection of the many inaccuracies and inconsistencies of Clarendon's great historical work and memoirs. The author of the Constitutional History of England, treating of the 49 the sand, as quickly to have disappeared, and to have been as completely thrown away. A dis- position naturally careless, a temper naturally cheerful, lively spirits, and feelings on which nothing was capable of making a deep impres- sion, had empowered Charles so to support his adverse fortune, as to excite an opinion of his mind and understanding which belonged neither to his character or his habits. (1) The variety of same period, is bound to seek, by cross-examination of every contemporary witness, all lapses from truth, and all contradictions existing in a work, which both from the author, the part which he acted, and the times of which he treats, comes with such a weight of authority before the public. (1) This carelessness of disposition was probably much increased by his mother's conduct to him at a time of life when, if a proper use had been made of the extraordinary circumstances in which he was placed, the natural faults of his character, .might have been corrected instead of con- firmed. After he left the island of Jersey, at the age of sixteen, the policy of Cardinal Mazarin persuaded Hen- rietta Maria that it was necessary for her husband's affairs that the person of the Prince of Wales should be in France. No sooner was he arrived there, than the same policy dic- tated a total neglect of him, leaving him entirely dependant upon his mother, to make the English parliament believe that he was at Paris against the will of Mazarin. During the prince's residence there, from 1655 to 1657, his mother supplied him with clothes and other necessaries, and he never had the command of five guineas in his pocket. She thought proper, too, not to allow him to be initiated into E 50 scenes and of society, to which his exile had in- troduced him, had formed his manners, without correcting his character, and the necessity and the shifts to which he had been reduced, had sharpened his wits, without enlarging his in- tellect. The same carelessness which had enabled him to support his misfortunes with cheerfulness, now allowed him to bear his pros- perity with moderation. His much- extolled lenity to his enemies at his restoration, was, in fact, as entirely a consequence of his character, and as little an effort of his mind, as his former admired resignation. This lenity (from what- ever cause), and the easy, gracious manners which accompanied it, must naturally have in- creased his general popularity during the first years after his return. It seems to have had the still further effect of leading many contem- poraries, and some subsequent writers, into an erroneous estimation of the clemency which they have ascribed to him and to his govern- any sort of business, or even to make him sensible of the unhappy situation of the royal family, and of his country. To this mistaken conduct, and the expedients to which his total dependance with regard to money must have reduced him, may fairly be attributed much of his subsequent want of delicacy in the means of procuring it, and his careless- ness and prodigality in its disbursement. 51 ment. It is an attribute they will be found so little to deserve, that during his reign more persons perished on the scaffold for state of- fences, than in all the succeeding century, from the revolution to the present day. (1) Much of this intemperate effusion of blood may be attributed to the influence of the Duke of York ; but this was only another and a more baneful effect of the culpable carelessness which we have already noticed. James, with a very inferior understanding, a worse temper, and a narrower mind, had a much stronger impulse given to his character, by the doctrines and practice of his religion ; a religion, whose every fault, of the many laid to its charge, may be resolved into the single one (and its bitterest enemies need not seek for another), that of being too powerful a lever to be placed in the hands of so imperfect a being as man. (1) Ninety-eight persons were executed for state offences from the year 1660 to 1685. E 2 COMPARATIVE VIEW. CHAPTER I. CONDUCT OF THE ROYAL FAMILY AT THE RESTORATION. DUKE of BUCKINGHAM. INFERIORITY OF THE TASTE, MANNERS, LITER ATUlti^, j^n SOCIAL HABITS OF ENGLAND, TO THOSE OF FRANCE AT THIS PERlUu. REASONS FOR IT. EFFECTS OF THE BAD TASTE OF THE TIMES ON MORALS AND ON SOCIETY. LORD ROCHESTER. EXCESSIVE DRINKING. KING'S BAD EXAMPLE. MEMOIRES DE GRAMMONT, ATALANTIS, DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and the re-establishment of the royal family in England, the splendour of a numerous court would probably have been adopted in preference to the economical simplicity of a republic, even if the princes who constituted that court had not imported all their ideas of its scale, regu- lations, and amusements, from that of France. Clarendon, whose sober judgment anticipated this tendency, complains of Henrietta Maria *e 3 54 having already acted upon these ideas, even during their exile, in the formation of the house- hold of her son, the Duke of York, at a time when he had nothing to bestow upon his servants but empty nominations to unpaid offices. Necessity, indeed, had then often obliged both Charles and his brother to put off clamorous importunity with promises, as im- properly extorted as they were afterwards ill performed. On their return to England, the appointments in their hoiisoholda were rewards eagerly sought after, and often necessary to the support of those whose losses in the cause of royalty were thus inadequately, and thus only remunerated. The more wealthy nobility and great landholders of the country either returned with the king to take possession of their restored estates, or came forward to greet his arrival, and add lustre to his court, from the dignified retirement in which they had lived during his absence. The Duke of Buckingham, the playfellow of his earliest years, and the associate of many of his subsequent dangers, joined his triumphal entry to Whitehall (1), released from the durance (1) He rode bare-headed with Monk before the King on his entry into London. May, 1660. 55 in which a premature return to England had for sorqe time placed him. This distinguished person seems to have united every gift of nature and of fortune most coveted by men. Adopted by Charles the First from the moment of his father's untimely death, when he was little more than a year old, he was brought up entirely with the King's children, and, consequently, may be said to have been exposed to all the disadvantages generally attached to the birth of princes, with- out having a right to plead that very sufficient and sweeping apology for his errors and follies. Like them, too, called into active life, and to the government of his own affairs, as early as they are often called to the government of those of others, we find his character uniting all the faults inseparable from such a station. His great parts were unripened by application, and dangerous from self-sufficiency, his talents frit- tered away in useless or unprosecuted pursuits, his weight and importance in the country lost in the unsteadiness of his conduct, and the qua- lities of his heart smothered and rendered use- less by the volatility of his disposition, mistaking profligacy for pleasure, and prodigality for mag- nificence. Duped through his vanity by Louis the Fourteenth on his embassies abroad, and e 4 56 made a tool by his worthless associates in ad- ministration at home ; the persecutor of Lord Clarendon, whose great character he was well able to appreciate ; the satyrist of Dryden, whose genius his own talents and love of letters should have led him to admire and pro- tect. It has been justly said, that there is often as much good fortune in the distribution of posthumous fame, as in the acquirement of that bestowed by contemporaries. The Duke of Buckingham was certainly not lucky in either respect; his culpable neglect of the de- cencies of life, and of public opinion, was amply visited upon him in unmeasured abuse during his life ; and it is remarkable, that the same per- son should have inspired the most brilliant pas- sages of descriptive satire extant in the language of their country, to two of its most celebrated poets. To Dryden's masterly character of the living Zimri, Pope has added his death, drawn with equal beauty, although with less individual truth. The " worst inn's worst room" was the comfortable house of an agent, and in his last moments, if unsurrounded by the parade and show of his former life, he seems to have been equally exempt from the turbulence and agitation with which it had been accompanied. He had given early proofs of distinguished cou- 57 rage and presence of mind in the civil wars, both of his own country and those of France. He had twice refused to compound with the parliament for his great estates, and to abandon the cause of royalty. At last, wearied out by the length of an inactive exile, ill suited to his volatile cha- racter, he returned to England in the year l6o7> although under the ban of Cromwell, and, con- sequently, exposed to the forfeiture of his life. A considerable part of his large possessions were immediately restored to him by Lord Fairfax, a generous enemy, who seems to have accepted of their forfeiture with a view of returning them to the real owner. He accompanied the gift with that of his daughter's hand, and a still fur- ther increase of property. (1) However little conducive this marriage was to the permanent domestic happiness of the parties, from the dissimilarity of their sentiments, and (1) He was married at Nunappleton, in Yorkshire, Sept. 1657. Anecdotes of the day tell us, that " when the Lord M Fairfax disliked the match with his daughter, not having " seen the Duke, his lady said, ' Ah ! but the Duke has " ' much of God in his face;' and so after Lord Fairfax "said so too." — Note,s copied from the Pocket-book of Mr. Richard Symonds, an Officer in Charles the First's Army. 58 from the Duke's subsequent licentiousness (1), yet it is stated, and probably with much truth, that the happiest period of his life was that which he spent in the country, at the house of his father-in-law, Lord Fairfax, before the restor- ation. His cultivated mind and the variety of scenes and of society which he had early witnessed, made his conversation and manners singularly lively and agreeable. His leisure was here passed respectably, and under those whole- some restrictions which his subsequent misuse of great wealth and power proved how much he required. At the restoration he came into the uncontrolled possession of above 25,000/. a year, an income at that time one of the very largest possessed by any English subject. The great advantages it afforded in procuring indulgences and luxuries, then of less easy access, and less (1) " The Duchess of Buckingham is likely to be blind; " a favour of her Lord's, which she has been ever very " thankful for ; but lately some friend in kindness endea- " voured to inform her judgment and reform her behaviour, " reasoned it with her, and represented her obligation to " such a husband ; upon which the little wise woman showed " some resentments to her Lord, but he soon made her " confess who this friend was, and a grievous bustle there " has been, but the poor creature is almost eaten up with " her case." — Lady RusselFs Letters to her Lord, 2d edit, p. 54. S9 generally diffused than at present, certainly placed its possessor in a comparatively higher situation than that of any of our great land- holders in later times. At first his expences seem to have been dignified and princely ; his spacious residence in the Strand (1), established on the most magnificent footing, was constantly open to all foreigners of distinction, and all the French nobility, whose visits to England were now frequent. The two courts of London and Paris, for political reasons, encouraged this intercourse, and made their near family con- nection, as well as their amusement, often a cloak for other transactions, which, under any less plausible pretences, would have been immediately obnoxious to the English public. The King, and, indeed, all the royal family, soon after their return, accepted entertainments from many of the principal nobility. (2) The (1) He inhabited York-house, formerly the town resi- dence of the Archbishops of York. His extravagant ex- penditure obliged him to sell it to builders, who erected on its site the streets still called by his name and titles. He next inhabited Wallingford house, on the site of the pre- sent Admiralty. This he likewise sold in 1680, and pur- chased with Lord Shaftesbury a house in Dowgate, in the city, with some view of securing popularity among the citizens. (2) The first Lady Burlington, in a MS. journal in the 60 Duke of Buckingham's house was frequently thus honoured. His character in so many points resembled that of his still more unprincipled sovereign, that, although he was often in tem- porary disgrace, although the monarch was obliged to punish the factious subject, or in- competent minister, the man was always willing to recall the easy, profligate, amusing com- panion. The treasonable designs for which he was obliged to abscond in 1666, resolve them- selves into some silly association with a reputed conjuror (1) for exploring secrets in alchemy and judicial astrology, which it was at least as disgraceful in his enemies to convert into a serious accusation as it was in him to have possession of her descendant, the Duke of Devonshire, men- tions the King and the Queen Dowager supping with her one night, and the Duke and Duchess of York another, in a part of London not likely to be again inhabited by those honoured with royal visits, White Friars. (1) Dr. Heydon, whom he employed to cast the King's nativity, which was forbidden by law. In this sort of non- sense the Duke had acquired a belief in France, and the King was certainly not exempt from it, as we see by letters from his mother and from Lord Jermyn in 1656, marking their anxiety that he should see a person who had been so successful in predictions, that they proposed sending the man in question to the King, at the Hague, where he then was. — See Thurlow's State Papers, vol. ii. 61 given them the opportunity. (1) From the heavier charge of betraying the King's councils in 1673, he defended himself before the House of Commons in a speech, marked with all the lively frankness that belonged to his character. (2) Indeed, his eloquence, whenever it was employed on the popular side, which in his versatile poli- tics was frequently the case, does honour to his opinions, while his manner of expressing them forms a striking contrast to the long- winded, involved disquisitions since delivered in the same assembly by many hardly more steady politicians. (3) (1) It is remarkable that on occasion of his arrest and commitment to the Tower, he was guilty of the same folly that we have seen repeated in our own days, of mistaking form for principle, and wantonly disturbing the peace and endangering the lives of his fellow citizens, in opposing, by force and barricades, what he considered as an illegal arrest by the executive power. (2) It was upon this occasion that he said, " If I am a " grievance, I am the cheapest grievance this house ever « had." (3) Lord Clarendon mentions his eagerness upon some occasions in parliament : — " When the Irish Cattle Bill " was brought into the House of Peers, in 1667, the Duke " of Buckingham, who was seldom up before eleven o'clock, " came to the house the first in the morning, and staid till " the last at night ; for the debate often held from the " morning till four o'clock, and sometimes candles tvere " brought in." — Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 112. 62 His strange protection of that still stranger character, Colonel Blood, ended, like most con- nections into which the careless allow themselves to be drawn by the designing and profligate, in attaching a part of the disgrace and obloquy due to the misdeeds of the one, on the folly of the other. The Duke of Buckingham's col- loquial wit, the quickness of his repartees, " his " soul of whim," have been often celebrated. His conference when recovering from an illness with a Roman Catholic priest, sent to him by the Duke of York, in hopes of making him a convert to his religion, evidently gave Swift the first idea of the reasoning of Lord Peter with his brothers Martin and Jack in the Tale of the Tub. Before the priest opens the subject, the Duke, taking up the cork of the bottle of wine on the table, says, " But all this while, father, " you take no notice of my fine gelding here. " Do but observe his exquisite shape ; what a " fine turned neck is there ! His eyes how "lively and full! His pace ho w majestic and " noble ! I'll lay a hundred guineas there is " nothing in Newmarket can compare with " him." Priest. " An't please your grace, I see no " horse." Duke, m Why, don't you see me play with his 63 " mane, stroke him under the belly, pat his " back, and manage him as I please ?" Priest. " Either your grace is merrily dis- " posed, or else your illness has a very unlucky " effect on your grace's imagination. Upon " my sincerity, I see nothing but a cork in your " hand." Duke. " How, my horse dwindled into a " foolish piece of cork ! Come, father, this is " very unkindly done of you, to turn the finest " gelding in Europe, whose sire was a true " Arab, and had a better genealogy to show " than the best gentleman in Wales or Scotland " can pretend to ■ It surprises me, puts me " to confusion, I can't tell what to say or do. " Therefore, at my request, once more observe " him more carefully, and tell me your "opinion." Priest. " Not to flatter, then, this melancholy " humour in your grace, which may but serve " to confirm and rivet it, I must roundly and " fairly tell your grace that it is a cork, and " nothing but a cork." Duke. " 'Tis hard that a person of my " quality\s word won't be taken in such a " matter, where I have not the least prospect " of getting a farthing by imposing on you. " — But, father, how do you make good your 64 " assertion ? I say still 'tis a horse, you tell me " 'tis a cork ; how shall this difference be made " up between us ?" Priest. " Very easily. For instance, I first " examine it (taking the cork from the Duke) " by the smell, and that tells me it is cork. " I next consult my sight, and that affirms the " same. Then I judge it by my taste, and still " 'tis cork, and my ears that have heard the " description of this bark a hundred times " concur in the same story. It is impossible " that all my senses should be bantered and " cheated in an affair of this nature, and they " are the proper judges to appeal to upon such " occasions." Duke. " Nay, since you are so positive, I " won't contest the matter with you, but e'en " let it be a cork. The fumes arising from my " illness, I perceive, had somewhat disordered " me. But now they are blown over, and I see " as plain as a pike-staff that 'tis nothing but a " cork. So now, father, if you please, to the " business in hand." The priest then brings forward the usual ar- guments from the literal acceptation of the words on which the doctrine of transubstantiation is founded ; the Duke recurs to his cork. " I see, " father, I must refresh your memory with this 65 " piece of cork, which I positively affirm once " more to be a horse. Just now you would be " governed by the senses in those matters that " properly belong to their tribunal ; but now you " disown the jurisdiction of the court, which is " not honestly done." Priest. " But in matters of faith." Duke. " And what of all that? No man " shall persuade me to believe against the plain " conviction of my senses. Here is a conse- " crated wafer ; you tell me 'tis God Almighty \ " I say, 'tis a piece of bread, and nothing else : if " I examine it by my taste, 'tis bread ; if by my " smell, sight, and touch, 'tis bread still." (1) The Duke thus covered the attempt on his protestant faith (such as it was) with a ridicule which the vindictive and bigoted James seems never to have forgiven. On the death of Charles, the Duke of Buckingham, no longer counting upon that indulgence and favour at court to which he had hitherto been accustomed, and having exhausted his princely fortune by every species of thoughtless extravagance and idle profusion, retired to his estates in Yorkshire. (1) See conference between the Duke of Buckingham and Father Fitzgerald, an Irish priest, George Duke of Buckingham's Works, vol. ii. p. 153. F 66 Here he passed the remainder of his life, which terminated in the same year with that of the short and infatuated reign of James. Here, at his manor of Helmsley, he excelled as a foxhunt- ing country gentleman in the entertainment of his neighbours, as much as he had formerly ex- celled as a courtier at London and Paris. Here, too, he still continued to amuse himself with writing ; but his want of all early application prevented that improvement in his compositions which might have been expected from the ma- turity of his talents. His Rehearsal, the only one of his three theatrical pieces which has sur- vived him, new in the idea, and lively in the execution, certainly gives a high opinion of the quickness of his invention ; and the happy pa- rodies it contains of passages in other pieces, all indeed sufficiently open to ridicule, inspire no mean opinion of his natural taste. But with good taste, the fashion of the day was so much at variance, that we find not only the works of the Duke of Buckingham, and his idle companions, but even those of the great poet he undertook to satirise, often disgraced by coarse profligacy, both of thought and of expression, deformed by slovenly carelessness, and divested of half their interest by a strange absence of all arrange- 67 merit, which their authors conceived to be only the privilege of genius. As the effects of a good or bad taste are as distinguishable in the moral affections and the habits of social life, as in literature or the fine arts, so the same coarse profligacy which too often dictated the verses of the " wits of Charles's days," pervaded their pleasures, dis- graced their talents, and curtailed their enjoy- ments. Lord Rochester, we may be sure, was not the only victim who sunk under the effects of extravagant intemperance, although his com- panions in vice had not previously risen to his distinction in its practice. Indeed, Lord Rochester seems to have in- herited the largest share of ill fame, for the shortest run of the indulgences which procured it, of any rake upon record. The Restoration found him at Oxford, from whence he was very early sent to travel in France and Italy, for he appeared at his return, when only eighteen, at the court of Charles, distinguished for his figure, talents, and familiarity with modern languages. To the reputation which he brought with him, he immediately added that of brilliant courage, by his conduct as a volunteer on board the fleet, in the campaigns of 1665 and 1666, f 2 68 against the Dutch. Hitherto his character was unsullied, his behaviour, both at college and abroad, had been irreproachable. The fashion of the day and a desire of notoriety seem alone to have plunged him into that course of wild debauchery which brought him to his grave at the early age of thirty-two, after enduring all the bodily sufferings of a premature decay, and all the severe regret and anguish of a lively intelligent mind, for time mispent, talents abused, and reputation thrown away. Habitual excess in drinking, that degrading infirmity of the north, to which loyalty had given a new pretence, was general upon all occasions of social meeting among men, whether for business or pleasure. The disorder and mischief attendant on inebriety seem to have increased with the in- creasing violence of political dissension : from this time to the Revolution they pervaded all orders of society. No dignity of situation, no responsibility of character were exempted from them. Sir John Reresby tells us, that in 16S6, at a dinner at Alderman Duncombe's, " the " Lord'Chancellor Jefferies, the Lord Treasurer, * (Hyde Earl of Rochester), and others, drank " themselves into that height of frenzy, that " among friends it was whispered they had 69 " stripped into their shirts, and that had not an " accident prevented them, they had got upon " a sign-post to drink the King's health." Mr. Evelyn gives us an account of a wedding at which he was present in 1683, " of one Mrs. " Castle to her fifth husband, a Lieutenant- " colonel of the cutty." (Train-bands probably.) " There was at the wedding the Lord Mayor, " the Sheriff, several Aldermen and persons " of quality, above all, Sir George Jefferies, " newly made Lord Chief Justice of England, " who, with Mr. Justice Wi things, daunced * with the bride, and were exceedingly merry. " These great men spent the rest of the after- " noon till eleven at night in drinking healths, " taking tobacco, and talking much beneath " the gravity of judges, who had but a day or " two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sidney." A more striking picture can hardly be given of the unseemly manners of the times. The tavern, as well as the houses of individuals, were the scenes of these convivial meetings. If women formed any part of the society, it was those of the lowest and most degraded order. From these orgies they sometimes resorted to the theatre, a mirror which reflected too truly their own manners and morals, to be at all likely f 3 70 to improve them. Sometimes they issued forth into the streets, to the annoyance of the sober part of society. The total want of all police in the metropolis, and the lax administration of criminal justice, are evident not only from the feats of Colonel Blood and his associates, but from many other disgraceful adventures of the times. The attack on Sir John Coventry was dictated by a spirit of vindictive revenge in the highest quarter. It is so unlike the naturally easy, careless character of the King, that one would almost suppose his anger to have been prompted by others, or exasperated by circumstances with which we are unacquainted. (1) An indecorous (1) To these circumstances (however inadequately they excuse such an outrage) the lately published Diary of Mr. Pepys furnish us with a key. It seems his brother, Sir William Coventry, at the time of his confinement in the Tower to prevent his intended duel with the Duke of Buckingham, expressed to Mr. Pepys much resentment at an intention of Killigrew's (then manager of the King's Theatre) to bring Sir William Coventry on the stage in a new piece, and to fix the satire indisputably on him ; he was to be represented ridiculously seated at a round table of a particular construction, which he had contrived for writing. Indignant at this attempt to make him publicly laughed at, " He had told Tom Killigrew, that he should " tell his actors, whoever they were, that did offer at any " thing like representing him, that he would not complain " to my Lord Chamberlain, which was too weak, nor get 71 jest made (1) in the House of Commons on the King's amours gave him such offence that he desired a lasting mark might be set upon the offender. The Duke of Monmouth, who then commanded the guards, seems to have under- stood the King's words as meant in their literal sense. Two of his officers, accompanied by some of their men, waylaid Sir John Coventry in the streets near where he lived ; he gallantly de- fended himself from their assault with the flam- beau of one of his servants, but was overpowered by numbers, and a stroke given him across the nose, which cut it to the bone. The House of Commons (as may be supposed) were indignant at this outrage on one of their members, and immediately passed the act against cutting and maiming, since known by the name of him whose ill usage gave rise to it. On the Duke of Monmouth's conduct for allowing such an at- " him beaten as Sir Charles Sedley is said to have done, "but that he would cause his nose to be cut" — Pepys's Diary, vol. ii. p. 312. (1) When a tax on playhouses had been proposed as a means of raising the supplies, it was opposed by the court. " The players," it was said, were the King's servants, M and part of his pleasure. Sir John Coventry asked, " Whether did the King's pleasure lie among the men or u the women that acted ? " — Burnet's Own Times, vol. i. p. 468. F 4 72 tack to have been made through his means, and under his direction, on the person of his friend (for such Sir John Coventry was), no comment can be necessary. We may certainly look back with satisfaction to the increased security of the laws, and to the improved authority of public opinion, when we recollect that the Irish adventurer Blood, by mere dint of undaunted impudence, and personal courage, was guilty of three separate attempts on the life of three distinguished individuals (1) in the metropolis, and not only escaped punish- ment, but by means of the Duke of Bucking- ham's ill-judged protection, succeeded in ap- proaching the person of the careless, unprincipled King. While Blood was in jail for robbing the Jewel Office, Charles was persuaded, out of curiosity, to see and examine the person who had attempted so extraordinary a theft. In this interview he not only avowed his seizure of the Duke of Ormond, but confessed having been en- gaged in a design on the life of the King him- self. He was to have been concealed with a (1) The seizure of the Duke of Ormond, in St. James's street, in December 1670; the assassination of Mr. Thymic, in Pall Mall, February 1681 ; and the attempt on the life of the Keeper of the Jewel Office, in 1671. 75 carbine in the high reeds growing by the Thames side above Battersea, where the King often went to swim, but declared that " when he had taken " stand in the reeds his heart was checked with " an awe of majesty, and he did not only relent " himself, but diverted the rest of his associates " from the design." The King was either flat- tered by the idea of the respect which his pre- sence had inspired to his intended assassins, or believed that by pardoning Blood he purchased security from the desperate accomplices, over whom he pretended a power of control. But not satisfied with pardoning the offences com- mitted against himself, he actually desired the Duke of Ormond not to prosecute for the out- rage from which he had suffered, gave Blood a pension, and allowed him to frequent the court. In I67I we find him, by Evelyn's Diary, one of a company at the Lord Treasurer Clifford's, " where dined M. de Grammont and several " French noblemen, and one Blood, that im- " pudent bold fellow, who had not long before " attempted to steal the imperial crown itself " out of the Tower. ***** How he came " to be pardoned and received into favour not " only after this, but several other exploits al- " most as daring, both in Ireland and here, I " never could understand. Some believed he m " became a spy of several parties, being well " with the sectaries and enthusiasts, and. did " his majesty service that way. * * * * This " man had not only a daring but a villanous " unmerciful look, and a false countenance, but " very well spoken, and dangerously insinu- " ating." (1) He seems to have been a sort of fanfaron assassin, who, by the strange circum- stances of the times, lived by a bad name, as others do by a good one. In his attack on the Duke of Ormond, it appears uncertain whether he meant actually to have carried him to Ty- burn, and there executed him, as was pretended, or only to have confined him till he had revoked his signature to some papers, which, as Blood affirmed, had deprived him of an estate in Ireland. Whatever were his intentions, the Duke of Ormond, at past sixty years old, was attacked in his coach when returning from the public dinner given by the city to the Prince of Orange on his first visit to England in KJ70. No less than six footmen always accompanied the Duke's carriage on occasions of ceremony, but as they could not all find place behind, he made them walk three and three, on each side of the pavement. The coach thus separated (1) Evelyn's Diary, vol. i. p. 437. 75 from its attendants, was attacked by Blood and five associates on horseback, going up St. James's Street to Clarendon House, at the top of x^lbe- marle Street (1), which the Duke then inhabited. He was pulled out of his carriage, tied behind one of the horsemen, and, in spite of his struggles, carried beyond that part of Piccadilly where Devonshire House now stands. Here he con- trived to unhorse the man before him, and both (1) On part of the space now occupied by Grafton Street. This was the house built by the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, the expense of which formed one of the futile charges brought against him by the parliament. Mr. Evelyn men- tions his admiration at first seeing this house, in 1665, in a letter to Lord Cornbury : — " I went with prejudices and a " critical spirit, incident to those who fancy they know any " thing in art. I acknowledge I have never seen a nobler " pile. ***** Here is state, and use, and solidity, " and beauty, combined. Nothing abroad pleases me better, " nothing at home approaches it." The Diary of the same person records, in little more than eighteen years, his me- lancholy feelings at "surveying the demolition of Clarendon " house, that costly and sumptuous palace of the late Lord " Chancellor Hyde, where I have often been so cheerful " with him, and sometimes so sad." He goes on to tell us, that it cost 50,000/. (an immense sum in those days), was sold, after the Chancellor's death, by his son to the young Duke of Albemarle for 25,000/., and by him " to " certain rich bankers and mechanics," who gave for it and the ground 35,000/. They immediately pulled the whole down, sold the materials, and erected Grafton Street on a part of the space. — See Evelyn's Diary, vol. i. p. 561. 76 fell together into the street. The Duke was so spent with struggling, that when his servants came up, he was unable to speak, and they first knew him by feeling his star. His life was thus saved, but the villains escaped in the obscurity of a December night ; in the then dark streets of London. The licence of the late civil wars had ac- customed the people to bold attacks on indivi- duals, and the executive government seems to have been careless or afraid of exerting those powers which would have been necessary to re- store habits of order and regularity, in which, as we have shown, the government itself was deficient. The King set an example of libertinism, which acquired neither dignity nor decency by his practice of it. Louis the Fourteenth, not less morally guilty than Charles, by the imposing gravity of his manners, by his attention to the decorum of those of others, together with the splendid and dignified magnificence with which he encircled his pleasures, prevented both himself and his court from falling into the dis- repute and disgrace which vice, in whatever rank, can only avoid, by affecting the senti- ments, and, as far as possible, the outward de- meanour of virtue. But Charles had lived too 77 long as a wanderer and an exile to re-assume with grace the stately habits of royalty. The careless ease of his manners pervaded his prin- ciples, his sentiments, and his estimation of those of others. The restraints due to public opinion, and those necessary even for the interest of his pleasures, which he practised not himself, he exacted not from his companions. His mis- tresses, therefore, were as deficient in the de- licacy of their sentiments, as in the fidelity of their conduct, and respected themselves as little as they did him. Of the two historians of the court of White- hall, the one, an Englishman only by name and family, selected a hero from his adopted country, very proper to figure in the society and scenes he so gaily describes. Comte Anthony Hamilton has adorned the memoirs of his relation, the Comte de Grammont (1), with the (1) The Due de St. Simon tells us, that it was the hero himself to whom the public is obliged for the publication of these memoirs: — " Ce fut lui-meme, qui rendit 1800 " francs pour le manuscrit ou il etoit si clairement traite de " fripon. Fontenellc, censeur de l'ouvrage, refusoit de " l'approuver par £gard pour le Comte. Celui-ci s'en " plaignit au Chancelier, a qui Fontenelle dit les raisons de " son refus d'approbation. Le Comte de Grammont, moins " delicat, et ne voulant pas perdre les 1800 francs, forca 78 graces of an unrivalled style, and much natural wit, together with a wish to make the best of the principal actors, and a good taste which certainly belonged much less to their adventures than to his lively account of them. The other, Mrs. Manley, in a clumsy fiction, has detailed the disgraceful amours of the Duchess of Cleveland, and other intrigues of the day, with a coarseness which even her sex could not correct, and which has already consigned the Atalantis to that oblivion at which Pope significantly hinted, under the prediction of an immortality dependent on the caprices of female favour. (1) But even the wit of Comte Hamilton, the charm of his style, and the varnish which with a light and rapid touch he passes over the cha- racters he draws, and the adventures he relates, cannot conceal from us their depravity. The Duchess of Cleveland rivalled Charles himself in inconstancy, and although by birth the equal of the La Valieres and Montespans of " Fontenelle d'approuver pour l'impression. N. B. Je tiens " ce fait de Fontnelle lui-meme." — Mem. du Due de St. Si?no?i. (1) As long as Atalantis shall be read, Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed. Rape of the Lock. 79 Louis the Fourteenth, she redeemed her frailty neither by the repentance of the one, nor the wit of the other. Her father, Viscount Grandison, had died, soon after her birth, of wounds received in the King's service at the battle of Edge Hill. She had been married the year before the Restor- ation to Roger Palmer, then a student in the Temple, the heir to a considerable fortune in Ireland, and two years afterwards created Earl of Castlemaine. Of him, after he had acquired his title and resigned his wife, we hear little till the next reign, except that he contrived to escape the murderous evidence of Oates andDan- gerfleld on the popish plot. (1.) After the ac- cession of James, Lord Castlemaine reappears as the King's unwelcome ambassador to Pope Innocent the Eleventh. He seems to have been almost as unfortunate in the acceptance of a public employment, as he had been in the choice of a domestic companion, hardly better treated in his diplomatic capacity at Rome, than as the husband of a profligate beauty at home. He had been separated from her in 1661, after the birth of adaughter, who, although she retained the name of Palmer, was desig- (1) See his trial in the State Trials by Howell, vol.xii. p. 598. 80 nated, on the confirmation of her mother's favour, by the suspicious title of the adopted daughter of the King. (1) That the avowed mistress of that King should be the wife of another man, taken from a high rank in so- ciety, and raised to the highest by his power and her misconduct, was something new to the country. For the long period of 180 years, from the days of Edward the Fourth and Jane Shore, England had witnessed no regularly, established royal mistress. It is easy to conceive the effect this novelty must have had on all that part of the nation, whose morality was strengthened and upheld by their political principles, and whose abhor- rence to kingly power and prerogative was thus confirmed by the abuse of both. Indeed, the weakness of Charles's private life, as well as the culpable errors of his govern- ment, soon found censurers and satirists even in his own court, and among his immediate companions. They certainly anticipated all the abuse, and even exceeded the freedom with which succeeding times have treated the cha- racters and conduct of princes. (2) (1) She was married, in 16 74-, to Thomas Lennard. Earl of Sussex. (2) See the State Poems, and all the satires of the times. 81 If we may believe the scandalous chronicle of the day, the Duchess of Cleveland had no right to complain of the King's inconstancy, or of the associates he gave her in his favour. The admirer of Jacob Hall the rope-dancer could not reproach the King with a passion for Nell Gwinne. But although her jealousy was excited neither by delicacy of sentiment nor constancy of attachment, she was sufficiently roused when the King's volatile fancy seemed about to settle upon any body likely to share the empire she assumed in his court, or to curtail the means of supporting the expensive habits in which she lived. Violent in temper, and libertine in disposition, she was insatiable in her demands for money, and perfectly insensible to the odium which the King's blindness or indifference to her extrava- gance and infidelity entailed upon him(l) as well as herself. Too much given up to her own indulgences to attempt acquiring any consider- able influence in politics, the circle which sur- rounded her at Whitehall was composed of all (1) See a mock speech made for the King on the opening the session of parliament in 1676, State Poems, vol. iii. p. 84. G 82 the young, the gay, and the licentious, who while treading the path of pleasure with their dis- solute monarch, were glad to suppose themselves in the road to preferment by his favour. When he had at last shaken off her yoke, and placed himself under the still more disgraceful bondage of the Duchess of Portsmouth, paid by France to make his pleasures subservient to the pur- poses of that government, and to the dishonour of his own, the Duchess of Cleveland claimed the continuance of his protection in a manner which proved how little she deserved it. In a letter yet extant she avows her continued frailties, without either repentance or shame, and seems only anxious still to associate the degraded King in her private piques, and still to make him a party in her disgraceful amours. This letter is addressed by her to Charles from Paris in I678, and is characteristic at once of the vulgarity of her mind, and the licentiousness of her conduct. It is curious, too, from the unbounded belief in predictions and judicial astrology which it supposes in the King, and for the severe truths which the writer tells him through the mouth of the enemy whom she was labouring to ruin. It was copied literatim by Gray the poet, about the year 1762, and is thus endorsed by him : " Copy " of a letter from the Duchess of Cleveland to 83 " Charles the Second, from the original, now in " the Earl of Berkshire's hands (1731). This is " the letter mentioned by Burnet in his history " I678, which ruined Montague with the King, " and he came over upon it, without being re- " called, the Earl of Sunderland succeeding him " as ambassador. The astrologer is probably a «< un ange, tel que la faiblesse de notre nature nous les fait 11 imaginer, qu'a une femme." — Madame de Motteville, torn. ii. p. 16. 147 who incited to deeds of arms, and who traversed hostile countries to rejoin her lover, or to bring succour to her friend. An extraordinary combination of circumstances gave Madame de Longueville that influence over her contemporaries, which she undoubtedly pos- sessed : it has elevated her name into almost historical celebrity ; while her character, not- withstanding her endowments, remains rather as a beacon than an example to her sex. She was the daughter of that Prince de Conde for whom Henry the Fourth had nearly sullied the lustre of his patriotic reign, by un- dertaking a war against Spain merely for the purpose of forcing back a young princess of 16 years old from the retreat in which a prudent husband had accompanied her, to avoid the im- portunities of her royal admirer. Such a passion at 56, could not hope to obtain either the success or the indulgence shown to his earlier amours. The public perfectly understood the absence of the Prince and Princess of Conde (1), (1) The Prince of Conde was at that time first prince of the blood, and, after Gaston Due d'Orleans, in immediate succession to the throne. He was known, therefore, by the appellation of Monsieur le Prince, and his wife, even after her family no longer stood in the same relation to the crown, by that of Madame la Princejse. L 2 148 and approved their conduct. Such, indeed, was their popularity at their return from Bruxelles to Paris, on the death of Henry the Fourth, that Mary of Medicis, at the outset of her regency, judged it expedient (for all pretence of either justice or law was out of the question) to send the Prince to the Bastille. From the Bastille, after some weeks, he was removed to Vincennes, where he remained two years, where his wife was allowed to join him, and where the Duchesse de Longueville was born in 1619. Her mar- riage with the Due de Longueville, a Prince of the Orleans branch of the blood royal, in 1642, seems to have been settled by her father only because, at the age of twenty-three, no other French prince had sought to obtain her hand. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, her relation and contemporary, in her Memoires, pities her for this union more than she seems to have pitied herself: she says, " Mr. de Longueville fut pour elle " une cruelle destinee ; il etoit vieux, elle etoit " fort jeune, et belle comme un ange. Cette " facheuse disproportion n'empecha pas qu'elle " ne s'accommodat a ce parti de tres bonne grace, " ce que je remarquai fort bien a ses frai^ailles " ou je fus price." (1) (1) Memoires de Montpensier, torn. i. p. 59. 149 This union took place only the year before her brother, the grand Conde, yet under the title of Due d'Enghien, had obtained the victory of Rocroi. The triumph of this heaven-born cap- tain — for so we must call a prince of the blood commanding in chief at twenty-two ! — cast a lustre both on himself and his family, which neither he nor they seem to have borne with moderation. Their pretensions became unli- mited, their demands exorbitant, and the po- litical situation of the country favoured both. A victory gained three days after the death of a sovereign, whose authority devolved on an infant under the guardianship of an unexpe- rienced mother, was a service likely to be ex- aggerated by all parties. In this instance the charms of the sister combined with the valour of the brother to bestow on them both that omnipo- tence which fashion only had the power of con- ferring in France, above, and in spite of every other species of despotism. (1) Within a year after the marriage of the (1) The name of Petit Maitre, which has remained in the language, it is known, was first given to the airs of import- ance and superiority assumed by the friends and society of the Grand Conde. It had succeeded to that of les Importans, of which the Due de Beaufort had been the leader. L 3 150 Duchesse de Longueville, a supposed doubt thrown on the purity of her character by a letter dropped in the society of a rival beauty, Madame de Monbazon, was considered as the sufficient and necessary cause of a duel in defence of that honour which she afterwards so often risked. This duel, which took place in the Place Roy ale in the centre of Paris, at noonday, and which must have resembled the encounter of two of Ariosto's Paladins, ended in the death of her champion, the Comte de Coligny. The fair object was said to have been a spectatress of the combat from a window in the square. This circumstance, whether true or false, and the whole of the transaction, is an additional proof of the remarkable change of manners which took place during the ensuing reign of Louis the Fourteenth. Madame de Longueville soon after accompanied her husband to Munster, whither he was sent as ambassador on the part of France to treat of peace. From thence she made a tour into Holland and Germany, and only returned to Paris in the year 1647. Such was the eclat with which she re-appeared, such the honours with which she was received by Anne of Austria, and such her own distinguished rank in society, that neither reason nor apology seems to have been left her for fomenting discontents against 151 the court, and inciting her husband and her brothers to separate their interests from it. The Hotel de Longueville and the Hotel de Conde were more crowded and more frequented courts than either the Luxembourg, inhabited by the Duke of Orleans, or the Palais Royale, by the King and Queen-mother. " On eut dit," says her biographer, " qu'elle etoit jalouse d'elle-meme, " tant elle avoit envie d'encherir toujours sur le " grand credit dont elle jouissoit." The desire to act a more distinguished part than was com- patible with peaceable times, and to acquire the facility of yielding to sentiments of which those times would not have permitted the indulgence, could alone have dictated her conduct. It leaves very problematical the assertion of Cardinal de Retz, " que si le Prieur des Chartreux l'avoit " plu, elle auroit ete solitaire de bonne foL" A difference in opinion on the merits of two sonnets seems at this time to have had no incon- siderable effect in increasing the animosity against the court, and animating the fashionable oppo- sition to its taste as well as to its measures. The verses of Benserade being protected and ad- mired by the Queen and her adherents, Madame de Longueville and her society declared for those of Voiture. Of this society, the power of its decrees, and l 4 1,52 all that its approbation gave or withheld, Ma- dame de Motteville has left us an entertaining picture. Of the particular tone of its convers- ation she says, " La fine raillerie dont elle " (Madame de Longueville), et ses courtisans " faisoient profession, tomboit souvent sur ceux " qui, en lui voulant rendre leurs devoirs, sen- " toient a leur dommage, que l'honnete sincerite, " qui se doit observer dans la societe civile, " etoit apparemment bannie de la sienne." It is impossible here not to recognize the beginning of that habit of persiflage, which so long constituted one of the most admired talents in French so- ciety ; which in later times, under the vulgar form and name of quizzing, spread into a neigh- bouring country, and which is yet by no means banished as entirely as it deserves from the social intercourse of either. A weak and indolent queen, governed by a mean, artful, and avaricious minister ; opposed by magistrates, who assumed rights, to which accidental circumstances gave them their only claim ; both parties alternately supported and abandoned by a factious nobility, who on either side only sought their own personal distinction ; such were the ignoble causes, which for more than five years involved France in that scene of turbulence and confusion, of inconsiderate 153 severity and disgraceful concessions, from which none of the principal actors retired with honour; which, after much unnecessary bloodshed and unprovoked cruelties, ended without leaving a trace of its existence, either on the institutions, the government, or the laws of the country. During these five years, we find Madame de Longneville sometimes enthroned at the Hotel de Ville at Paris, surrounded by a crowd of adorers, with generals and statesmen receiving her orders, and seeking her counsel, the oracle of her family, and the idol of her party. Some- times proudly submitting to the court, sometimes flying into exile before its forces. Alternately the ally and the opponent of her brother, the grand Conde, and always for equally futile reasons. Her name sometimes associated with that of Turenne, in the least commendable part of his illustrious career; and sometimes dis- graced by receiving money from the enemies of her country to support her in plans of opposition to it. At last, " not leaving faction, but by " it being left," we find her shut up in Bour- deaux, with all the remaining Frondeurs, who were split into as many factions as there were generals, and herself heartily weary of a provin- cial and almost besieged town, where she no longer commanded. Here, on the approach of 154 the court, all the faithful followers of these dis- interested leaders united in abandoning their cause, and insisting on making their peace with the King. The Duke de Vendome took pos- session of Bourdeaux in the King's name, and the Fronde ended, leaving every thing for which they had been cutting one another's throats exactly where they found it, except the power of Cardinal Mazarin, which was confirmed and augmented by their opposition. With the Fronde ended the brilliant part of the Duchesse de Longueville's career. Her beauty was on the wane, her admirer the Due de la Rochefoucauld no longer the slave of her charms, no longer inclined " pour plaire a ses " beaux yeux," to make war either against the gods or the King. Disgusted by her inconstancy in sentiments more appropriate to her sex than those of ambition and politics, he not only abandoned her cause, but persuaded her brother no longer to be misguided by her advice. The internal peace of the country being restored, her " occupation was gone," and to the court she was not allowed access. From Bourdeaux she was sent to Montreuil-Bellay, and from thence permitted to remove to Moulins, where the widow of her uncle, the beheaded Due de Montmorency, had taken the veil, and 155 was then the superior of the convent ; in whose church she had erected the admirable monu- ment, which still exists, to the memory of her husband. Here the Duke de Longueville joined his wife. He seems, either from indifference or from real attachment, to have been a most forgiving husband (1). He had endeavoured in vain to negotiate her peace at court, where he had long made his own. He now opposed the intention in which he found her of becoming a Carmelite, and reprobated the rigour and excess of the penances she was inflicting on herself; for about this time her conversion (as it was called) began. Repentance and devotion were the only parts left her to act, and she assumed them with all the eagerness and intemperance which she had formerly employed on politics and gallantry. Bishops, priests, and nuns be- came now what the leaders of the Fronde and (1) Cardinal de Retz says of him, " Monsieur de Lon- " gueville avoit avec le beau nom d'Orleans, de la vivacite", " de l'agrement, de la defense, de la liberalite, de la jus- " tice, de la valeur, de la grandeur, et il ne fut jamais qu'un « homme mediocre, parce qu'il eut toujours des id£es qui " furent infiniment au dessus de sa capacite. Avec la ca- " pacite, et les grands desseins, Ton n'est jamais compte " pour rien, quand on ne les soutien pas, Ton n'est jamais " compte pour beaucoup, et c'est ce qui fait le mediocre." — Memoires de Retz, liv. ii. p. 215. 156 the municipality of Paris had formerly been to her, and she to them. She took an active part in the affairs of the Jansenists, and against the persecution of the Port-Royal institutions ; and having given up all temporal intrigues, her rest- less mind and love of sway took refuge in spi- ritual schisms and disputes. She was in direct correspondence with the Pope (1), and became the patroness of all the religious factions and oppositions of the day, while supposing herself wholly devoted to the interests of piety, and to the white- washing her own soul from its worldly stains. (2) Among the first and best fruits of her conversion and altered life, was a greater attention to the wishes and to the interests of her husband, from whom she no longer separated herself. From Moulins she accompanied him to his government of Normandy, where she was distinguished by her beneficence and charities, and where she remained till his death. Of their two sons, the eldest had appeared in his mother's arms, when, as a hostage for the (1) Alexander the Seventh (Ottoboni). (2) It was said of her, ** Qu'elle eut le talent de faire " encore du bruit en faisant son salut, et de se sauver sur " la meme planche de l'enfer et de 1'ennui." — Lettres de Madame de Sevigne', GrouvehVs edit. torn. v. p. 142. in the notes. 157 sentiments of her family, she was presented to the populace of Paris, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, by the Cardinal de Retz. The second son was born soon after within its walls, and received the name of Charles Paris, from the magistrates of the city, who became his god- fathers. If, as was said, she had taken great pains with their education, it must have been ill directed. The eldest, the Comte de Dunois, from a sort of religious insanity, insisted on becoming a priest, took regular orders, and was known in the world only by the name of the Abbe d'Orleans. The derangement of his understanding afterwards taking a more decided and indubitable form, he was obliged to make a dotation of his estates and property to his brother, the Comte de St. Pol, who took the title of Due de Longueville, and was killed by a cannon ball at the passage of the Rhine, in 1672, under the eye of his uncle, the Grand Conde. On the manner in which his mother received this intelligence, her biographer, a priest, (who writes with the intention of hold- ing her up as a saint, and her conversion as an example to all the worldly,) dwells with much admiration. " Est-il mort sur le champ ?" was her first question. On receiving no answer, she exclaimed, " Ah ! repondez-moi ; mon fils, mon 158 " cher enfant, n'a-t-il pas eu un seul moment ? " Ah ! mon Dieu ! quel sacrifice !" — " Car, chez " elle," says her biographer, " la nature ne par- " loit qu'apres la religion.'' Madame de Sevigne, after mentioning the same particulars, gives a more affecting, and probably much more faithful, picture of the scene. She adds a remark, worthy of her tender and affectionate character, on the circumstance of the Due de la Rochefoucauld having likewise lost a son on the same occasion. Of these two persons, who, from having been long more than friends, had long become more than strangers, she says, " J'ai dans la tete, que " s'ils s'etoient rencontres tous deux seuls dans m ces premiers momens, tous les autres sentimens, " auroient fait place a des cris et des larmes, que " Ton auroit doubles de bon cceur."(l) In spite of Madame de Longueville's abstrac- tion from all worldly affairs, we find her soon after engaged in a law- suit with her husband's daughter, the Duchesse de Nemours, for the possession of the principality of Neufchatel, claimed by the Duchesse de Nemours, on the death of her half-brother, the Due de Longue- ville. Several great theologians, it seems, took the (1) Lettres de Madame de Sevigne, torn. iii. p. 150. 159 part of Madame de Longueville ; but, says the author of her life, as "la jurisprudence et la " theologie ont differentes manieres de raison- " ner," she would have lost her cause, had not the King (according to the laudable custom of those days) intervened, and, in opposition to the law, (which such intervention always supposes) ordered the possession to remain with the Du- chesse de Longueville. By the impartial public, it would seem, that her character was still vari- ously estimated, even in these her days of grace. An instance of her marvellous forbearance and Christian charity, cited by her biographer, is a much stronger proof of the strange, inconsistent licence of the times, than of any particular ele- vation in her sentiments. He tells us, that Bussy Rabutin, having unwarrantably abused the Grand Conde in some of his satirical writings, a gentle- man of his household had determined to avenge his prince, by arming all the lower servants of the Hotel de Conde, and murdering Bussy in the streets of Paris. Madame de Longueville (like- wise abused by Bussy) being informed of the in- tention, went immediately and discovered it to her brother, beseeching him to save their ene- my's life ; to which request, says the author, the Prince nobly consented. The remainder of the Duchesse de Longue- 160 ville's life was passed at Paris, in what were then called practices of devotion, between the two convents of Port- Royal des Champs, and the Car- melites of the Fauxbourg S. Jacques ; her time occupied by the business which their affairs, pre- tensions, and persecutions gave her ; and her con- science quieted by the penances she gave herself. These are reported to have been so severe, and so constant, that on one occasion, in pulling out her pocket-handkerchief, a girdle of iron dropped on the floor, which was picked up and restored to her by one of the company, before whom it fell ; an accident of which she must have been too well aware of the effect to be perfectly free from the suspicion of having contrived it ; while the com- pany, perhaps, were too well acquainted with her character to have felt much for her self-inflicted sufferings. But this is only one of the many in- stances of that sort of conventional dupery, in moments of representation and effect, exhibited in French society, even to this day, with never-failing success. The severities of her life were, however, believed to have increased a disease of languor which now attacked her, and which, ending in fever, put a period to her existence at fifty-nine years of age. During her illness, she would see nobody but her brother, the Grand Conde ; and died, surrounded by all the consolations which 161 the Roman Catholic religion offers to its true be- lievers. Among the followers of her pompous funeral was remarked the Due de la Rochefou- cauld, himself destined not to survive her a twelve- month. His character was now ripened by reason and by time; and having long enjoyed the sweets of repose, which he well knew how to employ, he must have looked back with wonder, if not regret, to all the petulant pretensions of their younger days. M 102 CHAPTER IV. MUCH PURITY OF CONDUCT AND EXCELLENCE OF FEMALE CHARACTER CONTEMPORARY WITH THE HEROINES OF THE FRONDE. MADAME DE SEVIGNE. MADE- MOISELLE DE VIGEAN. — THE DUCHESSE DE NAVAILLES. — THE AMUSEMENTS OF SOCIETY IN ENGLAND AND IN FRANCE. THE THEATRE. COMPARISON OF THAT OF FRANCE WITH THAT OF ENGLAND. The character of Madame de Longueville has been dwelt on more at length from her appear- ing to be the prototype of all the other heroines of her time, who, with fewer endowments either of nature or fortune, acted less brilliant but not less mischievous or less indecorous parts. The memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier of "La Grande Mademoiselle " a designation which must have been so agreeable to her, that she might be suspected of having bestow r ed it on herself) are perhaps in a social light the most curious of their day ; so accurately do they give the colour of the period they describe, and the measure of the pernicious and ridiculous influence of the women in all the most serious 163 affairs of the times. (1) Unaware of the com- plete ignorance she displays in every page of the first principles either of justice or moral feeling, she gives a curious and authentic de- tail of the opinions and the ideas then instilled into the minds of princes, as to their own con- duct, and as to their relative situation with respect to the rest of their fellow-creatures. The eagerness of the authoress to be doing something either for or against the court, is only to be distinguished from the same meddling dis- position in her female contemporaries by her not having the instigation of a lover or the excite- ment of any passion but a vague ambition to make herself remarkable. Her intrigues to marry either Louis the Fourteenth as soon as he was of age, or the grand Conde as soon as his wife was dead, or Charles the Second as soon as he should have recovered his kingdom, or the (1) When Gaston, Duke of Orleans, after a thousand fluctuations between the court and the Fronde, at last allowed his daughter to go to Orleans, and shut its gates on the King's troops ; seeing her depart, he said, " Cette " chevalerie seroit bien ridicule, si le bon sens de Mes- " dames de Fiesque, et de Frontenac ne la soutenoit." He afterwards addressed his letters to them, " a Mesdames " les Comtesses, Aides-de-Camps dans l'Armee de ma « Fille." M 2 L 164 Emperor of Germany, although old enough to be her father, and no way inclined to the alliance, sufficiently prove the absence of any sentiment but that of ambition. The individual merit of the persons she seems to have weighed exactly according to the scale of their rank in the precedence of Europe. When at last all these schemes for sovereign power had failed, when no longer young, she found herself left, with no other interest or occupation in life than that arising from the rigid observance of the eti- quettes whicli she exacted towards herself; from her often offended feelings on the distinctions of the chaise a dos,fauteuils and plums granted to others, and the self-important injustice with which she interfered in the little squabbles of her household ; then nature seems to have reclaimed her rights, and she felt or feigned love where her vain and domineering spirit would at least have been gratified by the object of her passion owing every thing to her gifts. The history of the Due de Lauzim is well known. A younger brother of the family of Caumont, without fortune, brought to the court of Louis the Fourteenth to seek his fortune, with very moderate abilities, and no distinguished military service : he rose to such favour with the King, that he obtained his consent to marry 165 Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the King's first cousin, the greatest heiress in France, and pos- sessing sovereign rights over many of her vast do- mains. Madame de Sevigne's lively letter on the subject gives a picture of the surprise excited in the court of Louis the Fourteentli by this event. It was such as showed the King he had done more than he ever intended to do for any subject. By a most cruel and unjustifiable exercise of arbitrary power the marriage was stopped, by his order, on the very day before its public celebration. Finding it not equally easy to prevent a private union between the parties, the unfortunate hero of these adventures, within a year afterwards, was on this account sent to the castle of Pignerol, a state-prison at the southern extremity of France, there to mourn the loss of his ambitious views, if not of his princess, and there he was actually detained ten years. The memoirs of the princess herself give the best account of her feelings on these arbitrary proceedings, which, however much she laments, never alter for a moment her belief in the infallible justice of the King. It is from other sources we are informed, that, after all the romance of life was over, when he was freed from his prison, and she from every illusion of passion, that they lived together on very bad terms, and that his violence, and as- M 3 166 sumed authority over her, was such, as to have given rise to the report of his ordering her, by the unceremonious appellation of Louise d'Orleans, to draw off his boots. Madame de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, the Princess Palatine, and Madame d'Olonne, who figure in the Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz, and other histories of the time, were all mere varieties of the same species of meddling character, which had distinguished la Grande Mademoiselle. The unresisted despotism of Louis the Four- teenth repressed this general spirit of political intrigue. It was, however, perpetuated in the characters of Mesdames de Montespan and de Maintenon, and exhibited in all its deformity by the Princess des Ursins. It was suspended for a moment by the overwhelming profligacy of the Regent's court, but re-appeared in the base and feeble intrigues of the Chateauneufs, the Pom- padours, and the Tencins of Louis the Fifteenth, till it sunk in the positive and irretrievable de" gradation of Madame du Barri. The virtues of Louis the Sixteenth, and the showy endowments of his Queen, unfortunate] v for them both, transferred to her that power of interference, which, in other times, characters less appropriate had wielded with still less discre- tion. But the spirit of meddling intrigue which 167 in former days had been collected, as in a focus, around the mistress of the monarch or the minister, had, at the end of the last century, spread through the whole mass of female society. Every body had a circle of dependants, every body was a patron, or was patronised, according to the society in which they were found. All had some interests in life, which necessarily carried them into the tortuous and degrading paths of intrigue, where alone they could pursue their object; and where this object, however honourable or legitimate, could only be attained by a reciprocity of indirect means, and often of unworthy services. A sedulous cultivation of every power to please, to persuade, and to seduce, which belongs particularly to the female sex, was necessary to their success. It made the women, therefore, in general agreeable, intelligent companions, and sometimes inestim- able friends. But the neglect of all the severer virtues so deteriorated the female character, and so banished all truth of principle from its social relations, that perhaps nothing less than the dreadful remedy administered by the Revolu- tion could have awakened them to a sense of their real interests, and restored the women of France to their true and appropriate consider^ ation in society. Let it, however, be remem- m 4 168 bered, in a comparative view of the merits of the age of which we have been speaking, that, while the Duchesse de Longueville and her associates were neglecting the honourable dis- tinctions and seemly virtues of their sex, in the indulgence of unrestrained passions, and the pursuit of a dubious fame, Madame de Sevigne, their contemporary, while adorned by every grace, was also devoted to every duty of her sex and situation. Mademoiselle de Vigean allowed not a mutual passion for an enamoured hero either as an excuse for misconduct or as the means of stepping into an indecorous cele- brity. (1) Madame de Navailles incurred, with- (1) The mutual passion of the Grand Conde (then Due d'Enghien) and Mademoiselle Vigean is rendered interest- ing by the successful struggles she opposed to sentiments she more than participated. To conceal from the public eye his devotion to her, and not to offend that decorum, which was as yet exacted even from the most exalted rank, perhaps, too, in compliance with the love of mystery ever sought by real passion, she insisted on his feigning an at- tachment, and bestowing his public attentions on Mademoi- selle de Bouteville Montmorency. But soon dreading the charms of her self-inflicted rival, her admirer, to convince her of his unshaken faith, not only immediately ceased to see his pretended mistress, but, in spite of all opposing difficulties of fortune and religion, made up a marriage for her with her real lover, the Chevalier de Chatillon, whom Conde, on his side, had dreaded as a proposed husband for 169 out hesitation, all the pains and penalties which it was then in the power of a young, angry, and absolute monarch to inflict, rather than betray those duties, which her conscience as well as the woman who, although without hopes of possessing him- self, he could not bear to see the wife of another. The wild dictates of ungratified passion then led him to think of taking measures to obtain a divorce from his princess (of the family of Mailly Breze), on the plea of a marriage too early in life for mutual consent, and thus to obtain the liberty of offering his hand, as well as his heart, to his virtuous mistress. But she, to avoid all further scandal, and to secure herself from importunities which she might doubt her own powers to resist, soon after the marriage of her pretended rival, retired from the world to the austerities of a Carmelite convent. In religion and in heaven she sought the only consolation of which sentiments like hers were capable, whose purity, as well as constancy, could not long be shared by an earthly lover. In the Memoires de Courart we are told, (speaking of the combat at the Porte St. Antoine during the Fronde,) that it was by a sort of miracle that the Prince of Conde" escaped alive, not only because he exposed himself more than he had ever done in any previous action, but because " on disoit qui " St. Mesgrin, qui, outre qu'il etoit tres vaillant, avoit depuis " longtems une haine particuliere contre Monsieur le Prince " a cause de la seconde fille du Marquis de Vigean, qui " est maintenant Carmelite, et dont St. Mesgrin etant fort " amoureux, et en termes de l'epouser, Monsieur le Prince " devint amoureux, et l'obligea de quitter prise, ce qu'il " n'avoit jamais pu oublier." — Memoires de Valentin Cou- rart, p. 112. 170 her situation dictated. (1) To these examples, taken from the immediate society of those who (1) The Duchesse de Navailles was the dame d'honneur to the Queen of Louis the Fourteenth, to whose charge the conduct and behaviour of the maids of honour was com- mitted, six of whom were then attached to the household of the Queen. It was a difficult and invidious duty, in which she could expect no assistance from her charge. They were all willing to be admired, and the King so willing to admire them, that Madame de Navailles soon discovered intentions of his Majesty to make visits to their apartment without passing through hers. Her expostulations he re- ceived at first with good humour, and then with such polite- ness as persuaded her she should escape his anger : but he soon gave her to understand, by no less grave a personage than le Tellier, not only that her conduct, if persisted in, would incur his serious displeasure, but that he desired she would abstain from any interference with the maids of honour ; at the same time proposing to her several ways of accommodating herself to his wishes, and saving appear- ances with respect to herself. Madame de Navailles rejected them all ; declared, as long as it pleased the King to leave her in her office, she would fulfil the duties of it to the best of her abilities. She threw herself at the King's feet, avowed all the obligations of herself and her husband to his favour, and beseeched him " de chercher ailleurs que 11 dans la maison de la Heine, qui est la votre, les objets de " vos plaisirs et de vos inclinations." The King was for a moment struck with her bold integrity, but continuing his clandestine visits, the intrepid dame d'honneur had gratings of iron placed at a certain window which had been the means of his entry at undue hours. The consequence was, at no long distance of time, the dismissal of herself and her husband from all their places at court, and an exile to the country, which her husband chose to share with her. 171 the least resembled them in conduct, might doubtless be added thousands of others less dis- tinguished by their situation or their talents, but not less commendable for their virtues. The scruples, the unconquered shame, and the early retreat of la Valiere ; the blustering demands of Monsieur de Montespan for a wife already the acknowledged mistress of Louis the Fourteenth, and the attention with which the children of this connexion were long concealed from the world, are all indubitable signs of the respect yet paid to public decency, and that fashion at least was still on the side of morality and good faith in the nearest relations of life. If in England fas has been before observed) the political influence of women was inconsiderable during a reign remarkable for its gallantries, that influence had been still more insignificant during the austerities of our political commotions, and it is remarkable, that Henrietta Maria after sixteen years' residence among us, had not found a single Englishwoman either capable or dis- posed to adopt her political views, to second her schemes, or even to accompany her on the first short visit that she made to the continent in I6i2, while more than half the people, and nearly all the nobility, remained still attached to the monarch, and to the monarchy. Lively, 172 petulant, and ill-judging as this Queen is de- scribed to have been(l), with what contempt we may suppose her looking down on the homely vir- tues of her subjects! — she, who had been brought up amidst all the political intrigues of her mother, Mary of Medicis, and taught to believe, that she was destined to bring back the country in which she reigned to the worship of the church of Rome. However mistaken her opinions of her sub- jects on matters of religion and government, she might certainly have been justified in feeling them very inferior to those of the country from whence she came, in social qualities, and all the rational amusements of life. When with us " civil dudgeon first grew high," France already (1) " Son temperament etoit tourne du cote de la gayete " et parmi les larmes, s'il arrivoit de dire quelque chose de " plaisant, elle les arretoit en quelque facon, pour divertir " la compagnie. La douleur quasi continuelle qui lui don- " noit alors beaucoup de serieux, et de mepris pour la vie, " la rendoit a mon gre plus solide, plus serieuse, et plus " estimable qu'elle l'auroit peut-etre ete, si elle avoit tou- " jours eu du bonheur. ***** De son naturel elle etoit " un peu depitee, et elle avoit de la vivacite. Elle soute- " noit ses sentimens avec de fortes raisons, mais elles etoient u accompagnies, d'une beaute, d'une raillerie, qui pouvoient " plaire et corriger tout ensemble les marques de hauteur '• et de courage qu'elle a donnees dans les actions priori- " pales de sa vie." — Madame de Mottevi/le. torn. i. 173 possessed a theatre, representing to an en- lightened and intelligent audience many of the pieces which still charm their descendants. In France, meetings of persons, whose disposition, taste, and situation suited each other, were al- ready habitual. Conversation on general sub- jects was already, by both sexes, cultivated as an accomplishment, and admired in both as a talent. In France men of letters were already called into general society, where their powers either of in- struction or amusement were not only imme- diately encouraged by the lively commendations of their audience, but rewarded, by elevating them to a sort of social equality with their su- periors in rank and riches. In England, although the education of the no- bility, titled and untitled, was as superior to that of any other of the cultivated nations of Europe as it has continued ever since ; although many of them carried away from the public schools and 'colleges, not only a taste for learning, but the habits of literary or scientific occupations ; yet to those born in a lower rank of life science and literature were only the means of raising them to distinction in the learned communities, to which they owed their proficiency, or to which they belonged. Instead of procuring them any influence in society, it was likely entirely to 174 alienate them from its intercourse : their oc- cupations, their fame, and their advancement being confined to the rich endowments for the encouragement of learning which at that time held out still greater incentives to exclusive at- tachment than at present. While their works, therefore, enriched the general stock of know- ledge, their talents in no respect contributed to the national fund of social enjoyment. The follies of the Fronde, the versatility of its heroes, and the adventures of its heroines, had already called forth a thousand occasional poets, who treated the object of their satire with the same gay frivolity they themselves treated the most serious affairs. While in France this period has left us volumes of epigrams, triolets, and mazarinades in every species of metre, hardly a single toler- able English stanza can be quoted on political subjects, from the year 1642 till the restoration. Those that remain are much more remarkable for their coarseness than their wit. (1) Had our sober-headed ancestors been as conversant with the follies of mankind as they were with their rights, the noble establishment of a consti- (1) As " The Rump, a Collection of Poems, S>-c. by the " most famous Wits from 1639 to 1661." Published in 1662, one vol. 8vo. 175 tutional monarchy, in which they so long anti- cipated the other nations of Europe, would pro- bably never have required the " manum emenda- tricem" of the Revolution of 1688. Meetings merely for social intercourse seem at this time to have formed no part of an English existence, except on occasions of treating or concluding a marriage, the birth or coming of age of an heir, &c. &c. The three great festivals allowed by the Church of England, even before they were attacked by the holy army, not of martyrs, but of sectaries, seem to have been en- joyed by the common people more than by the upper orders of society. At great country seats, open house was kept at these seasons for all the tenants. A custom, not abolished, as we see by Mr. Evelyn's Diary, till long after this date. (1) Sometimes costly entertainments were made at the country-house of some great lord, on oc- casion of a royal progress. The Duchess of Newcastle mentions an entertainment given by (1) Mr. Evelyn says, in a letter to Dr. Bohun of the 18th of January, 1697, " I am planting an evergreen grove here " to an old house ready to drop, the economy and hospi- " tality of which my good old brother will not depart from, " but, more veteram, kept a Christmas in which we had " not fewer than 300 bumkins every holy day. " — Evelyns Works, vol. ii. 176 the Duke, her husband, to Charles the First and his Queen, the year after the King returned from being crowned in Scotland, which, she says, " cost " the Duke, in all, between fourteen and fifteen " thousand pounds ;" an almost incredible sum in those days. " This entertainment was made " at Bolsover Castle, some five miles distant " from Welbeck, and he resigned Welbeck for " their Majesties lodging." — " Ben Jonson he " employed in fitting such scenes and speeches " as he could best devise, and sent for all the " gentry of the county to come and wait on their " Majesties." — (Life of the Duke of Newcastle, p. 140.) In distant parts of the country, we must suppose the young people in the drawing-room partook of the gaiety going on in the hall, and morrice-dancers and mummers at Christmas, and Jack in the green and Maid Marion at May- day, supplied the place of the masks and pageants of the court. These masks, given sometimes by the court, and sometimes to it, by the students at the inns of court, by the city, or by some of its rich associations, seldom called forth the ex- ercise of much wit in their composer, or of much taste and judgment in their audience. In Mart- land' s History of London, there is a detailed ac- count of one of these masques, drawn up by 177 Whitelock, whose after-life was certainly not employed in contributing to the amusement of the royal family : it is thus announced : " A. D. " 1633. The King being returned from his " progress into Scotland, the gentlemen of the " four inns of court resolved to entertain their " Majesties with a pompous masquerade, which " for curiosity of fancy, excellency of perform- " ance, and dazzling splendour, far excelled " every thing of the kind that had ever been seen " in England, the charge whereof (according to " a celebrated author, who was one of the com- " mittee appointed for the preparation of that " magnificent show) amounted to above twenty- " one thousand pounds. 'Tis not to be doubted, " but this enormous sum, which without a per- " adventure may justly be reckoned the greatest " that ever was expended in this kingdom on " any occasion, other than a coronation, will " whet the desire of the curious to have the " said magnificent, pompous, and incomparable " masquerade described ; therefore, without " regarding its prolixity, I shall, for the satisfac- " tion of all such, insert an account thereof, as " published by the learned and ingenious White- " lock, one of the above-mentioned committee, " and author of the celebrated memorials." To this account, which certainly keeps its N 178 promise on the score of prolixity, the reader is referred in Maitland's History ofLondon, p. 186. It is chiefly remarkable for the satire conveyed in a part of the entertainment on the too pre- valent and abused habit of giving patents and exclusive privileges on frivolous pretences. "First in this antimasque (1) rode a fellow " upon a little horse, with a great bit in his " mouth, and upon the man's breast was a bit, " with a head stall and reins fastened, and sig- (1) By antimasque was meant groupes of grotesque per- sons who on these occasions either preceded or were in- termixed with the grand representation of the day. Thus, in the entertainment above quoted, the antimasques were first a band of beggars and cripples " mounted on the " poorest, leanest jades that could be gotten out of the " dust-carts and elsewhere," accompanied by an appropriate music of keys, tongs, &c. Then followed " many men " playing upon pipes, whistles, and instruments, sounding " like the notes of birds of all sorts," preceding what was called the antimasque of birds. " This was an owl in an " ivy bush, with many several sorts of other birds in a " cluster about the owl, gazing as it were upon her. These " were little boys put into covers of the shapes of those " birds, rarely fitted, and sitting on small horses with foot- " men going by them with torches in their hands. After " this antimasque came other musicians playing on bag- " pipes, hornpipes, and such kind of northern music, speak- " ing the following antimasque of Projectors to be of the " Scotch and northern quarters." — See Maitland's History of London. 179 " nifying a Projector, that none in the kingdom " might ride their horses but with such bits as " they should buy of him. Then came another " fellow, with a bunch of carrots on his head " and a capon on his fist, describing a Projector, " who begged a patent of monopoly, as the first " inventor of the art to feed capons fat with " carrots, and that none but himself should make " use of the invention, and have the privilege " for fourteen years, according to the statute. " Several other projectors were in like manner " personated in this antimasque, and it pleased " the spectators the more, because by them an " information was covertly given to the King " of these projects against the law ; and the " attorney Noy, who had the most knowledge " of them, had a great hand in this antimasque " of the Projectors." While in England Puritans and Presbyte- rians had agreed in declaring music an abomin- ation, and had abolished the theatre as an imme- diate invention of Satan (1), Cardinal Mazarin (1) The following notice of the theatre occurs in a weekly newspaper, published during the Protectorate, from the 28th December to the 5th January, 1655 : — " This day there being a play at the Red Bull in " St. John's Street, contrary to the statute, some soldiers " were drawn out, who surprised them on the stage, and N °2 180 had transplanted the opera, a production of his own country, at great expence to Paris. An opera, or drama entirely in music, was of recent inven- tion even in Italy. Eclogues, pastoral cantatas, &c. had, indeed, been recited with choruses, accom- panied or rather interspersed with music, from the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the year 1529, at an entertainment given at Messina by Don Garcia di Toledo to Donna Antonia Cordova, / dui Pellegrini of Luigi Tansillo, a " componimento scenico," was a part of the enter- tainment. It differed from eclogue only as comprising a complete action, with a happy ending. This exhibition was followed by many others of the same sort, given either at the fetes of princes to one another, or on occasion of their visiting universities or other learned bodies, who often prepared something of this sort, got up with much expence of decoration ; as in the case of the Aretusa of Alberto Lollia, a Ferrarese poet, acted in 1563, before the Duke Alphonso the second of Este, and the Cardinal Luigi, his brother, " La rappresentd Messei* Lndovico " Belli, fece la musica Alphonso Viola, fu l'ar- " returned with the players' habits (which they had seized) "upon themselves." — Wroxton Collection of Pamphlets, vol. xxxix. »* 181 " chitetto e depintor della scena Messer Rinaldo " Costabili, fece la spesa Puniversita degli scolari " di legge." At length appeared the Aminta of Tasso, a complete pastoral drama, accompanied by choruses and interacts of music. It was first acted at Ferrara in 1573, and the same year at Florence, with much magnificence of decoration and universal applause. Its success produced a crowd of imitations, which, in spite of the praises of their own day, have, in ours, sunk nearer the level of their real merits. Still these dramas were all to be recited, and not sung, and to be interspersed, not accompanied, by music. The music, it would seem, however, formed so attractive a part of the performance, that Orazio Vecchi, a poet and music-master of Modena, at last resolved to try the effect of a drama entirely accompanied by music -, and his Anfiparnasso was represented in 1597* It was sung by Arlequino, Pantalone, il Dottore, and the other masks, then in complete possession of Italian comedy, and is considered as the first real attempt at the opera buffa. Whether the same idea, under another form, had occurred at Florence as well as at Modena, or w 7 hether the success of the Anfiparnasso had any part in the contemporary attempt at Florence, seems doubtful. But the same year, 1597> Ot- n 3 182 tavio Rinuncini, a noble Florentine, aided by Giacomo Corsi, a great lover of music, and pro- tector of the arts, produced the first heroic melo-drama that Italy had yet seen. The Dqfne was represented at the house of the above-mentioned Corsi, before the Grand Du- chesse of Tuscany, with rapturous applause. It was followed, in 1600, by the Euridice, publicly exhibited at Florence on occasion of the mar- riage of Henry the Fourth with Mary of Medicis, to whom Rinuncini was a gentleman of the bed-chamber. The music of both these operas, and some others which succeeded them, was composed by Giacomo Peri, who is, therefore, regarded as the inventor of recitativo, and, together with Rinuncini and Corsi, as the founders of heroic or serious opera. (1) The first produced at Paris was at the end of the carnival of 1647 to Anne of Austria and her court, at the private cost of Cardinal Mazarin. Madame de Motteville, who was present, calls it " une comedie (1) a machines, et en musique, ,, (1) See Storia Critica de Teatri Antichi e Modemi di Pietro Napoli Signoiclli, vol. vi. p. 4-. et passim. Napoli, 1813. (2) It will be remembered that the name of comtdic was common to all theatrical pieces at this time. The subject of the first opera was Orphee, certainly not the title of a burletta. 183 and informs us, that the Cardinal " avoit fait " venir les musiciens de Rome avec de grands *-' soins et le machiniste aussi, qui etoit un homme " de grande reputation pour ces sortes de spec- " tacles. Les habits en furent magnifiques, et " l'appareil tout de meme sorte." (2) She adds as a proof of the exact measure which Anne of Austria maintained between her pleasures and her devotions, that, in opposition to the Cardinal and to the Duke of Orleans, she would not allow the representations to continue in the ensuing Lent, and even went away herself, in the middle of the first representation, because it was given on a Saturday, and she retired to prepare for the religious duties of the ensuing day. This opera, after three representations during the carnival in which it was produced, was re- peated, in the following spring, at one of the fetes given at court to the Duchesse de Longue- ville, on her return from Munster. But the opera, as a national entertainment, does not seem to have acquired its present popularity till a later period, when the magnificent fetes of the youth of Louis the Fourteenth introduced, or rather confirmed, a taste for parade, for splendid dresses in assumed characters, dancers in rich uniform, (1) Madame de Motteville's Memoires, torn. i. p. 4-15. N 4 184 and military representations of other countries. These, from the Place de Carouzel, and from the Louvre, were transplanted, imitated, and domi- ciliated in a theatre destined to their sole exhi- bition. (1) The French, however, seem to have reluctantly admitted their Italian visitor into the circle of their amusements until she had assumed (1) The next attempt at an Italian opera in Paris was at the fetes of the marriage of Louis the Fourteenth in 1660, when the Ercole Amante was given, with a French transla- tion of the poetry for those who did not understand Italian. From this time a taste for this species of drama seems to have gained ground in France. After two or three other attempts, frustrated by the death of its first patron, the Cardinal Mazarin, an Abbe Perrin obtained, in 1669, letters patent for the establishment of an " academie des operas en langue Francoise." Under his direction the opera of Pomone, with French words of his own composition, was represented for eight successive months with much applause. This was followed by another under the name of Les Peines et les Plaisirs de V Amour. But Perrin and his associates having disagreed, Jean Baptist Lulli, a native of Florence, by the favour of Madame de Montespan, was allowed to purchase their patents, and, in 1672, Lulli gave his first opera, Les Fetes de V Amour et de Bacchus. It was an arrangement of fragments of the music of different ballets which Lulli had composed for the King, adapted to the words of Quinault. This marriage of Italian music to French poetry succeeded so well to French ears, that it was followed by the operas of Cadmus, Alceste, I'hesee, Ati/s, Jsis, and many others, com- posed by the same united authors. — See Des Maizeaux, Life of St. Evremond, vol. i. p. 126. 185 an entirely French dress, and had learned to ex- press herself in accents under which her original country was hardly discoverable, and this at a time when their own comic and tragic muse were already established in that general popularity which they have ever since maintained. Without recurring to the incomparable farce (1) which had diverted the courtiers of Charles the Eighth, and was reproduced with undiminished effect to their descendants above a century afterwards, the French theatre possessed a regular comedy, in the Visionnaires of Des- marets, as early as the year 1637 ; and Corneille, after having produced the Cid in the same year, and Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte in the suc- ceeding years, gave them the Menteur in 1644, several years before the inimitable and unrivalled Moliere had established their superiority in every species of legitimate comedy. (1) The Venceslaus of Rotrou, which dates even before (1) VAvocat Patelin, first written by Frangois Corbeuil in 1480, and since modernised by Brueys, who died in 1723. (2) La Mere Coquette of Quinault, which Voltaire calls " piece a la fois de caractere et d'intrigue, et meme modele " d'intrigue," appeared in 1664-, when Moliere had only pro- duced Les Amans Magnifiques, La Princesse d'Elide, and Le Medecin malgre lui. 186 some of the chefs-d'oeuvre of Corneille, still holds its place on the French theatre, and is still a proof of the priority of that theatre in regular heroic drama. Those who shut their eyes to the beauties of this species of drama, and refuse to admit the data on which French tragedy must be judged, are essentially their own enemies, contract the sphere of their enjoyments, and convict them- selves of as narrow a scope of intellect as any one, who, being a great admirer of Milton, should deny all beauty to the Rape of the Lock, and be insensible to the wit of Hudibras. The tragic art may be compared to ideal beauty in the imitative arts. It must be nature, but it must be something more ; — it must be a generalized idea, formed from an accurate in- vestigation and minute knowledge of details, which the author and the artist have the power of applying to the subjects of which they treat, and of placing in the situation they desire. Thus in both will be found a faithful represent- ation of nature, although probably no individual could have sat for either of the pictures. Tragedy is a representation of human nature in extraordinary situations; comedy of those which may and do occur in every-day life. The one should have all the accuracy of a portrait, 187 marking every minute particular and little cha- racteristic of the individual, or the class of in- dividuals meant to be represented (1) ; the other, like the statue of a Jupiter, an Apollo, or a Mars, must personify the passion meant to be portrayed with all the concentrated expression gathered from every individual, and with the strongest features compatible with perfect grace, or in other words with good taste. It is in this grace or good taste that the English theatre is accused by its French rival of essentially failing ; while it is retorted on the French theatre, that what is there esteemed grace is often so un- natural as to be still farther removed from good taste, in a representation of human life. If the foregoing definition of tragedy be true, we must candidly allow that the accusation brought for- ward against our theatre on the part of the French is often merited, before we proceed to notice what, according to our ideas of the true nature and end of tragedy, may be con- sidered as a set-off against our faults. (1) Schlegel has well remarked of Shakspeare's comic characters, " Les personnages dont il a dessine les traits " avec detail sont, sous beaucoup de rapports, des individus " d'une nature tres-particuliere, mais ils ont cependant une <; signification plus etendue, et Ton peut tirer des theories <•' universelles de leurs qualites preponderantes." — Schlegel, Cours de Litterature Dramatique, torn. ii. p. 377. 188 A distinguished English critic some years ago, in a laudable attempt to draw the public atten- tion to the works of Ford, and other (perhaps too much neglected) dramatists previous to the Restoration, has asserted that the literature of England materially suffered by that event. Un- fortunately for the success of the dramatic authors whom this critic protects, he has brought forward scenes and passages from their works which he compares and equals with Shakspeare, — a luckless mode of praise, which has always the effect of magnifying the faults and lessening the merits of the passages compared, by recalling all the beauties of the inimitable original. (1) And here, before any attempt is made to estimate the comparative excellence of the two national theatres, it is wished to withdraw Shakspeare from our consideration. The admirers of the beauties of the French theatre (and the author of these pages professes to be one) can have no objection, and the zealous and exclusive advocates of the English drama, if they have a just appreciation of Shakspeare, of the enormous and incalculable distance at which he has left all rivals, in all languages and of all ages, will boldly place the scale of com- (1) Edinburgh Review. 189 parison, without involving Shakspeare in a parallel, either with the writers of his own or those of any other country — Shakspeare, who, if the soberness of our language allowed of it, would be hailed by the title of " Divine " with a much more universal assent of his country than ever it was bestowed, in an age of enthu- siasm, on a hardly less irregular poet. (1) An admirable and enthusiastic writer, in a general view of European literature, and its national effects (2), after speaking of several of Shak- speare' s dramas with a discrimination of his faults, and a feeling of his peculiar beauties, which led to suppose she was really aware of the poetic eminence, the unattainable height on which he stood, unfortunately adds, that " Otway, Rowe, " et quelques autres Poetes Anglois ont fait des " tragedies toutes dans le genre de Shakspeare, " et son genie en Venice Sauvee a presque " trouve son egal." — Here the English enthu- siasts for Shakspeare feel themselves obliged to differ as entirely from this judgment of their native bard as from any former critic of the same nation. But with no mean opinion, no unjust prejudices, no under- valuing of the genius, taste, and candour of its distinguished author, (1) Dante. (2) Madame de Stael, L'Allemagne. 190 no longer, alas ! to animate literature with the speculations of her enlightened mind, nor so- ciety with the charms of her inimitable con- versation. Her opinions on this subject are only an ad- ditional proof, that the genius of Shakspeare can never, from the nature of things, come under the consideration of any French critic, but in so partial a manner as to justify all the faults they have found in him. To the most candid and informed, be can only appear as a voluminous writer of tragedies, many of which contain sub- lime poetic conceptions, and admirable descrip- tions of the human mind, and of human suffer- ings. Of these their admiration must be chiefly confined to those dramas, not founded on facts in English history, but on legends, which to foreigners, unacquainted with the obscure En- glish translations of the day, may well pass for inventions of the poet, and whose characters, therefore, are of more general application. (1) In his comedies, They cannot wade through confused and improbable plots, and crowds of supernumerary characters, to detect the beautiful samples of every species of poetry scattered through them all. They cannot enter with in- (1) See Madame de Stael, L'Allemag?ie } torn. i. p. 2S2. 191 terest into the peculiarities of a people, at that time in a much less artificial system of society than themselves. They cannot, therefore, sepa- rate from his great theatrical faults the sublime excellencies which place him at the head of poets, in the noblest and the most exalted acceptation of that name — as a great moral teacher, a pro- found master of the human heart and passions, possessing powers of imagination capable of placing his fellow-creatures in a creation of his own, and raising them above the sad realities of life. Schlegel alone seems penetrated with a just ad- miration of the miraculous powers of his genius. After an analytical view of his various perfections as a dramatic writer, and a candid and sometimes a too far-fetched apology for his faults, he thus sums up his titles to immortality : " Deja juge au " tribunal de la posterite, a celui des nations " etrangeres, sa gloire ne peut plus etre obscurcie " par le mepris qu'on affecte pour telle epoque, " pour tel gout national, pour telle forme de " composition. Et en ofFrant a nos regards les " traits les plus brillans du caractere des siecles et " des peuples divers, la hardiesse de 1'imagination, " et la profondeur de la pensee, le don d'emou- " voir fortement, et la finesse des apei^us, le culte " de la nature, et la connoissance de la societe, 192 " Tenthousiasme du poete, et Pimpartialite du " philosophe, il paroit fait pour representer a lui " seul, l'esprit humain, dont il reunit dans le plus " haut degre les qualites les plus opposees." (1) It is certain that before the Restoration (be- sides the immortal genius of Shakspeare) we possessed a cluster of dramatic poets (2), who, with strong powers of imagination and con- siderable poetic merit, have left behind a host of dramas, which, if they do little honour to the contemporary taste of the nation, are au- thentic records of the original genius and vigorous intellect of their authors. To this national taste, and to the peculiar social habits of the nation, may be fairly attri- buted all their faults. For to whom and where were these pieces represented ? Xot to an informed (or at least polished) audience, of a quick versatile nation, but to the lower orders of a people naturally slow to move, and requiring strong appeals to all the unvarnished feelings of human nature, independent of any conven- tional modes of society. These pieces were not written for, or exhibited at, a court, or (1) Schlegel, Cours de Litterature Dramatiqtie, torn. ii. p. 408. (2) Johnson, Massinger, Shirley, Decker, Rowley, Beau- mont and Fletcher, Ford, Webster, Field, and Marlow. 193 called into notice by the criticisms of a minister. They were first produced at theatres in the outskirts of London ; generally in the immediate neighbourhood of the retreats of profligacy and prostitution, which can leave no doubt of the complexion and character of their habitual audience. While Cardinal Richelieu was endeavouring in vain to extend his despotism into the territory of genius, and to stifle the good taste which had already produced the Cid, and an audience who felt and admired its beauties ; the pedantic James the First was regaled at Cambridge by a long series of bad jokes, in worse Latin, under the name of a comedy in five long acts, with two still longer prologues, written for the occa- sion by an indigenous poet, of the harmonious name of Ruggles, and acted by members of the university. (1) No wonder that under these circumstances the theatre, forming no part of the amusement of the upper orders of society, and frequented only by the idle, the ignorant, and the profligate, should have incurred the (1) Ignoramus, acted before James the First on his visit to Cambridge in 1627. .0 194 disgrace and abuse to which its immorality ex- posed its genius, with the reformers of the ensuing reign. Masques representing mythological or allego- rical personages, which were common long before the times of which w T e are speaking, cannot be received as decisive of the merits of the theatre of either nation. They had in both succeeded to the exhibitions which, under the name of my- sterieSy had in all times been patronised by the church. They were not representations of hu- man life or character, but merely modes of adulation to the great, used only on public oc- casions, and, being addressed more to the eyes than the understanding, were sure of being well received. We shall not, therefore, endeavour to press into the service of the English theatre one of the most exquisitely beautiful poems in our language, in which Milton, under the name of a Masque, has given proof of the perfection which he attained in every mode of poetry which his pure and exalted genius deigned to adorn. It is not here pretended to pass in critical review any of the English dramas previous to the Restoration : in many of them will be found plots admirably contrived to suspend the mind in anxious interest as to the issue of the scenes 195 before it(l); forcible displays of the human heart, and its sufferings under the influence of stormy or unlawful passions ; exquisite descrip- tions of female tenderness, its powers and effects, and frightful representations of the remorse and horror of great criminals. But in the choice of their subjects they seem often to have been determined only by an excess of crimes and cruelties in the conduct of their principal per- sonages, without sufficiently considering whether the action which calls them forth is dramatic as well as natural. To these crimes and cruelties they often fail to lend that art and that conceal- ment which such conduct must suppose to render it possible. They treat of them with all the bold simplicity of another era of society, in which indeed similar crimes are quite as likely to be committed, but have no pretence to being dramatic. Thus The Unnatural Combat of Massinger affects the mind in a quite different, and a much more disagreeable manner than Les Freres En- nemis of Racine. The French poet has en- venomed the hatred of the two brothers by a (1) As in The Duke of Milan of Massinger, where, till near the end of the last act, no guess can be made at the denouement. o C Z 196 rival passion for the same mistress, which how- ever harmonizes their characters in some degree with the feelings of the audience c . while the English dramatist, in addition to the sufficiently disgusting rivalry of the father and son, has su- peradded the horrible love of the father for his daughter, to make his character more execrable, and her situation more irretrievably dreadful ; but which in fact leaves him without any claim to our sympathy, and her beyond the reach of our compassion. It is unnecessary to remark on the coarseness of expression in our ancient dramatists, because the language of society has undergone such a change since their day, that it would be some- what difficult to ascertain what belonged to the phraseology of the times, and what to the bad company to which the authors addressed them- selves. But their plots are sometimes so es- sentially indecent, as to defy any delicacy of expression sufficiently to veil them, or any com- pany so bad as to admit of their theatrical re- presentation. (1) Nor must it be objected, that The Unnatural Combat, The Duke o/Gandia, &c. are not more improper subjects than Phcedra, (1) As The Wife of a Month of Beaumont and Fletcher, and many others. * 197 Myrrha, &c. because in these last pieces the whole art of the poet is exerted in concealing his subject, as in nature such crimes must always seek concealment, and betray themselves only as the author exhibits them, in their dread- ful effects on the moral being and happiness of his personages. But our old writers advance in licence of language as they advance in licence of situation, and shock the ears of their audience by making them immediately aware of the flagitious company into which they have been led. Besides, if (as the author believes) it is the province and legitimate end of tragedy to elevate as well as to affect the human mind, here our dramatists entirely fail. They either excite horror and disgust, from which we retire with an earnest desire to relieve ourselves as soon as possible, or they describe overwhelming distress accumulated on the head of some inno- cent being, plunged into irremediable crimes, which leaves us oppressed with a melancholy, and, for the most part, with an exaggerated idea of the necessary evils of social existence, and a false opinion of the moral government of the world. It is here, and with reason, that the French boast of the conduct and tone of their tragic muse; the elevation of her sentiments, the deli- o 3 198 cacy with which they are always expressed, the purity of her morals, and the dignity of her tone, always completely separated from that of her comic sister. It is true that, for a long time, she never spoke but from the mouths of heroes, kings, or ministers, and is accused by her English detractors of being often, in her long-winded tirades, as tedious and as little interesting as those illustrious personages have, in subsequent ages, sometimes in reality appeared. From the same quarter she is likewise accused of always con- tenting herself with a recital of the events which ought most essentially to interest her, and to require her presence ; of sometimes listen- ing patiently, while torn by conflicting passions, and under the most cruel circumstances, to the exposition of the whole plan of an ensuing cam- pain, as in Mithridate ; and sometimes to the recitation of a sort of gazette extraordinary, con- taining its success and casualties, as in the Cid. However true these accusations may be, and however the French theatre, in times subsequent to those of which we are speaking, may have ad- vanced nearer towards the truth of what may be called theatrical nature, it is certain, that, on our theatre, some subsequent attempts to iinbasfxin tragedy, and to strip her entirely of the " gor- " geous pall," which the pure taste of Milton 199 (in spite of his republican severity) required for her attire (1), have been completely unsuc- cessful. Lillo, an author free from all the grossness of ideas and of diction which disgraced his pre- decessors, and endowed with the truest tragic pathos, has left us several dramas, founded on catastrophes which had actually taken place in private life. (2) One of these, The Fatal Curiosity, is a tragedy cited by the classical Harris (3) as the model of a perfect tragic fable, and the plot, it must be granted, is singu- larly and eminently pathetic. This piece was revived some years ago on Drury-lane theatre, as an essay of this species of drama, with every advantage from the judg- ment and good taste of the manager ; (4) and, although supported by the all-powerful and all- accomplished actress who at that time illustrated English tragedy, it entirely failed of success. The close adherence to individual and un- elevated nature, undignified by any previous (1) " Or Tragedy in gorgeous robe come sweeping by." 7/ Penseroso. (2) As George Barnetvell, Arden of Feversham, and The Fatal Curiosity. (3) Harris's Philological Enquiries, vol. i. p. 154. (4) The late J. P. Kemble. O 4 200 distinction, and unaccompanied by any enno- bling circumstances ; the poverty necessary to be observed in the dresses and the absence of all species of decoration from the scene ; al- though all strictly natural and obligatory, ac- cording to the subject chosen, were in direct opposition to dramatic effect, and essentially lessened the interest of the piece. The long train of ideas, which a sudden reverse in fortune or in character excites in the human mind, and whicli so powerfully increases the weight of misfortune, was precluded. Two miserable- looking beings, complaining of want and poverty, and resolving to commit a murder to enrich themselves, present nothing either to astonish or elevate the mind. We cannot participate in their degraded feelings, nor can we be- lieve that they themselves feel the same horror at their meditated crime as Macbeth, a great chieftain, a successful general, honoured with public applause, and with his sovereign's favour ; who is led to commit a crime, which we cannot suppose his imagination ever before harboured, by a most imposing supernatural agency, and by the ambitious character of a beloved wife, acting on a dangerous, but not degrading, pas- sion for power. Even The Gamester, a story that comes home to every bosom, and which is c 20l likely to occur every day in the circles around us, as a drama, wants that previous elevation of sentiment and situation which is requisite to ennoble our sorrows and the misery of those who excite them. Could it be possible for pri- vate sufferings, and the herd of griefs unpartici- pated by the world, to become the subjects of tragedy, tragedy would immediately cease to be resorted to as an amusement. What human being may not inwardly say, " Too much such " sorrow hast thou had already ?" The most acutely- feeling minds will, therefore,, always be those who require the greatest degree of eleva- tion of sentiment, in fictitious calls on their sym- pathy. The excesses to which the German theatre has been led by this homely species of drama are irrelevant to our subject. But let it be remarked, that the ridicule stamped by an inimit- able English parody( 1 )on the morals and the taste of these pieces, has preserved our own theatre from the lamentable fate which for a moment impended over it, of reproducing all their faults in English translations. The Restoration, which gave us back our national theatre, gave us back an audience ac- (1) The Rovers, or the Double Arrangement, published in the Anti-Jacobin. 202 customed to the theatres of France ; no wonder, then, that " unhappy Dryden," and indeed " all " the wits of Charles's days," took the shortest road to theatrical success, by translating or by imitating the dramas of France. It was a much less tedious and less laborious task than pruning the luxuriance of those of our native growth, so as to render them admissible in the more cultiva- ted and more artificial soil where they were re- quired. Hence arose a mongrel race of tragedies, which combined the faults of both their parents. Hence, Shakspeare himself lay for a time neg- lected under a mass of writers, whose names are only known to the unerring judgment of posterity by the satire of Dryden. Hence, the bombast into which that great genius was him- self often betrayed, while we know how much, as a critic, he condemned his own practice as a dramatist. In his admirable Essay on Dramatic Poetry he proves himself to be perfectly aware of all the faults of the French theatre ; and if he speaks with too much partiality of those of our own, and adopts upon some points popular mis- takes, he has sealed for ever the proof of his good taste, in opposition to that of the day, by his animated praises of Shakspeare, and by the apologies he thinks necessary for bestowing them. Lord Lansdowne, his contemporary, in his 208 " Essay on unnatural Flights in Poetry," ex- presses the same opinion of Dryden's taste, and of the causes which he allowed to misguide al- though not to deceive it. " Our king return 'd, and banish'd peace restored, " The Muse went mad to see her exiled lord ; " On the crack'd stage the bedlam heroes roar'd, " And scarce could speak one reasonable word. " Dryden himself, to please a frantic age, " Was forced to let his judgment stoop to rage ; " To a wild audience he conform'd his voice, " Complied to custom, but not err'd by choice : " Deem then the people's, not the writer's sin, " Almanzor's rage, and rants of Maximin." The priority of the English theatre in le- gitimate comedy we may assume from, the works of Ben Jonson, who died the same year that gave the Visionnaires of Desmarets to the French stage. But the characters of Ben Jonson are too much individualized to be of general interest. The peculiarities and follies of many of his personages are as much out of date as the cut of their doublet and hose. They are portraits, still interesting to his countrymen, from preserving the dress and colour of the times; but their entirely local tints diminish their excellence as faithful transcripts of human nature. His pieces, therefore, have most of them become ob- solete, without having been popular. 204 Could Comedy ever be supposed faithfully " to hold the mirror up to nature," we might blush at belonging to the nature which her English mirror reflected in the w r orks of the " mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease" im- mediately after the Restoration. They outrage decency as well as morality, both in the dialogue and in the conduct of their pieces, and describe manners which could never have existed, except in the purlieus of their own theatre. But comedy we know can only be implicitly trusted as a recorder of the excesses of a metropolis, and of the fashionable follies and peculiarities of its inhabitants ; and certainly the highly-coloured and coarse sketches which she gave of those of London at this period, bear no favourable com- parison with similar representations in France. Already had the incomparable Moliere en- throned the comic muse on the French theatre. His satire was directed against the follies, not of a metropolis, but of human nature ; his portraits exhibited whole classes of individuals ; and he seized the ridicules of the age, as well as those of his own particular country. His wit, his wisdom, and his gaiety, were the produce of France, but became the property of all Europe. It is a property which has since been so bor- rowed from, and pillaged, that when we now 205 see the frequently-stolen goods in the hands of their original owner, they have lost the charm of surprise and the merit of novelty. But so long as misers and misanthropes, false saints and affected women, silly husbands and ignorant physicians exist in the world, so long will Mo- liere remain their unrivalled painter, historian, and satirist. 206 CHAPTER V. INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST YEARS OF THE .MAJORITY OF LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH ON THE SOCIETY AND SOCIAL HABITS OF FRANCE. ST. EVREMOND. DUCHESSE DE MAZARIN. NINON DE l'eNCLOS. HOTEL DE RAM- BOUILLET. FETES AT VERSAILLES. CHANGE WHICH TOOK PLACE DURING THE REIGN OF LOUIS. STATE OF SOCIETY AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH. " Au commencement du dix-septieme siecle, il " n'y avoit point cinquante carrosses a Paris : " dans le regne de Louis Quatorze tout le monde " en avoit, on ne pouvoitallera la cour autrement. 11 On ne fut plus recu sur les mules ; l'usage " fut laisse a quelques conseillers au parlement, " et cessoit pour eux et pour toujours vers " le milieu du regne de Louis Quatorze." (Mem. du Due de Richelieu, torn. i. p. 192.) The adoption of this general use of wheel carriages produced a greater change in the habits of social life, and had more influence on the political state of the country, than may be at first supposed. We have been so long ac- customed to their use, that the habits of a coun- 207 try, or the life of a great metropolis without them, does not immediately present itself to our imagination. The state of public roads, which the necessity of travelling on horseback supposes, must immediately influence all military movements and all communication of intelli- gence, must triple the expence of all commercial transfers, and prevent, or render difficult, all merely social meetings, except between the nearest neighbours. When Laporte, the valet-de-chambre to Anne of Austria, tells us, that in the winter of the year 1636, between Piteaux and Paris, on the route of Orleans, the road was so bad, that the Queen was obliged to sleep in her carriage, be- cause neither the mules nor carts that carried her baggage could possibly arrive (1), we may conceive how little winter travelling there could have been in France. Although coaches were already known and used in Paris, they were so unlike the modern vehicles of the same name, that the pleasures, engagements, and as- signations of the young men were still pursued on horseback. The trick which the Comte de Grammont boasts of having played to his friend the Due de Brissac, at the door of Marion de (1) Memoires de la Porte, p. 114. 208 L'Orme (1), could only have taken place be- tween cavaliers ; and the occupation de garder les manteaux could never have passed into an insulting bye- word, had well-lined modern car- riages been the conveyance of the day. A printed paper is yet extant in the King's library at Paris, announcing in all its details to the public, the establishment by government of porte , flambeaux and porte lanternes ; persons provided with them were to be posted at the Louvre, the Palais de Justice in the Carrefours, and other public places at Paris. These extempore illumin- ations must have been very necessary in the streets of a great town, still frequented by horse- men, where no aid of light was derived, either from the doors of private houses or the windows of shops ; the habitual darkness only made more visible from the occasional flambeaux car- ried before some persons of distinction by their own servants, or accompanying their coach. This establishment of porte flambeaux \ which was to take place in October 1662, is announced with all the forms of a long preamble, and sur- rounded with all the exclusive privileges which could have accompanied the most important measure of internal government. It is a curious (1) See Memoires de Grammont. 209 example of the minute details into which the hierarchy of despotic power had already entered in France. It calls itself, " l'etablissement de " porte flambeaux, et porte lanternes, a louage " dans la ville et fauxbourgs de Paris, et toutes " autres villes du royaume, par lettres patentes " du roi, verifiees au parlement, et reglement " fait par la dite cour, des salaries des dits " porte flambeaux et porte lanternes," Then follow the orders, which forbid any body from becoming a porte Jlambeaux, or a porte lanterne, without an express permission from the indi- vidual who has obtained this privilege from the King, to the exclusion of all others, under pain of a thousand francs penalty. The price is fixed for the hire of a porte lanterne at " 3 sous par " ^ d'heure pour les gens qui vont a pied, et " pour les gens qui vont en carrosses et en " chaise, 5 sous j" and the public are then as- sured, " que cette commodite de pouvoir aller " et venir, et d'etre eclaire a si peu de frais, fera " que les gens d'affaires et de negoce sortiront " plus librement; que les rues en seront bien " plus frequentees la nuit, ce qui contribuera " beaucoup a exempter la ville de Paris de " voleurs." To nightly depredators the darkness of the streets must have been very favourable. Thus p 210 we see Boileau makes one of the torments of a town life, the dread of thieves : " Que dans le marche neuf tout est calrae et tranquille, " Les voleurs a l'instant s'emparent de la ville, " Le bois le plus funeste, et le moins frequente, " Est, au prix de Paris, un lieu de surete. " Malheur done a celui, qu'une affaire imprevue " Engage un peu tard au detour d'une rue, " Bientot quatre bandits lui serrant les cotes " La bourse, il faut se rendre,'' &c. &c. Boileau, Sat. 6. In the former regency of Mary of Medicis the streets of Paris had been subject to the still greater dangers of frequent and fatal rencontres between the rival princes and nobility, over whom the court had so little the power of control, that the fair of St. Germains was put off in the year 1612, to avoid the occasions it might give for re- newing such quarrels, by the great concourse of disorderly people ; and the parliament, at the Queen's desire, made an arret to authorize the citizens taking arms, and laying down chains against any drawing of swords in the streets. Win wood's Letters, who writes from Paris in the year 1612, are full of accounts of such outrages. " There was yesterday a bloody quarrel fought " in this town near the Place R ovale, upon a " sudden occasion of the beating of some lakeys 211 " (laquais) by certain gentlemen, between whom " and the lakeys' masters there grew such hot " partakings, as that 4 gentlemen and 3 lakeys " were left dead on the place. 5 ' (Winwood's Letters, vol.iii. p. 352.) " The Prince of Conti's and the Comte de " Soissons's coaches meeting in a narrow place " near the Louvre, by the bad driving of their " coachmen jostled against each other, and came " to blows between their followers, who de- " parting in that fashion one from another, did, " against the next morning, call and assemble " together such numbers of their friends and fol- " lowers, as that the Duke of Guise joyning " with his brother-in-law, the Prince of Conti, " and the Prince of Conde with the Comte de 11 Soissons his uncle, they came out into the " streets with at least 3 or 400 horse a piece. «##*## >phe cna i ns have been set up all " night in many streets, and corps de gardes " kept near the town-houses." ( Winwood, vol. iii. p. 247.) " There do daily break forth new quarrels " between the nobility in this town, who are w here in greater numbers than usually have " been heretofore, whereof one, being between " Mr. d'Andelot and Mr. Balagny, was presently " taken up ; and another fell out the other day p 2 212 " between the Colonel d'Ornano and one Mr. " St. Andre, who, fighting in the streets, were " both hurt, and to avoid the mischief that " might ensue from partakings, the gates of the " town were for a time shut up." (Winwood, vol. iii. p. 324.) How long the monopoly of porte lanternes continued a profitable concern, we know not ; but at the end of the reign of Louis the Four- teenth, the luxury of carriages was so uni- versal (1), that riding among the young men was confined entirely to the manege, to hunting, and to their military life. A change of dress had indeed necessitated a change in their mode of conveyance. The military costume was no longer that of the court ; their boots and cloaks had disappeared, except when with their regi- ments ; and the knots of ribbons, the short sleeves, the long ruffles, the lace, fringe and em- broidery, and the flowing periwigs now general, were perfectly incompatible with an evening (1) At the death of Louis the Fourteenth there were sup- posed to be 300 carriages to be hired (voiturcs de remise) at Paris. The Regent Duke of Orleans in 1716 had allowed a grant of a livre a day on each of these carriages, to be levied in favour of the Dues d'Aumont and d'Antin. But the gift was considered as so invidious, that he was obliged to revoke it. See le Montey, p. 276. 213 ride from the Louvre to the Marais. This dress was soon carried to such excess, as to be a legitimate object of ridicule on their theatre. Moliere's two marquises in Les Precieuses Ridi- cules were caricatures of it ; and the account given of it by Geroute is said to have been a portrait of the appearance of the Due de Can- dale, the fine gentleman of that day. (1) From this dress, its inaptness to all manly ex- ercises, and the effeminate manners which were supposed to accompany it, first crept in those (1) Louis Charles Gaston de Candale de Foix, son of Bernard Due d'Epernon by Gabrielle Angelique, a legi- timated natural daughter of Henry the Fourth. Another detailed account of the excesses of the fashion^ able dress of the times is given by Sganarelle in the Ecole des Maris* He asks, what shall ever oblige him — " a porter de ces petits chapeaux, " Qui laissent eVenter leur debiles cerveaux, " Et de ces blonds cheveux, de qui la vaste enflure l< Des visages humains offusque la figure ? " De ces petits pourpoints sous le bras se perdant, " Et de ces grands collets jusqu'au nombril pendants ; " De ces manches qui a table on voit tater les sausses, " Et de ces cotillons appellees haut-de-chausses; " De ces souliers mignons, de rubans revetus, " Qui vous font ressembler a des pigeons pattus ; " Et de ces grands canons, oil, comme en des entraves, " On met le matin ses deux jambes esclaves, " Et par qui nous voyons, ces messieurs les galans " Marcher £carquilles ainsi que des volants ?" P 3 214 false and ridiculous ideas which so long dictated all subsequent representations of French charac- ters on our theatre ; where a Frenchman (al- ways dubbed a marquis) was represented with a powdered toupee, a hat under his arm, showy clothes, and a snuff-box in his hand. The expence of dress to the young men was often ruinous. Rich attire and magnifi- cence of costume was a privilege of the pri- vileged ; it could not be attempted by the lower orders; and such importance was at- tached to it, that not only minute descrip- tions of dress are often given in the memoirs of the times, but likewise in grave official re- ports. Thus the dress of Mary of Medicis, on the opening of the States General in 1614, is minutely detailed in the Ceremonial Franqois, torn. ii. p. 269. And on the entry of Louis the Fourteenth into Paris after his mar- riage in 1660, the greffier of the parliament of Paris in his proces verbal reports exactly the dress of the King on that occasion. Louis the Fourteenth, both from taste and policy, en- couraged great expence in dress, and in a cos- tume peculiar to his court. He, too, first imagined an uniform for the particularly favoured of his society, as a still farther distinction, de- pending entirely on himself. Les Justaucorps 215 Mens, Voltaire says, were almost as eagerly- sought after as le cordon bleu, and with some reason, as the one was a probable step to the other. (1) As a further means of crushing every remains of independence in the aristocracy, he insisted on the title and rank of marechal (be- cause military, and entirely depending on him- self) taking place of that of Due et Pair, and always called those who were marechals, Mr. le Marechal, and never by their hereditary titles. In like manner he decided a question of prece- dence in voting, between the peers and the pre- sidents of the parliament, by declaring the peers only to vote first at the lits de justice where him- self was present, as if their rank proceeded from him alone. The Marquis de Vardes, when he returned to court, after an exile of twenty years, in a justaucorps bleu, then no longer the livery of favour, with some difficulty turned off the laugh which his appearance excited by telling the King, " Quand on avoit le malheur de lui deplaire, on " etoit non-seulement malheureux, mais ridi- cule." (1) There was a regular warrant (brevet) granted for per- mission to wear these justaucorps. One of these brevets is preserved in the works of Louis the Fourteenth, vol. vi. p. 375. P 4 216 It were well if the dress of Louis the Four- teenth's court had continued peculiar to it. The portraits of the day sufficiently inform us how incompatible it was with grace and beauty; while the Spanish cloak, broad falling down collar, or small ruff, which had immediately pre- ceded it, are still resorted to in painting, to get rid of the altered remains of the dress which immediately followed, and which soon became general in Europe. This change, however un- lucky for the lovers of the picturesque, is per- haps one of the least essential which the reign of Louis the Fourteenth produced, not only on the manners, but the character of his country. All independence of feeling, all individual consider- ation and power, all personal dignity of senti- ment were crushed under the imposing glitter with which a young, handsome, showy monarch began in fetes and tournaments, and continued in ill-judged, but successful wars, to disguise the sceptre of arbitrary power, which the follies of the Fronde had left undisputed in his hands. However various the paths to distinction, honour, and fame, and however various the deci- sions of men in their choice, it will invariably be found, that success attends only those whose character happens to suit the age in which they appear, and the circumstances and situation in 21? which they are called into action. No abilities, however distinguished, without this adventitious aid ever rose above their natural level, or even attained the success they deserved. Individual happiness yet more surely depends on the same causes. In the lottery of human life we are sometimes tempted to think that if the tickets were distributed, as the Due de Mazarin is said to have drawn lots for the services of the different members of his household, lucky changes might often be made which would benefit and relieve both parties. Thus Louis the Sixteenth would probably have been honourably distinguished as a college pre- ceptor, and his unfortunate Queen as an amiable and fascinating individual, in the best society of her capital ; Charles the First might have served as the model of a well-educated English gentleman of his day ; and Queen Anne as an appropriate wife to a country Tory clergy- man. Louis the Fourteenth was as peculiarly for- tunate in the age and circumstances in which he lived, as in the people over whom he was called to reign. The foibles of his character were the foibles of theirs ; both his faults and merits were essentially national. His two first manifestations of power towards his neighbours would, in the 218 sovereign of any other nation, have been as ill- judged as they were unjust (1) But every (1) At the public entry of a Swedish minister into London in the year 1661, the Comte d'Estrades, the French am- bassador, with a numerous suite, came to a positive engage- ment in the streets of London with the Baron de Watteville, the Spanish ambassador, for precedence. If, as Voltaire says, (Steele de Louis Quatorze, torn. i. p. 297.) the Spaniards killed the horses in the French carriages, and then marched " l'epee nue, comme en triomphe," it was Charles the Se- cond, in whose metropolis, at a peaceful ceremony, such an outrage had taken place, who ought to have demanded sa- tisfaction. But Louis immediately recalled his ambassador from Spain, sent away the Spanish ambassador from Paris, and declared if Philip the Fourth (his father-in-law) did not publicly recognize the priority of the crown of France in all ceremonies, he should immediately declare war. The year after (1662) the insolence of the Due de Crequi, his ambassador at Rome, and the intolerable licence of his servants and suite, who had attacked sword in hand a party of the Pope's * guards in the streets of Rome, at last roused the Romans to reprisals, and a party of the same troops, thus offended, surrounded the house of the ambas- sador, and fired on his servants. On this occasion, instead of the mutual apologies due from both parties, but more especially from the first aggressor — the King — the eldest son of the church, not content with the Pope's hanging two of the offenders, and banishing the Governor of Rome, who was supposed to have connived at punishing the insolence of the French, immediately seized Avignon, and threatened to besiege Rome, till the Pope had not only banished his brother, and sent his nephew to apologize to Louis at * Alexander the Seventh (Chigi). 219 Frenchman in authority would have been happy to have done the same, and was delighted with his King for doing it for him. Under these circumstances, the personal character of the monarch became the established principle of his government, and his personal favour the para- mount object, even of those whose disposition and talents, in other times, or in a differently- constituted government, would have made them the most independent of it. Fashion ranged herself on the side of power ; against their united authority no abilities could compensate, no services excuse the slightest offence ; while credit seems to have been given them for not always visiting the objects of their displeasure with the severe dispensations of Richelieu. The Marquis de Vardes, exiled for a forgery which ought to have turned him out of all good company, without the necessity of banishing him from court, and Bussy Rabutin, whose caustic and slanderous pen no punishment could repress, and whose vanity no mortification could subdue, exiled to their own estates, extolled the Paris, but erected a pillar at Rome (long since destroyed) to commemorate the insolence of the French to a govern- ment from whose weakness they had nothing to dread, and whose honour they ought to have respected. 220 mildness of a monarch who had not, like his predecessor, retained them in the Bastille for much slighter offences. (1) And here the change in independence of character and sentiment is remarkable. The cruel imprisonments of the former reign met sometimes with characters who, while suffering, resisted and finally overcame their tormentors. The Commandeur de Jars, sent to the Bastille by Richelieu as suspected of having some concern in the intrigues of Cha- teauneuf, the Garde des Sceaux, was not only condemned to death and led to the scaffold, but actually had his eyes bound to receive the stroke, when, finding all attempts were vain to make him speak, he was released, and restored to the world and to the court. The Marquis de Chau- (1) " Le Comte de Cremail fut mis a la Bastille pour " avoir averti le Roi Louis Treize, quand il etoit en Lor- " raine, que sa personne n etoit pas en surete, I'annee des " Lorraines etant plus forte que la sienne. Le Cardinal (de " Richelieu) l'a fait mettre en prison pour avoir donne de " V apprehension an Roi, quoiqu'elie fut juste et raisonnable." " M. de Gouille tres-bien fait, qui avoit etc Sieve" page, " fut mis a la Bastille par Tadresse dune celebre fille de " joye qu'il entretenoit. Comme il la maltraitoit quel- " quefois pour ses inconstances, et que sa bravoure efta- " rouchoit les autres galans, elle s'ennuyoit. et pour Be M debarrasser de son amant, elle ecrivoit au Cardinal qu'elle cl lui avoit ou'i-dire, qui! nc mouriroit jamais que de sa mam" See La Porte's Memoires. 221 denier was imprisoned in the Chateau de Loches for two years, reduced to the bread and food of the common prisoners, and afterwards kept in exile for seven or eight years, without prevailing on him to give in his resignation of captain of the guards to Anne of Austria, when her ca- price, or that of Mazarin, insisted on his selling his commission, that they might bestow it on some other person. Madame de Sevigne and Bussy Rabutin both speak of his conduct as a great folly ; and so it was. But what was the government that made it so ? St. Evremond, who partook of the sentiments and character of the same period, had made a visit of three months to the Bastille, by the order of Cardinal Mazarin, for some jests at a dinner, which not daring to notice in the Due de Candale, his vengeance fell on his companion. At the con- ferences on the peace of the Pyrenees in 1659, at which St. Evremond was present, he wrote an account of what was passing to his intimate friend, the Marechal de Crequi. A copy of this letter was found in a box of papers de- posited by St. Evremond with Madame du Plessis Bellievre (the friend of Fouquet as well as of himself), when St. Evremond accompanied the Comte de Soissons on his complimentary em- bassy to England at the Restoration. On Fou- 222 quet's imprisonment, St. EvremoncTs papers were seized with those of their mutual friends, and this letter — * this ex post facto satire on a dead cardinal and a ratified peace, was repre- sented in such odious colours to Louis the Fourteenth by le Tellier and Colbert, that St. Evremond, aware of the unfavourable im- pression already existing against him, and afraid of a second visit to the Bastille, deemed it pru- dent to retire, first into his native province of Normandy, and then into Holland, from whence he repassed into England early in the year 1662. From England he made many vain attempts to be restored with impunity to his own country, and to take some active part in its affairs. Born of a good family in Normandy, one of six sons, his father had destined him for the law, and educated him accordingly at the College de Clermont at Paris ; but at sixteen he entered the army, and was early distinguished by the Grand Conde, his contemporary, not more for his bra- very than for his information, and for his talents in society. To Conde he soon attached his fortunes, was severely wounded at the affair of Nortlingen, under his command, and was afterwards sent by him to Mazarin to obtain the minister's consent to his future plan of campaign. His dismissal soon after from the lieutenancy 223 of Conde's guards does no honour to the prince. It would seem that he could not bear to sup- pose, that the keen observation of the ridicules of others, which had so often amused him in his companion, should ever be exerted in the ob- servation of his own. In the civil war which immediately afterwards ensued, St. Evremond was made a marechal de camp in the King's army, and served in Guyenne under the command of the Due de Candale. In the account which he gives of his military career we learn a curious fact, as to the constitution and the manner of payment of the army (even that of the King), during the regency of Anne of Austria. The officers were paid by assignments on the towns or communities occupied by their troops. By virtue of this assignment they took all they could get; and St. Evremond owns that during the two years and a half that he served in Guyenne, he brought back fifty thousand francs, " tout frais Jait." (1) Such an army must have been hardly less terrible to its friends than its enemies. During St. Evremond's first residence in (1) Two thousand pounds sterling. See St. Evremond's works. 224 England, the ill success of all his attempts to re-establish himself in his own country threw him into such a state of melancholy and ill health, that in the year 1665, when the plague first be- gan to manifest itself in London, he returned to Holland to try the effects of a change of air. — Here began that acquaintance with the Prince of Orange, which afterwards secured to him the friendship and protection of King William the Third, from whom he long received the pension of 300/. a year, which had been given him by Charles the Second. Few of the pensions be- stowed by Charles were more honourable to his character and good taste than this to St. Evre- mond. By the intervention of Sir William Temple, his minister at the Hague, he had invited St. Evremond back to England in the year 1670, and the delicate manner in which he secured to him the means of living there, relieved his pen- sioner from the unpleasant sentiment of receiv- ing a salary from a foreign sovereign without either services received, or duties attached to it. Some little islands, forming a decoy for wild fowl, which have long since disappeared, in a canal in St. James's Park, which has long since under- gone an entire alteration, were constituted by the King into a government, and St. Evremond, by a regular commission, made governor of these " Duck Islands" with a salary of 300/. a year. This finally attached him to the court of Charles the Second, and, together with some little patri- mony which he still possessed in France, gave him a sufficiency to indulge in the literary leisure in which he had taken refuge, when no longer allowed a part in more active occupa- tions. His writings leave a very favourable im- pression of his mind and character, and, above all, of the charms of his society. His clas- sical knowledge and general reading were un- common for a man of the world in those days ; and his knowledge of that world, his intimate acquaintance with most of the principal actors in it, and the active situations in which he himself had been placed, were still more uncommon in a man of letters. The leisure and the privations of his exile had forced him to the cultivation of his literary talents, and kept his Epicurean phi- losophy within the bounds of good order, which perhaps might not have been the case in pros- perity, and in the country and the society to which he naturally belonged. His misfortunes seem to have enabled him to unite the qualities which he himself describes with such approba- tion : " II n'y a pas de meilleur commerce qu'un Anglois qui parle, et qu'un Francis qui pense." Q 226 His society and conversation must have been as varied as they were agreeable ; for the same man who had been a favourite companion of Charles the Second, was so pleasing to King William, that he was always named by him as one of the company when that King dined in any private house. His works are much less read than they de- serve, because most of them are addressed more to the society for which they were writ- ten than to the world, and are rather the lively observations of a man of letters than an inves- tigation of the subject which he treats. His verses were all occasional, all called forth by some momentary impulse ; but instead of the tameness and insipidity common to such pro- ductions, they mark in a peculiar manner the keen observation of character and of ridicule for which he was always distinguished, and have the charm of well-painted old portraits, of whose exact resemblance it is impossible to feel a doubt. (1) By his numerous letters and verses to Madame de Mazarin, although all in adula- tory terms, we are admitted for the moment (1) See his " Dialogue entre le Vicillard et la Mort,'' torn. iii. p. 115. ; his " Sce?ie de Bassette,'' and several other nieces. 227 into her society, and learn to pity the man, however sincerely attached to her, who was constantly exposed to her peculiarities, her weaknesses, and her violence. Hortense Mancini, this spoiled child of fortune, after her wanderings in Italy, and her residence at Chamberry, had come to England five or six years after St. Evremond. Her pretext was a visit to the second wife of the Duke of York, who was by birth her cousin german. (1) The account she has given of her own life leaves us no doubt as to her character or her conduct. The eccentricities and the mad bigotry of her husband seem in some degree to have excused both, without justifying either. Although her uncle the Cardinal had made her the greatest heiress in Europe, the husband he had chosen for her complained bitterly (as Madame de Sevigne tells us) that Louis the Fourteenth had obliged him to allow her a thousand a year, and to give her five hundred pounds on her first separation from him, and her journey to Italy. So little were these means adequate to the ex- travagant habits in which she had been brought (1) Mary of Modena, the second wife of the Duke of York, was niece to Cardinal Mazarin, daughter of his sister Martinozzi, Q 2 228 up, that a pension of four thousand pounds a year, allowed her by Charles the Second on her coming to England, never prevented her being overwhelmed with debts. On her arrival in I676, the King had lodged her within the precincts of Whitehall, and she was considered for a time to have occupied his vagrant heart during the interregnum between the Duchesses of Cleveland and Portsmouth. Evelyn, we see, talks of her as the King's mistress, and Madame de Sevigne says of her, " Madame de Mazarin " court les champs de son cote, on la croit en " Angleterre, ou il n'y a, comme vous savez, ni u foi, ni loi, ni pretre ; mais je crois qu'elle ne " voudroit pas, comme dit le chanson, qu'ofi cut " chasse le Roi" Her house was soon the resort of all the foreigners then in England, and was one of the first where play took place regularly, as the entertainment of the evening. St. Evremond became immediately one of her most devoted admirers, and spent his life in her society. It is easy to imagine the resource it must have been to him, long deprived of the enjoyment of his native language, his early habits of society, and all the little details of social life, to which a residence in a foreign country often attaches with peculiar fondness. 229 His partiality for her became such, that we can by no means trust the following descrip- tion : " Madame de Mazarin," he says, " n'est " pas plutot arrivee en quelque lieu, qu'elle " y etablit une maison qui fait abandonner toutes " les autres. On y trouve la plus grande liberte " du monde, on y vit avec une egale discretion. " Chacun y est plus commodement que chez soi, " et plus respectueusement qu'a la cour. II est " vrai qu'on dispute quelquefois, mais c'est avec " plus de lumiere que de chaleur. C'est moins " pour contredire les personnes, que pour eclair- " cir les matieres ; plus pour animer les conversa- " tions, que pour aigrir les esprits. Le jeu qu'on " y joue est peu considerable, et le seul divertisse- " ment y fait jouir. Vous n'y voyez sur les visages " ni la crainte de perdre, ni la douleur d' avoir " perdu. Le desinteressement va si loin en " quelqu'uns, qu'on leur reproche de se rejouir " de leur perte, et de s'affliger de leur gain. Le " jeu est suivi des meilleurs repas qu'on puisse <« faire. On y voit tout ce qui vient de France " pour les delicats, tout ce qui vient des Indes " pour les curieux, et les mets communs de- " viennent rares par le gout exquis qu'on leur " donne." — St. Evremond, torn. iv. p. 238. The gaming which he here talks of as a mere amusement was in fact the passion and occupa- tion of her life, against which St. Evremond exerts Q 3 2S0 himself with all the ingenuous perseverance of real friendship. He attacks this pernicious pro- pensity both in verse and in prose, both with wit and with reason ; and his earnest desire to banish its excesses from the society in which he passed his life, has dictated many of his best occasional verses. In some he describes, with characteristic accuracy, the Basset players, who now filled her house every evening. In others he celebrates the charms of her parties, when otherwise con- stituted, and when the company of men of wit and letters admitted of literary conversation. " Que sert a ces messieurs leur illustre science ? " A peine leur fait-on la simple reverence ; " Et les pauvres savans, interdits et confus, " Regardent Mazarin, et ne la connoit plus. " Tout se change ici has, a la fin tout se passe, " Les livres de Bassette ont des autres la place ; " Plutarque est suspendu, Don Quichotte interdit, " Montaigne aupres de vous a perdu son credit, " Racine vous deplait, Patru vous importune, " Et le bon La Fontaine a la nieme fortune.' St. Evremond, torn. iv. p. 112. But the mild philosophy of St. Evremond made as little impression on the mind as his steady attachment on the heart of Madame de Mazarin. Her character, naturally violent, un- restrained by any principle, uncorrected by any education, was steady to nothing but the indul- gence of her own passions, caprices, and whims. 231 While overwhelmed with debts which they prin- cipally occasioned, she seems to have continued as wantonly lavish in the expenditure of money as when, she herself tells us, that with her sisters she amused herself by throwing handsful of their uncle the Cardinal's ill-gotten wealth out of the win- dows of the Palais Royal, to thepopulacebelow.(l) The latter part of such a life may be anticipated, although she lived not beyond the age of 53. She had been more than once indebted to the economy of St. Evremond for the means of sup- plying her immediate wants. She died in a small house at Chelsea, where her body was detained by her numerous and importunate creditors, and not allowed to be transported to France, till an assurance was given by her son, that all their de- mands should be satisfied. " Madame Mazarin's body is not yet gone " from a little house, which she rented of him " (Lord Cheney) at Chelsea; but there have been " many creditors at it to claim debts, which they " say her son writ to my Lord Feversham, to take (1) " Un jour entr'autres que nous n'avions de meilleur " passe-tems, nous jettames plus de trois cent Louis par " les fenetres du Palais Mazarin, pour avoir le plaisir de " faire battre un peuple de valets qui etoit dans la cour." Memoir es de la Duchesse de Mazarin, CEuvres de St. Real, torn. vi. p. 23. Q 4 232 " care about her body for Gravesend, till he re- " turned home to the Duke of Mazarin, who he " had no doubt would satisfy all, and give " directions for her funeral." (1) St. Evremond did not survive the friend he so devotedly admired above four years. Her loss must have been severely felt by him. Habits of life and society of twenty years' standing could at his age neither be altered nor supplied. Such were with him their force, that he had before declined accepting the tardy permission he had at last received to return to France. That any government should have obstinately prolonged (1) Extract of a Letter from Gertrude Pierpoint, Mar- chioness of Hah/ax, to her Lord, 28th June, 1699. Dev. M SS. The Due de Mazarin, who long survived her, had her body embalmed, and, instead of burying, always carried along with him the remains of the person who alive could never endure him. The fate of Madame de Mazarin and her sisters seems as little what might have been expected after their deaths as during their lives. Mary Mancini, the Constabless Colonna, the admired of Louis the Fourteenth, who had almost been Queen of France, and who was married so illustriously in Italy, is buried in a small insignificant church at Pisa (La Madonna della Spina, where a large flat stone in the pavement says only, " Marice Mancini " pulvis ct ossa." In an inscription at the bottom of the same stone, her son the Cardinal Colonna tells us, that, bv his mothers express injunction, no other inscription could be put on her tomb. No amplification certainly could have made it more impressive. 233 the exile of such a man, for such an offence, till an age at which a return to his native country was no longer desirable, gives a strong idea of the ignorance in which Louis the Fourteenth was kept by the malice or vindictiveness of his minis- ters, or their subalterns. St. Evremond's prolonged existence proved how little either had affected the happy equanimity of his mind; and he died at the age of ninety-two, having received from the friends he had acquired in England all the at- tentions during his life, and after his death all the honours, that could have been bestowed on him in the country to which he belonged. With that country, however, and those friends, he kept up an uninterrupted correspondence, which the frequent intercourse at this time sub- sisting between the two countries, and the number of French visitors to the court of White- hall, much facilitated. The Due de Nevers, Madame de Mazarin's brother, a sort of Grand Seigneur Bel-esprit, was more than once in England. In the year 1680 we find him there at the same time with his cousin the Grand Prieur Vendome, with the Due de la Tremou- ille, and with the Marquis de Crequi ; and in 1687 Marianne Mancini, the Duchesse de Bou- illon, paid a visit to her sister, Madame de Mazarin, and to her cousin Mary of Modena, 234 then on the throne of England. The arrival of all these visitors from France must have formed very agreeable incidents in the life of St. Evre- mond, and maintained an interest in the so- ciety of his own country. His correspondence, too, with his contemporaries and with the asso- ciates of his youth was never dropped. To them he addresses the essays on various objects of taste and literature, which had formerly been the subject of their conversation, and the re- membrance of which now amused his mind and occupied his leisure. Among his letters to Ninon de PEnclos, are luckily preserved several of her letters to him. They are remarkable for their good sense, good taste, and unaffected propriety of expres- sion. These qualities, which we must suppose to have been at least as remarkable in her con- versation as in her correspondence, can alone account, and scarcely account, for the inter- course she maintained with many of the most respectable women of her day ; with Madame de Maintenon, with Madame de Coulanges, with Lady Sandwich, during her long residence at Paris (1), and with several others. This inter- (I) Lady Sandwich was the daughter of John Wilmot, the too celebrated Earl of Rochester. At her desire, Ninon de C 2S5 course, however (with the exception of Madame de Maintenon, who had always known her, and who, to their mutual honour, never dropped the acquaintance), must have taken place during the latter part of the long career of Ninon. We cannot suppose Madame de Coulanges re- ceiving or visiting her while her cousin Ma- dame de Sevigne, with whom she was living in uninterrupted intimacy and friendship, was justly complaining of the excesses into which Ninon had successively led both her husband and her son, or indeed while her age allowed her to continue the habits of life in which she had mis-spent her youth. In her more advanced years, spite of all the stories so often repeated of her having lovers at eighty, we see by her letters to St. Evremond, that she perfectly knew how to grow old. In her situation, a talent so singularly difficult must suppose a strong unso- phisticated understanding, and much truth of character. She receives the gallant compliments which St. Evremond (with less good taste than she merited) still continues to bestow on her, as mere remembrances, and replies to them with l'Enclos had given her her portrait, which, at the death of Lady Sandwich, became the property of Horace Walpole Earl of Orford, and is now in the collection at Strawberry-hill. <236 sober good sense, and an expression of much steady attachment. After all, her existence in the society of her day must be considered as one of those odd anomalies in manners which by incalculable combinations of circumstances have sometimes taken place in all countries. Had St. Evremond returned to France at the end of his long exile, in spite of his intermediate correspondence with individuals, he would pro- bably have been much surprised at the altered tone which the developement of the character of Louis the Fourteenth had imposed on the nation. While Mazarin allowed him no part in the government of his kingdom, he rather en- couraged his inclination to gallantry, and his taste for the gayeties and amusements of society; the more so, as the society immediately within the King's power, and what he most sought, wa> that of the Cardinal's niece, the Comtesse de Soissons, Olympia Mancini, married to a prince of the house ofSavoy(l), and made superintend- ent of the household of theyoungQueen. Lodged in the palace, her apartment was the rendezvous of all the young and the gay of the court. A taste for conversation, for an ingenious turn of thought (1) The Comte de Soissons was the. eldest son of Prince Thomas of Savoy, uncle to the then young Duke of Savoy. 237 and of expression, for occasional verses, and a ritual of studied and arbitrary politeness, had already raised to celebrity the house of the Mar- quise de Rambouillet, which, Madame de Mot- teville tells us, " etoit le reduit non-seulement " de tous les beaux esprits, mais de tous les " gens de la cour." In the character which she goes on to give of Madame de Rambouillet, we see little to distinguish her from any other well- bred woman, loving the world, wishing to be always surrounded by a large society, sacrificing much to secure it, treating all the world alike as to their personal merit ; but obsequious to those in power, and anxious of distinction at court. Her maternal feelings could not have been very lively, as of four daughters, three were made nuns, and one only, the much-praised Julie d'Angennes, appeared in the world. The Poetical Garland, whichbearshername, (1) was the contribution of all the wits that fre- quented the Hotel de Rambouillet (2), of whom it gives no very high opinion. It was presented (1) La Guirlande de Julie. (2) The famous Hotel de Rambouillet had been the house of a financier of the name of Rambouillet. It was situated at the extremity of the Rue de Charenton, and had a large garden which went down to the river. It had been called La Jblie Rambouillet. — Memoires de Courart, p. 111. notes. 238 as an offering to the charms of the lady, by the Due de Montausier, who, after a courtship of fourteen years, married her at the ripened age of thirty-eight. Why she remained so long ob- durate to a passion which had been expressed in all the metres "of the babbling earth," no good reason seems to be given. It was in these societies that Louis had early acquired (while all other instruction was denied him) those dignified manners, those attentions to women, and those rigorous forms of politeness, which helped afterwards to conceal his hard and self-indulging character. St. Evremond had left France so soon after the death of Mazarin, that he had never witnessed the king reigning for himself) and indulging in that taste for show and mag- nificence which succeeded in giving an impulse and direction to the character and taste of the country. His fetes and tournaments, his build- ings, both for public ornament and for individual enjoyment, served to produce in all the walks of art (from the genius of Moliere to that of Le Nostre) authors and artists surpassing their age. The assumed national dresses in the Carouzel, which took place in 1662 ; the band of Romans headed by the King, of Persians by his brother, of Americans by the Due de Guise, bringing to- gether no less than 600 persons, must have set to 239 work a host of artisans, and given an increased activity to all the manufactures connected with ornament and luxury. This impulse must necessarily have often pro- duced improvements in matters of more com- mon and general use. The fetes of Versailles in 1664 lasted a week ; history and fable were ransacked for characters, which the favoured in- dividuals of the court were themselves to per- sonate. Thus a part of the entertainment of all depending on their exertions, and a part of the honour devolving on each individual well ac- quitting themselves, must have sharpened the wits of all: — we may suppose, too, that their adopted characters sometimes made them ac- quainted with personages of antiquity, and with traits of history, of which their very neglected education would otherwise have left them ig- norant. It must have had the still greater ad- vantage of bringing them into immediate contact with all the superior talents of their own day, to whom they were obliged to have recourse for the interest of their pleasures, and were indebted for the means of being able to amuse themselves. It is therefore rather from their effects on the future social life in France, than for their own well-known details, that these fetes are here mentioned. Particulars of the entertainments of 240 a court must, in all times and in all countries, much resemble one another. Beauty and youth have always sought courts with eagerness, as one of the theatres of their many triumphs ; have there produced their always-allowed claims, have been admired, envied, flattered, and forgotten. But on these fetes of Louis the Fourteenth, from the talents by which they were honoured, and from the subsequent celebrity of many of the assist- ants, the imagination dwells with peculiar interest, and, losing in the distance from which they are viewed all the heart-burnings and all the envy, all the vexations and all the fatigue by which they must have been accompanied, repre- sents to itself with pleasure the commencement of the flattering triumph of laValiere, — a youth- ful monarch, impressed for the first time with a degree of that diffidence inseparable from real passion ; who, instead of throwing the handker- chief with affronting security to the object of his passion, " Love's awful throne approached by just degrees. 11 And, as he would be happy, learnt to please." Imagination pictures her timid eyes, unconscious of the secret they betrayed, riveted on the King, when, distinguished no less by his youth and manly beauty than by all the jewels of the 241 crown glittering on his dress and on the trap- pings of his horse, he led the brilliant band of knights who were to figure in the ensuing tourna- ment. Thus opened the first day of the week of fetes, during which a court of 600 persons were lodged and entertained at the King's expence, besides the whole host of artists, subalterns, and servants necessary for the preparation and at- tendance on these varied shows. We figure to ourselves Madame de Sevigne, yet young enough to have attracted admiration on her own account, totally occupied with that bestowed on her daughter. Mademoiselle de Sevigne first ap- peared at court the preceding year, and now made one of the performers in the ballets danced by the King, which formed a part of these enter- tainments. We see the delighted eyes of the happy mother following the object of her affec- tions in the assumed character of a Shepherdess, of a Nereid, and of anOmphale, which fell to her lot in these exhibitions. The variety of costume in which they took place, gave scope not only to a display of the beauty, but of the grace and taste of the performers. Benserade celebrated the charms of Mademoiselle de Sevigne in verses hardly less complimentary to the mother than to the daughter. The talent of this court poet for bespoken verses and varied forms of adulation R 242 was unrivalled ; it was that of his day, and of the fetes which called it forth. Of a very different nature were the dramas with which they were dignified by the genius of Moliere. His Princess d' Elide was given on the fourth day of this week : it was full of allusions, now lost, to the sentiments, the interests, and the circumstances of the moment. The whole of the first scene between the young prince and his confidant evidently alludes to the state of the King's sentiments for Mademoiselle de la Valiere, and takes pains (probably little wanted) to encourage him in the indulgence of his passion, and to convince him that the weaknesses of love were necessary to the character of an accomplished prince. Every succeeding evening produced a new piece of Moliere's. The Fdcheiuv was given on the fifth day, the three first acts of Tartuffe on the sixth day, and Le Marriage Force on the seventh. If any other part of these entertainments equalled that of the theatre, they certainly have remained unrivalled, and deserved all the excessive ad- miration bestowed on them by their contempo- raries. Voltaire recalls this period of the life of Louis in the person of a disappointed stranger visiting Paris for the first time in later days, and no longer finding any remains of the magnificence 243 and the triumphs which he had heard extolled, and came to witness : — * Quels plaisirs, quand vos jours marques par vos conquetes " S'embellissoient encore a r*e"clat de vos fetes ! " L'^tranger admiroit dans votre auguste cour " Cent filles de heros, conduites par l'amour ; " Ces belles Montbazons, ces Chatillons brillantes, " Ces piquantes Bouillons, ces Nemours si touchantes, " Dansant avec Louis sous de berceaux de fleurs, tc Et du Rhin subjuge couronnant les vainqueurs. u Perrault du Louvre auguste, elevant la merveille, " Le Grand Conde pleurant aux vers du grand Corneille ; u Tandis que plus aimable, et plus maitre des coeurs, " Racine, d'Henriette exprimoit les douleurs, " Et voilant ce beau nom, du nom de Berenice " Des feux les plus touchans peignoit le sacrifice." (1 ) It is not the business of this work to follow Louis the Fourteenth from the fetes and festivals of his youth, through the military pomps and pageantry of his riper years. They were all sug- gested by the same ideas of grandeur, the same love of show, and the same personal vanity. These ideas being common both to himself and to his people, were reflected back by the court which surrounded him, and combined into a species of enthusiasm which for a time usurped (1) Le Russe a Paris. Contes en Vers, Satires et Poesies melees. R 2 244 the place of every other, and obstructed the slow progress of more rational ideas. In his march through Flanders in I67O, he was fol- lowed by his whole court. He had hitherto always accompanied his troops on horseback ; he now for the first time appeared to them in a coach with glass windows, then a very recent luxury. (1) Of these lumbering vehicles exact representations yet remain in the pictures of Vandermeulan. They contained six, eight, and sometimes nine persons, as all the royal family, in the first degree of affinity, in certain great ceremonies went together. (2) (1) Bassompierre had brought the first carriage with glass windows from Venice. (2) They were still in use during the reign of Louis the Sixteenth, and the author remembers having seen the un- fortunate Marie Antoinette incased in one of these clumsy conveyances when, in the year 1785, she went to Notre Dame to return thanks for the birth of the last ill-fated Dauphin. The same vehicle contained the Comtesse de Provence, the Comtesse d'Artois, Madame Elizabeth, the Duchesse d'Orleans, and the Princesse de Conti. The fa- tigue and ennui of her long passage through the crowded streets of Paris in such a carriage was not rewarded or lightened by a single note of applause from the surrounding multitude, nor one consoling expression of that admiration formerly lavished on her every public appearance. Se- parated from the King, who formed no part of the proces- sion, the public seemed to profit by the occasion to evince to her individually, their altered sentiments. m5 In the carriage with Louis the Fourteenth, during his campaign ofl670, travelled the Queen with Madame de Montespan for her dame d'honneur, Madame (Henrietta of England), and la grande Mademoiselle. However the company might have pleased the King, we cannot conceive their being very agreeable travelling companions to one another. Madame de la Valiere was still the reigning mistress, and it was on this occa- sion (the only one where she seems to have braved the Queen), that she ordered her postil- lions to leave the great road, and take a short cut over the open country, that she might arrive at head quarters before the court. (1) On a second progress through Flanders in 1674, all attentions and honours, except those of mere etiquette to the Queen, were for Madame de Montespan, then in the zenith of her favour; and we know she was not of a disposition to con- ceal or to soften any of the advantages the King's passion gave her over her legitimate rival. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, again one of the party, mentions the jealousy and vexation of the Queen when on her road from Tournay to Amiens (where the court was ordered to wait (1) See Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, torn. iv. p. 197. R 3 246 for the King), while stopping to dine she saw Madame de Montespan pass in a carriage of the King's, with four gens-d'armes sent from the army to escort her. Her journeys afterwards were made with something like royal attendance. Madame de Sevigne, who followed her on the road to the baths of Vichy in May I676, says, " Nous suivons les pas de Madame de Montes- " pan; nous nous faisons conter par-tout ce qu'elle " fait, ce qu'elle mange, ce qu'elle dort. Elle est " dans une caleche a six chevaux, avec la petite " Thianges(her niece). Elleauncarrossederriere, " attele de meme, avec six femmes. Elle a deux " fourgons, six mulets, et dix ou douze homines " a cheval. sans ses officiers. Son train est de " 45 personnes. Elle trouve la chambre et son " lit tout prets ; elle se couche en arrivant, et " mange tres-bien." — Lettres de Sevig?ie, torn. hi. p. 418. It is unnecessary farther to dwell on the often- told tale of the brilliant days of Louis the Four- teenth. Madame de Sevigne has adorned it with all the graces of her inimitable pen, and has often drawn from it reflections the more excellent, from being generally suggested as much by the heart as by the understanding. St. Simon lias entered into its details with a caustic truth, rare from the mind of a devoted courtier ; and 247 Dangeau has recorded the trifling incidents of every day, which often present much more to the mind of the reader than ever entered the head of their historian. It is our business only to notice the change produced on the manners of the nation by the altered taste of the sovereign in his latter days. La Bruyere says of these times, comparing them with the past, " Le courtisan avoit ses cheveux, " etoit en chausses et en pourpoint, portoit de " large canons, et il etoit libertin. Cela ne sied " plus. II porte perruque, l'habit serre, le bas uni, " et il est devot." — LaBruyere, torn. ii. p. 225. " L'exemple d'un monarque ordonne et se fait suivre : " Quand Auguste buvoit, la Pologne etoit ivre; " Quand Louis le Grand bmloit d'un tendre amour, " Paris devint Cy there, et tout suivoit la cour ; " Lorsqu'il devint devot, et ardent a la priere, " Le lache courtisan marmotta son breViaire." CEuvres de Frederick le Grand, Epitre au Comte Hoditz. The false policy and the bigoted observances which disgraced the latter part of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, seem to have been more the effects of an ignorance which was imposed on by others, than any predispositions of his own to persecution. His language on these matters, in his advice to the Dauphin, written under his dictation by Pelisson, and published in the com- pilation which bears the name of Les CEuvres de r 4 248 Louis Quatorze, breathes a very different spirit from that of the revocation of the edict of Nantes (1) ; and his refusing to comply with the violences continually suggested to him by le Tellier against the Cardinal de Noailles, the virtuous Archbishop of Paris, although he con- curred in every lesser act of vexation towards him, proves weakness rather than malevolence in a character armed with absolute power. ( L 2) The same weakness which made him thus treat the man of whom he had said, when removing him from the see of Chalons to that of Paris, that had he known a more deserving or (1) " II me semble, mon fils, que ceux qui vouloient " employer des remedes extremes et violens, ne con- " noissent pas la nature de ce mal, cause en partie par la " chaleur des esprits, qu'il faut laisser passer et s'eteindre in- " sensiblement, plutot que de la rallumer de nouveau par une " forte contradiction, sur-tout quand la corruption n'est pas " borne a un petit nombre connu, mais repandu dans toutes " les parties de Petat ; et d'ailleurs, les reformateurs 11 disoient vrai visiblement en plusieurs choses. Le meil- M leur moyen pour re"duire peu-a-peu les Hugenots de mon " royaume £toit de ne point presser par aucun rigueur " nouvelle contre eux." (2) " Le Roi l'accabloit de tous les degouts qui auroient " terrasse un pretre courtisan ; mais quand on lui parloit de 11 la depose, de I'enlever, et de Tenferraer, il eprouvoit plus " de trouble que le pieux archeveque objet de ses menaces." — Histoire de France pendant le Dix-septiemc Siccle, tom.i. p. 81, 249 more virtuous prelate, he should not have preferred Noailles ; the same weakness made him neglect Catinat because he was a protestant, employ Venddme, who was a notorious profligate without either religion or morals, and sign the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Le Montey observes, that the existence of Louis the Fourteenth may be divided into two parts, his heroic and his subjugated life. Imme- diately after the death of Mazarin, his conduct had risen far above what was expected from his natural talents, and the disgraceful neglect of his education ; while, in the latter half of his life, his character and conduct seem to have been prematurely enfeebled. His robust health, his insensibility to excesses of heat and cold, and his power of supporting fatigue, which were as remarkable as his other personal endowments, were broken in upon by a painful disorder before he was fifty. — " Avec " la sante disparurent les victoires, les amours, " et Montespan ; avec les infirmites arrivoient " les dragonades, le Jansenism, les confesseurs, " le credit des batards, F obsession de la gou- " vernante, les intrigues de la veuve Scarron. — Monarchie de Louis Quatorze, p. 412. This veuve Scarron, in spite of all the abuse inevitably excited by the remarkable caprice of c 250 fortune which converted la veuve Scar r on into the wife of Louis the Fourteenth, appears to have been naturally neither a very ambitious nor a very narrow-minded woman. The extra- ordinary circumstances in which she was placed, made her both : the first from having been elevated to almost regal power, the second from being a proselyte in religion. The effect of this last circumstance is avowed by herself in a letter to Madame de Frontenac about the year 1680. " Ruvigne est intraitable, il a dit au roi que j'etois nee Calviniste, et que je l'avois " ete jusqu'a mon, entree a la cour. Ced " nC engage a approuver des c hoses fort opposee " a mes sentimcns. II y a long terns que je n'en " ai plus a moi." — Lett res de Madame de Main tenon, torn. i. p. 77. Her character meanwhile retained much of the good derived from the difficulties and indi- gence in which she had passed her youth. The friendly intercourse she never ceased to main- tain with several persons, whose intimacy and protection she had shared in times which a more ordinary character would have wished to forget, says much both for her heart and her understanding. That heart and understanding must be pitied, when placed in a situation, how- ever elevated, which punished every feeling ol 251 the one, precluded every enjoyment of the other, and exposed to public unpopularity, with no consolation but the cold gratifications of ambition. She had supplanted an imperious and pro- voking rival ; she had satisfied the scruples of her conscience ; she had succeeded to a more complete dominion than any of her predecessors over the will and opinions of One whose breath was still power, and whose favour was fame. Yet is the sincerity of her repeated and earnest expressions of ennui and melancholy not to be doubted. She had attained a situation which she could not, and which nobody would have abandoned ; of which she speaks as a sage, while often acting in it like a timid and short-sighted woman. — Of all persons, she must have felt the most, that courts confer not that happiness which they prevent those accustomed to them from finding elsewhere. The task of which she complains, of amusing a being no longer am usable (1), must have fallen heavy on the mind of her who could, in absolute indigence, and without any assured means of subsistence, write on the subject of a marriage then proposed for her in the follow- ing terms to Ninon de l'Enclos, who might (1) " D'amuser un etre, qui n'est plus amusable.' Q52 be supposed not to entertain very scrupulous ideas of the sentiments necessary in such a con- nexion. " Mars 8. 1666. Dans Petat ou je " suis, je ne saurez me dire trop souvent que " vous approuvez le courage que j'ai eu, de m'y " mettre. — A la Place Royale, on me blame ; " a St. Germain, on me loue ; et nulle part on " ne songe ni a me plaindre, ni a me servir. — " Que pensez-vous de la comparaison qu'on a " ose faire de cet homme a Mr. Scarron ? — O " Dieu ! quelle difference ! Sans fortune, sans " plaisirs, il attiroit chez moi la bonne com- " pagnie. Celui-ci 1'auroit hai et eloigne. Mr. " Scarron avoit cet enjouement que tout le " monde sait, et cet bonte d'esprit, que presque 11 personne ne lui a connu. Celui-ci ni Pa, ni bril- " lant, ni badin,ni solide: s'il parle, il est ridicule. " Mon mart avoit le fond excellent. Je l'avois " corrige de ses licences. II n'etoit ni fbu ni " vicieux par le cceur, d'une probite reconnue, " d'un d^sinteressement sans example. C * * 11 n'aime que ses plaisirs, et n'est estime que 44 d'une jeunesse perdue. Livre aux femmes, ** dupe de ses amis, haut, emporte, avare, et " prodigue — au moins, m'a-t-il paru tout cela." Lettres de Maintenon, torn. i. p. 3S. The melancholy reverses of the latter part of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth ; his army 253 beaten, his finances ruined, his cities and country depopulated, not only by war, but by the more destructive hostility of religious persecution; were alone sufficient to account for a cessation of that magnificence, of those fetes, and of the dispo- sition to indulge in them, which had so long blinded both himself and his people to the evils he was accumulating on their heads. Still, how- ever, an habitual and imposing pomp surrounded his court. An habitual respect was entertained for him ; an habitual remembrance of his past triumphs, and an habitual obedience to his will. These might have prolonged, in his own eyes, the vision of his infallibility, had not his interior life been tormented by the interminable quarrels of Jesuits and Jansenists, and the little concord existing between the confessor and the wife, to whom he alternately applied for worldly con- solation and spiritual security. He saw his family dying around him, and witnessed within one year the loss of the three next successors to his throne. Another death, which took place at the same time, was yet more immediately destructive of his interior comfort. The Dauphine, Duchess of Burgundy, seems to have been the only member of the royal family from whom he received those delightful attentions, and in whom he encouraged that 2.54 perfect familiarity and freedom of mind, which allows the gaiety of youth to communicate something of its exhilarating spirit to the failing senses of age. Her apparent frankness, her childish tricks, and the liberties she took in his presence, some of which must have been those alluded to bv a distinguished English writer on this period, when he professes omitting the details of many habits of Louis the Fourteenth and his family as " too indelicate for the perusal of the hum- " blest class of English readers" — it must be in the highest, and not the humblest class of readers in any country, where forgiveness can be hoped for any childishness, any nonsense, or any tricks, however little consonant with pro- priety, which could relieve tor a moment the intolerable ennui that age, etiquette, the satiety of pleasure, and the melancholy sameness of magnificence, had accumulated on the head of Louis the Fourteenth. To his selfish character, therefore, the death of the Duchess of Burgundy must have been more felt than that of her husband and their child, or that of his own son, which immediately preceded or followed it. Of the first Dauphin (known by the name of A/oflA neur) the insignificance and nullity of character were so great, and his dulness on all subjects so 255 profound, that not even the interested activity of a cabal of intriguers, who surrounded the heir of a king of past seventy, could raise him either into activity or into notice. " On le trouvoit pendant " des journees entieres couche dans son lit, ou " bien ii se trainoit sur une chaise, une canne a " la main, dont il frappoit ses souliers sans mot " dire. Enfin, il restoit des jours entiers assis et " immobile, les yeux fixes sur une table, une des " coudes appuyes dessus, se bouchant des mains " les deux oreilles, et vecut plusieurs annees, " pere du Roi d'Espagne, et fils de notre Roi, cl sans qu'il eut l'idee, ou la hardiesse, d'employer " le credit qu'il devoit avoir aupres de Pun et " de l'autre, pour obtenir la moindre grace. — Mem. die Due de Richelieu, torn. i. p. 113. This eldest son of the King of France, this father of the King of Spain, died at Meudon, unlamented and unthought of by any body, but half a dozen intriguing women, who had got pos- session of his passive mind and person. Of the Dauphin Duke of Burgundy it is im- possible to believe all the bad, or all the good, reported of him. Le Montey remarks, " Ce 11 Prince qui avoit re$u des passions violentes, " et une education sainte, epuiser tour-a-tour les " exces qui peuvent produire des causes si " contraires." — Monarchie de Louis Quatorze, 256 p. 444. And it is perhaps lucky that he died in time to preserve the wholesome idea that edu- cation can perform the miracles it was supposed to have done in his case. But the feelings excited by all these deaths were envenomed to the King by the horrible suspicion, that they had occurred, not as a dis- pensation of Providence, but by poison, and that poison administered by one of his own family. This was continually urged, by the ignorance, u well as by the private interests of those about him. And credit should be given to the King for trusting to the opinion of the single one of his medical advisers who declared against the supposed poison, as much as to the adviser who was bold enough, in sucli circumstances, to maintain such an opinion against all his col- leagues. ( 1 ) The rigorous winter under which the whole of Europe had suffered in the year 1709s was succeeded in France by a famine, which uniting its dreadful effects to the depopulating victories of Marlborough and Eugene, reduced that coun- try to the most lamentable state of internal misery. While Europe was still admiring the gilding, the statues, and the fountains of Yev- (1) Marechal, who was surgeon to Louis the Fourteenth. 257 sailles and Marly, the armies of France were recruited from a starving population, which sought bread more than honour under her standards. The memoirs of Dangeau (too good a courtier to dwell willingly on the subject) are full of reports of risings in the provinces, and partial riots in Paris, from mere starvation, and the impossibility of procuring the means of existence. Mention is likewise made of a circumstance which shows that to excess of misery was joined excess of misgovernment. All the regiments in the towns of Flanders and Alsace successively mutinied, from being obliged by their officers to take bread from the commissaries of the army at a higher price than they could obtain it in the market, and were only pacified by money being distributed among them. (1) In these disastrous circumstances, Louis the Fourteenth was indebted to the ignominious terms offered to him by his triumphant enemies, for calling forth a vigour of mind and a dignity of conduct, which he had hitherto only shown on trifling occasions, and to an idolizing court. When the allies proposed in 1709, as the only terms on which even a truce was to be granted, (1) he Montey, Suppressed Paragraphs of Dangeau, p. 272. s 258 that he should within two months join their arms to drive his own grandson from the throne of Spain, he encouraged his starving population to further exertions and to prolonged sufferings, by declaring that he must ever prefer making war on his enemies rather than on his own children ; and that if his armies continued un- successful, he was determined, in spite of his age and infirmities, to put himself at the head of his nobility, and die in the field. The feel- ings of Frenchmen still responded to this lan- guage from their sovereign ; and in spite of another successful campaign of Marlborough, and the battle of Malplaquet, their devoted bravery, and the success of Villars against Prince Eugene at Denain, saved France from the immediate invasion which was meditated by the alii From this time to the death of Louis the Fourteenth, within five years afterwards, the universal and bigotted devotion of the court trayed its hypocrisy. The old and grave were, or pretended to be, occupied with religious contro- versies, which recalled those of the last w of the western empire. The young were eagerly anticipating a reward for present restraints, in the expected gaiety of a new reign, and the licence of which the character of the Duke of Orleans had already given assurance. 159 CHAPTER VL THE CHANGE OF MANNERS WHICH TOOK PLACE IN ENG- LAND AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. KING WIL- LIAM. QUEEN MARY. THE AMUSEMENTS AND HABITS OF SOCIAL LIFE DURING THE REIGNS OF KING WIL- LIAM AND OF QUEEN ANNE. — DUCHESS OF NORFOLK^ DIVORCE. DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH, LADY MA- SHAM. QUEEN ANNE. LADY BETTY GERMAINE. DUCHESS OF QUEENSBURY. LADY M. W. MONTAGUE. BOLINGBROKE. POPE. SWIFT. STEELE. GAY. PRIOR. CONGREVE. DEGRADED STATE OF THE FINE ARTS. The changes which took place in the social ex- istence of France, during the long reign of Louis the Fourteenth, occupy a period which in English history extends from before the restoration of Charles the Second to after the accession of the house of Hanover (1) ; and it is as remarkable for the different conduct and sentiments of the two nations, as any period of their preceding civil wars. From the momentary delirium of the Restor- ation the English nation (now long accustomed (1) From 1660 to 1717- s 2 260 to think on subjects of government) soon re- covered. The popish plot on the one side, and the arbitrary measures of domestic government which immediately followed on the other, soon convinced both parties that nothing had been done by either to secure what all had been fighting for. The Revolution of 1688 ensued, in which few things are perhaps more commend- able, or less borrowed from the character of our neighbours, than the leaders of that revolution having wisely contented themselves with aban- doning as little as possible the established order both of government and of succession, and ral- lying as much as possible to settled institutions ; satisfied with real securities, instead of apparent differences. The change in social life and manners was of a much more evident nature. The early years of William had been past in a country, and in circumstances, not favourable to the formation of a popular character. Born at the end of seven months, in an apartment yet hung with black for the death of his father and the execution of his grandfather, his health and organization were languid and feeble. He lost his mother when only ten years old, and w r as then left almost in infancy in the hands of the popular faction of his country, which was neither friendly to him- 261 selfi his family, or its pretensions. Thus early deprived of the tenderness of parents, and of that first cultivation of the heart which can seldom be received from strangers, he was called, at the age of twenty-two, to head the armies of his country, in an occasion of peculiar danger and despondency. The whole of his after life seems to have received a decided im- pression from these circumstances of his early youth. His steady and unshaken mind, and great military talents, were called forth and perfected by the extraordinary difficulties in which he was placed; while his naturally sedate and serious nature, and his acquired reserve, precluded his possessing any of the engaging attributes of youth. Even the persons the most aware of his virtues, lamented their cold, inattractive com- plexion. He had no taste for literature, or the fine arts, either by nature or cultivation ; his clumsy addition to the collegiate magnificence of Cardinal Wolsey at Hampton Court, was a poor and ill-judged imitation of the grandeur of Ver- sailles, in a country where the expenditure was to be granted by votes of parliament, and not depending on the will of the prince. William abhorred show as much as Louis loved it, and was soon disgusted by the enormous charges of s 3 264 please by an implicit devotion to his will. They show, too, that she had adopted much of his habitual reserve to the persons about her, ne- cessary perhaps in those uncertain and trea- cherous times. She says, " I go to Kensington " as often as I can for change of air ; but then 1 " can never be quite alone, neither can I com- " plain : that would be some ease ; but I have " nobody whose humour and circumstances " agree enough with mine to speak my mind " freely to ; besides, I must hear about business, " which being a thing I am so new in, and so " unfit for, does but break my brains the more, " and not ease my heart." She has before de- clared that she never does any thing now with- out thinking he may be in the greatest danger. " And yet I must see company on my set dn\ B, " I must play twice a week, nay, I must laugh M and talk, though never so much against my will. " I believe I dissemble very ill to those who know " me ; yet I must endure it : all my motions are " watched, and all I do so observed, that if I eat " less, or speak less, or look more grave, all is " lost, in the opinion of the world ; so that I have " this misery added to that of your absence, and " my fears for your dear person, — that 1 must " grin when my heart is ready to break, and talk 265 " when my heart is so oppressed I can scarce " breathe." (1) The sufferings of persons placed in the most brilliant and envied circumstances are here forcibly recalled to us, and the misery of all situations so exalted as to preclude the com- forts of confidence and sympathy. That Mary should have allowed herself to be persuaded by any arguments of supposed necessity, on her first arrival in London, to enter with a laughing countenace the palace at Whitehall from which her father had fled but a few days before ; that she should have run about with an idle curiosity from room to room (which even her panegyrist Burnet allows to have been the case) proves a want of all individual character, perhaps as much as a want of feeling. Her being induced to bespeak the Spanish Friar for the play at which she made her first appearance at the theatre, can only be attributed to her having been misled by persons as ignorant as herself, or perhaps treacherously seeking to place her in an odious light. (2) Her quarrel with her sister Anne proves they were equally without any elevation of sentiment. But Mary possessed the power, (1) Appendix to Macpherson's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 166. (2) Note from Lord Nottingham's Letters in Macpherson's Memoirs. 26* please by an implicit devotion to his will. They show, too, that she had adopted much of his habitual reserve to the persons about her, ne- cessary perhaps in those uncertain and trea- cherous times. She says, " I go to Kensington " as often as I can for change of air ; but then 1 " can never be quite alone, neither can I com- " plain : that would be some ease ; but I have " nobody whose humour and circumstances " agree enough with mine to speak my mind " freely to ; besides, I must hear about business, " which being a thing I am so new in, and so " unfit for, does but break my brains the more, " and not ease my heart." She has before de- clared that she never does any thing now with- out thinking he may be in the greatest danger. " And yet I must see company on my set days, " I must play twice a week, nay, I must laugh «' and talk, though never so much against my will. " I believe I dissemble very ill to those who know " me ; yet I must endure it : all my motions are u w r atched, and all I do so observed, that if I eat " less, or speak less, or look more grave, all is " lost, in the opinion of the world ; so that I have " this misery added to that of your absence, and " my fears for your dear person, — that 1 must " grin when my heart is ready to break, and talk 26.5 " when my heart is so oppressed I can scarce " breathe." (1) The sufferings of persons placed in the most brilliant and envied circumstances are here forcibly recalled to us, and the misery of all situations so exalted as to preclude the com- forts of confidence and sympathy. That Mary should have allowed herself to be persuaded by any arguments of supposed necessity, on her first arrival in London, to enter with a laughing countenace the palace at Whitehall from which her father had fled but a few days before ; that she should have run about with an idle curiosity from room to room (which even her panegyrist Burnet allows to have been the case) proves a want of all individual character, perhaps as much as a want of feeling. Her being induced to bespeak the Spanish Friar for the play at which she made her first appearance at the theatre, can only be attributed to her having been misled by persons as ignorant as herself, or perhaps treacherously seeking to place her in an odious light. (2) Her quarrel with her sister Anne proves they were equally without any elevation of sentiment. But Mary possessed the power, (1) Appendix to Macpherson's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 166. (2) Note from Lord Nottingham's Letters in Macpherson's Memoirs. 266 and therefore ought to have been the most pla- cable. Her death, at the age of thirty-three, was more politically than individually regretted. All the time-serving part of the nation, whose renunci- ation of King James was not grounded on the true footing of his forfeiture of the throne from misconduct, were deprived of their only excuse, — that of having transferred their allegiance to his eldest legitimate heir. Those whose principles as well as conduct had deeply involved them in the measure of inviting over the Prince of Orange, must have trembled for the shock it was likely to give to his authority. And the clergy of the church of England, many of whom seem to have dreaded the supposed Calvinistical prejudices of William almost as much as the Popish propensities of James, thought them- selves deprived of their only protection in the orthodoxy of the Queen. The superiority of William's character and measures, and the solid good sense of the English people, ill duly appreciating what he had secured to them, were perhaps never more evident than in his retaining quiet possession of the crown, after the death of her, in whom his only right (except that of conquest) was centred. It was the people in whom these opinion 267 were the most strongly grounded. In an account given to James's ministers, by a person sent on purpose to sound the general disposition of the English towards his return at this period, the writer says, that he had certainly more friends than enemies among the upper orders of the people, on account of the heavy taxes and other grievances. This the writer concludes from the indulgence shown to Jacobites by the lieutenants of counties, justices of the peace, &c. and from the conversation of the gentlemen all over the country. " But for the common people, " they are still venomous, and the magistrates " in most corporation towns round the nation " no less malignant. They own their present " burthens very heavy, yet profess openly, that " they would rather carry it on and on, than let " Popery, by restoring the King, steal in upon " them ; and when asked how they can read the 11 King's last declaration, and observe the pro- " mises therein made, and yet doubt either of " the establishment or tranquillity of their own " church, they answer that, being certain some " of these promises will be broke, they find " reason to doubt whether any of them will be " kept." (1) Of the unpopularity of William (1) Macpherson's State Papers. 268 with the upper orders of society he was himself well aware, and was sometimes disgusted with the manner in which it was enforced to him by the conduct of parliament. The Duke of Shrewsbury tells Lord Somers, in a letter writ- ten soon after the dismissal of the Dutch guards, that the King had mentioned to him (the Duke of Shrewsbury) a design he had had of leaving England, " soon after he came over, occasioned " by something that had gone wrong in the " first parliament, and speaks with uneasiness of " the King's second design to go away, when " the guards were taken from him. ,, (l) The court of two persons of the characters of William and Mary was not likely to have been very gay, even if the circumstances attending their having mounted the throne had not formed a revolution in manners still greater than in government. All the sober part of the nation from moral reasons, all the Whigs from political principles, all Protestants from aversion to Papists, all (1) These words are copied from a letter of Mr. Charles Yorke (the Chancellor's son) to his brother, Sir Joseph Yorke, giving an account of his examination of Lord Somers's papers, at Bellbar, in 174 c 2. The papers were afterwards almost all unfortunately burnt at a tire in Mr. Yorke's chambers in Lincoln's Inn. 269 united in abhorrence of the manners of the late court ; for the court, at the period of which we are speaking, still exercised an authority in man- ners, an importance in the country, and a na- tional consideration, which ceased soon after the Bill of Rights had defined exactly its powers, and the little that court could or could not do. All social communication between the courts of France and England, all adoption of her fashions or amusements, likewise ceased, or became sus- pected. None of the numerous French who had visited England during the reigns of Charles and James remained, except those whom the re- vocation of the edict of Nantes had exiled on account of their religion. The Duchess of Mazarin was still detained by her debts, in spite of King William having generously continued to her the pension of 4000/. a year which she had first received from Charles ; and St. Evremond was now too old to avail himself of a permission to return to a country which had so long re- jected him. The religious education and sober habits in which both William and Mary had been brought up, made their court immediately assume an ap- pearance of much decency and regularity of conduct. The short and distracted reign o£ James could hardly be separated, either in man- 270 ners or morals, from the twenty licentious years which had preceded it. The stage, we find, had neither reformed its language nor its precepts ; for some of our most defective comedies in these particulars, as has been before observed, date from the first ten years after the Revolution. This became a sufficient reason, why, when more refined manners and a better taste in morals prevailed, the theatres ceased to be a popular amusement in the upper ranks of so- ciety, and justified the neglect of them which continued during the early part of the last cen- tury. Several distinguished singers having visited this country during the reigns of Charles and James, a taste had been acquired for Italian music : it was now about to be established in a theatre exclusively dedicated to it, and patron- ised by the nobility and the good company of London, as a less exceptionable entertainment than the national theatre. It certainly had no chance of corrupting either the heart or the un- derstanding, neither of which were at all called into action at these exhibitions. " Mrs. Tofts, a mere Englishwoman, in the " part of Camilla, courted by Nicolini, an Italian, " without understanding a syllable each other " said ;" Mrs. Tofts chanting her recitative in English, in answer to his Italian ; " and, on the 271 " other hand, Valentirri courting amorously in " the same language a Dutchwoman, who could " neither speak English nor Italian, and com- " mitted murder on our good old English with " as little understanding as a parrot, could in- " terest nothing but the eyes and ears. "(1) These particulars may give us some idea of the strange incongruities which accompanied the infancy of the establishment of the opera in Lon- don. No wonder that, in the beginning of the next reign, Steele and Addison exerted them- selves to recall the public taste to the English stage. They had both of them endeavoured, by example as well as precept, to purify it from that alloy of coarseness of sentiment and of expression which debased the otherwise sterling and incom- parable comedies of Congreve, Vanburgh, and Farquhar. In the Tatler and Spectator they strove to lead the public taste towards admiring such pieces as The Haunted House, The Con- scious Lovers, Grief a la Mode, &c. &c. If a coarse thread is still sometimes found traversing the tissue of their dialogue, we feel sure it was a compromise between the yet unsettled taste of the day and the purity of that of the authors. During most part of the reign of King William, (1) See Chetwode's General History of the Stage. 272 the young and active in the upper orders of society, those who must always give the tone to it, were so occupied, either directly or indirectly, with the political and religious parties, which still existed in the country, that they had little time for the quiet amusements of literature, and no need of fictitious excitements. Whig and Tory, Papist and Protestant, were then designations which struck so home to the interests, to the honour, and even to the life of those distinguished by them ; so much depended on their triumph or defeat, and their ulterior suc- cess was. yet so uncertain, that every lively feeling of the gay and thoughtless, and every serious speculation of the cautious and wise, must have been concentrated on these subjects. They per- vaded the whole mass of society. Every thing connected with literature or the arts, and every trifling incident, received a colour from the party that was supposed to favour or to oppose it. Of the strong impression permanently made, by the circumstances of this period of our history, we may best judge by observing that even now, when Whig and Tory are become mere names for two modifications of political opinion, both admissible in our well-poised government ; when Papist and Protestant are become mere differ- ences of creed, unconnected with any political 273 inferences ; when the whole bearings of these questions are so entirely changed, that the pro- tection of religious toleration, now 7 claimed by the Whigs, was then exclusively the doctrine of the Tories ; that even now, the former ideas respecting religious differences still remain en- graved so forcibly on a great portion of the pub- lic mind. Taverns and coffee-houses were then the ren- dezvous of the men, for the discussion of business, as well as convivial motives, A house had been opened for making and selling coffee as early as the year 1652, by a Greek servant of Sir Nicholas Crisp, a Turkey merchant, whom he had brought to England with him. During the Protectorate, and probably till the Restoration, coffee-houses, if they were much increased in number, were merely places in which coffee was to be found by those who happened to like this new beverage. Immediately after the Restoration, however, they rapidly multiplied, and soon became the separate resort of societies of persons united in the same pursuits, or sentiments, or pleasures. They thus supplied the place of the various clubs we have since seen established. Although no exclusive subscription belonged to any of these coffee-houses, we find, by the account which Colley Cibber gives of his first visit to 274 Will's in Covent Garden, that it required an in- troduction to this society not to be considered as an impertinent intruder. There the veteran Dryden had long presided over all the acknow- ledged wits and poets of the day, and those who had the pretension to be reckoned among them. The politicians assembled at the St. James's coffee-house, from whence all the articles of po- litical news in the first Tatlers are dated. The learned frequented the Grecian coffee-house in Devereux Court. Locket's in Gerard Street Soho, and Pontac's were the fashionable taverns, where the young and gay met to dine ; and White's and other chocolate houses seem to have been the resort of the same company in the morning. Three o'clock, or at latest four, was the dining hour of the most fashionable persons in London ; for in the country no such late hours had as yet been adopted, in London, therefore, soon after six, the men began to assemble at the coffee-house they frequented, if they were not setting in for hard drinking, which seems to have been less indulged in private houses than in taverns. The ladies made visits to one another, which, it must be owned, was a much less waste of time, when considered as an amusement of the evening, than now, as being a morning occupation. Every body going out much at the same %J5 time, we may suppose they were, as now, lucky enough often to miss each other. When they did not, or when they met by agreement, Qua- drille and Ombre were the amusement of the evening. Games of chance, and the high play at Bassette and at Loo, of which the court had set the example during the reign of Charles, ceased with his life, or took place only on New- year's day, while a public ball continued to be given at court on that festival. James and his Queen continued evening drawing-rooms ; and Queen Mary, as we see by the letters to King William already quoted, received her immediate court twice a week, and twice a week had evening drawing-rooms, at which she played at Ombre or Quadrille. After the embarrassing circumstance which took place at the first visit she made to the theatre, we are told that she avoided making a second, although a day had been appointed for that purpose ; an ill-counselled measure, which must have been a triumph to all the Jacobites, and seemed to tell the public that, according to the proverb, she had taken the cap that fitted her. " The only day her Majesty gave herself " the diversion of a play, and that on which she " designed to see another, has furnished the " town with discourse for near a month. The " choice of the play was the Spanish Fryar, t 2 276 " acted June 1689, the only play forbid by the " late King. Some unhappy expressions among " these that follow put her in some disorder, " and forced her to hold up her face, and often " look behind her, and call for her palatine and " hood, and any thing she could next think of; " while those who were in the pit before her " turned their heads over their shoulders, and " all in general directed their looks towards " her whenever their fancy led them to make " an application of what was said. ***** " But however the observations then made " furnished with talk tili something else hap- " pened, which gave as much occasion for 11 discourse ; for another play being ordered to " be acted, the Queen came not, being taken up " with other diversions. " (1) Great societies of persons in private hoi. on set days, or by invitation, since distinguished by the names of routs, drums, or assemblies, had not yet commenced ; nor were balls an enter- tainment given by individuals, except at the great holidays of the church, and on occasion of marriages. This ceremony was conducted in a very different manner from what the delicacy of (]) Letter of Lord Nottingham. See Mc.cphcrson's M> - woirs, vol. ii. Appendix, p. 78. 277 later times has prescribed. The bride and bride- groom then were, or were supposed to be, among the gayest of their gay associates, collected to witness their happiness. No retirement carried them away from the immediate congratulations of their friends ; and a series of dinners, with every member of the families on both sides, followed directly the wedding-day, and kept them in a course of festivities which, to many couples, must have been a bad introduction to the sober dulness of their ensuing life. In the detailed account given in the Diary of Mr.Pepys of the marriage of Lady Jemima Montague, daughter of the first Earl of Sandwich, to Mr. Carteret, in 1665, the admiration he bestows on the extraordinary decency and gravity with which the whole business was conducted shows us how much our ideas on this subject are changed, and the great difference in manners, which then admitted of marriages " twenty times " more merry and jovial" (1) (1) After they returned from church, he says, " All sa- " luted her, but I did not, till my Lady Sandwich did ask " me whether I had saluted her or no. So to dinner ; cora- " pany divided, some to cards, others to talk. At night to " supper, and so to talk, and, which methought was the most " extraordinary thing, all of us to prayers as usual, and the " young bride and bridegroom too ; and so after prayers T 3 C 2JS Bear-gardens and bowling-greens still supplied a means of gambling to the men. To the bear- garden we find Mr. Pepys accompanying his wife, and meeting other ladies there. They continued frequented by gentlemen even unto the days of Pope, who, describing two brothers of different habits, says, u y loved the senate, Hockley-hole his brother, " Like, in all else, as one pea's like another." At Hockley-hole, in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, was a sort of amphitheatre dedicated to bear-baiting, bull-baiting, &c. Of the amuse- ments of this place we may judge by the follow- ing advertisement in the reign of Queen Anne (1709) : " At the Bear-garden near Clerken- " well-green. This is to give notice to all gen- " tlemen gamesters and others, that on this " present Monday is a match to be fought by " soberly to bed, only I got into the bridegroom's chamber " while he undressed himself, and there was very merry " till he was called to the bride's chamber, and into bed " they went. I kissed the bride in bed, and so the curtains " drawn with the greatest gravity that could be, and so " good night ; but the modesty and gravity of this business " was so decent, that it was to me, indeed, ten times more " delightful than if it had been twenty times more merry " and jovial." — Pepys s Diary, vol. i. p. S57. 279 " two dogs, one from Newgate- market against " one from Honeylane-market, at a bull, for " a guinea to be spent ; five let- goes out of hand : " which goes fairest and fastest in, wins all. " Likewise a green bull to be baited, which was " never baited before ; and a bull to be turned " loose with fireworks all over him. Also a " mad ass to be baited ; with a variety of bull- 61 baiting, bear-baiting, and a dog to be drawn " up with fireworks. To begin exactly at three " o'clock." (1) Newmarket, too, which had been much patron- ised and constantly frequented by Charles and his brother, was visited even by William, the year after the Revolution, certainly more as a sacrifice on his part to a popular and national amusement than to indulge a taste of his own, which could never have been cultivated in his earlier years. Among the women, the principal scenes of gaiety at this time, and in which they sought relief from the stiff' formality of London visits, and the sameness of eternal card-playing were occasional jaunts to wells and watering-places. Of these, Bath and Tunbridge are the only ones that have still preserved the reputation of their (1) Harleian Catalogue, 5931. in fol. 280 healing powers. Of the many others formerly in the neighbourhood of London, such as Epsom, Highgate, &c. all credit for their salubrity seems to have vanished with their fashion as a place of public resort. Epsom Wells, of which a half- destroyed row of little stunted pollards on a bare common now alone marks the site, was once a place of such gay renown as to have been chosen for the scene of one of the comedies of the day. Of the life of Tunbridge we have a detailed account in certain homely verses preserved in the collection calling itself " State Poems." (1) We are told that they repaired to the wells soon after break of day, then to the chapel as now, close by the fountain, then to smoke a pipe before breakfast : — " For this design appointed places are, " Lest smoking on the walks offend the fair." Then to breakfast on tea: afterwards a pipe is again mentioned, as an agreeable way of passing time to avoid gaming, which many do, — then to the market, which is described — " Close by the wells, upon a spacious plain. M Where rows of trees make a delightful lane ;" (1) See " Tunbridgalia. or the Pleasures of Tunbridge, by " Mr. Peter Causton, Merchant,'' Poems on State Affairs, vol. i. p. '2(T>. 281 and it is said to be stored with every delicacy, and plenty of fish from Rye. Then they again drink the waters, and again take a pipe, by way of a whet before dinner. After dinner, they go to bowls or nine-pins : — " Here 's choice of bowling-places to be seen ; " But Rusthall is, by far, the finest green — " or cards or chess are played at, or reading is recommended, Horace or the Bible, till the cool of the evening invites them out to walk ; when, to close the lovely scene, " Each night there 's constant dancing on the green. " Persons of highest rank stick round the ring, " Lustre and grace to the diversion bring, " While lads and lasses forth in pairs advance, " Music keeps time to the well-measured dance." The fairs held periodically in and about London, and the theatres, sights, and shows exhibited at them, were then frequently visited by all the best company of London. Lady Russell mentions her sister Lady Northum- berland and Lady Shaftesbury returning from Bartholomew fair, loaded with fairings for her- self and children. May fair was just about this time established. It commenced on the 1st of May, and continued for fifteen days after- 282 wards. It was held by a grant from James the Second, for the benefit of Henry Lord Dover and his heirs for ever. But it soon became such a resort for the idle, the dissipated, and the pro- fligate, that it was presented as a public nuisance in the reign of Queen Anne, 1708, and finally abolished the next year. The ground on which it was held was soon covered with the buildings now called Shepherd's Market and its environs. Of the amusements of this fair while it lasted, we have the following account quoted in an extract from a MS. letter of Mr. Bryan Fair- fax (1) in 1701. " I wish you had been at May fair, where the " rope-dancing would have recompensed your " labour. All the nobility of the town were there, " and I am sure even you, at your years, must have " had your youthful wishes, to have beheld the " beauty, the shape, and activity of Lady Mary "when she danced" — (a rope-dancer, called the famous Dutchwoman, see Grainger's Biogra- phical History). " Pray ask Lord Fairfax about (1) Mr. Bryan Fairfax was the publisher of the Memoirs of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, called " Short Memorials of " Thomas, Lord Fairfax, tvritten by himself.'" This curious memoir is reprinted in " Select Tracts relating to the Civil " Wars in England, in the Reign of King Charles the F collected by Baron Maseres. and published in l s l .">. 283 " her, who is not the only lord by twenty who " was every night an admirer of her while the " fair lasted. (1) Then was the city of Am- " sterdam well worth your seeing ; every street, " and every individual house was carved in " wood, in exact proportion to one another. " The stadt-house was as big as your hand ; the " whole, though an irregular figure, yet that you * may guess about ten yards in diameter. Here " was a boy to be seen : within one of his eyes " was Dens mens in capital letters, as Gulielmus " is on half a crown ; round the other he had in " Hebrew 1771 ; Dllt this you must take as I did, " on trust. I am now drinking your health at " Locket's, therefore do me justice in Yorkshire." " B. F." The church must be considered at this time as one of the principal public places, which the youth of both sexes equally frequented, where they constantly met, and where, therefore, we (1) In Lord Lansdowne's Epilogue to the Jew of Venice is the following reference to this Lady Mary the rope- dancer : — " Tis Shakspeare's play, and if these scenes miscarry, " Let Gorman * take the stage or Lady Mary." * A noted prize-fighter. 284 may suppose they sometimes went as much for this purpose as for any other. In the Spectator and Guardian we find frequent mention made of young gentlemen first seeking to attract the attention, and mark their admiration of young ladies, by frequenting the same church, and placing themselves in an opposite or contiguous pew. The contending sects and religious dif- ferences which had distracted England for the last fifty years had put every body on the alert, not only as to their profession of faith, but as to the minute observances of the rites of their par- ticular church. All the young and the gay, all those living the most in the world, all went regularly to church twice every Sunday, at all the great festivals of the church, and on every prayer and every saint's day ; all those devoutly inclined, or wishing to be thought so, attended public prayers every morning and evening. Lent was still observed in all regular families on Wednesdays and Fridays, and we are now speaking of members of the church of England, much less rigid as to the observances of its followers than any of the sectaries. In the appendix to Reede's Life of Tillotson, we learn that Tillotson, while a young man at Cambridge during the Protec- torate, " generally heard four sermons every " Lord's day, besides the weekly lectures at 285 " Trin ty Church on Wednesdays (1) ;" and we know the uncontrolled length of the presbyte- rian service, and their severe observance of the sabbath, even unto this day. Shopping in the times of which we are speak- ing, as in our own, seems to have been called in aid by the female world for the occupation of their time. It was attended with somewhat more of interest and excuse than in the present day, where every street presents in every win- dow all that the varying productions of fashion or commerce can offer. At that time, our manu- factures of luxury and ornament had by no means attained their present excellence. France was then, and with much more reason than now, resorted to for every article of finery and orna- ment in dress. After the return of the Duke and Duchess of St. Alban's from France, in 1698, with a magnificent wardrobe, King William was importuned to prevent the importation of such clothes from France, to protect and encourage our own manufactures : but our trade to India then brought to England a variety of eastern productions which no imitations had yet rivalled, and to which no others could compare. The silks, the chintzes, the porcelain, the lacquer- (1) Appendix to Reede's Life of Tillotson, p. 398. V86 ware, and the toys of China, were the admiration of Europe. When the India ships arrived in the Thames, it was no uncommon thing for the ladies to go down to Blackwall, and make pur- chases on board. Madame de Mazarin, we learn from St. Evremond, was particularly eager about these expeditions. The India houses often men- tioned in the comedies and poems of the times were no other than warehouses dealing in all the importations of China. They were in the east end of the town, and seem to have been the only retailers of these commodities. The use of tea was then so recent, and so confined, as to occa- sion no great importation of it ; it was a fashion- able luxury, and was only to be found at these India houses : there, in a back room behind the warehouse, a kettle was always kept boiling, to try the tea before it was purchased. Parties were common among the young and gay to these India houses, where raffling took place, as a means of disposing of some of their most costly articles, and of facilitating the purchase of others. (1) Such parties we may suppose some- (1) The fashion of raffling at the jewellers and great toy- shops continued to a much later date, as we see that Lady M. W. Montague says in one of her Town Eclogues, " At Corticelli's he the raffle won." 287 times served as an excuse for meetings which could not have taken place unobserved else- where. Such, at least, was the reputation ^whe- ther well grounded or not) which they acquired. In the letter of Lord Nottingham already quoted an account is given of Queen Mary having visited all these India houses, partaking of the raffling going on at them, and having dined at the house of a milliner of no good repute, as we are to understand by a coarse reprimand which is said to have been given by King William to the Queen for this party. (1) That the repri- mand was given, the broad words still admitted in the colloquial language of those days allow us to believe ; but it could only be to the preju- diced mind of an inveterate Tory that it could appear otherwise than a good-humoured and rather a gallant way of taking up the circum- stance. Had the education of women at this (1) " She dined at Mrs. Graden's, the famous woman in " the Hall that sells fine ribands and head-dresses ; from " thence she went to the Jews that sell India things, to " Mrs. Ferguson's, De Vett's, Mrs. Harrison's, and other " India houses. These things, however innocent in them- *' selves, have passed the censure of the town ; and besides " a private reprimand given, the King gave one in public, " saying to the Queen, that he heard she dined at a b " house, and desired the next time she went, he might go " too." Letter of Lord Nottingham, Macphersons Memoirs, 288 time been less neglected, and had their minds been opened to a greater variety of interests, we should say that the distribution of their time and of their lives was more likely to have con- tributed to the rational enjoyments of society than at present. Fashion had not then issued what a distinguished female writer has justly called " her most arbitrary decree," that of ordering every body to be present every where* Dissipation was not then a business, even among the most dissipated. The circle in which every one moved was so much smaller, and generally so much more intimate, that from society much might have been gained had any previous pre- paration made it possible. But from the com- pany of mere housewifes, the men soon retreated to their coffee-houses and taverns, and en- deavoured to supply by excess in wine that deficiency of gaiety and cheerfulness, which can alone be found in society, where both sexes con- tribute their appropriate share. The women were left to find occupation in their household business, and amusement in cards and vulgar gossipings on the character, conduct, and cir- cumstances of their neighbours. Time so spent must have reduced all natural abilities to nearly the same level : few were found below, and still fewer above it. Thus Swift we see accusing the 289 whole sex of gross ignorance, idleness, and every bad disposition of mind arising from them, although no man of his day knew so many ex- ceptions to his own decisions, nor so little deserved the credit he obtained by them. But Swift professing himself to be a Whig, and sell- ing his abilities to the Tories, and Swift treating with contempt the whole female sex while he was courting and abusing the confidence of two distinguished women, equally deserves that re- probation which his popular talents have too much averted from his memory. We are obliged to the correspondence of Swift for our better acquaintance with several of his female contem- poraries, who might have given him very different ideas of the sex from those he thought fit to entertain. Through the whole of the Journal to Stella, he hardly notices any woman of his society in London but those immediately con- nected with the politics of the day. As the families to which they belonged were Whig or Tory, they are called drabs, as in the case of the Duchess of Marlborough and her daughters; or they have no fault " but too much tenderness " of disposition, as in the case of Mrs. Masham, of whom this worthy Christian pastor always speaks well, except when she left the Queen's ear for a couple of days, to watch her dying child at u 290 Kensington, which he considered as an unpar- donable dereliction of duty. Lady Orkney he calls " the wisest woman he knows," because, as he asserts, her advice had been of use to Harley in his elevation to power. Except on this occa- sion, Lady Orkney's claim to superior wisdom appears to have rested on the French proverb, " Que c'est une brave femme qui ne fait pas " parler d'elle," which merit she seems to have possessed, even when in the difficult situation of the favoured friend and supposed mistress of King William. In fact, the women whom the political circum- stances of those times had lifted into public no- tice were by no means distinguished characters. The Duchess of Marlborough owed her power and celebrity, not to any natural endowments of her mind or understanding, which seem to have been of a very vulgar and ordinary nature, totally uncultivated by education. She wrote and spelt like a chambermaid. No habits of business nor acquaintance with the world gave her the means of expressing even her anger with dignity, and no experience of politics the power of looking beyond the narrow views of a party. The author has had access to a correspondence between her and the amba- dor Earl of Stair, in the year 1741, when he 291 was retired to Scotland, and she was confined to her house in London by infirmity. In this cor- respondence she marks all the virulence against the measures and the person of Sir Robert Wal- pole that she could have felt for Harley and Mrs. Masham, and predicts the immediate ruin of the country from the councils of Walpole, as surely as she might have been excused for doing at the dismissal of her own lord. She never soars above the view that any lady of the bed-cham- ber might take of the political administration of any country in which she had never acted a distinguished part. The Duchess of Marlbo- rough's power had consisted in the Queen's weakness ; the public consideration to which she rose, to her lord's great abilities, his ex- traordinary services, and his entire affection and confidence in her. It is worthy of remark, that every detail of the private life of these two persons, which has since been laid before the public, raises our idea of his character, which had been traduced by a powerful and triumph- ant faction, and sinks hers, which in fact owed its celebrity to the same cause. Such as she was, she was considerably above the level of Queen Anne. We are told that at her accession to the throne, she had already lost all sentiments of confidential friendship for the Duchess of Marl- u 2 292 borough. Swift says, " There was not perhaps " in all England a person who understood more " artificially to disguise her passions than the "late Queen." (1) If so, the cowardly trea- chery of her conduct was duly punished, by obliging her for eight years to suffer all that the imperious temper of the Duchess of Marlborough could inflict on a person no longer attached to her, and in whom there could in fact be no sympathy of feeling. The narrow, impenetrable understanding of Anne, and her obstinate illi- beral mind, absolutely required to be governed, but to be governed by something as near as possible to her own level. This she found in Mrs. Masham. Even Swift's subservience her, while the Queen's favourite, extorts little praise of her. Although she Beemfl al have obeyed the dictates of her prompter Mar- lev, in being very sufficiently attentive to Swift. But it is not among the favourites of kings or queens, or the dabblers in the doubtful politics of the day, that we are to look for those who redeemed their sex from the general charges brought against them by Swilt. With Lady Betty Germaine his acquaintance began when he (1) " Memoirs relating to the Change in the Queen's Ministry" Swift's Works. Scott's edition, vol. iii. p. 293 was chaplain to her father, Lord Berkeley, in Ireland, and continued uninterruptedly on her part, to his death. She seems to have been a person of excellent abilities, much liveliness, and capable of the most steady, disinterested friend- ship. Her answer to Swift's letter, basely abus- ing her friend, Mrs. Howard, for not, as he conceived, having forwarded his interest with Queen Caroline, is remarkable. It has the ad- vantage of his as much in logic, reasoning, and expression, as it has in sentiment and good feel- ing. We must regret that more of Lady Betty Germaine's letters are not preserved, as they all bear the marks of a lively, unaffected, intelli- gent mind ; sufficiently cultivated by education, and ripened by the world, and the habits of good company. Her steady devotion to her friends she had occasion to evince, in no com- mon manner. Lady Betty had married, not early in life, Sir John Germaine, the same per- son on whose account the Duke of Norfolk had obtained a divorce from his wife, Lady Mary Mordaunt, the daughter and heiress of an earl of Peterborough, uncle to him celebrated by Pope. This lady dying without children, left the whole of her estates to Sir John Germaine. Sir John's successes with the fair sex were cer- tainly owing to very different qualifications from u 3 294 those of §wift ; for he was so remarkably illi- terate, and oddly ignorant, that it is known he left by will a legacy to Sir Matthew Decker, a great Dutch merchant in London, who had written on trade, as believing him to be the author likewise of St. Matthew's Gospel. How much he wanted all early instruction on the subject of the inspired writers may be judged by his saying to his wife, after having received the sacra- ment, at her earnest desire, during his last ill 1 1 " Betty, that thing you made me take has done " me no good." Sir John Germaine was by birth a native of the Low Countries. He was what was then called a soldier of fortune ; one who considered the military profession as the means of existence as well as of glory, and wl advancement depended as much on their BUC- cess in the world as on their military talents. Having left the whole of the estates that he received from Lady Mary Mordaunt to his widow, Lady Hetty Germaine, she, having no children of her own, bequeathed them to the second son of her intimate and attached friend, the Duchess of Dorset, on condition of his taking the name of Germaine, by whose descendants these estates are now enjoyed. The Duchess of Queensbury is another of Swift's correspondents, whose letters convey a $95 high idea of her charms and superiority. The friendly and liberal protection which she and her husband the Duke of Queensbury afforded Gay, and their unfeigned regret at his death, have left an amiable picture of their hearts. The Duchess retained till her death, at the ad- vanced age of more than eighty, all the liveli- ness of mind and activity of person which she had possessed when celebrated by Prior as " Kitty beautiful and young." (1) The author of these pages remembers to have seen her walking with the Duke but a short time before her death, and remembers the lively impression made by her still tall, upright, active figure; her silver locks without powder, combed care- lessly about her face under a small hat, which did not conceal the remains of a beautiful clear complexion, and large, dark, animated eyes, partaking of no mark of age. She had always used the privilege of a beauty, in not observing the dictates of fashion in her dress. In her later life, her great peculiarities both of appear- (1) Catherine Hyde, youngest daughter of Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, by the Lady Harriet Boyle, fifth daughter of the first Earl of Burlington : she was thus grand- daughter to the Chancellor Clarendon, and cousin to Queen Anne. u 4 ^90 ance and manner, and the rules she laid down for those admitted to her society, were respected and complied with by all the youngest and gayest persons of the day. An invitation to her balls was considered by them as a flattering prefer- ence. Had such meetings been as numerously attended then as at present, she would have been called on too often to exercise a certain figur- ative manner in which she indulged herself of clearing away guests, whom she found impor- tunate or remaining with her too long, — that of sweeping about them with the fire-broom, which expressed, by an image hardly to be mistaken, a desire to get rid of them. — Horace Walpo lines left on her table, on finding her out airing in her carriage, during one of the last \ ears of her life, seem to have echoed the expression of general feeling for her : " To man} Kitties Love hii " Docs for a day cwl:.\^ " But Prior's Kit' air, " Retains it tor an aire." On the whole, therefore, notwithstanding the abuse of Swift and the satires of Pope, we may rather wonder how many women at this period were distinguished by their worth and abilii and how few forced themselves into unseemly 297 notice, while entire idleness of mind and of time was still the lot of all those whose rank and riches placed them above the necessity of taking an active part in their own households. The long-established domestic habits of the country, and the influence of the new court on the fashion of the times, seem in some degree to have pre- vented idleness from realising the proverb and being the parent of vice. But one trial for divorce occurs during the reigns of William and of Anne — that of the Duchess of Norfolk before mentioned. Many circumstances of this lady's case show how much the ordinary habits of life were overstepped, and what precautions were thought necessary previous to such misconduct. A house taken at Lambeth, then a small and little frequented village, whose nearest communi- cation with Westminster was by a horse-ferry. This house, hired and resorted to under feigned names, and occupied by foreign servants, who, it was supposed, could not identify the lady, are not measures taken in a country where the crime they were meant to conceal was frequent. Thus we find no other instance of conjugal in- fidelity brought before parliament for seven-and- twenty years from the above-mentioned trial of the Duchess of Norfolk in 1697, to that of Lady 298 Annesley iu 1728, a longer interval than has since occurred. Another very distinguished female belongs to this period, Lady Mary Wortley Montague. (1) Of all her contemporaries she has left the greatest proofs of her claims to rank with the liveliest wits of her age. The embassy in which she accompanied her husband to Constantinople four years after their marriage, gave her oppor- tunities of knowledge and information rare to her sex. Her noble birth and connexions opened to her all society in her own country. Her natural abilities and literary turn made her seek that of its most distinguished members, With these she lived in a constant interchange of talent, while, at the same time, she was im- mersed by taste as well as by situation in all the dissipation her rank, sex, and age led to in the general society of the world. Her lively com- ments on this society in her letters to her si>Kr Lady Marre, prove with what a quick, observ- ing, intelligent eye she viewed its tollies, its affectations, and its weaknesses. Too happy had her own character entirely escaped their (1) She was the daughter of Evelyn Pierpont, Duke of Kingston, by Mary Fielding, daughter of the Earl of Den- bigh ; born at Thoresby in 1690, married to Edward Wort- ley Montague in 1712, died at the age of 72, in 1~ 299 contamination. Her Town Eclogues could hardly have been written by a person who had not par- ticipated in the follies she describes, and lived with the persons she characterizes. She ad- mirably marks the passing peculiarities of eva- nescent fashion on the unaltering stock of human nature. The characters in these Eclogues were all persons of the society in which she lived ; but they are treated without any coarse or cruel personal satire. They are the sketches of in- dividuals, but describe a whole species. The Epistle from Arthur Grey, in point of poetry, perhaps, the first of her works, is subject to the heavy charge of having justly offended an intimate friend, by giving additional publicity to an odious and offensive attempt of which she had been the object. A drunken footman of Lord Binning's had entered the bed-room of his sister-in-law Lady Murray (a grand-daughter of the first Earl of Marchmont). (1) The man was tried and condemned for the attempted (1) This lady was the daughter of George Baillie, Esq. of Jerviswood, and the Lady Grisell Home, the eldest of eighteen children of Sir Patrick Home, afterwards Earl of Marchmont. She left behind her a very interesting me- moir of the lives and characters of her father and mother, which, together with some explanatory matter, and a little notice on the life of their author, was printed lately by a 300 assault. Female delicacy as well as female sympathy should have prevented Lady Mary from allowing her poetical imagination to adorn this coarse and disgusting canvas with all the lively colouring of real and delicate passion ; and friendship should have made her desirous gentleman in Edinburgh, distinguished for his literary taste and accomplishments, and has since been published. The extraordinary escapes and adventures of the two families to which Lady Murray belonged, during their imprison- ment and exile in the disturbances in Scotland at the end of the reign of Charles the Second, would interest even in a romance. They are here recounted, from their own re- port, in the simplest and plainest language by their daugh- ter. The character of this daughter, from the little account here given of it by her editor, and by many contemporary testimonies, seems to have been worthy of such excellent parents, and to have been very justly appreciated both by the world and by her friends. The circumstance adverted to in the text had the effect that was inevitable on her inti- macy with Lady Mary Wortley Montague, which the latter was very desirous to remove, for Lady Murray was a dis- tinguished person in the first society of London : " Her " uncommon beauty, her graceful and courtly air, the fas- " cinating sweetness of her manners, her gaiety of temper " and sprightliness of conversation are traditionally remem- " bered." So says the well-informed editor of her memoirs. In the letters lately published of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, there is a character of Lady Murray, traced by the hand of friendship, with an intensity of sorrow for her loss, honour- able to her who felt as well as to her who inspired such feeling. 301 of avoiding every thing that could perpetuate in the mind of Lady Murray any trace of so extraordinary and painful an adventure. More than female delicacy is offended in her Letter to Mr. Chandler. The licence of its pictures of supposed happiness would hardly become the pen of a man, and are unpardonable from that of a woman, in spite of all the graceful fancy with which they are drawn. Her Correspondence from Constantinople, the most popular of her works, will always be read with pleasure, notwithstanding the vast increase of detailed information we have since received on all subjects relative to that country. Her epistolary style has hardly been surpassed. A great body of her unpublished letters to members of her own family is still in their hands. It is to be hoped, instead of destroy- ing what at present there may be objections to publish, that at some future time, and under proper restrictions, the public may not be de- prived of these letters, nor the memory of their writer of a further claim to celebrity for various talents and great superiority of intellect. The adulatory letters of Pope to this lady, after making all deductions for the compliment- ary taste of the age', will not allow us to justify his subsequent abuse of a woman, whom he had 302 professed so to admire ; and his infirmities as well as his genius and her own good taste, should have secured him from her coarse re- taliation. Swift she seems wisely never to have admitted into her intimacy, although in her letters to Pope we find her admiring his wit and enquiring after his works. The whole of the latter part of Lady Mary's life was spent on the Continent, where the residences she made in various parts of Italy contributed to give a higher opinion of the abili- ties than of the conduct of her countrywomen. Her correspondence with her daughter the Countess of Bute, during this latter period, shows an excellent understanding improved by the world and by observation, and contains ad- mirable hints on the education of her grand- children. But her dryness on all subjects connected with the heart and feelings, and her complaints of the absence of all friendship in those with whom she lived in her several changes of residence, are a melancholy addition to the long list of proofs that nothing but the virtues of the heart can secure to any woman a com- fortable and respected existence in old age. Of the many eminent men who at this period formed a part of what has been affectedly called the Augusta?! age of England, none seem to 303 have been more distinguished for social talents than Lord Bolingbroke. His letters present to us a profoundly thinking mind, of general in- formation, graceful expression, and equally cal- culated to treat the lightest and the most serious subjects. His false and pernicious ideas, either in politics or religion, form no part of the present view of his character. In the inflated language of Johnson, speaking of his posthumous works, he is said " to have charged a blunderbuss " against the immortal happiness of mankind, " but wanting courage to fire it, had left Mallet " (his executor and editor) half a crown to draw " the trigger." The total neglect into which the philosophical discussions of Bolingbroke have long fallen, prove how much the zeal of Johnson had magnified their importance. All his con- temporaries, from the cynical Swift to the courtier Chesterfield opposed to him in party, agree in their opinion of his unrivalled abilities, and the charm of his familiar intercourse. Swift de- clares him to have " a strong memory, a clear "judgment, a vast range of wit and fancy, a " thorough comprehension, an invincible elo- " quence, with a most agreeable elocution." (1) (1) An Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queens last Ministry. Swift's Works, vol. vi. p. 7. In a letter to 304 Chesterfield says, " Lord Bolingbroke has both " a tongue and a pen to persuade ; his manner " of speaking in private conversation is full as " elegant as his writings. Whatever subject he " either speaks or writes upon, he adorns it with " the most splendid eloquence ; not a studied " laboured eloquence, but such a flowing happi- " ness of diction, which (from care perhaps at " first) is become so habitual to him, that even " his most familiar conversations would bear the " press without the least correction, either as " to method or style. If his conduct in the " former part of his life had been equal to all his " natural and acquired talents, he would most "justly have merited the epithet of all- " accomplished. * * * * And take him as he " now is, the character of all-accomplished ifl Stella of the 3d of November, 1711, he says. - I think " Mr. St. John the greatest young man I ever knew ; wit, " capacity, beauty, quickness of apprehension, good learn- «' ing, and an excellent taste ; the best orator of the House " of Commons, admirable conversation, good-nature and " good manners, generous, and a despiser of money. His " only fault is talking to his friends, in way of complaint, " of too great a load of business, which looks a little like " affectation ; and he endeavours too much to mix the " fine gentleman and man of pleasure with the man of " business." 305 " more his due than any man's I ever knew in " my life. (1) In the early part of his career he entered into all the coarse profligacy which was then common, and permitted, even in the highest ranks of society. He seems to have aimed, in the words of his friend Pope, " To shine a Tully and a Wilmot too." Swift often mentions in his Diary the dissipation and late hours of St. John preventing his seeing him on business. An old Mr. Mildmay, who died within the remembrance of many persons now alive, had been in his early youth appointed his private secretary. In a previous interview with St. John, he was desired by him to delay entering on his functions on the day at first proposed, because he, the Secretary of State, recollected that on that day he should be ex- ceedingly drunk. The dissipation of our time has at least taken a less degrading character. In his subsequent life, his frequent visits to France, and his second marriage to a niece of Madame de Maintenon's, had given him a familiarity with the language, manners, and society of the Conti- (1) Chesterfield's Letters, vol. ii. p. 289. X 306 nent, which began by this time to be again rare among the best company in England. Political prejudices, and fears of the dethroned family, again operated to alienate us from our nearest neighbours. The exile thought neces- sary of such men as Bolingbroke and Atterbury was not calculated to allay these fears. The sons of the gentry were for the most part educated entirely at home. To those who were permitted to travel, a visit to the Continent was hurried over, as dangerous to the young man's religious and political principles. Nothing but the astonishing powers of mind, and various talents recorded of St. John, could have allowed him, during the turbulence and agitation of his political life, to have continued the culti- vation of letters, and to have occupied himself with speculations so foreign to those of his ill- judging ambition. Perhaps no passage of his life places him in so amiable a light as his un- deviating friendship and constant affectionate intercourse with Swift and with Pope ; with Swift, after he had ceased to be the tool of his party ; and with Pope, who lie knew never had and never would be the tool of any party. Why the sincerity of the sentiments of these three distinguished persons should be doubted by their biographers, and reduced to a mere commerce 307 of vanity and compliments, can only be accounted for by an excess of the calculating spirit of the age ; a spirit which denies the existence of any lively sentiments not founded on direct worldly interests. If these worldly interests are con- sidered on a sufficiently enlarged basis, the author agrees in the opinion, that the most romantic friendship, wherever it may be supposed to exist, can be nothing more than a commerce of mutual benefits expressed and understood. It has been said only to take place between equals ; but this is not a fair statement ; for persons unequal both in mental endowments and in adventitious circumstances of fortune or situation, may be able to maintain this commerce with perfect in- dependence, and great mutual advantage. The decisions of a profoundly-thinking mind may be thus exchanged for the brilliant sallies of a lively imagination ; that knowledge of the world and of human nature, acquired only by penetrating and observing characters, for the affectionate support and confidence of gayer and less reflecting minds ; a power of arrangement and turn for business, for the lively animated intercourse of a highly- cultivated intellect, without the same habit of affairs : by these means securing that reciprocity of real services, the only equality which friendship absolutely requires. St. John x 2 308 thus supplied to the poetical mind of Pope the idea and outline of his most beautiful moral poem(l); andPope's society, his admiration and attachment to St. John, and the communica- tion of his works, helped, in the retirement of Dawley, to render more supportable his political disappointments, and the successes of Walpole. The natural infirmities of Pope, his deformity, and the weaknesses attendant on it, incapacitated him from the bustle of the world in general, and made him avoid society, where he was not well known, and where the powers of his mind had (1) If any one cavils at this epithet, applied to the Essay on Man, the following extract from the earliest of Pope's biographers will, it is believed, set this matter at rest with every candid mind, as to the intention and views of the author: — " Pope's Essay on Man is a real vindication of " Providence against libertines and atheists, who quarrel " with the present constitution of things, and deny a future " state. To these, he answers, that tvhatever is, is right; " and he assigns the reason, that we see only a part of the " moral system, and not the whole. Therefore, these irre- " gularities serving to great purposes, such as the future " manifestation of God's goodness and justice, they are " right. On the other hand, Lord Bolingbroke's El " are a pretended vindication of Providence against an ima- " ginary confederacy between divines and atheists. * * * * " In a word, the poet directs his reason against atheists and 11 libertines, in support of religion; Lord Bolingbroke against "divines, in support of naturalism.' — See Rlffhead's Life of Pope. 309 not long obliterated the impression made by the distorted frame attached to it. Conversation and intercourse of friends, however, were his chief resource and relaxation. He loved, too, the society of women, although his person ab- solutely precluded the possibility of his inspiring those sentiments he may be supposed to have felt for them. In his intimacy with the family of Blount, his neighbours, during his early resid- ence in Berkshire, it is to be regretted that the sister of that family, whom he distinguished by his particular regard and attachment, should have partaken so much of the petulance felt, more or less, by all young women, as to the pretensions of those by whom they are admired. The doubts expressed by the late editors of Pope's works, as to the nature of his connexion with Martha Blount, it is believed, would have va- nished, had they seen, as the author of these pages has, a very melancholy and interesting letter from Pope to another member of the Blount family, lamenting that the affectionate regard he had always felt for all the sisters, and the pleasure he experienced in their society, seemed so little participated, and to inspire no return on their part. They probably had laughed at Martha for her conquest, and ridiculed the idea of a lover in the shape of Pope ; while she x 3 310 was blinded, or was insensible to the immortality which poetry only can bestow on a woman. The peculiarities of Swift, and his affected roughness, must have made him oftener indi- vidually entertaining than generally agreeable. His social success in England seems to have de- pended chiefly on his political services and re- nown. In Ireland, he owns to Pope having sur- rounded himself with persons who gave into all his humours, and adopted his taste for literary trifles and nonsense : with these he endeavoured to beguile his disappointed ambition, and what should have been, and probably was more diffi- cult, — the reproaches of his own conscience for all the domestic happiness he had destroyed for himself as well as for others. Whatever poli- tical principles he might have first imbibed, and whatever he might call himself, a Tory he ever was, in mind, character, and conduct, — a cold, selfish, imperious Tory. It has often been ob- served, that nobody is completely condemned, but by their own evidence ; thus, his letters to Stella give the clear and unequivocal means of judging his character and his principles, both in his political and private life. In his politics, he abandoned the party of his falling friends, the Whigs, when they could no longer serve him ; and such friends as Addison, Steele, and Garth! — 311 he vows vengeance against the Treasurer, Lord Godolphin, because he received him with cold- ness (1); and calls Lord Somers a "false, deceitful rascal," because he wrote an unsuccessful letter of recommendation of Swift to Lord Wharton, when he was lord lieutenant of Ireland. (2) His own account of his first introduction to Harley and St. John proves with what coarse and com- mon phrases of flattery he allowed himself to be attached to their rising star, and to dedicate his great abilities, as a party writer, to the sup- port of principles which he had formerly dis- avowed, and often to the exaltation of characters which his professions of morality ought to have taught him to condemn. In the mean time, he endeavours to satisfy the mean pride of his own mind by rough manners, and an exaction of much attention from his new patrons. Several quarrels, or rather affronts, are recorded in these letters, in which the apologies necessary to sa- tisfy his insolent disposition are always readily made by the ministers, who saw through the man they had to deal with, and were too wise to quarrel with weaknesses, by which they could so (1) Letter, September 9. 1710. (2) Letter, January 14. 1711. x 4< 312 easily wield his abilities to their purpose. (1) Sometimes he seeks to prove his independence by refusing to dine with the Secretary of State, without naming his own company : sometimes by giving his voice to exclude the Lord Keeper and Lord Treasurer Harley from a club of which he says, " we take in none but men of wit, or " men of interest ; and if we go on as we be- " gin, no other club in this town will be worth " talking of." This club was, as he tell us, " among other things, to advance conversation and " friendship, and the members were to call one " another, in place of all other titles, ■ Brother.' " In March 1712, when Swift was lodging in Suffolk-street, the house of one of these brothers, that of Sir William Wyndham in the Haymar- ket, was burnt to the ground. His wife, the Duke of Somerset's daughter, escaped bare- footed j two female servants were killed on the spot by jumping out of the windows ; and the loss of the house, and all destroyed in it, was not less to his brother Wyndham than ten or twelve thousand pounds. During this terrible accident the kind-hearted, friendly brother Swift, after having learnt (as he tells us) where the fire was, (1) Letter, January 14-. 1711. beginning, « Mr. Harley " desired me to dine with bim to-day." 313 quietly turned himself to sleep again, although the noise and confusion in the neighbourhood was such as to have awakened his servant, and the people of the house where he lodged. But what could be expected from a man, who from his earliest youth had betrayed, in all the social relations of life, a character of irreclaimable, selfish pride and hard-heartedness ; who seems to have mistaken a tyrannical for an independent spirit, and insolence of manner for dignity of mind ; who, while invariably pursuing a system of self-interest and self-indulgence with respect to others, captiously resents the slightest mark of neglect to himself. However we may allow the straitened circumstances of his infancy and early education to have soured his humour, and distempered his first views of human life, his residence with Sir William Temple, which, with some short interruptions, lasted for nearly eleven years, ought essentially to have improved his character and manners, as well as his abilities. But his proud, unsubmitting, selfish spirit seems never to have forgiven the noviciate of the acquaintance. Thepolished manners and ripened judgment of Sir William Temple were at first shocked by the unaccommodating and assuming pretensions of a young man, who could not yet have proved his title to any such indulgence. 314 On further acquaintance, he appears to have done ample justice to his merits, and during the latter years of their association he certainly pro- cured for Swift advantages which he could hardly otherwise have obtained, and which, gifted as he was by nature, were perhaps of all others the greatest which, at his time of life, he could have received ; yet still dissatisfied with Sir William's endeavours to serve him while he lived, and dis- appointed in his pecuniary expectations at his death, Swift seems to have retained a rancorous hatred to all his family, which breaks out when- ever the name of Lady Gifford (Sir William's sister) is mentioned in his correspondence. With this Lady Gifford lived the mother of Stella, the widow of a merchant in London, and her two daughters ; for such was their father, as we are assured by the last and best of Swift's biogra- phers : she was in a situation which seems to have been something between that of a friend and a humble companion. To one of her daughters, Swift, while yet an inmate in Sir William Temple's family, became attached ; and no other objection could probably have ever been made to their union, had he proposed it, but the young man not yet possessing the means of subsistence. When, at the age of thirty-three, he was established in Ireland as vicar of Laracor, 315 he seduced this daughter, not eighteen years old, away from her mother and sister, and the honour- able protection under which they lived, to follow him to Ireland. She was accompanied by a person of the name of Dingley, several years older than herself, and though a distant relation of the Temple family, in the same sort of sub- ordinate situation. This seduction, for the word must surely be applied to the heart and affections, as well as to the person, could only have been effected, and could only have been consented to by the mother, under an express understanding with Swift, as well as a perfect confidence in his honour, that a marriage was to take place as soon as his circumstances admitted of it. Stella was this deceived, unhappy woman, who seems in every respect, both of mind, character, and per- son, to have deserved a better fate. She was retained till her death in Ireland by the fallacious hope of every day becoming the wife of him, who, although fifteen years older than herself, had possessed himself of her earliest affections : indeed, had his conduct estranged them, the unprotected situation, and the equivocal light in which that situation must necessarily have been viewed in Ireland, made her entirely dependent on his will. In one instance she appears to have been desirous, even at the expence of her feel- 316 ings, to have emancipated herself from a thral- dom, which, whatever blandishments vanity might have thrown around it, must have been repugnant to any noble mind. A very respect- able clergyman of the name of Tisdale wished to marry her, and, with a confidence which he basely betrayed, made Swift his mediator with Stella. No sooner did her cold-hearted tyrant find she was about to recover her liberty, than he overwhelmed his rival with every kind of ridicule, and found means, under a specious show of disinterestedness, so to calumniate him to the mind of Stella, that she felt herself obliged to give up, or had not the resolution to prosecute this only means of independence. She had already remained nine years in Ireland, subject to the arbitrary will of the most arbitrary of characters, without either the public respect, or the internal sense of duty, which as his wife might have soothed such a situation. Every expectation disappointed, and every feeling un- gratified, except her vanity, if complimentary verses, and childish expressions of an affection failing in all its real dictates, could gratify it, Swift, after having repeatedly left his victim in Ireland, whilst he sought his own personal ad- vancement and interests in London, was sent thither (as is known) in the year 1?10, deputed 317 by the clergy of Ireland to obtain from Queen Anne's government the remission of certain duties and rights on them. Here a new scene opened to his ambition, and his talents were called forth in the manner of all others in which they were the most available, as a party writer to a new administration. During this absence, prolonged to three years, he continued to write constantly and uninterruptedly to Stella ; and we see in the course of this very curious journal how rapidly he advances in his high opinion of himself, and his contempt and hatred for the rest of mankind. It must have been a con- siderable relief to him, to pour into a partial and patient ear every feeling of his selfish, haughty mind. The poor deceived Stella meanwhile was by this detailed and regular correspondence confirmed in the hope that his successes and fame in England were advancing their union, wherever his lot might afterwards be cast. The encouragement of this self-deception was doubly necessary on his part, as, during the first year of his establishment in London, he became the intimate of a family, where he soon gave Stella a rival in wretchedness, if not in his affections. Let it be here remarked, to the honour of the female sex, that great talents have almost always been irresistible, in securing the attachment of 318 women. With Swift they were certainly unac- companied by any personal graces or softness of manner. He was coarse and abusive to all women who did not particularly ple?se him, or on whom his interest did not particularly depend. We must suppose that to those he wished to please, the charm consisted in the belief that he excepted them from the odium he cast on the rest of their sex ; while, in fact, submission to all his petty pretensions, and some lucky conciliation of his inordinate and vulgar pride, seem to have been the chief passes to his favour. Miss Vanhomrigh, unfortunately known to the world by the name of Vanessa, was both to a station of life and of a personal character very dif- ferent from that of Stella. Her father, origin- ally a merchant at Amsterdam, had been em- ployed in the commissariat of the troops of King William in Ireland. Two daughters by the death of their brothers inherited his fortune, and lived with their widowed mother in London, when Swift came there in 1710. Vanessa could not then have been twenty, for in August lyil he mentions her being come of age, and intend- ing to go to Ireland to look after the property her father had left there. To this young per- son Swift appeared in the zenith of his glory ; his works, and his wit, the dread of one party, 319 the support of the other, and the admired of all ; himself treating with affected contempt what the rest of the world envied, and with calculated rudeness the advances of those whom the rest of the world sought: no wonder that his so- ciety and his attentions made a strong impres- sion on a young and ardent mind, possessed of a great desire of knowledge, already more accom- plished than was common to her age, and with much aptitude for improvement. Of this im- pression, Swift, at the ripened age of forty-two, must have been early aware; and whatever may have been the supposed insuperable objections to his union with Stella, his encouraging the feelings, and giving way to his own selfish in- dulgence and flattered vanity in his intercourse with Vanessa, is equally unjustifiable to her, to Stella, and, above all (as his editors would give us to understand), to himself. These editors, we must be allowed to observe, have all treated his character, as to the circumstances of his private life, with a degree of partiality which reminds us of the fable of the lion, described in a pic- ture as subdued in single combat by a man. Had the lions been painters, says the fable, the story would have been differently represented : perhaps, in the present case, and for the same reason, misrepresentation may be suspected in 320 the author of these pages. The correspondence which has luckily been retrieved with Vanessa will, it is believed, bear out all, and more than all that has been said of his cruelty and her in- nocence. But whatever impression may be left of the general character and conduct of Swift in his private life, let at least the weaker sex re- member, and rest satisfied, that the great object of his wishes and ambition — a settlement in Eng- land, and an English bishopric — were defeated not by the Tale of the Tub (1), or any other va- grant effusions of his wit, but by the weak arm of a woman — by that sex to whom retributive jus- tice owed and committed his punishment. With the Duchess of Somerset he had no ac- (1) " The project for the advancement of religion, pub- " lished in 1709, made a deep and powerful sensation on " all those who considered national prosperity as connected " with national morals. It may, in some respects, be con- •' sidered as a sequel of the humorous argument against " abolishing Christianity, &c. It was very favourably re- " ceived by the public, and appears to have been laid before " the Queen by the Archbishop of York (Sharpe), the very " prelate who had denounced to her private ear the sup- "posed author of the Tale of a Tub." — Scott's Life of Swift, vol. i. p. 105. So that we see it was not this arch- bishop, of whom Swift always speaks with the virulence of an irreconcilable enemy, nor the Queen's opinion previous to his attack on the Duchess of Somerset, which were the real obstructions to his preferment in England. 321 quaintance ; he knew her only by dreading her influence with the Queen against the measures of the Tory ministry at the opening of parliament in 1711. Her he attacked in a manner which no party feelings could justify, and hardly Chris- tian charity forgive. By the extraordinary cir- cumstances in which this great heiress had been placed in early youth, when she could scarcely be said to have a choice, and still less a will of her own, she was twice married, and twice a widow, before she was fifteen years old. Of the poisoning her first husband Lord Ogle, and of the assassination of her second, Mr. Thynne, Swift in no measured terms accuses her of being an accomplice. (1) There are few persons, it is believed, but will allow, that such an accusation, brought forward at such a moment in the form of political verses, by a most popular political writer, and likely to be in the hands of all the world, was a very sufficient cause for the indig- nant feelings of the person so vilely traduced; that the author of such a scandal, having con- victed himself of the unchristian charges of " envy, spite, malice, and all uncharitableness," justified the Duchess of Somerset in powerfully (1) See Windsor's Prophecy, vol. x. p. 379. Swift's Works, Scott's edition. 322 exerting that influence over the Queen which her traducer so much dreaded ; it rendered abor- tive all attempts of the ministry, to whom he had thus prostituted his talents, to effect his establishment in England. In Ireland, the farther prosecution of the pu- nishment due to him from the female sex con- demned him to survive, while yet in the vigour of life, both the victims of his cold-hearted selfish- ness. It is evident that had his ambitious views succeeded, poor Stella would never have been his wife. Whether he would have submitted to re- move by marriage the slur which his contempt- ible vanity induced him to cast on the reputa- tion of Vanessa, must remain in the same uncer- tainty which involves his inexplicable and unprin- cipled cruelty in not avowing his tardy union with the dying Stella. More than enough has perhaps been said on this subject, after the just and admirable view of which the public are already in possession of Swift's conduct, both in a political and social light, in the Edinburgh Review of the last edi- tion of his works. The author of that Review, with the energy inspired by sound principles both of political and moral feeling, has com- pletely stripped M the gilding off a knave; 91 a gilding which nothing but the popular nature of 328 his works, and the moment of political agitation in which they appeared, could have preserved so xong ; and the impartial judgment of posterity will confirm the critic's assertion, " That, what- " ever merits Swift might have as a writer, he " was despicable as a politician, and hateful as a " man."(l) Of the charm of Addison's society even Swift himself bears record. (2) But the extreme de- licacy of Addison's taste, and his want of promptitude of decision, even in the choice of words, must have been an impediment to the excellence of his general conversation, as it was to his talents in public business. It sometimes happens, that writers the most distinguished by the liveliness and brilliancy of their pen, have by no means supported the same character in their social intercourse. But Con- greve, we know, was not less superior in his own colloquial powers than in those he bestowed on the characters of his inimitable comedies. The good company in which he lived, and his own good taste, purified his conversation from that (1) Edinburgh Review, No. liii. p. 44. (2) " Mr. Addison's election has passed easy and undis- " puted, and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen king, " he would hardly be refused."— Journal to Stella, Oct. 10. 1710. Y c 2 324 profligacy and coarseness of expression which still remained the received language of the stage. That the admirable wit and profound knowledge of human character which dictated his comedies should have been expressed in this language, is the more to be regretted as it degrades the tone of his satire, and is apparent to those incapable of comprehending either the wit of his allusions or the philosophy of his wit. The dramatic works of Steele, his private letters, and the Ta tiers, leave a very agreeable impression of the character of their author. Unfortunately, in the conduct of his own affairs he seems to have been both unwise and unlucky. By his own careless extravagance, and his wife's over-attention on the subject of money, he ap- pears to have been always leading a life of shifts and expedients, which, however they may favour literary exertions, are very incompatible with social enjoyment. Prior's admirable verses betray sometimes a coarseness of thought, and sometimes of ex- pression, which, without any reproach to his ge- nius, must be attributed to the first impressions of early youth ; to the company he must inevi- tably have kept, before his talents had raised him from a situation to which he so soon proved him- self superior. When placed by his abilities in the 325 society of* princes and ministers, bis tastes and his affections remained nearer the level of his former fortunes. The secretary to the pompous embassy of Bentinck (1), the minister at Ver- sailles negotiating the peace of Utrecht, was still the faithful admirer of the butcher's wife in Middle-row, whom he propitiated in verses, of which the coarsest parts were probably above the level of her taste. Gay seems to have been the beloved child of the knot of superior spirits with whom he lived. Their character never appears in a more amiable light than in their feelings for Gay; in the anxiety they showed to further his interests, (1) The embassy of the Earl of Portland to France, in 1698, cost 80,000/. He was accompanied by six young lords and three gentlemen, besides Prior as secretary to the embassy. His public entry into Paris, on the 27th Fe- bruary, was more magnificent than any thing that had been seen since the Duke of Buckingham in Charles the First's time. He was attended by a gentleman of the horse, twelve pages, fifty-six footmen, twelve led horses, four coaches with eight horses, and two chariots with six. He received every sort of respect and attention from Louis the Fourteenth, and returned loaded with presents ; but it was remarked, that no embassy had been more honoured or less successful in its objects, as it neither obtained the removal of King James from the neighbourhood of Paris, nor any mitigation of the persecutions of the Protestants. — See Harris's History of King William, p. 463. Y 3 326 and the manner in which they praised, criticised, and rejoiced in the success of his works. It has been remarked with great truth, by a late distinguished writer on the principles of taste, " That corruption in the fine arts and ex- " travagancies in dress have generally accompa- " nied each other ; but that literature never mani- " fested any symptoms of sympathy with either. " From the middle of the seventeenth to the " middle of the eighteenth century the fashions " in dress were carried to the utmost extreme "of deformity; and imitative art sunk to its " lowest state of degradation, at the same time " that taste in literary composition, both in " England and France, attained a degree of " purity and perfection only surpassed by that " of the finest ages of Greece or Rome." (1) The age of Queen Anne would seem to justify this remark ; for at no other time was painting, sculpture, and architecture at a lower ebb. It was not as in the days of Leo, that " A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung :" although Pope, it must be confessed, was as superior to Vida as Raphael was to Sir Godfrey Kneller. In female dress, in furniture, in e\ery (1) Knight on Taste, p. , 327 species of ornament, amenable to the laws of taste, nothing could be further removed from those forms which we have since found we can neither rival nor improve. The enormous wigs of the men, their stiffened coats, long waist- coats, short breeches, and rolled stockings, were infinitely less consonant with grace, and de- formed the human figure much more than the cloak, ruff, close doublet, and trunk hose of the preceding age. The long stays, small hoops, stiff silk gowns, and boot sleeves of the women were so ungraceful, that their painters, Jervis and Kneller, changed them entirely into that indescribable robe in which they are in all their portraits more or less enveloped, and which nothing but the art of their brush could suspend for a moment on any human body. Sculpture produced only those heavy-headed cherubim, cumbrous angels, and periwig-pated portraits, which loaded the walls of Westminster Abbey, and in our provincial cathedrals and parish churches ill contrasted with the altar- tombs of a former age, on which repose the knight and his lady side by side, in the dress, and with the features they wore in life — a Vandyke portrait admirably executed in marble. Architecture assumed a strange, anomalous style, unknown to any age or nation where a y h 328 high state of cultivation had produced ornament in building. The huge masses of stone or brick raised at this period, and during the reigns of the two first Georges, are for the most part without any attempt at ornament, except some uncouth, non-descript flourishes over the door and middle window of the edifice. The only prevalent idea of the builders seems to have been a number of windows, small in their pro- portions, and multiplied when an effect of gran- deur was intended to be produced ; an absence of all projections and salient angles, that could effect any charm from light and shadow, or any comfort from a wide overhanging roof, or the shelter of a porched door. The genius of Van- burgh soared above his age ; the proportions of Grecian architecture were not then familiar to artists ; he swerved from all Roman models, and formed to himself a style, which, when ex- amined by the rules of his art, transgresses them all ; but when viewed as a whole in the great buildings he erected, produces an effect which could only have been calculated by a su- perior and original genius. Sir Joshua Rey- nolds, with the eye of a painter, sagaciously ob- serves, that Vanburgh was particularly careful to make such accompaniments and back-grounds to his buildings, as gave them effect, and avoided 329 their rising crudely out of the ground, like many of our admired country seats, from a bald, smooth-shaven lawn. Hence his great substruc- tures, flights of steps, and balustrades, and, below them, terraces ornamented with architectural sculpture, vases, pedestals, and the like. The eye thus became familiar with ornament before it met all that he lavished on the edifice whose character was intended to be magnificence. Blenheim and Castle Howard prove how well their architect succeeded in that intention. 330 CHAPTER VII. IGNORANCE OF THE GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS THE FOUR- TEENTH. THEOLOGICAL DISPUTES. SUSPICIONS OF POISON. MADAME DE BRIN VILLIERS. JESUITS AND JANSENISTS. VOLTAIRE. REGENT'S GOVERNMENT HURRIED ON THE REVOLUTION. — CONDUCT OF THE FRENCH NOBILITY AND OF THE POPULAR PARTY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. — STATE OF THE PUBLIC MIND IN EUROPE. ROUSSEAU, EFFECTS PRO- DUCED BY HIS WRITINGS IN FRANCE. ABSENCE OF ALL REGARD TO MORAL TRUTH. MADAME DU CHA- TELET. ST. LAMBERT. MADAME DE GRAFIGNY. MADAME D'EPINAY, HER SOCIETY, ROUSSEAU'S CON- DUCT IN IT. MADAME d'hOUDETOT. The government of Louis the Fourteenth, and of his immediate successor, seems to have been quite insensible to the progress made by the human mind during his reign, and to the natural tendency of all the enterprise and activity excited by it. They seem to have thought they could arrest both at pleasure, and while in fact a flood of light was pouring in from every point of the intellectual compass, they endeavoured to pre- vent any portion of its rays from falling on the 331 subjects most seriously interesting to the civil existence of man. All the quickness, industry, and enthusiasm which we have since seen produce such astonish- ing effects when employed on subjects worthy of them, were then alike shut out from the dis- cussion of politics, of government, of every use- ful speculation in the philosophy of human life. The active, when not engaged in war, were con- demned to a dangerous idleness. The studious were too often obliged to waste their talents in a futile literature, in disputes on the merits of a sonnet, or the legitimacy of a verse, or to bewilder themselves in controversial learning on abstract points of faith, incomprehensible differences in the creeds and precepts of the church, or of forms and etiquettes in her ceremonials. Hence an Andilly (1), whose great talents and prolonged life might have enlightened his contemporaries in grammar and logic, left behind him 104 vo- lumes, not one of which has added a line to the stock books of European literature. Hence the keen powers of reasoning and admirable humour of a Pascal were wasted on a subject long since condemned to oblivion ; and (having been exerted for party, and not for general interests) have lost (1) Antoine d' Andilly. 332 much with posterity. Hence the elegant mind and varied powers of a Fenelon are scarcely known, but by a romance, in the composition of which his intellect sought repose from subjects less naturally interesting to him, but to which his profession, and the age in which he lived, condemned him to confine his studies. It would be difficult to imagine how inane disputes, worthy of the darkness of the middle ages, could yet occupy any part of the talents of a nation already distinguished by its learning and literature. But we invariably observe that where the existence of public spirit is repressed by the institutions of the country, or by the rights of its inhabitants being ill defined, F esprit de corps reigns with uncontrolled intensity, in defiance both of reason and of truth. " La " communaute d'interets donne de la valeur a " des passions qui seroient nulles dans leur " isolement; et le gouvernement s'etonne d'une " resistance qu'il a cree lui-meme." (1) Hence the eternal quarrels of the clergy and parliaments of France during the latter part of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth and the regency, through a long succession of nonsensical disputes on (1) Le Montey, p. 404. 333 Jansenism, Molinism, Quietism, on the Bull Unigenitus, the constitution, and the billets de confession. The lamentable ignorance of the King, and his consequent want of all enlargement of mind, subjected him to the prejudices of the times as entirely as would have been the case with a more ordinary understanding and character. His want of all information on religious subjects, which even Madame de Maintenon avows and laments, made him a dupe to the insinuations of the priests about him. The Jesuit le Tellier persuaded him that the doctrines of Jansenism were unfriendly to his absolute authority. In- stead of crushing the disputes between the Jesuits and Jansenists by the arm of power, as he had in his earlier years the pretensions of the noblesse against his authority ; his scruples en- couraged their virulence, and allowed them to fill the prisons with persons accused of Jan- senism. Even Bossuet, the great Bossuet, con- descended to make use of the same means to frighten the King, representing the mystical nonsense of the enthusiast Madame Guyon(l) (1) Madame Guy on, the head of the sect of Quietists, was of Montargis, left young the widow of Guyon, the per- son who had undertaken the construction of an inland navi- 384 as dangerous to the state, and a pious work of the elegant and accomplished Fenelon as so heretical, that the poor deceived King wrote him- self to Pope Innocent the Eleventh, to press his decision on a book(l) which is only known to posterity by the circumstance of a papal censure having fallen on any writing of its pure and pious author. An ignorance of the true principles of that Christian faith which they all professed, and all disgraced, had led to these endless disputes of the clergy. A still greater ignorance on all subjects of natural philosophy, and of experimental che- mistry, and medicine connected with it, produced a strange and remarkable anomaly in the man- gation at Briaire. She was good-looking, and had some fortune. Her confessor, a Barnabite monk from Anneci, near Geneva, encouraged her romantic disposition to mys- ticity, and she aimed at being a second St. Therese. Her name and adventures would probably have been soon for- gotten in France had she not been the means of creating dissension between Bossuet and Fenelon. (1) Les Maximcs des Saints. In thirty-seven conferences at Rome, thirty-seven propositions extracted from this work were judged erroneous by a majority of voices, and a brief from the Pope, declaring this sentence, published in Rome March, 1699. Fenelon, instead of defending himself, and making to himself a great party by his persecution, sub- mitted to the sentence, and publicly, in his pulpit, agreed in the condemnation of his book. 335 tiers of a court which boasted of an amenity and refinement unknown to other nations. In the midst of this court, whose occupation was plea- sure, in the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, and among the persons forming his immediate society, suspicions of poison, the basest of crimes, became familiar, and accusations of attempting it frequent. This can only be accounted for by the universal ignorance which invited fools to seek, knaves to administer, and the government to punish with disgraceful eclat, preparations, potions, and secrets to create love, to avoid old age, to cure irremediable ills, to restore faded charms, renew exhausted strength, and arrest passing enjoyments. During the turbulence and crimes of the sixteenth century, poison had doubtless been often employed to remove importunate claimants to rich successions, or to gratify private vengeance. The supposed security of the mur- derer, and the insufficiency of strength or courage against such an enemy, had recommended it to the weak in that age of violence, and the fashion of the crime (if the expression be allowable) might not be quite passed away in the times of which we are speaking. Madame de Brinvilliers, at the instigation and with the assistance of her Italian lover, was doubtless guilty of many of the 336 murders laid to her charge. But many of the persons who were accused of consulting her were probably guilty of nothing but the enormous folly of believing that an ignorant and profligate woman possessed powers which no science could procure, and no mortal delegate. The different character assumed in different ages by the professors in supernatural cures, and in secrets unknown to the scrutinising eye of experimental philosophy, is worthy of remark. In the age of Madame de Brinvilliers, pre- tenders to occult sciences courted the suppo- sition of their dealings with the devil, and allowed it to be understood that their purchase of super- natural powers at the expence of their own souls in the next world, should enhance the price of their services to their friends in this. But the empirics of the next age, so far from dealing in poisons and receiving their com- missions from the devil, had nothing but piety and purity in their mouths. With no less bold- ness than their predecessors, they asserted that all their powers were derived from superior virtues, from intensity of meditation, and from universal benevolence. The Grahams, the Mesmers, the Cagliostros of the last fifty yea in took a directly contrary way to arrive at the same point of imposition on the credulous. 337 At the time that the courts of Rome and France were still bewildering themselves in end- less disputes and interminable negotiations on unintelligible subjects, arose the financial system of Law, which at once calmed all differences by turning the morbid activity whiqh chiefly occa- sioned them to speculations of gain ; and the system of Law at once did more than bishops, cardinals, the Pope, and Louis the Fourteenth, had been able to effect, by uniting Jesuits and Jansenists in one common pursuit. The Regent's government had hurried on the fate of France beyond the natural and inevitable progression of circumstances. His unbridled pro- fligacy had loosened every moral restraint, and his weak belief that there was a royal way to national wealth, a short cut which left both industry and economy far behind, not only precipitated the ruin and confiscation of the national resources, but completed that of the honour and moral character of the people. The natural riches and the natural cleverness and activity of that people soon succeeded in restoring the country to its natural and unalienable wealth ; but from their moral degradation the upper orders never recovered. When the bubble of imaginary riches burst, the warfare of fanaticism was re- commenced with new virulence and with new z 338 follies ; and that both parties might be equally blameable, both Jansenists and Jesuits began to work miracles in the cure of diseases. The power of the Jesuits, however, declined with that of le Tellier at the death of Louis the Fourteenth. And the Convahionaires at the tomb of a priest in the church-yard of St. Medard were the last efforts of the spirit of Jansenism among the people. (1) The almost worn-out and threadbare fanaticism of polemical divinity, which had been the subject of some of the most disgraceful pages in the history of man, had served at the same time to awaken the intellects of an ignorant world, and to sharpen the wits of those whose swords w not employed in cutting the throats of each other for private interests or individual ven- geance. This fanaticism, which, during a great part of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, had (1) Towards the end of Queen Anne's reign, there ap- peared in England a number of* fanatics who pretended to (and probably thought they poneased) the gift of prop! They used to assemble in Moorfields and exercise this gift, surrounded by crowds of idle and curious people. They were suppressed by the wise conduct of the govern- ment towards them. Instead of dispersing them by i or taking them up, Powel, the master of a celebrated pup- pet-show, was desired to make Punch turn prophet, which he did with such success as soon to silence his competitors. 339 begun to assume a political character, and to designate parties in the state almost as much as sects in the church ; this fanaticism, within seventy years afterwards, gave way at once to the fanaticism of liberty, which, like all errors founded on true principles, went much further astray than the one it supplanted. The first had been long estranged from all the pure and incon- trovertible truths of Christianity, and retained no hold but on the weakness and vindictiveness of man ; while the second originated in all that ennobles and elevates his character. At the moment when the human mind in France was undergoing this essential change in its principle of action ; when recovered from its blind adoration of the despotism of Louis the Fourteenth by the mortifications and by the misgovernment of his latter years ; when, loosened from its former prejudices, it began to regard the past with contempt, and the future with confidence, a genius started forward, sin- gularly fitted to lead the way, and to advance his followers in the vast career of mind and intellect which his writings opened to them. The talents of Voltaire were as peculiarly fa- voured by the age and circumstances in which he appeared as those of Louis the Fourteenth had been half a century before. The difference z 2 340 in the manners of the nation, and in the fashions and the splendour of the court, was not greater at the commencement of his reign and at his death than was the difference of the national mind and ways of thinking, as Voltaire found and as he left them. Both the monarch and the au- thor reigned absolutely over the opinions and character of the people and of the period to which they belonged. Both injured themselves by an attempt at universal sway. To both a long age of glory was allowed, which both sullied in their latter years : the one by listening to the dictates of a narrow-minded bigotry, which led him to measures of individual perse- cution and national calamity ; the other, by his insatiate thirst for praise betraying him into un- worthy and dishonest means of acquiring that which he already possessed in an unexampled degree. " L'amour de la gloire ne l'arlran- " chissoit d'aucune inquietude de la vanite (1) ;" and this vanity gave bun an excessive and ever increasing irritability against literary adversaries, whose insignificance was only brought into ob- servation by his notice. The combat between the institutions and the opinions of France, which may be said to have (1) Histoire du Dixhuitieme Siecle. torn. iii. p. 68. 341 begun with Voltaire, were brought to an issue by his genius. Had that genius been of a less general and less popular nature, and had his moral principles been of a severer cast, exile, persecution, and punishment would have im- mediately followed the first enunciation of his political and religious opinions. But while he showed himself so superior, so brilliant, and often so just in his views of the great subjects most interesting to humanity, his dramas charmed and enlightened those yet in- capable of more serious instruction. The laxity of many of his lighter works, and the often, profligate displays of his wit, assimilated him to the frivolous world over which his astonishing genius soared, although unable ever entirely to purify itself from the stains of the age to which it belonged. Thus, in recording Cardinal Albe- roni's plans, and the Duchesse de Maine's con- temporary plot during the Regency, Voltaire evidently writes to produce effect. He could neither believe in the magnitude of those plans, nor in the probability of their success. In the history of any other country, or any other period, instead of talking seriously of the Duchesse de Maine's conspiracy, he would have laughed at the idea of carrying off a first prince of the blood, the regent of the kingdom 5 and z 3 342 would have asked, what they were to do with him — what they were to do with themselves, if they had succeeded? But Voltaire had been brought up in the midst of these ridiculous in- trigues, had been long admired at the court of Sceaux, and felt that partiality for the follies of his contemporaries which the remembrances of early youth commonly produce. Of the whole of the Regent's reign he speaks in the same tone, with the same feelings of tenderness towards the depravity in which he had himself participated ; calls the elevation of the infamous and ignorant Dubois merely ridiculous ; says on his death, " Nous rimes de sa mort, comme de son elevation ;" speaks of the excesses of the Regent and of his court as mere gaiety and mirth ; and finishes by comparing him to Henry the Fourth! The writer, who has so often lamented the manner in which history is falsified, should have avoided a falsification, at once more pernicious to the interests of morality, and more discreditable to its author, than any of those of which lie complains. In the accounts which are handed down to us, on very unimpeachable authority, of the abandoned conduct and disgraceful compli- ances of women of the highest rank to the ad- venturer Law, when the stream of Pactolus was 343 supposed to flow through his hands, we recog- nize the ancestors of those who, at the begin- ning of the Revolution in 1789, profited by the first moment of public disorder to throw off every restraint, and, under weak and selfish pre- tences of personal suffering, to elope from their families in danger, and their country in con- fusion : while the men, bearing some of the most illustrious names of France, whose proge- nitors in the year 17 17 had crowded the Rue Quincampoix(l), in the year 1789, having, by their obstinacy and cupidity, hurried their inno- cent and well-intentioned monarch into the dif- ficulties which their own ignorance prevented their seeing, left him to encounter that popular fury which their conduct had chiefly excited ; and left their injured and enraged country to inflict on itself that dreadful punishment, which, in fact, its aristocracy only deserved. (2) (1) The Rue Quincampoix is a narrow street in the quar- tier de St. Denis, where the transactions of the bank were first carried on ; but the crowds became so excessive, and so choked up the street and all its environs, that many serious accidents occurred in the press before the books and the transfers of stock were removed, first, to the Hotel de Nevers (now the King's library), then, as a still larger space, to the Place de Vendome, and afterwards to the garden of the Hotel de Soissons. (2) " La regeneration nationale de 1789 ofFroit a la no- z 4 344 How can all the illustrious names, boasting of twelve centuries of uncontaminated blood and of distinguished actions, how can they excuse their dispersion at the beginning of the Revolution ? What future ages must pass away, what brilliant achievements be recorded, before this disgraceful blot can be erased from their escutcheons ! In vain will they urge, that they left their King, at his own request, only to return with the means of defending him ; for to own having aban- doned him to save themselves will hardly be brought forward by the nation who boasted preferring 11 Chimene A la vie, et l'honneur a Chime " blesse Francoise un inoven d'expier les tort dc lei an- " cetres, et de Bubstituer a ane existence privilegiee, (jui 14 touchoit a son terme, une existence citoyenne, ou elle eut " trouvO d'amplea dedommagemens. Sauf des except " que je voudrois croire nombreuses, et auxquelK " me plais a rendre hommage, elle refusa cet honorable U traitc. Sourde aux avertiswemena dune i . que " l'aveuglement le plus complet pouvoit seul ineconnoitre, "irritee des conseils de ses membres les plus . elle u se placa en dehors dune nation, disposee a considcrer M comme hostile, tout ce qui mettoit son orgueil a lui rester " Stranger, et par ses protestations ineonsiderees, par ses " menaces, qui n'avoient de danger que pour elle-meme, elle " donna plus de consistence et d'ainertume a des souvenirs " facheux, et plus de vraisemblance aux Boupcoofl que ces "souvenirs autorisoit." — B, CONSTANT) Lcttres sur U* Cent Jours, partie ii. p. 1 10. 345 But they fled, leaving their King in the midst of an enraged capital and a discontented country : they fled to strangers for that assistance which they felt they could not hope for from their own dependents. Had not the great territorial pro- prietors known that many of them were as ob- noxious (and much more justly so) to their own vassals than their poor deserted King was to the populace of Paris, they would have gone down to their estates, and spread themselves over the provinces. Even to the most ignorant it was apparent, that factious and mischievous spirits were endeavouring to corrupt their inhabitants ; although few calculated how rapidly the im- perious progression of circumstances was ad- vancing this corruption. Instead of abandoning at such a moment their irritated and misguided country, had they possessed either energy or conduct, they would have reclaimed or perished with her. The excellent account given by Las Casas, in his Memorial de St. Helene, of the beginning, the progress, and the effects of emigration, con- firms all that is here said. He treats of it with a truth, and places it in a light, which, as he had himself participated in the folly and madness of the measure, could only have been drawn from him by the powerful influence of the person S4ti who bade him speak. (1) We see that even at first, when emigration was considered as some- thing heroic and chevalresque in the young, such was the excessive ignorance and infatuation of the older heads guilty of the same miscon- duct as to the real sentiments and situation of their country, that, if they repressed rather than encouraged the measure, it was only from a fear that the supposed advantages attached to it would be shared by too many competitors, on the triumphant return which they all anticipated into France. In the mean time, the coteries of the prim and those of the first society in Paris, disa:ran_ by the bustle, and frightened by the disorder of the times, dispersed and re-united themselves at Coblentz. Many of the secret tics connecting these coteries, which propriety and a regard to appearances (the only moral feeling remaining) had concealed or left doubtful at Paris, were at once discovered and brought to light by fre- quent journeys to the frontier^ ; by violent declar- ations of political principles in persons hardly suspected of having any; by supposed duties never heard of before, to those they followed, or (1) Buonaparte. See Las Casts, Mim v. Htbme, torn. iii. )) 34? to those they left behind ; by sacrifices of fortune, of fame, and of country, made with magnanimous carelessness to please the mistress or follow the fashion of the moment. Nothing can place in a stronger light the severe discipline required by the upper orders of society in France at this period, to restore them to a sense of their real situation and duties, than the account given in the work to which we have already alluded of the conduct and man- ners of these mistaken people, under circum- stances which raised them in no eyes but their own. Their insolent manners and absurd pre- tensions in the countries which had afforded them refuge (1) ; their intolerant etiquettes, ridiculous out of the walls of their own palaces ; their jealousy of each other, their animosity against any one who had hesitated longer than themselves at abandoning their country, their presuming insolence on what they conceived their own superior conduct, was as remarkable and as little to the credit either of their character or understanding as was afterwards honourable (1) At the table of the Elector of Treves, in the year 1791, a French emigre" (whose name is well forgotten) said aloud to one of his countrymen seated by the Elector, " Ami, crois-tu que c'est mieux de mourir de faim, ou " devoir mange d'un ragout Allemand ? " 318 to both the manner in which many of them supported the dreadful adversity which quickly followed their infatuation. Las Casas must be pardoned for endeavouring to give the best colour lie can to the motives which first led them astray. He boasts the ge- nerosity of their sentiments, the purity of their intentions, and the heroic devotion of the " gentilliommes dc province." But the un- adorned truth is, that to this last order of per- sons, and to such of the noblesse not habitually living at Pafis, or living at Paris unattached to the court, the great incentive to emigration was the opportunity it gave of approaching the persons and attracting the notice of their princes, and associating themselves to the higher nobility, into whose society they never could have forced themselves at court, or at Paris, where their pretensions would only have exposed them to the merciless wounds of ridicule. It was such wounds already festering in the breasts of many, that urged them to adopt with acri- mony the popular cause, and to be foremost in the ranks of reform. Meanwhile, the wiser de- mocratical leaders, aware of the consequence emigration, secretly encouraged it, and whilst they declaimed from the tribune of the National Assembly against evaders, took care to leave all 349 doors open to facilitate escape. If the disposi- tion towards emigration seemed to relax, their harangues against it became more violent, and their orders more severe. This was sure to create a new impulse to fly, and care was taken that what appeared a mere accidental negligence at the barriers, allowed those who fled all the liberty they wished. Regiments were en- couraged to revolt, that their commanding officers might fancy it necessary to leave them. By this means the ruling party got rid of per- sons ill disposed towards them, and found in the subalterns and non-commissioned officers zealous friends to the new arrangements, among whom arose most of those great leaders who so long defeated the efforts of all the regularly- trained troops of Europe. While the King was thus abandoned, the country was left to be torn in pieces during ten years by the most bloody and despicable dema- gogues that were ever let loose on a people, deprived of all their natural counsellors and de- fenders, and forced to struggle out of anarchy through all the horrors of popular convulsions. The inevitable consequences, the natural death entailed by such convulsions, was the military despotism which so long extended its iron arm over that rich and highly-favoured country, 350 which her nobles deserted, instead of defending, and irritated instead of guiding. However such conduct may have been glossed over by the panic of the moment, from the impartial pen of history those guilty of it can- not hope to escape. In the future records of France, the violence, the barbarity, the atrocities of an ignorant and incensed populace, power- fully excited, will be noticed with compassion ; while the dereliction of her most illustrious nobles, her captains, and her statesmen, will be consigned to the judgment it merit-. Let not the author be here misunderstood : that author knows and reverences the individual talents and virtues of the French nation ; ho- nours innumerable instances of devoted attach- ment to their country, and of enlightened 1 of their monarch and his race > respects the con- duct of thousands involved from inevitable cir- cumstances in their disastrous emigration, and remembers with respect and admiration their conduct under all the privations, sufferings, and mortifications to which it subjected them: — but the author is here speaking of emigration political measure of the day, and ventures to attribute it to what it is believed all think minds will allow to have been at once its cause 351 and its excuse — to the general degraded state of moral feeling under institutions which the natural quickness of the nation had long outrun. To which must be added the administration of a series of weak ministers, acting under, or rather for, the two dissipated and profligate princes (the Regent and Louis the Fifteenth), who, in succeeding to Louis the Fourteenth, suc- ceeded to all the unpopularity which the disorder of the finances entailed by the passing glory of his reign necessarily devolved on his successors. The spectacle of a great nation shaking off chains it had so long worn, and reclaiming rights of which it had been so long deprived, soon attracted the eyes and interested the feelings of all Europe in its success : — that success it was itself entirely unprepared either to bear or to profit by. Its wits and its philosophers had un- dermined every prop, both of its throne and of its altars, without having condescended to form any plan for a new construction, or even to have any foresight of what was likely to arise from the ruins they had made. Few of their number had had opportunities of occupying themselves in any practical details of reform; and the whole bulk of the nation, educated for centuries in the habits of despotism, had no standard to recur to S5°Z by which to measure either their rights, their ex- pectations, or their demands. (1) In our great dispute with our monarch, a century before, tee reclaimed rights acknow- ledged by repeated charters, confirmed by suc- cessive sovereigns, never infringed without re- monstrance, and seldom without a further secu- rity for their future observance. But the in- toxication of France, on her first successes, in a cause so new, was immediately followed by a general fever of mind, a mental epidemy, accom- panied by symptoms of delirium at once horri- ble and ridiculous. From a centre of infection so potent, the disease soon spread itself nationally and individually over the greater part of Eun marking its progress by schemes of impossible reform, complaints of irremediable evils, virions of perfection incompatible with human nature, (1) " II ne faut pas croire que la nation fut d " pour manier dignement M liberie. oil encore "dans 1'edueation et le caracure trop de prejuges du " terns passe. Cela seroit venu, nous nous fonnions chaque " jour ; mais nous avions encore beaucoup i gagner. " de l'explosion de la Revolution, les patriotes en general, " se trouverent tels par nature, par instinct ; ce sentiment se " trouva dans leur sang ; ce fut chez eux une passion, une " frenesie ; et dela l'eftervescence, les exces, l'exageration " de l'epoque." — Buonaparte to Las Casas, Memorial de St. Helhie, torn. iv. p. 98. 353 a dereliction of real and experienced benefits, for untried and impossible improvements ; a general discontent with the existing order of things, and violent aspirations after an imagined and visionary future. When Voltaire, by the universality of his genius, the vivacity and the activity of his wit, and by a character singularly adapted to give to both their full effect with his countrymen — when he had roused a spirit of enquiry, and had given an irresistible impulse not only to the taste and literature, but to the general opinions of his age — another singularly-endowed being made his appearance in the domain of letters, who, scorning to address himself to the understand- ing, spoke directly to the heart and passions. Wielding at his pleasure the mighty force of an unexampled eloquence on the feelings of a lively and excitable people, he completed the mental revolution of France, which immediately preceded and materially contributed to the great political revolution that ensued. Rous- seau, endowed with the power of conceiving and of expressing every exalted feeling of the human heart, every sentiment of noble enthu- siasm, every excess of virtuous passion, every ecstatic joy and excruciating sorrow that can belong to the intellectual nature of man ; Rous* A A 354 seau, thus admirable in general conceptions, and in imaginary personifications of all that was great and good, was absolutely divested of judg- ment in their application to real life and to his own conduct. In his writings he promulgated principles of impossible application, and covered with the magic of his imagination the weakness and the contradictions of his arguments, in his own life, and in the extraordinary and lament- able details of it which his excessive vanity induced him to record, we have the measure of his estimation, and of his adherence to truth, when he tells us, in the midst of his career, that he has fulfilled a great and noble task, in ex- piating his secret faults and weaknesses, by ac- cusing himself of others more serious, of which he was not only innocent but incapable. (1) Throughout his Confessions, v. an ill- organized mind, endued with talents invariably employed to exalt human nature in the n and degrade it individually. An idle, lively, neglected boy, he runs away from a culpably careless father, and spends the first twenty-live years of his life a self-determined vagabond, in (1) '• Mais ici commence la grande et noble tache que j'ai " dignement remplie, d'expier mes iautes et mes foibh 11 cachees, en me chargeant de fautef plus graves, dont j " incapable, et que je ne commis jamais." — Confessions torn. ili. p. T20. 355 the commission of repeated acts of vile and voluntary baseness ; in the indulgence of the most foolish and most volatile attachments to objects invariably worthless ; in repeated, un- grateful neglect of many extraordinary instances of real kindness ; and in an obstinate opposition to every attempt made to better his existence and to reform his propensities. It is to be regretted, that, for the honour of human nature, we have not, and are never likely to have, the confessions of some well-constituted and ingenuous mind, having been, like Rous- seau, deprived of wholesome restraint in infancy, and having, like him, alone and unassisted, to combat all the ills, the sufferings, and the pas- sions of youth. How often, in such confessions, should we find all the noble enthusiasm of virtue, all the heroic self-devotion of friendship, all the fond visions of pure and faithful love, all "the ex- quisite enjoyments of nature, and all the " long- ings after immortality," unmixed with and un- disgraced by the vile propensities, the silly attach- ments, the insatiable vanity, the obstinate selfish- ness, and the perpetual inconstancy of Rousseau. Those who were well acquainted with the national character of France, and with her go- vernment, previous to the Revolution — with the peculiarities of the one, and the principles of the a a c 2 356 other — must soon convince themselves, that a change in the social existence of that country was inevitable, and independent of all the finan- cial difficulties which have been supposed the principal and immediate cause of her Revolution. The nation had fairly outgrown her institutions. Vain was the endeavour to patch, and stretch, and fit them to the altered fashion of the times. The tawdry rags, covering the shackles, in spite of which she had grown up to strength and beauty, would no longer hold together. They appeared at every turn, and chafed her in every movement, and this yet more in the details of social life than in public measures. The spirit of the times, and the progress of the human mind, on the great subjects of civil liberty and government, had much circumscribed the (otherwise unlimited) power of the crown over the liberty and pro- perty of its subjects. Arbitrary imprisonments, although equally legitimate, were more rarely resorted to. Political opinions it was found no longer possible to repress. They were produced under every varied form that a popular literature could assume, to disseminate discontent through every order of the state. A lively people, already disposed to listen, were thus addressed in the language of wit and of passion. Voltaire and Rousseau had lent a voice to express feelings 357 which nature had implanted in every heart, and opinions which already lurked in every mind. Few were sufficiently informed to be able to de- tect their errors or their exaggerations ; but the refined began to perceive, that the profound cor- ruption of manners which pervaded all orders of society was adverse even to their enjoyments. (1 ) The enlightened were aware, that the absolute want of mutual faith entailed by such corruption, prevented all associations, depending on the con- fidence of man with man, for increasing the benefits and lessening the evils of social life. An ignorance of the value, an indifference to the existence, and a neglect of the practice of truth, collectively and individually, of which their government set the example, pervaded all their combinations, and paralysed all their enormous natural advantages. Hence no public banks, no companies of assurance against individual losses, no great partnerships for mutual gain, no cor- (1) " C'est a l'exces de la depravation, au degout du d£s- " ordre, a l'avilissement des mceurs, c'est au vice, enfin, qu'il " appartient de detruire les plaisirs, et de d£crier l'amour. " On reclamera la vertu, jusqu'a un certain point, pour l'in- " teret du plaisir. Croyez-moi qu'il arrivera du changement, " et peut-etre en bien. II n'y a rien, par exemple, qui soit " aujourd'hui si decrie que l'amour conjugal. Ce prejuge " est trop violent : il ne peut pas durer." — Duclos, Memoires du C te . ***, torn. i. p. 107. A A 3 358 porate bodies possessing the confidence of their fellow-citizens. A tacit agreement seemed to have taken place mutually to receive and to make asser- tions, without enquiry into prooft but at the same time without confidence in fact, on either part. They had not yet advanced in the doctrine of sound and useful ethics to the conclusion, that truth is, in every thing, not only the shortest but the only road to excellence — the only foundation on which any thing permanent can ever be raised; and that all ways of evading, slighting, or opposing it are, in fact, only loss of time and hinderance of business in the affairs of men. A stronger instance can scarcely be given of the unmodified disregard to truth which had long existed in France, than the account of a dud between the Due de Richelieu and the Comte de Gace at the beginning of the Regency. This account is given in memoirs which, if not written by the Due de Richelieu himself were published in his name by some one devoted to his interests. The quarrel took place at the Bal de l 9 Opera: the combatants left it together, and stopped to fight in the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre, one of the most public and frequented streets of Paris, surrounded by hundreds of spectat They were both wounded, and Richelieu dan- gerously. The affair made such a noise from its 359 remarkable publicity, and the existing laws against duelling, that the Parliament of Paris thought proper to take notice of it. In the mean time, the Regent sent both the individuals with- out further ceremony to the Bastille. The Par- liament, with the permission of the Regent, continued their proceedings, and one of their body was deputed to interrogate the principals. " Le Parlement nomma Ferrand pour nous inter- " roger, et nous jurdmes tous deux, que nous " ?i'etio?is point battus en duel." No witnesses presented themselves, though invited. " Nos " juges etoient bien assures que nous nous etions " battus a Poutrance. — Ensuite les preuves " du combat ne s'etant pas manifestees, le Parle- " ment nous declara absous d'un pretendu duel, " et je sorti de la Bastille." (1) This absence of all regard to moral truth had communicated itself, from the maxims of their government, through all the ramifications of their private existence and affairs. It was not enough that marriage, in the upper orders of society, was generally considered as a contract, which, being made without consulting the contracting parties, gave them afterwards a tacit right to evade with- out reproach. Persons of the rank of nobles (1) See Memoires du Due de Richelieu, torn. ii. p. 100. A A 4* 360 were found vile enough to accept in marriage, and to bestow the name of* wife, on those whose conduct, as well as birth, would otherwise have denied them an entrance into society. Some- times the same disgraceful bargain was made with those of their own rank, who found a more honourable establishment difficult. The husband sacrificing at once his honour and his rights at the church-door, was sent to eat the wages of his base compliance in a distant provincial town. Here his title and his money soon procured him the good graces of some provincial beauty, who consoled him for the contempt with which he had been treated elsewhere, and whose husband imitated his own example of forbearance and submission. The sacrifice of youth and beauty was often made, and made without remonstrance, to deformity, to age, and even to imbecility, among persons equal in birth, when one of the parties had to oiler the wealth or brilliant e ence in society whieli was wanting to the other. — Even among the philosophers ami refbrn of the age — of those whose writings breathe nothing but the charms of conjugal fidelity, and the praises of constancy of sentiment, and pu- rity of manners — their own lives and tho9t their connections prove how little impression their doctrine had made either on themselves or otla re. 361 Without adverting to the moral conduct of Rousseau, or trusting to the opprobrious cha- racters he gives of most of his contemporaries, and of all his intimates, the whole of Voltaire's connexion with Madame du Chatelet ; the base conduct of the caustic Duclos towards persons of his most intimate society ; the adventures of the pastoral St. Lambert ; the letters of Madame d'Epinay, and a crowd of other con- temporary witnesses, prove not so much against the characters of the individuals, as against the total degradation of sentiment and the absence of all moral truth which had taken place uni- versally in cultivated society. Madame du Cha- telet's proficiency in mathematics and the severe studies of men seems to have secured her from no female frivolity, weakness, or inconsistency. In her conduct she proved herself without mo- ral principle of any sort, and in the little details of life without liberality, reason, or propriety. Her passion for dress and for gaming was ex- cessive. In the first, she made herself ridicu- lous from her bad taste ; and in the latter, almost ruined herself by her excesses. During a resi- dence of the court at Fontainbleau, she lost at the Queen's table, in the two or three first sit- tings, a thousand pounds; one half of which she contrived to force from her steward by antici- 36<2 pation on her revenues, and the other half she borrowed from Voltaire and from a Demoiselle du Thil, who seems to haye been a humble but attached friend. Not content with this loss, and supposing, like the veriest gambler, that she was to repair it by continuing to play, she again lost no less than three thousand five hundred pounds on her word. Voltaire, who had been the miserable spectator of this ruin, returned with her to Paris during the night of this last adventure, having with dif- ficulty got together her servants, horses, kc. lodged in different parts of the town of Fontain- bleau. So entirely pennyless was the whole party, that a wheel having broken near Essone, nobody had wherewithal to pay the blacksmith. He absolutely refused to let them proceed before he was satisfied for his job, and they were detained till by good luck an acquaintance of Madame du Chatelet's passing by, she borrowed the money necessary to release them. After this adventure, she retired with Voltaire to her husband's estate at Cirey in Champagne, to economise, and to endeavour to forget her losses. She always set out on all journeys, in all weather, winter or summer, at night, without the least con- sideration for the servants who accompanied her, or any precaution taken about the carriage that 363 conveyed herself and them ; although it was always overloaded by the quantity of baggage which travelled with her. On the above-men- tioned journey with Voltaire to Cirey, they set out from Paris at nine o'clock of a January night, the ground covered with snow, in an old tub of a coach, loaded like a diligence, — herself, Voltaire, her femme-de-chambre, and a pile of bandboxes within, and two servants on the out- side. The axle-tree broke before they arrived at Nangis, within six miles of Paris. She and Vol- taire were obliged to remain seated on the cushions of the carriage placed on the snow, while a blacksmith was sent for, three miles off, to repair the carriage. So ill was he paid for his work, as well as the peasants who came to their assistance, that on the carriage breaking again before it had proceeded half a league, neither blacksmith nor peasants would return to assist till they had bargained for their remuneration. In the whole arrangements of her household, and all domestic details, she was so shamefully penurious in her expences, that her servants have been known all to leave her at once on the eve of a removal. Their claims for an increase of wages could not even in those days have been called exorbitant ; when her coachman, her two footmen, and her cook were paid at the rate of 36± twenty sous (lOd.) a day, including their board wages, and her femme-de-chambre, her porter, and her upper servant thirty sous (Is. 3d.) However much she surpassed her sex in cer- tain powers of intellect, she seems to have par- taken of the absolute want of consideration for the lower orders of society, which, in spite of Voltaire and his fellow-labourers to raise the dignity of man, and to destroy artificial differences, was still general in all immediate intercourse with the people : they seem hardly to have been considered as of the same nature with their su- periors. Some curious instances of this are given in the memoirs of a valet-de-chambre of Ma- dame du Chatelet's, lately published (1), to which the reader must be referred for the de- tails in question ; confining ourselves here to the general remark suggested by the man himself as an apology for Madame du Chatelet's con- duct, in the circumstances which he recounts. " On ne se genoit pas devant ses laquais. C'etoit " 1* usage, et j'ai etc a meme dejuger par mon " propre example, que leurs mattresses ne les " regardoient que comme des automates. Je " suis du moins convaincu que Madame du Cha- (1) Menwircs sur Voltaire, ct sur ses Quvragcs, par Long- champ ct U'agnilres. Paris, 18S 365 " telet, dans son bain, en m'ordonnant de la " servir, ne voyoit pas meme en cela l'ombre " d'indecence, et que mon individu n'etoit alors " a ses yeux ni plus ni moins que la bouilloire " que j'avois a la main. ,, Her losses at play had not lessened her im- moderate love of gaming. On her return from Cirey to Paris, she stopped at Chalons at eight o'clock in the morning, to breakfast with the bishop of that place. Her post-horses were ordered at half past nine, to carry her on : while waiting for them, she proposed a party at cards. The horses came, and were sent away again till two. By this time she had dined, and the party at cards was recommenced, which lasted till past eight o'clock at night, the post-horses and drivers having been in attendance from two o'clock till that hour. When Voltaire first discovered her infidelity to him, and her amour with St. Lambert, they were all lodged together in the country house of Stanislaus, the Ex- King of Poland, at Commercey in Lorraine. Voltaire's rage was excessive. St. Lambert took up the matter with a high hand, and said if his conduct displeased him, he was ready to answer for it. Madame du Chatelet was much calmer, and, nothing put out, she went up to the apartment of Voltaire, and argued 3(56 the matter with him in a quite different manner, justifying her conduct, and giving her reasons for so doing. For these reasons the reader must be referred to the original work already quoted. Voltaire finished the conversation (overheard by him who reports it) with saying, " Ah! Madame, " vous aurez toujours raison ; mais puisqu'il faut " que les choses soit ainsi, du moins, qu'elles ne " se passent pas devant mes yeux. M The affair ended by St. Lambert making apologies to Vol- taire for the impetuosity of his language, and the whole party supping together the next night as usual, at Madame de Bouflers. St. Lambert seems to have been a much more successful lover with the ladies than with the muses, although he courted both assiduously. Of a gentleman's family in Lorraine, and in the French service, he was attached to the household of Stanislaus during his retreat at Luneville. Here he became the favoured lover of the Mar- quise dc Bouflers, the mother to the Chevalier de Bouflers of epigrammatic memory, and the osten- sible mistress of the old gouty King of Poland. His pretensions to gallantry, however, were