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 Mx^ffiiS JifeMife^ : -S- 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE 
 
 OF 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
- 1 i 
 
LECTURES 
 
 OF 
 
 Lola Montez 
 
 (COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD) 
 
 including her Autobiography 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 RUDD & CARLETON, 310 BROADWAY 
 M DCCC LVIII 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 
 
 EUDD & CARLETON, 
 
 la the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
 E. CRAIQHKAU, 
 Printer, Slereotyper, and Electrotyper, 
 
 Carton 33utrtJtng, 
 
 81, 83, and 83 Centre Strut. 
 
EXTRACT FROM THE AMERICAN LAW JOURNAL. 
 
 " Let Lola Montez have credit for her talents, intelli 
 gence, and her support of popular rights. As a political 
 character, she held, until her retirement from Switzer 
 land, an important position in Bavaria and Germany, 
 besides having agents and correspondents in various 
 parts of Europe. On foreign politics she has clear ideas, 
 and has been treated by the political men of the country 
 as a substantive power. She always kept state secrets, 
 and could be consulted in safety in cases in which her 
 original habits of thought rendered her of service. Act 
 ing under her advice, the king had pledged himself to a 
 course of steady improvement to the people. Although 
 she wielded so much power, it is alleged that she never 
 used it for the promotion of unworthy persons, or, as 
 other favorites have done, for corrupt purposes; and 
 there is reason to believe that political feeling influenced 
 her course, not sordid considerations." 
 
CON 
 
 TENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Autobiography. Part I., . . . . 9 
 
 II. II.,. ~V. .'-.." . . 55 
 
 III. Beautiful Women, '.-. . 83 
 
 IV. Gallantry,- . . '.. . . .125 
 V. Heroines of History, . . . . -171 
 
 VI. Comic Aspect of Love, . v v , .' . . 207 
 
 VII. Wits and Women of Paris, ./ . ; . . 231 
 
 VIII. Romanism, * . -.y* '"'V-' 265 
 
AUTOBIOGRAP HY 
 
 PART I. 
 
AUTOBI OGRAPHY. 
 PART I. 
 
 THE right of defining one's position seems to be a 
 very sacred privilege in America, and I must avail 
 myself of it, in entering upon the novel business of 
 this lecture. Several leading and influential journals 
 have more than once called for a lecture on Lola 
 Montez, and as it is reasonably supposed that I am 
 about as well acquainted with that " eccentric" indi 
 vidual (as the newspapers call her) as any lady in 
 this country, the task of such an undertaking has 
 fallen upon me. 
 
 It is not a pleasant duty for me to perform. For, 
 however fearless, or if you please, however impudent 
 
1 2 Autobiography. 
 
 I may be in asserting and maintaining my opinions 
 and my rights, yet I must confess to a great deal of 
 diffidence when I come to speak personally of one so 
 nearly related to me as Lola Montez is. As Burns 
 says, " we were girls together." . The smiles and 
 tears of our childhood, the joys and sorrows of our 
 girlhood, and the riper and somewhat stormy events 
 of womanhood, have all been shared with her. There 
 fore, you will perceive, that to speak of her, is the 
 very next thing to speaking of myself. 
 . But though we are friends of such long standing, I 
 have not come to be the eulogist or apologist of Lola 
 Montez ; I am not quite sure that she would accept 
 such a service even from her best friend. 
 
 A woman, like a man of true courage, instinctively 
 prefers to face the public deeds of her life, rather than, 
 by cowardly shifts, to skulk and hide away from her 
 own historical presence. 
 
 Perhaps the noblest courage, after all, is to dare to 
 meet one's self to sit down face to face with one's 
 own . life, and confront all those deeds which may 
 
Autobiography. 1 3 
 
 have influenced the mind or manners of society, for 
 good or evil. 
 
 As applied to women, of course this remark can be 
 true only of those who have, to some extent, per 
 formed tasks usually imposed upon men. That is, 
 she must have performed some deeds which have left 
 their mark upon society, before she can come within 
 the rule. 
 
 An inane piece of human wax- work, whose life has 
 consisted merely of powdering, drinking tea, going 
 to the opera, flirting, and sleeping, has had no life 
 to be taken into the count in this connexion. Sho 
 may have been useful, as a pretty piece of statuary, to 
 fill a nook in a private house, or as a pleasant piece 
 of furniture for a drawing-room; but there are no 
 rules of her moral and social being which can justly 
 be applied to one whose more positive nature forces 
 her out into the mighty field of the world, where the 
 crowd and crush of opposing interests come together 
 in the perpetual battle of life. 
 
 What can a woman do oujb there who cannot take 
 
14 Autobiography. 
 
 her part ! A good tea-drinker a merely good drawing 
 room flirt, would make a very sorry shift of it, I fear ! 
 She must have a due degree of the force of resistance 
 to be able to stand in those tidal shocks of the world. 
 Alas ! for a woman whose circumstances, or whose na 
 tural propensities and powers push her forward beyond 
 the line of the ordinary routine of female life, unless 
 she possesses a saving amount of that force of resist 
 ance. Many a woman who has had strength to get 
 outside of that line, has not possessed the strength to 
 stand there ; and the fatal result has been that she has 
 been swept down into the gulf of irredeemable sin. 
 The great misfortune was that there was too much of 
 her to be held within the prescribed and safe limits 
 allotted to woman; but there was not enough to 
 enable her to stand securely beyond the shelter of 
 conventional rules. 
 
 Within this little bit of philosophy there is a key 
 which unlocks the dark secret of the fall and ever 
 lasting ruin of many of the most beautiful and natu 
 rally-gifted women in the world. 
 
Autobiography. ij 
 
 There was as much truth as wit in the old writer 
 who said that " the woman of extraordinary beauty, 
 who has also sufficient intellect to render her of an 
 independent mind, ought also to be able to assume 
 the quills of the porcupine in self-defence." 
 
 At any rate, such is the social and moral fabric of 
 the world, that woman must be content with an ex 
 ceedingly narrow sphere of action, or she must take 
 the worst consequences of daring to be an innovator 
 and a heretic. She must be either the servant or the 
 spoiled plaything of man ; or she must take the re 
 sponsibility of making herself a target to be shot at 
 by the most corrupt and cowardly of her own sex, 
 and by the ill-natured and depraved of the opposite 
 gender. 
 
 Daniel O'Connell used to be proud of being, as he 
 said, " the best abused man in the world." I do not 
 know whether Lola Montez has been the best abused 
 woman in the world or not, but she has been pretty 
 well abused at any rate ; and has the honor, I be 
 lieve, of having caused more newspaper paragraphs 
 
16 Autobiography. 
 
 and more biographies than any woman living. I have, 
 myself, seen twenty-three or twenty-four pretended 
 biographies of Lola Montez ; not one of which, how 
 ever, came any nearer to being a biography of her, 
 than it did to being an authentic history of the man 
 in the moon. Seven cities claimed old Homer, but 
 the biographers have given Lola Montez to more 
 than three times seven cities. And a laughable thing 
 is, that not one of all these biographers has yet hit 
 upon the real place of her birth. One makes her 
 born in Spain, another in Geneva, another in Cuba, 
 another in India, another in Turkey, and so on. And 
 at last, a certain fugitive from the gallows will 
 have it, that she was born of a washerwoman in 
 Scotland. And so of her parentage one author 
 makes her the child of a Spanish gipsy ; another, the 
 daughter of Lord Byron ; another, of a native prince 
 of India, and so on, until they have given her more 
 fathers than there are signs in the zodiac. 
 
 I declare, if I were Lola Montez, I should begin to 
 doubt whether I ever had a father, or whether I was 
 
Autobiography. 1 7 
 
 ever born at all, except in some such fashion aa 
 Minerva was said to be born of the brain of Jupiter. 
 
 Lola Montez has had a more difficult time to get 
 born than even that, for she has had to be born over 
 and over again of the separate brain of every man 
 who has attempted to write her history. 
 
 Happily, however, I possess the means of settling 
 this confused question, and of relieving the doubts 
 of this unfortunate lady in relation to her parentage 
 and birthplace ; while I may at the same time gratify 
 the curiosity of those who have honored me with 
 their presence here to-night. 
 
 Lola Montez was then actually born in the city of 
 Limerick, in the year of our Lord, 1824. I hope she 
 will forgive me for telling her age. Her father was 
 a son of Sir Edward Gilbert; and his mother, Lady 
 Gilbert, was considered, I believe, one of the hand 
 somest women of her time. The mother of Lola was 
 an Oliver, of Castle Oliver, and her family name was 
 of the Spanish noble family of Montalvo, descended 
 from Count de Montalvo, who once possessed im- 
 
1 8 Autobiography. 
 
 mense estates in Spain, all of which, were lost in the 
 wars with the French and other nations. The Mon- 
 talvos were originally of Moorish blood, who came 
 into Spain at the time of Ferdinand and Isabella the 
 Catholic. So that the fountain-head of the blood 
 which courses in the veins of the erratic Lola Montez 
 is Irish and Moorish-Spanish a somewhat combus 
 tible compound it must be confessed. 
 
 Her father, the young Gilbert, was made an ensign 
 in the English army when he was seventeen years 
 old, and before he was twenty, he was advanced to 
 the rank of Captain of the 44th Regiment. He was 
 but little more than twenty at the time of his mar 
 riage, and her mother was about fifteen. Lola was 
 born during the second year of this marriage 
 making her little debut upon this sublunary stage 
 in the midst of the very honeymoon of the young 
 people, and when they had hardly tune to give 
 a proper reception to so extraordinary a per 
 sonage. 
 
 She was baptized by the name of MARIE DOLORES 
 
Autobiography. 19 
 
 ELIZA EOSANNA GILBERT. She was always called 
 DOLORES, the diminutive of which is LOLA. 
 
 Soon after the birth of this DOLORES, the 44th 
 Eegiment, of which her father was a captain, was 
 ordered to India. I have heard her mother say that 
 the passage to India lasted about four months that 
 they landed at Calcutta, where they remained about 
 three years, when the Governor-General, Lord Hast 
 ings, ordered the 44th Eegiment to Dinapore, some 
 distance in the interior, upon the Ganges. Soon 
 after the army arrived at this spot, the cholera broke 
 out with terrible violence, and her father was among 
 its first victims. There was a young and gallant 
 officer by the name of Craigie, whom her father 
 loved, and when dying and too far gone to speak, 
 he took his child and wife's hand and put them, in 
 the hand of this young officer, with an imploring 
 look, that he would be kind to them when death had 
 done its work. 
 
 The mother of Lola Montez was thus left a widow 
 before she was eighteen years old; and she was 
 
2o Autobiography. 
 
 confided to the care and protection of Mrs. General 
 Brown. You can have but a faint conception of the 
 responsibility of the charge of a handsome, young 
 European widow in India. 
 
 The hearts of a hundred officers, young and old, 
 beat all at once with such violence for her, that the 
 whole atmosphere for ten miles round fairly throbbed 
 with the emotion. But in this instance the general 
 fever did not last long, for Captain Craigie led the 
 young widow Gilbert to the altar himself. He was 
 a man of high intellectual accomplishments, and soon 
 after this marriage his regiment was ordered back 
 to Calcutta, and he was advanced to the rank of 
 major. 
 
 At this time the child Lola was little more than 
 six years old, when she was sent to Europe to the 
 care of Major Craigie's father at Montrose, in Scot 
 land. This venerable man had been provost of 
 Montrose for nearly a quarter of a century, and the 
 dignity of his profession, as well as the great respect 
 ability of the family, made every event connected 
 
Autobiography. 2 1 
 
 with his household a matter of some public note, and 
 the arrival of the queer, wayward, little East Indian 
 girl was immediately known to all Montrose. The 
 peculiarity of her dress, and I dare say not a little 
 eccentricity in her manners, served to make her an 
 object of curiosity and remark ; and very likely the 
 child perceived that she was somewhat of a public 
 character, and may have begun, even at this early 
 age, to assume airs and customs of her own. 
 
 "With this family, however, she remained but a 
 short time, when her parents became somehow 
 impressed with the idea that she was being petted 
 and spoiled, and she was removed to the family of 
 Sir Jasper Nichols, of London, commander-in-chief 
 of the Bengal forces. His family remained in Paris 
 for the sake of educating their daughters. After 
 several years in Paris, Miss Fanny Nichols and the 
 young Lola were sent to Bath for eighteen months to 
 undergo the operation of what is properly called 
 finishing their education. At the expiration of this 
 finishing campaign, Lola's mother came from India 
 
22 Autobiography. 
 
 for the purpose of taking her daughter back with her 
 She was then fourteen years old ; and from the first 
 moment of her mother's arrival, there was a great hub 
 bub of new dresses, and all manner of extravagant 
 queer-looking apparel, especially for the wardrobe of 
 a young girl of fourteen years. The little Dolores 
 made bold enough one day to ask her mother what 
 this was all about, and received for an answer that it 
 did not concern her that children should not be 
 inquisitive, nor ask idle questions. But there was a 
 Captain James of the army in India, who came out 
 with her mother, who informed the young Lola that 
 all this dressmaking business was for her own wedding 
 clothes, that her mother had promised her in mar 
 riage to Sir Abraham Lumly, a rich and gouty old 
 rascal of sixty years, and Judge of the Supreme 
 Court in India. This put the first fire to the maga 
 zine. The little madcap cried and stormed alter 
 nately. The mother was determined, so was her 
 child. The mother was inflexible, so was her child, 
 and in the wildest language of defiance she told her 
 
Autobiography. 23 
 
 that she never would be thus thrown alive into the 
 jaws of death. 
 
 Here, then, was one of those fatal family quarrels, 
 where the child is forced to disobey parental authority, 
 or to throw herself away into irredeemable wretched 
 ness and ruin. It is certainly a fearful responsibility 
 for a parent to assume of forcing a child to such alter 
 natives. But the young Dolores sought the advice 
 and assistance of her mother's friend, Captain James. 
 He was twenty-seven years of age, and ought to have 
 been capable of giving good and safe counsel. In 
 
 tears and despair she appealed to him to save her 
 
 / 
 
 from this detested marriage a thing which he cer 
 tainly did most effectually, by eloping with her the 
 next day himself. The pair went to Ireland, to Cap 
 tain James's family, where they had a great muss in 
 trying to get married. No clergyman could be found 
 who would marry so young a child without a mother's 
 consent. The captain's sister put off for Bath, to try 
 and get the mother's consent. At first she would not 
 listen, but at last good sense so far prevailed as to make 
 
24 Autobiography. 
 
 her see that nothing but evil and sorrow could come 
 of her refusal, and she consented, but would neither 
 be present at the wedding, nor send her blessing. So 
 in flying from that marriage with ghastly and gouty 
 old age, the child lost her mother, and gained what 
 proved to be only the outside shell of a husband, 
 who had neither a brain which she could respect, nor 
 a heart which it was possible for her to love. Kun- 
 away matches, like run-away horses, are almost sure 
 to end in a smash-up. 
 
 My advice to all young girls who contemplate 
 taking such a step, is. that they had better hang or 
 drown themselves just one hour before they start. 
 
 Captain James remained with his child- wife eight 
 months in Ireland, when he joined his regiment in 
 India. The first season of Lola's life in India was 
 spent in the gay and fashionable city of Calcutta, 
 after which time the regiment was ordered to Kurwal, 
 in the interior. 
 
 The fashion of travelling in India I fancy can never 
 be made agreeable to an American or a European 
 
Autobiography. 25 
 
 certainly not to one of kind and humane feelings ; for 
 human beings are there used to perform the office of 
 horses, carrying you on their shoulders in a palan 
 quin. A palanquin is a kind of square box, hand 
 somely painted outside, with soft cushions inside, and 
 side-lamps like a carriage. To each palanquin there 
 are usually eight bearers, four of whom are employed 
 at a time. It is astonishing to see the amount of 
 fatigue which these human horses will endure. But I 
 have seen the poor creatures almost sink down with 
 exhaustion, as they set down their burden after a long 
 journey through the burning sun, that would almost 
 kill a man to sit still in twenty minutes. But still, as 
 human nature will somehow adapt itself to whatever 
 circumstances may surround it, these hapless beings 
 contrive to make a merry life among themselves. 
 You will hear them sing their jolly songs under their 
 heavy burdens. The chants of the palanquin bearers 
 are sometimes very amusing, and will serve to give 
 you an idea of the native genius of India. Though 
 they keep all the time to the same sing-song tune, yet 
 
26 Autobiography. 
 
 they generally invent the words as they go along. I 
 will give you a sample, as well as it could be made 
 out, of what I heard them sing, while carrying an 
 English clergyman who could not have weighed less 
 than two hundred and twenty-five pounds. I must 
 premise that palkee is the Hindostanee word for 
 palanquin, and each line of the following jargon was 
 sung in a different voice : 
 
 Oh, what a heavy bag I 
 
 No ; it is an elephant ; 
 
 He is an awful weight 
 
 Let's throw his palkee down 
 
 Let's set him in the mud 
 
 Let's leave him to his fate. 
 
 No, for he'll be angry then ; 
 
 Ay, and he'll beat us then 
 
 With a thick stick. 
 
 Then let's make haste and get along, 
 
 Jump along quick. 
 
 And off they started in a jog-trot, which must have 
 shaken every bone in his reverence's body, keeping 
 chorus all the time of "jump along quick, jump 
 
Autobiography. 27 
 
 along quick," until they were obliged to stop for 
 laugMng. 
 
 They invariably suit these extempore chants to the 
 weight and character of their burden. I remember to 
 have been exceedingly amused one day at the merry 
 chant of my human horses as they started off on the 
 run. I must mention, that cabbada means " take 
 care," and larba means "young lady." 
 
 She's not heavy, 
 
 Cabbada ! 
 Little barba, 
 
 Cabbada 1 
 Carry her swiftly, 
 
 Cabbada! 
 Pretty barba, 
 
 Cabbada! 
 
 And so they went on singing and extemporising 
 for the whole hour and a half's journey. It is quite 
 a common custom to give them four annas (or Eng- 
 glish sixpence) apiece, at the end of every stage 
 when fresh horses are put under the burden ; but a gen- 
 
28 Autobiography. 
 
 tleman of my acquaintance, who had been carried too 
 slowly, as he thought, only gave them two annas 
 apiece. The consequence was that during the next 
 stage, the men not only went much faster, but they 
 make him laugh with their characteristic song, the 
 whole burden of which was, "He has only given 
 them two annas, because they went slowly ; Let us 
 make haste and go along quickly, and then we shall 
 get eight annas and have a good supper." 
 
 The native princes of India generally possessed 
 great wealth, as I may illustrate by a description of 
 the grand reception given by Eunjeet Singh of 
 Sind, to Lord Auckland and the British army on its 
 way to Cabul. Eunjeet Singh was one of the richest 
 and most powerful of the native princes of India, and 
 this grand.reception took place at his chief city of La 
 hore, on the banks of the Indus. 
 
 This prince had tents erected to receive the whole 
 British army. My father, who was Adjutant-General 
 of the army in India, was there with my mother. 
 The tents erected for the officers were lined with gold 
 
Autobiography. 2Cj 
 
 and silver trimmings, and with the richest cashmere 
 shawls. The Indian prince gave an audience to the 
 British officers in a palace, the walls of which were 
 studded with agates, cornelians, turquoises, and every 
 kind of precious stone; and the officers, servants, 
 and even elephants of the prince were also covered 
 with jewels. My mother, with several other wives 
 of the British officers, was present at this magnificent 
 audience. After the consultation, the prince, dressed 
 in a perfectly white muslin, with no jewels except 
 those in his turban, took his seat on a throne of gold, 
 and Lord Auckland was placed on another golden 
 throne representing the throne of England. 
 
 After this ceremony came in, according to the 
 custom of the country, the rich presents for the 
 English officers, which were distributed with strict 
 reference to the rank of each officer. These presents 
 consisted of trays full of the most precious stones and 
 jewels. My mother described what a lapful of 
 these precious things was presented to her every 
 one of which, however, she had to give up to the 
 
30 Autobiography. 
 
 government for I ought to tell you that every British 
 officer in India is obliged to take an oath that he will 
 faithfully give up to government all presents that 
 may be given him by the native princes. Every 
 month there is a public sale of all such gifts, which 
 has been an immense wealth to the East India 
 Company. 
 
 Well, after all these splendid gifts from the Indian 
 prince, Lord Auckland ordered in the presents which 
 the English had provided for the prince and his 
 officers, which consisted of imitation gold and silver 
 ornaments, swords, rusty old pistols, and all sorts of 
 trumpery, which Eunjeet Singh received without 
 moving a muscle of his face. 
 
 But the most extraordinary gift of the great prince 
 was yet to come. He gave a splendid dance in the 
 evening to the British officers, at which the most 
 beautiful dancing girls of his harem were presented. 
 These beautiful girls were all Circassian and Georgian 
 slaves of the prince. There were just as many of 
 them present as there were British officers, and each 
 
Autobiography. 31 
 
 girl had a fortune of jewels and precious stones on 
 her person. At the conclusion of the dance, the 
 prince presented each of her majesty's officers with 
 one of these richly loaded girls as a present giving 
 the richest and most beautiful one to the highest 
 officers, and so down the regular gradations of 
 rank. 
 
 The peculiar looks on the faces of the English 
 officers that followed this scene, I shall not attempt to 
 describe. But I can easily imagine with what a sad 
 countenance old Lord Auckland informed the prince 
 that English law and English civilization did not 
 quite allow her majesty's officers to receive such a 
 peculiar kind of presents, and I am afraid that the 
 young officers no the gentlemen who hear me can 
 so much better appreciate their disappointment than 
 I can, that it will be folly for me to attempt to 
 describe it. 
 
 As a singular example of the romance often found 
 in the history of the native rulers of India, I may 
 refer to a famous queen of a province near Merut, 
 
32 Autobiography. 
 
 who by her great tact and diplomacy managed to keep 
 her possessions, and obtain many favors from the 
 English government. She began life as a dancing 
 girl, and one of the commonest of her profession at 
 that. But she was very beautiful, it was said, when 
 young. The old king of the province had a grand 
 dance, and among five hundred girls she appeared, 
 and so won the admiration of the monarch, that he 
 had her engaged to sing and dance regularly at his 
 court. Little by little she won his heart until he 
 married her, and raised her to the queenly dignity. 
 For some time all went on well, the bewitching young 
 queen really being the king herself. At length there 
 came into that little kingdom an adventurer, a 
 European, by the name of Dyce Sombre, who entered 
 the army of the Indian king. He was young and 
 very handsome, and the charming queen took a fancy 
 to him, which soon ripened into an intrigue, and she 
 at once set about a plan to get the old king out of the 
 way. With daring ingenuity she projected a revolu 
 tion, and fired the old king up with most desperate 
 
Autobiography. 33 
 
 determinations in resisting it, at the same time telling 
 
 him she was determined not to survive his defeat, and 
 
 
 she assured him that if the battle was lost, she would 
 
 send him a handkerchief soaked in her blood ; and 
 she did dip the handkerchief in somebody's blood, 
 and sent it to her despairing lord, who himself pre 
 ferred death to defeat, and did what he supposed was 
 following his queen to the other world. But she had 
 prudently, though most wickedly, stayed behind, in 
 the company of the handsome foreigner. She after 
 wards had a son, who was acknowledged by the Eng 
 lish government as heir to her throne. She grew to 
 be very jealous of her husband, and when she one 
 day caught him looking at a beautiful young girl, she 
 instantly sent for some workmen, and had a deep hole 
 dug under her footstool, and into this she had the 
 young girl plunged and buried alive. When I saw 
 this remarkable woman, she was shrivelled up a little, 
 dressed in plain white, without a single jewel 01 
 ornament upon her person. On her death, the British 
 
 government abolished her throne and pensioned her 
 
 2* 
 
34 Autobiography. 
 
 son, wliicli was the way it kept its promise to the 
 queen. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this little episode of kingly love, 
 because it illustrates the fact, that the native princes 
 of India sometimes continue to imitate the more 
 refined manners of civilized courts. 
 
 The native princes of India were generally slaves 
 to their senses, and many of them were ruled by the 
 will or caprice of their fair and fascinating ladies. 
 The powerful Raja of Jypur became such a slave to 
 an infatuated attachment to a beautiful Mahomedan 
 dancing girl, that he lost nearly all his hereditary pos 
 sessions ; and what was spared, was from the suffer 
 ance of Ameer Khan. 
 
 There was another instance in Tulasi Bai, a woman 
 of low extraction, whose beauty captured and enslaved 
 the mind of Malhar Rao ; and so well did she play her 
 cards, that after the death of the prince she was made 
 Regent to his successor, the young Holkar. Her 
 regency gave the British government, and the British 
 army, the greatest embarrassments. It was through 
 
Autobiography. 35 
 
 her instrumentality that a general confederacy was 
 made against the English. But the fortunes of war 
 threw this female general into their hands, and so 
 much were her skill and power dreaded, that she was 
 carried immediately to the banks of a river, where 
 her head was severed from her body, and her body' 
 thrown into the stream, as if determined to make it 
 doubly sure that she was really out of the way. This 
 beautiful and powerful woman was not thirty years of 
 age at the time of her death. 
 
 The respectable women of the natives never appear 
 in public never go to parties never look upon the 
 face of a man, except a member of their family. 
 They consider it an irreparable disgrace if their faces 
 should be seen by a stranger. 
 
 If a stranger visits a family, he may converse with 
 the lady on the other side of a'thickly wadded curtain 
 but that is considered a mark of great favor to a 
 visitor. I have known some of the more liberal 
 allow their wives to shake hands with a particular 
 friend, through a hole ! 
 
36 Autobiography. 
 
 These native women of India are often very beau 
 tiful. And you may have a curiosity to know if they 
 ever have any intrigues ? You can judge for your 
 selves what chance there can be. Such a thing, 
 if found out, would be instant death. The natives 
 of India are not much like that amiable American 
 who told an affectionate neighbor, that if he ever 
 caught him kissing his wife again, there would be a 
 coolness grow up between them. But the women of 
 India do sometimes elude the vigilance of their jea 
 lous lords. Still, as a general thing, India in this par 
 ticular gives the lie to the old proverb that, " Where 
 there is a will there is a way." 
 
 The jewels worn by these native women are of 
 great beauty and cost ; and those well to do in the 
 world, will have a different dress for every day in the 
 year. Does not that beat Fifth Avenue ? I may add 
 that these women are horribly jealous, and very vin 
 dictive, as all orientals are. It would take a mis 
 sionary his lifetime to make one of them understand 
 the motives of a fashionable European or an Ameri- 
 
Autobiography. 37 
 
 can lady, who will often take a great deal of pains tc 
 get her husband into an actual flirtation with some 
 other woman. The women of India do not exactly 
 understand the philosophical principle involved in 
 the proposition that a husband cannot see two ways 
 at once. 
 
 The European and American women are so much 
 better educated than their sisters in India. 
 
 But we left Lola Montez on her journey to Karwal, 
 where, after some little general pleasure-riding, she was 
 taken to visit a Mrs. Lomer a pretty woman, who 
 was about thirty -three years of age, and was a great 
 admirer of Capt. James. Her husband was a blind 
 fool enough ; and though Captain James's little wife, 
 Lola, was not exactly a fool, yet it is quite likely she 
 did not care enough about him to keep a look-out 
 upon what was going on between himself and Mrs. 
 Lomer. So she used to be peacefully sleeping every 
 morning when the Captain and Mrs. Lomer were off 
 to a sociable ride on horseback. In this way 
 things went on for a long time, when one morning 
 
38 Autobiography. 
 
 Captain James and Mrs. Lomer did not get back to 
 breakfast and so the little Mrs. James and Mr. 
 Lomer breakfasted alone, wondering what had become 
 of the morning riders. 
 
 But all doubts were soon cleared up by the fact 
 coming fully to light, that they had really eloped to 
 Neilghery Hills. Poor Lomer stormed, and raved, and 
 tore himself to pieces, not having the courage to 
 attack anybody else. And little Lola wondered, cried 
 a little, and laughed a good deal, especially at Lomer's 
 rage. Finally, all the officers' wives got together and 
 held a consultation over her, as to what was to be 
 done with her. At first she was confided to the care 
 of a Mrs. Palmer. Then it was afterwards resolved 
 that it was best to send her to her mother at Calcutta. 
 This was a bitter necessity for her, for she dreaded her 
 mother ; she knew that she had never been forgiven 
 the elopement, and now to be sent to her after the 
 fatal fruits of that folly were so apparent, was indeed 
 a bitter necessity. 
 
 The meeting of the mother and the child was by 
 
Autobiography. 39 
 
 no means a pleasant one. The latter was locked up 
 in a chamber, and confined, till her mother procured 
 a certificate from a doctor that the little prisoner was 
 in ill health, and must be sent to Europe. General 
 Craigie, her step-father, certainly thought this treat 
 ment unusually severe, if not unwise. Large tears 
 rolled down his cheeks when he took her on board 
 the vessel ; and he testified his affection and his care; 
 by placing in the hand of the little grass- widow a 
 check for a thousand pounds on a house in London. 
 She was to be sent to the care of a branch of the 
 Craigie family, which lived at Perth, in Scotland ; and 
 an American family, Mr. and Mrs. Sturges, who are, 
 I think, yet living in Boston, were intrusted with the 
 care of her on shipboard. There was also a Mrs. 
 Stevens, another American lady, on board, who was a 
 very gay woman, and who had some influence in sup 
 porting the determination of Lola not to go to the 
 Craigies' on her landing in London. But Mr. David 
 Craigie, who was a blue Scotch Calvinist, was there on 
 her arrival to take her home. She refused to ga 
 
40 Autobiography. 
 
 At first he used arguments and persuasion, and find 
 ing that these failed, he tried force, and then, of 
 course, there was an explosion which soon settled the 
 matter, and convinced Mr. David Craigie that he 
 might go back to the little dull town of Perth, as 
 soon as he pleased, without the little grass- widow. 
 Now she was left in London sole mistress of her own 
 fate. She had, besides the five thousand dollar check 
 given her by her step-father, between five and six 
 thousand dollars' worth of various kinds of jewelry, 
 making her capital, all counted, about ten thousand dol 
 lars a very considerable portion of which disappeared 
 in less than one year, by a sort of insensible perspiration, 
 which is a disease very common to the purses of ladies 
 who have never been taught the value of money. She 
 first went to reside with Fanny Kelly, a lady as 
 worthy in the acts of her private life, as she was 
 gifted in genius. The plan was to make an actress of 
 her ; but deficient English was a bar to her immediate 
 appearance, so it was settled that she should be a 
 danseuse. A Spanish teacher of that art was soon 
 
Autobiography. 41 
 
 procured, with whom she studied four months, and 
 then, after a brief visit to the Montalvos in Spain, she 
 caine back to London, and made her debut at her 
 Majesty's Theatre. 
 
 When news of this event reached her mother she 
 put on mourning as though her child was dead, and sent 
 out to all her friends the customary funeral letters. 
 
 The debut was a successful one, but the engage 
 ment was broken off immediately by a difficulty as to 
 terms between her and the director, and though she 
 was then entirely out of money she refused to go on 
 for the terms offered. 
 
 Through the management of influential friends an 
 opening was made for her at the Royal Theatre at 
 Dresden in Saxony, where she first met the celebrated 
 pianist, Franz Liszt, who was then creating such a 
 furore in Dresden, that when he dropped his pocket- 
 handkerchief it was seized by the ladies and torn into 
 rags, which they divided among themselves each 
 being but too happy to get so much as a rag which 
 had belonged to the great artist. 
 
42 Autobiography. 
 
 The furore created by Lola Montez's appearance at 
 the theatre in Dresden was quite as great among the 
 gentlemen as was Liszt's among the ladies. She was 
 invited by the king and queen to visit them at their 
 summer palace, and when she left, her Eoyal patroness, 
 the queen, who was the sister to the King of Bavaria, 
 gave her a letter to the Queen of Prussia, another sister 
 to King Louis, which opened the way for an immense 
 triumph at Berlin. The queen became her enthusias 
 tic patron, and often invited her to the Eoyal Palace ; 
 and finally wound up her kind attentions by offering 
 to make a match for her and settle her down in the 
 stagnation of matrimony at her court. But Lola 
 Montez was a giddy fool, intoxicated with her success 
 as a danseuse, and caring not a fig for all the wealth 
 and position there was in the world. 
 
 It was at this court that an incident occurred which 
 caused not a little laughter at the time. The King 
 Frederick William gave a grand reception to the Em 
 peror of Russia, at which Lola Montez was invited to 
 dance, and during the entertainment of the evening 
 
Autobiography. 43 
 
 she became very thirsty and askeo. for some water 
 and, on being told that it was then impossible for her 
 to have any, as it was a rule of Court etiquette that no 
 artists should eat or drink in the presence of Eoyalty, 
 she began to storm not a little, and flatly declared that 
 she would not go on with the dance, until she had 
 some water. Duke Michael, brother of the Emperor 
 Nicholas, on hearing of the difficulty, went to the king' 
 and told him that little Lola Montez declared she was 
 dying of thirst and insisted that she would have some 
 water. Whereupon the amiable king sent for a gob 
 let of water, and after putting it to his own lips, pre 
 sented it to her with his own hand, which brought 
 the demand of Lola for something to drink within the 
 rule of the etiquette of the court. 
 
 Prince Schulkoski, to whom Lola Montez recently 
 was almost married, was present on that occasion. 
 It is one of the romances of life that after so many 
 years he should, in this far-off Eepublican land, seek 
 and obtain the promise of the hand of one who had 
 seen enough of the vices of nobility to have reasona- 
 
44 Autobiography. 
 
 bly disenchanted her of all its baubles of honor. But 
 every woman has a right to be a little foolish on that 
 subject of marriage, and Lola Montez (I hope she will 
 forgive me for telling family secrets) did engage her 
 self to marry the Prince Schulkoski ; but alas for the 
 constancy, or inconstancy, of human love, while the 
 noble Prince was furiously telegraphing kisses three 
 times a day to his affianced bride, he was merrily 
 travelling through the South with a celebrated singer, 
 putting his own name and title in his pocket, and con 
 veniently assuming that of the Prima Donna, they 
 
 booking themselves as plain Mr. and Mrs. at the 
 
 hotels. This pleasant piece of news came squarely 
 and undeniably to the knowledge of Lola Montez. 
 I leave you, who have probably some general idea 
 of Lola Montez, to judge of what followed. 
 
 If the course of true-love never did run smooth, it 
 is more than probable that it was not particularly so 
 when the Prince returned from his musical journey to 
 the South. 
 
 But let us return to Berlin, where we left Lola and 
 
Autobiography. 45 
 
 the Prince. From Berlin Lola went to Warsaw, the 
 capital of Poland, and it was in this city that her 
 name first became involved in politics. The Prince 
 Paskewich, Yiceroy of Poland, an old man, fell 
 most furiously and disgracefully in love with her. 
 Old men are never very wise when in love, but the 
 vice-king was especially foolish. Now the director 
 of the theatre was also Colonel of the Gens-d'armes 
 a disgraceful position of itself, and rendered pecu 
 liarly so by him, from his having been a complete 
 spy for the Eussian government. Of course the 
 Poles hated him. 
 
 While Lola Montez was on a visit to Madame 
 Steinkiller, the wife of the principal banker of 
 Poland, the old viceroy sent to ask her presence at 
 the palace one morning at eleven o'clock. She was 
 assured by several ladies that it would neither be 
 politic nor safe to refuse to go ; and she did go in 
 Madame Steinkiller's carriage, and heard from the 
 viceroy a most extraordinary proposition. He 
 offered her the gift of a splendid country estate, 
 
<j.6 Autobiography. 
 
 and would load her with diamonds besides. The 
 poor old man was a comic sight to look upon unu 
 sually short in stature, and every time he spoke he 
 threw his head back and opened his mouth so wide 
 as to expose the artificial gold roof of his palate. A 
 death's-head making love to a lady could not have 
 been a more disgusting or horrible sight. These 
 generous gifts were most respectfully and very decid 
 edly declined. But her refusal to make a bigger fool 
 of one who was already fool enough, was not well 
 received. 
 
 In those countries where political tyranny is unre 
 strained the social and domestic tyranny is scarcely 
 less absolute. 
 
 The next day his majesty's tool, the Colonel of the 
 Q-ens-cFarmes and the director of the theatre, called at 
 her hotel to urge the suit of his master. 
 
 He began by being persuasive and argumentative ; 
 and when that availed nothing, he insinuated threats, 
 when a grand row broke out, and the madcap ordered 
 him out of her room. 
 
Autobiography. 47 
 
 Now when Lola Montez appeared that niglit at the 
 theatre, she was hissed by two or three parties who 
 had evidently been instructed to do so by the director 
 himself. The same thing occurred the next night; 
 and when it came again on the third night, Lola 
 Montez in a rage rushed down to the foot-lights and 
 declared that those hisses had been set at her by the 
 director, because she had refused certain gifts from the 
 old prince his master. Then came a tremendous 
 shower of applause from the audience ; and the old 
 princess, who was present, both nodded her head and 
 clapped her hands to the enraged and fiery little 
 Lola. 
 
 Here, then, was a pretty muss. An immense 
 crowd of Poles, who hated both the prince and 
 the director, escorted her to her lodgings. She 
 found herself a hero without expecting it, and indeed 
 without intending it. In a moment of rage she had 
 told the whole truth, without stopping to count the 
 cost, and she had unintentionally set the whole of 
 "Warsaw by the ears. 
 
48 Autobiography. 
 
 The hatred which the Poles intensely felt towards 
 the government and its agents found a convenient 
 opportunity of demonstrating itself, and in less than 
 twenty-four hours Warsaw was bubbling and raging 
 with the signs of an incipient revolution. "When 
 Lola Montez was apprised of the fact that her arrest 
 was ordered, she barricaded her door ; and when the 
 police arrived, she sat behind it with a pistol in her 
 hand, declaring that she would certainly shoot the 
 first man dead who should break in. The police 
 were frightened, or at least they could not agree 
 among themselves who should be the martyr, and 
 they went off to inform their masters what a tiger 
 they had to confront, and to consult as to what 
 should be done. In the meantime the French consul 
 came forward and gallantly claimed Lola Montez as a 
 French subject, which saved her from immediate 
 arrest ; but the order was peremptory, that she must 
 quit Warsaw. 
 
 Her trunks were opened by the government, under 
 pretence that she was suspected of carrying on a 
 
Autobiography. 49 
 
 secret correspondence with the enemies of the govern 
 ment. 
 
 There was a letter of friendly introduction from 
 the Queen of Prussia to the Empress of Russia which 
 Lola snatched from the hand of the officer, tore 
 into a thousand pieces, and threw them at his head. 
 This act confirmed the worst of their suspicions, and 
 everybody in "Warsaw who took the part of Lola was 
 suspected of being an enemy to the government. 
 Over three hundred arrests were made, and among 
 them her good friend Steinkiller, the banker. But 
 in the midst of all the terrible excitement, the little 
 dancing-girl, who had kicked up all the muss, slip 
 ped off to Russia, where she had already been invited 
 personally by the emperor himself, while at the court 
 of his father-in-law, Frederick William of Prussia. 
 
 Her arrival at the capital of Russia, notwithstand 
 ing the terrible row in "Warsaw, was welcomed with 
 many peculiar and flattering attentions, of which it 
 would look too much like vanity to speak in detail. 
 
 The favors which she had received from the Queens 
 
50 Autobiography. 
 
 of Saxony and Prussia, had opened the way for the 
 kindest reception, and for many delicate attentions 
 from the truly amiable and worthy Empress. And 
 Nicholas, as well as the ministers of his court, besides 
 their proverbial gallantry, appeared from the first 
 anxious to test her skill and sagacity in the routine 
 of secret diplomacy and politics. A humorous cir 
 cumstance happened one day while she and the 
 Emperor and Count Benkendorf, Minister of the In 
 terior, were in a somewhat private chat about cer 
 tain vexatious matters connected with Caucasia. It 
 was suddenly announced that the superior officers of 
 the Caucasian army were without, desiring audience. 
 The very subject of the previous conversation ren 
 dered it desirable that Lola Montez should not be 
 seen in conference with the Emperor and the Minister 
 of the Interior ; and so, to get her for the moment out 
 of sight, she was thrust into a closet and the door 
 locked. The conference between the officers and the 
 Emperor was short but very stormy. Nicholas got 
 into a towering rage. It seemed to the imprisoned 
 
Autobiography. 51 
 
 Lola that there was a whirlwind outside ; and a little 
 bit of womanly curiosity to hear what it was about, 
 joined with the great difficulty of keeping from 
 coughing, made her position a strangely embarrassing 
 one. But the worst of it was, in the midst of the 
 grand quarrel the parties all went out of the room, 
 and forgot Lola Montez, who was locked up in the 
 closet. For a whole hour she was kept in this durance 
 vile, reflecting upon the somewhat confined and 
 cramping honors she was receiving from the hands 
 .of royalty, when the Emperor, who seems to have 
 come to himself before Count Benkendorf did, came 
 running back out of breath and unlocked the door, 
 and not only begged pardon for his forgetfulness, in 
 a manner which only a man of his accomplished ad 
 dress could do, but presented the victim with a thou 
 sand roubles (seven hundred and fifty dollars), say 
 ing, laughingly, "I have made up my mind that 
 whenever I imprison any of my subjects unjustly, I 
 will pay them for their time and suffering." And 
 Lola Montez answered him, u Ah, sire, I am afraid 
 
52 Autobiography. 
 
 that that rule will make a poor man of you." He 
 laughed heartily, and replied, " Well, I am happy in 
 being able to settle with you, any how." Nicholas 
 was as amiable and accomplished in private life, as 
 he was great, stern, and inflexible as a monarch. He 
 was the strongest pattern of a monarch of this 
 age, and I see no promise of his equal, either in the 
 incumbents or the heir-apparents of the other thrones 
 of Europe. 
 
 I have now given as much of the history of Lola 
 Montez up to the time when she went to Bavaria, as 
 is necessary to understand what kind of an education 
 and preparation she had for the varied, stormy, and in 
 many respects the unhappy career she has led since 
 that time. We have now followed this "eccentric 
 woman," as the newspapers call her, through the calm 
 and more peaceful portion of her life, and what is to 
 come is all storm, excitement, unrest, and full of 
 seeming contradiction, I know ; but there is, or there 
 should be a key which, when it is possessed, explains 
 the difficult volume of our natures, as well as there is 
 
Autobiography. 53 
 
 to works of science and art. Don't misunderstand 
 me I am not promising in my next lecture to ex 
 plain that riddle, Lola Montez that is a thing I have 
 not guessed myself yet but I shall faithfully go over 
 this wild episode of life (horse-whippings and all) 
 without the least disposition to shield my subject from 
 the open eyes of the critical world. I am fortunate in 
 this, at least, that the subject of my lecture has no 
 thing to lose by having the truth told about her. 
 She can say with one of Lord Byron's heroes : 
 
 " Whate'er betides I've known the worst." 
 
AUTOBIOGRAP HY 
 
 PART II. 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ON the evening of the last lecture, we left Lola Mon- 
 tez in St. Petersburg. She had then just imbibed a 
 fondness for political matters a thing that was natu 
 ral enough, for ever since she left London she had 
 spent her time almost exclusively in diplomatic cir 
 cles, at the Courts of Saxony, Prussia, Poland, and 
 St. Petersburg. With this fresh love of politics, she 
 went to Paris, and immediately on arriving there she 
 formed the acquaintance of the young and gifted 
 Dujarrier, editor of La Presse, and a popular leader 
 of the Eepublican party. He was a man of uncom 
 mon genius, and greatly loved and respected by all 
 3* 
 
58 Autobiography. 
 
 who knew him, except those who disagreed with 
 him in politics, and who dreaded the scorching and 
 terrible power of his pen. 
 
 Duj airier spent almost every hour he could spare 
 from his editorial duties with Lola Montez, and in 
 his society she rapidly ripened in politics, and be 
 came a good and confirmed hater of tyranny and 
 oppression, in whatever shape it came. 
 
 She soon became familiar with the state of politics 
 throughout Europe, and became so enthusiastic a 
 Eepublican, that she, in her heart, almost sickened 
 that she had not been made a man. But while she 
 and Dujarrier were thus plotting and scheming poli 
 tics, they both fell in love, and were immediately 
 pledged to each other in marriage. 
 
 This was in autumn, and the following spring the 
 marriage was to take place. It was arranged that 
 Alexander Dumas, and the celebrated poet, Mery, 
 should accompany them on their marriage tour 
 through Spain. But alas, the inscrutable hand of 
 Providence had ordered it otherwise ! Dujarrier was 
 
Autobiography. 59 
 
 most wickedly murdered for though, lie fell in a 
 duel, yet politics were at the bottom of it, and he 
 was drawn into it that he might be murdered, and 
 put out of the way of a party which, dreaded hiTn ) 
 young as he was, more than any other man in 
 France. On the morning of the duel, he wrote her 
 this affectionate note 
 
 "Mr DEAR LOLA: I am going out to fight with pistols. 
 This explains why I did not come to see you this morning. I 
 have need of all my calmness. At two o'clock, all, all will be 
 over. A thousand embraces, my dear Lola, my good little wife, 
 whom I love so much, and the thoughts of whom will never 
 leave me." 
 
 The duel was fought in the Bois de Boulogne, and 
 Dujarrier was instantly killed by the challenger, 
 Beauvallon. After Lola Montez received Dujarrier's 
 note, she rushed out and made every possible effort 
 to find the parties, but it was too late. She received 
 the corpse from the carriage, and made such prepa 
 rations, with the help of his friends, for the funeral, 
 
60 Autobiography. 
 
 as she could, under the crushing load of sorrow and 
 despair which weighed upon her heart. 
 
 On the morning of the duel, Dujarrier wrote his 
 will, leaving almost all his estate, amounting to over 
 one hundred thousand dollars, to Lola. But she 
 settled the estate, and gave every dollar of it to the 
 relations of the deceased, and then quitted Paris to 
 get rid of the sights that reminded her perpetually 
 of the loss which could never be made up to her in 
 this world. 
 
 Beauvallon was arrested and tried for murder, and 
 Lola Montez was summoned as a witness. The fol 
 lowing notice of her testimony appeared in the public 
 press " Mile, de Montez in her testimony spoke 
 highly of the kind and amiable qualities of the 
 deceased. She had expressed a desire to be intro 
 duced to Beauvallon and to go to the dinner, but 
 Dujarrier positively refused to allow it. She received 
 the letter on her return from rehearsal, and immedi 
 ately took measures to prevent the duel, but it was 
 too late." " I was," said she in her testimony, " a bet 
 
 - 
 
Autobiography. 61 
 
 ter shot than Dujarrier, and if Beauvallon wanted 
 satisfaction I would have fought him myself." 
 
 She received the corpse from the carriage, and the 
 emotion which she then experienced was still visible 
 in her testimony. 
 
 Dujarrier evidently entertained a warm affection for 
 her, as, in addition to his farewell letter, he wrote a 
 will, on the morning of the duel, leaving her the prin 
 cipal part of the estate. 
 
 The trial took place at Eouen, and among the wit 
 nesses was Alexander Dumas, who was a friend of 
 Dujarrier. When Dumas was asked what his profes 
 sion was, he made this remarkable and characteristic 
 reply " I should call myself a dramatic poet, if I was 
 not in the birth-place of Corneille." This answer 
 touched the hearts of the audience, for Eouen was the 
 birth-place of the two brothers Pierre and Thomas 
 Corneille, and although two hundred years have 
 elapsed since their birth, their memory is still honored 
 by the inhabitants. 
 
 I mav state that when Dumas learned that the duel 
 
62 Autobiography. 
 
 was to take place, lie sent his son to practise Dujarrier 
 at a shooting-gallery, where he was able to hit a mark 
 as large as a man only twice in fourteen times, while 
 his antagonist was one of the best shots in Paris. 
 
 At this time Lola Montez was full of health and 
 life, and in no degree lacking of the courage to stand 
 in the place of Dujarrier, and could she have done so 
 Beauvallon might not have come off so well as he did 
 with his victim, who was entirely unskilled with the 
 pistol. 
 
 After this melancholy event, Lola Montez quitted 
 Paris for Bavaria ; and it is a remarkable fact, that a 
 somewhat extended history of her career in Bavaria 
 appeared in the American Law Journal, in 1848, 
 written, as I am informed by a distinguished editor 
 of Philadelphia, by an eminent Chief Justice in this 
 country. The article is on the trial of Beauvallon for 
 the murder of Dujarrier, which developed some pecu 
 liarities of French criminal law ; and after this legal 
 matter was disposed of, the author devoted several 
 pages to the history of Lola Montez, after the death 
 
Autobiography. 63 
 
 of Dujarrier, for the facts of which, he acknowledges 
 his indebtedness to "Fraser's Magazine." As I 
 intend to make one or two extracts from this 
 eminent American authority, it is proper for me to 
 remind yon that the article was written in 1848, just 
 after the events in Bavaria, and some three years 
 before Lola Montez came to this country. The 
 author says : 
 
 " After leaving Paris, she next made her appearance upon the 
 theatre at Munich. Her association with the literary and 
 political circles in which Dujarrier moved in Paris, had made 
 her familiar with general literature, and with European politics 
 in particular. The beauty and rare powers of mind which won 
 the attachment of her talented protector in Paris, made a rapid 
 conquest of the King of Bavaria. The masculine energy and 
 courage which prompted the effort to save her friend by 
 hastening to the duelling-ground, with the intention to stand hi 
 his place in the deadly conflict, enabled her to acquire an 
 ascendency over the minds of others. The extent of her 
 influence in Bavaria is shown by her success in driving the 
 Jesuits from power, remodelling the cabinet of the king, and 
 directing all the important measures of his administration." 
 
 It is very fortunate for Lola Montez that she can 
 
64 Autobiography. 
 
 appeal to such. high. American as well as European 
 authority in defence of her deeds in Bavaria ; 
 for the tools of the Jesuits in the United States 
 have cunningly misrepresented, and, indeed, covered 
 with most shameful lies, this portion of her history. 
 Before we can understand fully the nature of the 
 part which Lola Montez performed in Bavaria, we 
 must have a correct understanding of the character of 
 King Louis, and of the political condition of Bavaria 
 at the time of her arrival there. I am compelled to 
 say that a portion of the press of the United States 
 has exhibited an astonishing ignorance of the charac 
 ter of this king. They have represented him as a 
 weak, foolish, and unprincipled man, who sought 
 only his own pleasure, regardless of the good of his 
 people and the honor of his crown while he was 
 precisely the reverse of all this. Not only was he 
 one of the most learned, enlightened, and intellectual 
 monarchs that Europe has had for a whole century, 
 but he loved his people, and was, in the best political 
 sense of it, a father to his country. During his reign. 
 
Autobiography. 65 
 
 Munich, was raised from a third class to a first class 
 capital in Europe. No monarch of a whole century 
 did so much for the cause of religion and human 
 liberty as he. Look at those magnificent edifices 
 built by him, which are the admiration of all Europe 
 the Saint Ludwig's church, the Aller Heiligen 
 Chapel, the Theatiner Church, the Au Church, the 
 New Palace, the Glyptothek, with its magnificent 
 statues ; the Pinacothek, with its pictures ; the 
 Odeon, the Public Library, the University, the Cleri 
 cal School, the school for the female children of the 
 nobility; the Feldherrenhalle, filled with statues ; the 
 Arch of Triumph, the Euhmshalle, the Bazaar, and 
 the "Walhalla. Nearly all these superb structures 
 were erected, and the statues which they contained 
 paid for with the king's own money. And besides 
 these stupendous works of art, Louis set on foot the 
 grandest works of internal improvement. The 
 canal which unites the Main with the Danube, and 
 which establishes an uninterrupted line of water com 
 munication from Rotterdam to the Black Sea, owes 
 
66 Autobiography. 
 
 its origin to him. It was he who originated the plan 
 for the National Kailways of Bavaria. He was also 
 the originator of the company for running steamboats 
 from the highest navigable point of the Danube 
 above Donauwerth down to Eensburg. He gave his 
 people the Landrath system, under which the actual 
 cultivator of the soil is protected in comparative 
 independence, while in other portions of Germany he 
 is the trembling slave of despotism. 
 
 "When Louk ascended the throne he was possessed 
 with the most liberal ideas, and it was his first inten 
 tion to admit his people to a degree of political free 
 dom which no people of G-ermany had ever known. 
 But the revolutionary movement of 1830 forced him 
 backwards, and an evil hour brought into his coun 
 sels the most despotic and illiberal of the Jesuits. 
 Through the influence of this ministry the natural 
 liberality of the King was perpetually thwarted, and 
 the government had degenerated into a petty tyranny, 
 where priestly influence was sucking out the lifeblood 
 of the people. There was a rigid censorship upon 
 
Autobiography. 67 
 
 the pre:*s, and the cloven foot of Jesuitism was every 
 where apparent, until the king had grown sick of 
 the government which necessity seemed to force upon 
 him. 
 
 Such was the condition of things in Bavaria, when 
 Lola Montez arrived there. And now, in this connex 
 ion, I hope I shall be pardoned for quoting once more 
 the authority of the American Law Journal of 1848 : 
 " She obtained permission to dance upon the theatre 
 at Munich. Her beauty and distinguished manners 
 attracted the notice of the king. On further acquaint 
 ance with her, he became enamored of her originality 
 of character, her mental powers, and of those bold and 
 novel political views which she fearlessly and frankly 
 laid before him. Under her counsels, a total revolu 
 tion afterwards took place in the Bavarian system of 
 government. The existing ministry were dismissed ; 
 new and more liberal advisers were chosen; the 
 power of the Jesuits was ended ; Austrian influences 
 repelled, and a foundation laid for making Bavaria an 
 independent member of the great family of nations." 
 
68 Autobiography. 
 
 These favorable results may fairly be attributed to the 
 talents, the energy, and the influence of Lola Montez, 
 who received, in her promotion to the nobility, only 
 the usual reward of political services. She became 
 Countess of Landsfeld, accompanied by an estate of 
 the same name, with certain feudal privileges and 
 rights over some two thousand souls. Her income, 
 including a recent addition from the king of 20,000 
 florins per annum, was 70,000 florins, or little more 
 than 5,000 per annum. After all the noise there 
 has been in the world about Lola Montez in Bavaria, 
 she may challenge history to produce an instance 
 where power in the hands of a woman was used with 
 greater propriety of deportment, and with more unsel 
 fish devotion to the cause of human freedom. She, 
 and she alone, induced the king, not only to abolish 
 a ministry which had stood for a quarter of a century, 
 but she went further, and induced him to form his new 
 ministry from the ranks of the people, without respect 
 to the rank of nobility. What an immense step was 
 such an example as that to be set in a German state ! 
 
Autobiography. 69 
 
 And you, in your peaceful republican home, here in 
 the United States, can form no conception of the 
 furious rage it set the nobility in, not only in Bava 
 ria, but all over Grermany. It was at that moment 
 that Lola Montez became a fiend, a devil, a she-dragon, 
 with more heads and horns than that frightful beast 
 spoken of in Eevelation. 
 
 "When Lola Montez arrived in Bavaria the nobility 
 had such power that a tradesman could not possibly 
 collect a debt of one of them by law, as they could 
 only be tried by their peers. And the poor people, 
 alas ! had no chance when they came under the ban 
 of the laws, for the nobility were alone their judges. 
 To remedy this enormity Lola Montez had obtained 
 the pledges of the king that he would introduce the 
 Code Napoleon, and she was having it copied and put 
 in due form when the revolution broke out and drove 
 her from power. The blow that she had dealt at the 
 swollen heads of the patent nobility was severe 
 enough, in choosing ministers from the ranks of the 
 people, but this introduction of the Code Napoleon 
 
jo Autobiography. 
 
 was looked upon as the finishing blow. The fat and 
 idle vagabonds who lived off the people's earnings 
 saw the last plank drifting from their hands. And 
 Lola Montez was the devil of it all. The priests used 
 to preach that there was no longer a Virgin Mary in 
 Munich, but that Venus had taken her place. At 
 first they tried to win her to their side. A nobleman 
 was found who would immolate himself in marriage 
 with her ; then Austrian gold was tried old Metter- 
 nich would give her a million if she would quit 
 Bavaria all, all was offered to no purpose. Then 
 came threats and the plots for her destruction. She 
 was twice shot at, and once poisoned and it was only 
 the accident of too large a dose that saved her. In 
 their determination to be doubly sure they defeated 
 themselves. And when the revolution broke out 
 which drove Lola Montez from power, it was not by 
 the superior tact and sagacity of her enemies, but it 
 was by the brute force produced by Austrian gold. 
 Gold was sowed in the streets of Munich, and the 
 rabble by which I mean not the people but the 
 
Autobiography. 71 
 
 baser sort of idlers and mercenary hirelings, became 
 the tools of the Austrian party. 
 
 They came with cannon, and guns, and swords, 
 with the voice of ten thousand devils, and surround 
 ed her little castle. Against the entreaties of her 
 friends, who were with her, she presented herself 
 before the infuriated mob which demanded her life. 
 This for the moment had the effect of paralysing 
 them, as it must have seemed like an act of insanity. 
 And it was a little " scary," as the old man said of 
 his unmanageable horse. A thousand guns were 
 pointed at her, and a hundred fat and apoplectic 
 voices fiercely demanded that she should cause the 
 repeal of what she had done. In a language of great 
 mildness for it was no time to scold she replied 
 that it was impossible for her to accede to such a 
 request. What had been done was honestly meant 
 for the good of the people, and for the honor of 
 Bavaria. 
 
 They could take her life if they would, but that 
 would never mend their cause, for her blood would 
 
72 Autobiography. 
 
 never prove that they were in the right. Tn the 
 midst of this speech she was dragged back within 
 the house, by her friends; and soon after, on per 
 ceiving that preparations were making to burn it 
 down, she yielded to the persuasion and entreaties 01 
 her friends, and made her escape disguised as a 
 peasant girl she retreated, on foot, through the 
 snow (for it was February), about seven miles into 
 the country. The leaders of the Liberal party were 
 obliged also to escape into the country, with their 
 families. 
 
 Lola Montez was now hopelessly banished from 
 Bavaria, and there was no alternative left but to 
 make immediate retreat within the shelter of some 
 friendly state. That state was Switzerland, that 
 little Eepublic that lies there, like a majestic eagle, 
 in the midst of the monarchical vultures and cor 
 morants of Europe. But, before Lola Montez quitted 
 Bavaria for ever, she went back, disguised in boy's 
 clothes riding nights, and prudently lying still by 
 and a t twelve o'clock at night, she obtained a 
 
Autobiography. 73 
 
 last audience with, the king. She gained from the 
 king a promise that he would abdicate she could 
 not endure the thought that he should, with his own 
 hand, destroy the reforms which he had made at her 
 instigation. She pointed out to him the impossibility 
 of holding his throne, unless he went down into the 
 disgraceful humility of recanting the great deeds 
 which he had proclaimed he had done under a sense 
 of immediate justice. She convinced him that it 
 would be best for his own fame that the backward 
 step should be taken by his son, who was an enemy 
 of the Liberal party, and who in a short time, at 
 farthest, must ascend the throne. Louis readily saw 
 the propriety of this advice, and he faithfully kept 
 the promise which he then made, to abdicate. And 
 Lola Montez, under the stars of a midnight sky, 
 went out in her boy's disguise, to look upon the 
 turrets and spires of Munich, for the last time. She 
 knew that if she were discovered she would be igno- 
 miniously shot but she did not think or care much 
 about that. Her thoughts were on the past. And 
 
74 Autobiography. 
 
 they have never been able to look much to a future, 
 in this world at least. 
 
 Ten years have elapsed since the events with which 
 Lola Montez was connected in Bavaria, and yet the 
 malice of the diffusive and ever vigilant Jesuits is as 
 fresh and as active as it was the first hour it assailed 
 her. For it is not too much for her to say, that few 
 artists, of her profession, ever escaped with so little 
 censure ; and certainly none ever had the doors of 
 the highest social respectability so universally open 
 to her, as she had up to the time she went to Bavaria. 
 And she denies that there was anything in her con 
 duct there which ought to have compromised her 
 before the world. Her enemies assailed her, not be 
 cause her deeds were bad, but because they knew of 
 no other means to destroy her influence. On this 
 point I must quote again the authority of the Ame 
 rican Law Journal. Speaking of the king's confi 
 dence in Lola Montez, it says : 
 
 " This attachment enabled her to work out the great political 
 changes which have taken place in Bavaria; and it is but just 
 
Autobiography. 75 
 
 to acknowledge that it is the political use she has made of her 
 relations with the king, and not the immorality of the con 
 nexion itself, that has brought down upon her most of the 
 vehement censures which the defeated party have from time to 
 time bestowed, accompanied by the bitterest calumnies. The 
 moral indignation which her opponents displayed was, unfor 
 tunately, a mere sham. They have not only tolerated, but 
 patronized, a female who formerly held a most equivocal posi 
 tion with the king, because she made herself subservient to the 
 then dominant party. Let Lola Montez have credit for her 
 talents, her intelligence, and her support of popular rights. As 
 a political character, she held, until her retirement from Switzer 
 land, an important position in Bavaria and Germany, besides 
 having agents and correspondents in various parts of Europe. 
 On foreign politics she has clear ideas, and has been treated by 
 the political men of the country as a substantive power. She 
 always kept state secrets, and could be consulted in safety in 
 cases in which her original habits of thought rendered her of 
 service. Acting under her advice, the king had pledged him 
 self to a course of steady improvement in the political freedom 
 of the people. Although she wielded so much power, it is 
 alleged that she never used it for the promotion of unworthy 
 persons, or, as other favorites have done, for corrupt purposes ; 
 and there is reason to believe that political feeling influenced 
 her course, not sordid considerations." 
 
 To the above statement of the American Law 
 
76 Autobiography. 
 
 Journal, I will add that Lola Montez could theu 
 easily have been the richest woman that ever lived, 
 had she preferred her own advantage to the success of 
 political freedom. She willingly sacrificed herself for 
 a principle, and lost, alas ! that. 
 
 Her last hope for Bavaria being broken, she turned 
 her attention towards Switzerland, as the nearest 
 shelter from the storm that was beating above her 
 head. She had influenced the King of Bavaria to 
 withhold his assent to a proposition from Austria, 
 which had for its object the destruction of that little 
 Eepublic of Switzerland. If Republics are ungrateful, 
 Switzerland certainly was not so to Lola Montez ; for 
 it received her with open arms, made her its guest, 
 and generously offered to bestow upon her an establish 
 ment for life. It was a great mistake that she refused 
 that offer, for had she remained in Switzerland, she 
 could have preserved that potential power among 
 those scheming nations, spoken of in the above quo 
 tation from the American Journal, and might have 
 still further chastised the Jesuit party in Germany. 
 
Autobiography. 77 
 
 But she allowed this brilliant opportunity to pass. 
 and went to London to enter upon another marriage 
 experiment, of which nothing but sorrow and mortifi 
 cation came. The time which she afterwards lived in 
 Paris was, however, pleasantly and comfortably spent. 
 Her house was the resort of the most gifted literary 
 geniuses of Paris, and there she had the honor and 
 happiness of entertaining many literary gentlemen 
 from America, who were temporarily sojourning in 
 the French capital. 
 
 The next step of any public note taken by Lola 
 Montez was her passage to America, coming out in 
 the same ship with Kossuth. Shattered in fortune, 
 and broken in health, she came with curiosity and 
 reviving hope, to the shores of the New World ; this 
 stupendous asylum of the world's unfortunate, and 
 last refuge of the victims of the tyranny and 
 wrongs of the Old "World ! God grant that it may 
 ever stand as it is now, the noblest column of liberty 
 that was ever reared beneath the arch of heaven ! 
 
 Of Lola Montez' career in the United States there 
 
78 Autobiography. 
 
 is not much to be said. On arriving in this country 
 she found that the same terrible power which had 
 pursued her in Europe, after the blows she had given 
 it in Germany, held even here the means to fill the 
 American press with a thousand anecdotes and rumors 
 which were entirely unjust and false in relation to her. 
 Among other things, she had had the honor of horse 
 whipping hundreds of men whom she never knew, 
 and never saw. But there is one comfort in all these 
 falsehoods, which is, that these men very likely would 
 have deserved horsewhipping, if she had only known 
 them. As a specimen of the pleasant things said 
 of Lola Montez, I am going to quote you from a 
 book, entitled the " Adventures of Mrs. Seacole," pub 
 lished last year in London, and edited by no less of a 
 literary man than the gifted correspondent of the 
 London Times, W. H. Eussell, Esq. Mrs. Seacole is 
 giving her adventures at Cruces, between here and 
 California. She says : " Occasionally, some distin 
 guished passengers passed on the upward and down 
 ward tides of rascality and ruffianism, that swept 
 
Autobiography. 79 
 
 periodically through Cruces. Came one day, Lola 
 Montez, in the full zenith of her evil fame, bound for 
 California, with a strange suite. A good-looking, bold 
 woman, with fine, bad eyes, and a determined bearing, 
 dressed ostentatiously in perfect male attire, with shirt- 
 collar turned down over a velvet lappelled coat, 
 richly worked shirt-front, black hat, French un 
 mentionables, and natty polished boots with spurs. 
 She carried in her hand a handsome riding-whip, 
 which she could use as well in the streets of Cruces as 
 in the towns of Europe ; for an impertinent American, 
 presuming, perhaps not unnaturally, upon her re 
 putation, laid hold jestingly of the tails of her long 
 coat, and, as a lesson, received a cut across his 
 face that must have marked him for some days. I 
 did not wait to see the row that followed, and was 
 glad when the wretched woman rode off on the 
 following morning." 
 
 Now, there are several rather comical mistakes in 
 this complimentary notice. 
 
 1st. Lola Montez was never dressed off the stage 
 4* 
 
8o Autobiography. 
 
 in man's apparel in her whole life, except when she 
 went back disguised to Bavaria. 
 
 2nd. Therefore no man could have pulled the tails 
 of her coat at Cruces. 
 
 3rd. She never had a whip in her hand in Cruces, 
 and could not, therefore, have whipped the American 
 as described. 
 
 4th. She never was in Cruces in her life. Before 
 she went to California the new route was opened, and 
 she passed many miles from that place. 
 
 5th. The whole story is a base fabrication from 
 beginning to end. It is as false as Mrs. Seacole's 
 own name. Another funny thing is, that Mrs. 
 Seacole makes this interesting event occur in 1851, 
 whereas Lola Montez did not go to California till 
 1853. 
 
 If I were to collect all similar falsehoods which I 
 have seen in papers or books about Lola Montez, they 
 would form a mountain higher than Chimborazo. 
 
 But no matter for these. Since Lola Montez com 
 menced her lectures, she has experienced nothing but 
 
Autobiography. 8 1 
 
 kindness at the hands of the entire respectable press 
 of the country. And for this she will carry in her 
 heart a grateful remembrance, when she is back again 
 amidst the scenes of the Old World. And, indeed, 
 as for that, she will carry a whole new world back 
 with her ; for her heart and brain are full of the stu 
 pendous strides which freedom has made in this mag 
 nificent country. Those of you who have not had 
 some taste of the quality of government in the Old 
 "World, can but half relish your own glorious institu 
 tions. The pilgrim from the effete forms of Europe, 
 must look upon your great Republic with as happy 
 an eye as the storm-tossed and ship-wrecked mariner 
 looks upon the first star that shines beneath the reced 
 ing tempest. And now suffer me to close my lecture 
 here with the last words of Childe Harold's Pilgri 
 mage: 
 
 " Farewell ! a word that must be, and hath been 
 A sound which makes us linger ; yet farewell 1 
 Te 1 who have traced the pilgrim to the scene 
 Which is his last, if in your memories dwell 
 
82 Autobiography. 
 
 A thought which once was his, if on ye swell 
 
 A single recollection, not in vain 
 
 He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell ; 
 
 Farewell ! with him alone may rest the pain, 
 
 If such there were with you the moral of his strain. 
 
BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. 
 
Beautiful Women. 
 
 THE last and most difficult office imposed on Psyche 
 was to descend to the lower regions and bring back 
 a portion of Proserpine's beauty in a box. The too 
 inquisitive goddess, impelled by curiosity or perhaps 
 by a desire to add to her own charms, raised the lid, 
 and behold, there issued forth a vapor ! which was 
 all there was of that wondrous beauty. 
 
 In attempting to give a definition of beauty, I 
 have painfully felt the force of this classic parable. 
 If I settle upon a standard of beauty in Paris, I find 
 it will not do when I get to Constantinople. Per 
 sonal qualities the most opposite imaginable are each 
 looked upon as beautiful in different countries, and 
 even by different people of the same country. That 
 
86 Beautiful Women. 
 
 which is deformity at New York may be beauty at 
 
 Pekin. The poet Cowley says 
 
 - * 
 " Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape, 
 
 Who dost in every country change thy shape, 
 
 Here black, there brown, here tawny, and there white." 
 
 At one place the sighing lover sees " Helen" in an 
 Egyptian brow. In China, black teeth, painted eye 
 lids, and plucked eyebrows are beautiful ; and should 
 a woman's feet be large enough to walk upon, their 
 owners are looked upon as monsters of ugliness. 
 
 The Liliputian daine is the beau ideal of beauty in 
 the eyes of a Northern gallant ; while in Patagonia 
 they have a most Polyphemus standard of beauty. I 
 have read of nations where a man makes no preten 
 sions to being well favored without five or six scars 
 in his face. And this, which was probably a mere 
 accident connected with valor, grew at last to have so 
 entire a share in the idea of beauty, that it became a 
 custom to slash the faces of infants. 
 
 Said Voltaire, "Ask a toad what is beauty, the 
 supremely beautiful, the to kalon, he will answer you 
 
Beautiful Women. 87 
 
 that it is his female, with two large round eyes pro 
 jecting out of its little head, a broad, flat neck, 
 yellow breast, and dark brown back!" Ask a 
 Guinea negro the same question, and he will point 
 you to a greasy black skin, hollow eyes, thick 
 lips, and a flat nose, with perhaps an ingot of gold 
 in it. 
 
 With the modern Greeks and other nations on the 
 shores of the Mediterranean, corpulency is the perfec 
 tion of form in a woman ; the very attributes which 
 disgust the western European, form the highest 
 attractions of an Oriental fair. It was from the com 
 mon and admired shape of his countrywomen, that 
 Kubens, in his pictures, delights in a vulgar and 
 almost odious plumpness. He seems to have no idea 
 of beauty under two hundred pounds. His very 
 Graces are all fat. 
 
 Hair is a beautiful ornament of woman, but it has 
 always been a disputed point as to what color it 
 shall be. I believe that most people now-a-days look 
 upon a red head with disfavor but in the times of 
 
88 Beautiful Women. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth it was in fashion. Mary of Scot 
 land, though she had exquisite hair of her own, wore 
 red fronts out of compliment to fashion and the red 
 headed Queen of England. 
 
 That famous beauty, Cleopatra, was red-haired 
 also ; and the Venetian ladies to this day counterfeit 
 yellow hair. 
 
 Yellow hair has a higher authority still. The 
 ORDER OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, instituted by 
 Philip, Duke of Burgundy, was in honor of a frail 
 beauty whose hair was yellow. 
 
 So, ladies and gentlemen, this thing of beauty 
 which I come to talk about, has a somewhat migra 
 tory and fickle standard of its own. All the lovers 
 of the world will have their own idea of the thing in 
 spite of me. 
 
 A lover of Gongora, for instance, sighs for lips an 
 inch thick : while a Chinese lover is mad in praise of 
 lips so thin, that they are no lips at all. In Cir- 
 cassia, a straight nose is the only nose of beauty- 
 cross but a mountain which separates it from 
 
Beautiful Women. 89 
 
 Tartary, and there flat noses, tawny skins, and eyes 
 three inches asunder, are all the fashion. 
 
 But I must stop this, lest I unsettle the faith of 
 many a fair lady in the only good which her soul 
 hankers after, and sweep away the airy foundations 
 on which so many millions of lovers are rapturously 
 reposing. I suspect they would not thank me for 
 that. I can remember, when I was younger than I 
 am now, with what sullen, pouting kind of surprise 
 I read out of Mr. Hume's Essays, that "there is 
 nothing in itself beautiful or deformed, desirable or 
 hateful ; but these attributes arise from the pecu 
 liar constitution and fabric of human sentiment and 
 affection." 
 
 My experience has since led me to a personal 
 knowledge of the various types of beauty in all 
 quarters of the world ; and though I am not pre 
 pared to argue the truth of Mr. Hume's proposition 
 in its full extent, yet I am free to confess that I find 
 the greatest difficulty in sketching in my own mind the 
 details of any infallible standard of a beautiful woman, 
 
90 Beautiful Women. 
 
 Canova was obliged to have sixty different women 
 sit for his Venus ; and how shall we dare point tc 
 any one woman, and say that she is perfectly beau 
 tiful ? When Zeuxis drew his famous picture of Helen, 
 he modelled his portrait from the separate charms 
 of five different virgins. 
 
 But though there is this difnculty in settling upon 
 a perfect standard of female beauty, there can be no 
 doubt about its power over the customs and institu 
 tions of mankind. The beauty of woman has settled 
 and unsettled the affairs of empires and the fate of 
 republics, when diplomacy and the sword have proved 
 futile. "Certainly," observes Lucian, "more women 
 have obtained honor for their beauty than for all other 
 virtues besides." And Tasso has said that " beauty 
 and grace are the power and arms of a woman," 
 while Ariosto declares that, after every other gift of 
 arms had been exhausted on man, there remained for 
 woman only beauty the most victorious of the whole. 
 There is a great and terrible testimony of the power 
 of female beauty in the history which Homer gives us 
 
Beautiful Women. 91 
 
 of Helen. When she shows herself on the ramparts 
 of Troy even the aged Priam forgets his miseries and 
 the wrongs of his people, in rapture at her charms. 
 
 And afterwards, when Menelaus came, armed with 
 rage and fury, to revenge himself on the lovely but 
 guilty cause of so much bloodshed, his weapon fell in 
 her presence, and his arm grew nerveless. 
 
 " Heavens ! that a face should thus bewitch his soul, 
 And win all that's great and godlike in it." 
 
 And so another poet has sung : 
 
 " Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, 
 And beauty draws us by a single hair." 
 
 But where are we to detect this especial source of 
 power ? Often forsooth in a dimple, sometimes beneath 
 the shade of an eyelid, or perhaps among the tresses 
 of a little fantastic curl ! 
 
 Alas I I am ashamed to think what small things will 
 often move the strongest and bravest of men. Many 
 times in my life, in the company of kings and nobles, 
 
92 Beautiful Women. 
 
 have I been forced to reflect upon the following words 
 of the sublime Milton : 
 
 " For what admir'st thou ? what transports thee so : 
 An outside ? Fair, no doubt, and worthy well 
 Thy cherishing, thy honoring and thy love, 
 Not thy subjection 1" 
 
 I once knew a nobleman who used to try to make 
 himself wise, and to emancipate his heart from its 
 thraldom to a celebrated beauty of the court, by con 
 tinually repeating to himself, "but it is short lived," 
 " it won't last,"" it won't last." 
 
 Ah, me! that is too true it won't last. Beauty 
 has its date, and it is the penalty of nature that girls 
 must fade and become wizened as their grandmothers 
 have done before them. 
 
 The old abbey and the aged oak are more venera 
 ble in their decay ; and many are the charms around 
 us, both of art and nature, that may still linger 
 and please. The breaking wave is most graceful at 
 the moment of its dissolution ; the sun when setting 
 is still glorious and beautiful, and though the longest 
 
Beautiful Women. 93 
 
 day must have its evening, yet is the evening as beau 
 tiful as the morning the light deserts us, but it is to 
 visit us again ; the rose retains after charms for the 
 sense, and though it fall into decay, it renews its glo 
 ries at the approach of another spring. 
 
 But for woman there is no second May ! To each 
 belongs her little day, and Time, that gives new white 
 ness to the swan, gives it not unto woman ! The 
 winner of a hundred hearts, in the very bud of her 
 beauty, in the morn and liquid dews of youth even, 
 cannot obtain a patent for her charms. " They all do 
 fade as the leaf." While the fair lady curls her hair, 
 is it not imperceptibly growing grey ? 
 
 To borrow an Arabian proverb, let her " be light as 
 the full moon," yet when her eye is fullest of light, it 
 is nearest the point where it begins to fade. The fuller 
 the rose is blown, the sooner it is shed. When the 
 peach is ripest what next ? 
 
 Let her head be from Greece, her bust from Aus 
 tria, her feet from Hindostan, her shoulders from Italy, 
 and her hands and complexion from England let her 
 
94 Beautiful Women. 
 
 have the gait of a Spaniard, and the Venetian tire- 
 let her, indeed, be another Helen, and have a box of 
 beauty to repair her charms withal yet must she 
 travel the si\me road where all the withered leaves do 
 lie! 
 
 But this won't do. In vain shall I try to preach 
 beauty down. The world has had the sage reflection, 
 and the warning, of the pulpits on this subject, for I 
 know not how many thousands of years, and yet not 
 a feather has been plucked from this bird of beauty, 
 nor an ounce of its potent sway destroyed. 
 
 So, without further philosophizing, we may set our 
 selves fairly to the business of this lecture, which is to 
 discuss the beauty of woman, together with the means 
 of its development and preservation. 
 
 I am impressed that some sketch of my own obser 
 vations of the national types of beautiful women will 
 be more interesting to you than any speculation, or 
 theory on the subject, abstractly considered. It is not 
 so interesting to listen to a theory of beautiful women, 
 as to look at a beautiful woman. 
 
Beautiful Women. 95 
 
 As a general thing you have to look into the ranks 
 of the nobility for the most beautiful women of 
 Europe. And on the whole I must give the pre- 
 ference to the English nobility for the most beautiful 
 women I have met with. 
 
 In calling to my mind the many I have seen, in the 
 course of my life, I find myself at once thinking of 
 the Duchess of Sutherland. She was a large and 
 magnificent woman a natural queen. Her com 
 plexion was light, and she might be considered the 
 paragon and type of the beautiful aristocracy of Eng 
 land. I next think of Lady Blessington. She was 
 a marvellous beauty. Kings and Nobles were at 
 her feet. In Italy they called her the goddess. She 
 was very voluptuous, with a neck that sat on her 
 shoulders like the most charming Greek models, a 
 wonderfully beautiful hand, and an eye that when it 
 smiled, captivated all hearts. She was a far more 
 intellectual type of beauty than the Duchess of 
 Sutherland. 
 
 The present Duchess of "Wellington is a remarka- 
 
96 Beautiful Women. 
 
 bly beautiful woman but with little intellect or ani 
 mation. She is a fine piece of sculpture, and as cold 
 as a piece of sculpture. The most famously beautiful 
 family in England is the great Sheridan family. 
 There were two sons who were considered the hand 
 somest men of their day. Then there are three 
 daughters, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, well known on this 
 side of the Atlantic through her poverty and her mis 
 fortunes ! Lady Blackwood, and Lady Seymour, 
 who was the queen of beauty at the famous Eglinton 
 Tournament. These three beautiful Sheridan sisters 
 used to be called "the three Graces of England." 
 Lady Seymour has dark blue eyes, large, lustrous, 
 and most beautiful; while Lady Blackwood and 
 Mrs. Norton have grey eyes, but full of fire, and soul, 
 and beauty. 
 
 The women of France are not generally beautiful, 
 although they are very charming. The art of pleas 
 ing, or of refined and fascinating manners, is the first 
 study of a French lady. But still France is not with 
 out its beautiful women. The Marquise de la Grange 
 
Beautiful Women. 97 
 
 was one of the most beautiful women I have met in 
 Paris. She had an antique head and face, grave and 
 dignified in her manners as Juno, and was altogether 
 a grand study for an artist. 
 
 Eugenia, the Empress, is, however, handsomer still. 
 When I last saw her she was certainly one of the 
 most vivacious, witty, and sprightly women in Paris. 
 All the portraits of her which I have seen in this 
 country greatly exaggerate her size, for Eugenia is 
 really a small woman. Before her marriage with the 
 Emperor, and when she was the belle of Madrid, she 
 evinced a great admiration for the celebrated pianist 
 Louis Gotschalk, who has, I believe, carried off the 
 hearts of half a million of girls in this country, without, 
 poor fellow, being in the slightest degree cognizant 
 of the fact himself. Eugenia caused him to be received 
 into the best and most aristocratic families of Madrid. 
 
 The ladies of the Koyal family of Eussia are among 
 the most beautiful women of Europe. The Grand 
 Duchess Olga, eldest daughter of the late Emperor 
 
 Nicholas, was so beautiful that even when she appeared 
 
 5 
 
98 Beautiful Women. 
 
 in public tlie whole audience would rise up and 
 receive her with, shouts of applause. Her younger 
 sister Marie, wife of the Duke of Leuchtenburg, was 
 only less beautiful. 
 
 In Turkey I saw very few beautiful women. The 
 style of beauty there is universally fat. Their crite 
 rion of a beautiful woman is that she ought to be a 
 load for a camel. They are, however, quite handsome 
 when young, but the habit of feeding them on such 
 things as pounded rose leaves and butter, to make 
 them plump, soon destroys it. The lords of creation 
 in that part of the world treat women as you would 
 geese stuff them to make them fat. 
 
 Through the politeness of Sir Stratford Canning, 
 English Ambassador at Constantinople, who gave me 
 a letter to a Greek lady residing in the Sultan's harem, 
 I was kindly permitted to visit, as frequently as T 
 pleased, the inside of that institution, and look upon 
 what they call in Turkey " the lights of the world." 
 These "lights of the world " consisted of some five 
 hundred bodies of unwieldy fatness. 
 
Beautiful Women. 99 
 
 Your American Plato, Mr. Kalph Emerson, would 
 have exclaimed on seeing such a sight, "What quan 
 tity I" With the exception of a few very young girls, 
 there was not a beautiful woman in the whole vast 
 accumulation of pounded rose-leaves and butter. The 
 ladies of the harem gazed at my leanness with com 
 miserating wonder ; and every one wanted to remedy 
 the horrible deformity. They paid many civil com 
 pliments to my face and foot but were positively dis 
 gusted at my diminutive size. The ladies of Turkey 
 are allowed very little exercise lest they should get 
 thin. 
 
 The Circassians and Georgians are the most beauti 
 ful of the Eastern women. 
 
 The East Indian women are very beautiful from 
 eleven to fifteen, but the flower soon withers, and at 
 twenty they are old and wan. They eat and 
 smoke a composition made of pounded tobacco and 
 opium, called bhang, which is a great destroyer of 
 beauty. 
 
 Italy has a type of female beauty which is marked 
 
loo Beautiful Women. 
 
 and characteristic dark, fiery, and bright as the sky 
 that bends above them. A true Italian woman is all 
 life, movement, gesticulation, and love. There is no 
 life for a woman in Italy without plenty of love and 
 intrigue. When old age has put out the fires of youth, 
 they form Platonic love-affairs, and contrive, as they 
 can, to go over a semblance of the old rounds of intri 
 gue. But the women of Italy have this excuse, that 
 their own husbands pay them very slight attentions, 
 and the consequence is that the wife must look 
 abroad for what satisfies her heart. Indeed I am 
 inclined to believe that this remark holds pretty true 
 in relation to more countries than Italy. As a general 
 thing, husbands may thank themselves if their wives' 
 affections wander away from home. Fontenelle 
 defines woman " a creature that loves." And if no 
 violence, or neglect, or injustice, is done to her heart, 
 she naturally clings to the object that first awakened 
 the latent fires of her affections. It is a law of her 
 moral being to do so. It is as natural for her to keep 
 on loving that object, as it is for the flowers to give 
 
Beautiful Women. 101 
 
 back their odors to the sun and air. Not far from 
 this philosophical point lies a mighty lesson for hus 
 bands. Gentlemen, if you please, if you would have 
 your homes hold no heart but yours, see to it that 
 your own hearts are always found at home. 
 
 The women of Italy have mostly dark eyes and 
 dark hair. But a blonde is regarded as a miracle of 
 beauty. Of such a type was the Countess Guiccioli, 
 the mistress of Lord Byron. 
 
 The Spanish women are many of them very beau 
 tiful. But there are two distinct and very different 
 types of beauty in Spain. In the North they are fair 
 and blond. In the South they are mixed with Moor 
 ish blood, and are dark, have dark hair, with light 
 eyes. The aristocratic Spaniards are generally fair- 
 haired. 
 
 In Germany I have seen some very beautiful 
 blond women, who looked as fair and as clear as 
 snow-flakes. I should say that the beautiful women 
 of Germany are a type between the English and 
 French. Indeed the German women are a remarka- 
 
1O2 Beautiful Women. 
 
 ble type of handsome fine-looking women, and are the 
 very beau-ideal of the Teutonic race. 
 
 If we go back to the beginning of taste and fashion, 
 we shall find that, for many an age, the twisted foliage 
 of trees, and the skins of beasts, were the only gar 
 ments which clothed the human race. Decoration 
 was unknown, excepting the wild flower, plucked from 
 the shrub, the shell from the beach, or the berry off 
 the tree. Nature had few sophistications. The lover 
 looked for no .other attraction in his bride than the 
 peach-bloom of her cheek the downcast softness of 
 her eye. In after times when avarice ploughed the 
 world, or ambition bestrode it, the various products 
 of the loom and the Tyrian mystery of dyes, all united 
 to give embellishment to beauty, and attraction to 
 woman's mien. But even at that period, when the 
 east and south laid their decorating riches at the feet 
 of woman, we see by the sculptures yet remaining, that 
 the dames of Greece the then exemplars of the 
 world, were true to the simple laws of nature. 
 
 The amply-folding robe cast round the form ; the 
 
Beautiful Women. 103 
 
 modest clasp and zone on the bosom ; the braided 
 hair or the veiled head these were the fashions alike of 
 the wife of a Phocion and the mistress of an Alcibiades. 
 
 A chastened taste ruled at woman's toilet. And 
 from that hour to this, the forms and modes of Greece 
 have been the models of the poet, the sculptor, and 
 the painter. 
 
 Rome, queen of the world, the proud dictatress to 
 the Athenian and Spartan dames, disdained not to 
 array herself in their dignified attire. And the 
 statues of her virgins, her matrons, and her empresses, 
 in every portico of her ancient streets^ show the grace 
 ful fashion of her Grecian provinces. 
 
 It was the irruption of the Goths and Vandals which 
 made it necessary for woman to assume a more repul 
 sive garb. 
 
 The flowing robe, the easy shape, the soft, unfet 
 tered hair, gave place to skirts shortened for flight or 
 contest to the hardened vest, and head buckled in 
 gold or silver. 
 
 Thence, by a natural descent, came the iron bodice, the 
 
104 Beautiful Women. 
 
 stiff farthingale, and spiral coiffure of the middle ages. 
 The courts of Charlemagne, of the English Edwards, 
 Henries, and Elizabeth, all exhibit the figures of 
 women in a state of siege such lines of circumvalla- 
 tion and out-works such bulwarks of whalebone, 
 wood, and steel such impassable masses of gold, sil 
 ver, silk, and furbelows met a man's view, that before 
 he had time to guess it was a woman that he saw, she 
 had passed from his sight ; and he only formed a vague 
 wish on the subject, by hearing from an interested fa 
 ther or brother that the moving castle was a woman. 
 These preposterous fashions disappeared in England 
 a short time after the Eestoration. They had been a 
 little on the wane during the more classic reign of 
 Charles I., and what the pencil of Yandyke shows us, 
 in the graceful dress of the Lady Carlisle and Sacha- 
 rissa, was rendered yet more correspondent to the soft 
 undulations of nature in the garments of the lovely 
 but frail beauties of the second Charles's court. But 
 as change too often is carried to extremes, in this case 
 the unzoned taste of the ladies thought no freedom too 
 
Beautiful Women. 105 
 
 free, and their vestments were gradually unloosed of 
 the brace, until another touch would have exposed 
 the wearer to no thicker covering than the ambient 
 air. 
 
 The matron reign of Anne, in some measure, 
 corrected this. But it was not till the accession 
 of the House of Brunswick that it was finally 
 exploded, and gave way, by degrees, to the ancient 
 mode of female fortification, by introducing the Pari 
 sian fashion of hoops, buckram stays, waists to the 
 hips, and below them, screwed to the circumference of 
 a wasp, brocaded silk stiff with gold, shoes with heels 
 so high as to set the wearer on her toes, and heads, for 
 quantity of false hair and height, to out-weigh and 
 perhaps out-reach the tower of Babel. 
 
 "When the arts of sculpture and painting, in their 
 fine specimens from the chisels of Greece and the pen 
 cils of Italy, began to be again studied, taste began 
 again to mould the dress of the female youth, after 
 their most graceful fashion. 
 
 The healthrdestroying bodice was ]aid aside j th 
 
106 Beautiful Women. 
 
 brocades and whalebone disappeared, and the easy 
 shape and flowing drapery again assumed the rights 
 of nature and of grace. The light hues of auburn, 
 raven, or golden tresses, adorned the head in their 
 native simplicity, putting aside the few powdered tou 
 pees which yet lingered on the brow of prejudice and 
 deformity. 
 
 Thus, for a short time, did the Graces indeed pre 
 side at the toilet of beauty; but a strange caprice 
 soon dislodged the gentle handmaids. Here stands 
 affectation distorting the form into a thousand unnatu 
 ral shapes, and there, ill-taste loading it with grotesque 
 ornaments (and mingled confusedly) from Grecian and 
 Eoman models, from Egypt, China, Turkey, and Hin- 
 dostan. All nations are ransacked to equip a fine lady ; 
 and after all, while she may strike a contemporary beau 
 as a fine lady, no son of nature could possibly find 
 out that she represents an elegant woman. 
 
 In teaching a young lady to dress elegantly, we must 
 first impress upon her mind that symmetry of figure 
 ought eyer to be accompanied by harmony of dress, 
 
Beautiful Women. 107 
 
 and that there is a certain propriety in habiliment, 
 adapted to form, complexion, and age. To preserve 
 the health of the human form, is the first object of 
 consideration, for without that you can neither main 
 tain its symmetry nor improve its beauty. But the 
 foundation of a just proportion must be laid in infancy. 
 "As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." A light 
 dress, which gives freedom to the functions of life, is 
 indispensable to an unobstructed growth. If the 
 young fibres are uninterrupted by obstacles of ttrt, 
 they will shoot harmoniously into the form which 
 nature drew. The garb of childhood should in all 
 respects be easy not to impede its movements by 
 ligatures on the chest, the loins, the legs, or the arms. 
 By this liberty, we shall see the muscles of the limbs 
 gradually assume the fine swell and insertion which 
 only unconstrained exercise can produce. The chest 
 will sway gracefully on the firmly poised waist, swell 
 ing in noble and healthy expanse, and the whole 
 figure will start forward at the blooming age of youth, 
 and early ripen to the maturity of beauty. 
 
io8 Beautiful Women. 
 
 The lovely form of woman, thus educated, or rathci 
 thus left to its natural growth, assumes a variety of 
 charming characters. In one youthful figure, we see 
 the lineaments of a wood-nymph, a form slight and 
 elastic in all its parts. The shape, 
 
 " Small by degrees, and beautifully less, 
 From the soft bosom to tlie slender waist !" 
 
 A foot as light as that of her whose flying step 
 scarcely brushed the "unbending corn," and limbs 
 whose agile grace moved in harmony with the curves 
 of her swan-like neck, and the beams of her spark 
 ling eyes. 
 
 Another fair one appears with the chastened dignity 
 of a vestal. Her proportions are of a less aerial out 
 line. As she draws near, we perceive that the contour 
 of her figure is on a broader and less flexible scale 
 than that of her more etherial sister. Euphrosyne 
 speaks in one, Melpomene in the other. 
 
 Between these two, lies the whole range of female 
 character in form; and in proportion as the figure 
 
Beautiful Women. 109 
 
 approaches the one extreme or the other, we call it 
 grave or gay, majestic or graceful. Not but that the 
 same person may, by a happy combination of charms, 
 unite all these qualities in herself. But unless the 
 commanding figure softens the amplitude of its con 
 tour with a gentle elegance, it may possess a sort of 
 regal state, but it will be heavy and ungraceful ; 
 and on the other hand, unless the slight and airy 
 form (full of youth and animal spirits) superadds 
 to these attractions the grace of restraining dignity, 
 her vivacity will be deemed levity, and her sprightli- 
 ness the romping of a wild hoyden. N6 matter what 
 charms such a one may possess, she would never be 
 looked upon as a lady. 
 
 Young women, therefore, when they present them 
 selves to the world, must not implicitly fashion their 
 demeanors according to the levelling and uniform rules 
 of the generality of school-governesses ; but, con 
 sidering the character of their own figures, allow their 
 deportment and their dress to follow the bias of 
 nature. 
 
no Beautiful Women. 
 
 ITiave already observed, that during the period of 
 youth, different women wear a variety of characters, 
 such as the gay, the grave, etc., each of which has a 
 style naturally its own ; and even if it is found that 
 this loveliest season of life places its subjects in vary 
 ing lights, how necessary does it seem that woman 
 should carry this idea yet further by analogy, and 
 recollect that she has a summer as well as a spring, 
 an autumn, and a winter. As the aspect of the 
 earth alters with the changes of the year, so does 
 the appearance of woman adapt itself to the time 
 which passes over her. Like the rose, she buds, she 
 blooms, she fades, she dies. 
 
 When the freshness of virgin youth vanishes 
 when Mary passes her teens, and approaches her 
 thirtieth year, she may then consider her day at the 
 meridian ; but the sun which shines so brightly on 
 her beauties, declines while it displays them. A few 
 short years, and the jocund step, the airy habit, the 
 sportive manner, must all be exchanged for the 
 "faltering step and slow." Before this happens, it 
 
Beautiful Women. 1 1 1 
 
 '" ' * '."''-. *?'. " "'- ';>'' 
 
 would be well for her to remember, that it is wiser 
 for her to throw a shadow over her yet unimpaired 
 charms, than to hold them in the light till they are 
 seen to decay. As each age has its appropriate style 
 of figure, it is the business of discernment and taste 
 to discover and maintain all the advantages of their 
 due seasons. Nature having maintained a harmony 
 between the figure of woman and her years, it is 
 desirous that the consistency should extend to her 
 deportment, and to the materials and fashion of her 
 apparel. For youth to dress and appear like age, 
 is an instance of bad taste seldom seen. When 
 virgin, bridal beauty arrays herself for conquest, 
 we say that she obeys an end of her creation ; but 
 when the wrinkled fair, the hoary-headed matron 
 attempts to equip herself to awaken sentiments 
 which, when the bloom on her cheek has disap 
 peared, her rouge can never recall, we turn away in 
 sorrow or disgust, and mentally exclaim, Alas, 
 Madame! it were better for you to seek for charms 
 in the mental and social graces of Madame de 
 
112 Beautiful Women. 
 
 Sevigne, than the meretricious arts of Ninon de 
 1'Enclos. 
 
 But, that in some cases wrinkles may be warded 
 off, and auburn tresses preserve a lengthened fresh 
 ness, may not be denied ; and when nature prolongs 
 the youth of a Helen or a Cleopatra, it is not for man 
 to see her otherwise. These, however, are rare 
 instances, and in the minds of rational women, ought 
 rather to excite wonder than desire to emulate their 
 extended reign. But Saint Evremond has told us. 
 that "A woman's last sighs are for her beauty," and 
 what this wit has advanced, my sex has been but too 
 ready to confirm. A strange kind of art, a sort of 
 sorcery, is prescribed in the form of cosmetics, to 
 preserve female charms in perpetual youth. Alas, 
 how vain! Were these composts concocted in 
 Meda's caldron itself, they would fail. The only 
 real secret of preserving beauty lies in three simple 
 things temperance, exercise, and cleanliness. 
 
 Temperance includes moderation at table, and in 
 the enjoyment of what the world calls pleasure. A 
 
:iful"\V 
 
 Beautiful Women. i : 3 
 
 young beauty, were she as fair as Hebe, as elegant as 
 the goddess of love herself, would soon lose those 
 charms by a course of inordinate eating, drinking, 
 and late hours. 
 
 ^ No doubt that many delicate young ladies will start 
 at this last remark, and wonder how it can be that 
 any well-bred person should think it possible that 
 pretty ladies could be guilty of the two first mentioned 
 excesses. But I do not mean feasting like a glutton, 
 nor drinking to intoxication. My objection is no 
 more against the quantity than the quality of the 
 dishes which constitute the usual repast of a woman 
 of fashion. 
 
 Even if we take what is deemed a moderate break 
 fast, that of strong coffee, and hot bread and butter, 
 you have got an agent most destructive to beauty. 
 These things, long indulged in, are sure to derange 
 the stomach, and by creating bilious disorders, gradu 
 ally overspread the fair skin with a wan or jrellow 
 hue. After this meal, a long and exhausting fast not 
 unfrequently succeeds, from nine in the morning, til] 
 
114 Beautiful Women. 
 
 five or six in the afternoon, when dinner is served up, 
 and the half-famished beauty sits down to sate a keen 
 appetite with peppered soups, fish, meats roasted, 
 boiled, fried, stewed, game, tarts, pies, puddings, ice 
 creams, cakes, &c., &c. How must the constitution 
 suffer in digesting this melange ! How does the 
 heated complexion bear witness to the combustion 
 within, and. when we consider that the beverage she 
 takes to dilute this mass of food and assuage the con 
 sequent fever of her stomach, is not merely water 
 from the spring, but often poisonous drugs in the 
 name of wines, you cannot wonder that I should warn 
 this inexperienced creature against such beauty- 
 destroying intemperance. Let the fashionable lady 
 keep up this habit, and add the other one of late hours, 
 and her looking-glass will very shortly begin to warn 
 her of the fact that, " we all do fade as the leaf." 
 The firm texture of the form gives way to a flabby 
 softness, the delicate porportion yields to scraggy 
 leanness or shapeless fat. The once fair skin assumes 
 a pallid rigidity or a bloated redness, which the vain 
 
Beautiful Women. 1 1 5 
 
 but deluded creature would still regard as the rose of 
 health and beauty ! 
 
 To repair these ravages, conies the aid of padding 
 to give shape where there is none, stays to compress 
 into form the swelling chaos of flesh, and paints of 
 all hues to rectify the dingy complexion ; but useless 
 are these attempts for, if dissipation, late hours, 
 immoderation, and carelessness have wrecked the love 
 liness of female charms, it is not in the power of' 
 Esculapius himself to refit the scattered bark, or of 
 the Syrens, with all their songs and wiles, to save 
 its battered sides from the rocks, and make it ride the 
 sea in gallant trim again. The fair lady who cannot 
 so moderate her pursuit of pleasure that the feast, the 
 midnight hours, the dance, shall not recur too fre 
 quently, must relinquish the hope of preserving her 
 charms till the time of nature's own decay. After this 
 moderation in the indulgence of pleasure, the next spe 
 cific for the preservation of beauty which I shall give, 
 is that of gentle and daily exercise in the open air, 
 Nature teaches us, in the gambols and sportiveness of 
 
ii6 Beautiful Women. 
 
 tlie lower animals, that bodily exertion is necessary 
 for the growth, vigor, and symmetry of the animal 
 frame ; while the too studious scholar and the indo 
 lent man of luxury exhibit in themselves the perni 
 cious consequences of the want of exercise. Many a 
 rich lady would give thousands of dollars for that 
 full rounded arm, and that peach bloom on the cheek, 
 possessed by her kitchen-maid ; well, might she not 
 have had both, by the same amount of exercise and 
 simple living ? 
 
 Cleanliness is the last receipt which I shall give for 
 the preservation of beauty. It is an indispensable 
 thing. It maintains the limbs in their pliancy, the 
 skin in its softness, the complexion in its lustre, and 
 the whole frame in its fairest light. The frequent use 
 of the tepid bath is not more grateful to the senses, 
 than it is salutary to health and beauty. It is by 
 such ablutions that accidental corporeal impurities are 
 thrown off, cutaneous obstructions removed, and while 
 the surface of the body is preserved in its original 
 brightness, many threatening, and beauty-destroying 
 
Beautiful Women. 117 
 
 disorders are prevented. This delightful oriental 
 fashion has for many years been growing into common 
 use with well conditioned people all over the world ; 
 especially on the continent of Europe is this the case. 
 From the Villas of Italy to the Chateaux of France, 
 from the palaces of the Muscovite to the Castles of 
 Germany, we everywhere find the marble bath under 
 the vaulted portico or the sheltering shade. Every 
 house and every gentleman of almost every nation 
 except England and America, possesses one of these 
 genial friends of health and beauty. But every beau 
 tiful woman may be certain that she cannot preserve 
 the brightness of her charms without a frequent resort 
 to this beautifying agent. She should make the bath 
 as indispensable an article in her house as her looking- 
 glass. 
 
 ' '>*.. *?". ' -' * 
 
 " This is the purest exercise of health, 
 
 The sweet refresher of the Summer heatfl; 
 Even from the body's purity the mind 
 Receives a secret sympathetic aid." 
 
 Besides these rational and natural means of develop- 
 
ii8 Beautiful Women. 
 
 ing and preserving the charms of woman, there are 
 undoubtedly many more artificial devices, by which a 
 fair lady may keep up and show off her attractions 
 to great advantage. 
 
 During my residence at Paris, bathing in milk was 
 practised by every fashionable "Beauty who could 
 possibly afford the expense of such a luxury. To 
 such aji extent was this custom carried, that there 
 really became a great scarcity of milk for domestic 
 purposes, until at length the Police discovered that 
 the venders were in the habit of buying back the 
 milk which had been used in the bath from the ser 
 vants, and serving it over again to their tea and 
 coffee drinking customers. In consequence of this 
 practice, the jxrice of the article was so advanced that 
 while hundreds of fashionable women were swimming 
 in milk every morning, thousands of families were 
 obliged to dispense with the use of it in their choco 
 late and coffee. . 
 
 But a far less expensive and probably more scien 
 tific bath for cleansing and beautifying the body, is 
 
Beautiful Women. 1 1 9 
 
 that of tepid water and bran, which, is really a 
 remarkable softener and purifier of the skin. 
 
 The celebrated Madame Yestris slept every night 
 with her face plastered in a kind of paste to drive 
 back the wrinkles, and keep her complexion fresh 
 and fair. This notorious beauty had her white satin 
 boots sewed on her feet every morning, and of course 
 they had to be ripped off at night, and the same paii 
 could be worn but a single day. 
 
 This lady rejoiced in the reputation of having the 
 handsomest foot and ankle of any woman in the 
 world. 
 
 It is not an unfrequent custom with fashionable 
 beauties at Paris, to bind their faces on going to bed 
 at night with thin slices of raw beef, which is said to 
 keep the skin from wrinkles, while it gives freshness 
 and brilliancy to the complexion. But what a sight 
 it would be for the lover to look upon the face of his 
 beloved thus done into a sandwich, and bound up 
 with a napkin ! But these things are not for lovers 
 to see they are not even for lovers to hear ; and I 
 
12O Beautiful Women. 
 
 ) . 
 
 expect the gentlemen to have gallantry enough not 
 to listen to a single word of the secrets I am now dis 
 closing* The Spanish women are particularly proud 
 of a small foot and a white hand, and to secure 
 this object, the poor creatures will torture them 
 selves by wearing tight bandages on their feet in bed, 
 and sleeping all night with their hands held up by 
 pulleys, in order to make them bloodless and white. 
 The women of the East beautify themselves by 
 bathing and friction. The cosmetic of the Turks 
 is friction. They rouge themselves a little, and 
 paint their eyebrows with sourma, and like other 
 Eastern women, the nails of their hands and feet 
 with henna. Eastern women never wear shoes in 
 the house ; but water and friction are the chief 
 beautifiers in an Eastern lady's toilet. One of the 
 most famous cosmetics known to the fashionable 
 beauties was the Creme de 1'Enclos, the mysterious 
 components of which were lemon juice, milk, and 
 white brandy. But there was a cosmetic still more 
 famous known to the cunning beauties of the court 
 
Beautiful Women. 121 
 
 of Charles II., which really possessed the power of 
 calling the crimson stream of blood to the exter 
 nal fibres of the face, and produced on the cheeks a 
 beautiful rosy color which was like the bloom of 
 nature itself. In the time of George L, it was a 
 custom with the beauties of the court to take quick 
 silver in order to render the skin white and fair. In 
 some of the German States to this day, the women 
 are in the habit of drinking the waters of arsenic 
 springs to keep them young-looking and beautiful, 
 but when once they begin this custom, they are 
 obliged to continue it through life. 
 
 But I weary of this subject of Cosmetics, as every 
 woman of sense will at last weary of the use of them. 
 It is a lesson which is sure to come ; but, in the lives 
 of most fashionable ladies, it has small chance of being 
 needed until that unmentionable time, when men will 
 cease to make baubles and playthings of them. It takes 
 most women two-thirds of their lifetime to discover, 
 that men may be amused by, without respecting them ; 
 
 and every woman may make up her mind that to be 
 
 6 
 
122 Beautiful Women. 
 
 really respected, site must possess merit, slie must have 
 accomplishments of mind and heart, and there can 
 be no real beauty without these. If the soul is 
 without cultivation, without refinement, without 
 taste, without the sweetness of affection, not all 
 the mysteries of art can make the face beautiful; and 
 on the other hand, it is impossible to dim the bright 
 ness of an elegant and polished mind, its radiance 
 strikes through the encasements of deformity, and 
 asserts its sway over the world of the affections. 
 
 It has been my privilege to see the most celebrated 
 Beauties that shine in the gilded courts of fashion 
 throughout the world from St. James to St. Peters- 
 burgh, from Paris to India, and yet I know of no art 
 which can atone for the defect of an unpolished mind 
 and an unlovely heart. That charming activity of 
 soul, that spiritual energy, which gives animation, 
 grace, and living light to the animal frame, is, after all, 
 the real source of Woman's Beauty. It is that which 
 gives eloquence to the language of her eyes, which 
 gives the sweetest expression to her face, and lights 
 
Beautiful Women. 123 
 
 up her whole personnel as if her very body thought. 
 I never myself behold a creature with such sweet 
 and spiritual beauty, but I fall in love with her my 
 self, and only wish I were a man that I could marry 
 her. 
 
GALLANTRY 
 
Gallantry. 
 
 A HISTORY of the beginning of the reign of 
 gallantry would carry us back to the creation of the 
 world; for I believe that about the first thing that 
 man began to do after he was created, was to make 
 love to woman. 
 
 The Jewish and Christian accounts seem to agree 
 in this matter; and as for the Heathen record, the 
 life of even Jupiter himself was little else than a 
 history of his gallantry. In the service of the fair 
 sex he was converted into a satyr, a shepherd, a bull, 
 a swan, and a golden shower; and so entirely 
 devoted to the cause of love was he, that his wife, 
 Juno, mockingly calls him Cupid's whirligig. 
 
 Alasl I am much afraid that this old heathen 
 
1 28 Gallantry. 
 
 divinity has never been wanting for millions of 
 disciples, even among the high and noble of Christian 
 lands. The proudest heroes and the mightiest kings 
 I have met with have been just about as pliant 
 " whirligigs" to Cupid as was the great thunderer of 
 Olympus ; and history teaches me that my observa 
 tions are confirmed by the lives of some of the 
 gravest philosophers and bravest generals of anti 
 quity. If we look to an Alcibiades, a Demosthenes, 
 a Caesar, or an Alexander, we find that their gal 
 lantries form no inconsiderable portion of their 
 histories. 
 
 But gallantry, as I propose to treat of it in this 
 lecture, arose more particularly with the institution 
 of chivalry, and formed, we may say, the soul of the 
 most noble and daring exploits of chivalry during its 
 brilliant career. Indeed the eighth and ninth virtues 
 of chivalry which every knight had to swear to obey, 
 were to "Uphold the maiden's right," and "Not see 
 the widow wronged." 
 
 In the eleventh century, it was declared by the 
 
Gallantry. 1 29 
 
 celebrated Council of Clermont, which authorized the 
 first crusade, that every person of noble birth, on 
 attaining twelve years of age, should take a solemn 
 oath before the bishop of his diocese, to defend to the 
 utmost the women of noble birth, both married and 
 single, and to have especial care of widows and 
 orphans. So that to whatever class of duties the can 
 didate for the honors of chivalry was attached, he 
 never forgot that he was the squire of dames, or the 
 knight of the fair ladies. 
 
 Since the knights were bound by oath to defend 
 woman, the principle was felt in all its force and 
 spirit by him who aspired to chivalric honors. Love 
 was mixed in the mind of the young knight with 
 "images of war, and he therefore thought that his 
 mistress, like honor, could only be gained through 
 difficulties and dangers; and from this feeling pro 
 ceeded the wild romance of the loves of knighthood. 
 So the courage of the knight of chivalry was chiefly 
 inspired by the lady of his affections. 
 
 Women were regarded as the highest incentives to 
 6* 
 
130 Gallantry. 
 
 valor; and I remember the story of a Danish 
 champion who had lost his chin and one of his 
 cheeks by a single stroke of a sword, who refused to 
 return to his home, because, said he, "The Danish 
 girls will never willingly give me a kiss while I have 
 such a battered face." The knight, whose heart was 
 warmed with the true light of chivalry, never wished 
 that the dominion of his mistress should be less than 
 absolute. 
 
 There was no discussion then about "woman's 
 rights," or "woman's influence" woman had what 
 ever her soul desired, and her will was the watchword 
 for battle or peace. Love was as marked a feature in 
 the chivalric character as valor ; and he who under 
 stood how to break a lance, and did not understand 
 how to win a lady, was held to be but half a man. 
 He fought to gain her smiles he lived to be worthy 
 of her love. G-ower, who wrote in the days of 
 Edward III., has thus summed up the chivalric devo 
 tion to woman : 
 
 " What thing she bid me do, I do. 
 
Gallantry. 131 
 
 And where she bid me go, I go ; 
 And when she likes to call, I come, 
 I serve, I bow, I look, I loute, 
 My eye it folio weth her about. 1 ' 
 
 In those days to be "a servant of the ladies" was 
 no mere figure of the imagination and to be in love 
 was no idle pastime ; but to be profoundly, furiously, 
 almost ridiculously in earnest. In the mind of the 
 cavalier, woman was a being of mystic power. As in 
 the old forests of Germany, she had been listened to 
 like a spirit of the woods, melodious, solemn, and 
 oracular ; so when chivalry became an institution, the 
 same idea of something supernaturally beautiful in 
 her character threw a shadow over her life, and she 
 was not only loved but revered. And never were 
 men more constant to their fair ladies than in the 
 proudest days of chivalry. 
 
 Fickleness would have been a species of impiety, 
 for woman was not a mere toy to be played with, but 
 a divinity who was to be worshipped. And this treat 
 ment of woman had its effect on her character, and 
 
132 Gallantry. 
 
 gave to her a nobility of feeling, a heroism of heart 
 which made her the fit companion of men of chival 
 rous deeds. A damsel, on hearing that her knight 
 had survived his honor, exclaimed, "I should have 
 loved him better dead than alive !" A lady who was 
 reproached for loving an ugly man, replied, " He is so 
 valiant, I have never looked in his face." The gal 
 lantry of knighthood certainly acted powerfully in 
 giving elevation and purity to the character of 
 woman. 
 
 We behold a further illustration of this kind of 
 gallantry in the history of Tournaments. It was the 
 beauty of woman which inspired the heroic and 
 graceful achievements of the tournaments. The 
 daring knight acquired almost superhuman strength 
 when he saw the lady of his affections smiling upon 
 his gallant skill. And certainly woman did perform 
 a great mission in those days. Under her influence 
 the fierceness of war was mellowed into elegance, 
 and eyen feudalism abated something of its sternness. 
 The ladie? were the supreme judges of tournaments. 
 
Gallantry. 1 33 
 
 and if any complaint was made against a knight, the;y 
 determined the case without appeal. 
 
 Every gallant knight wore the device of his lady 
 love as his coat of arms, and to gain her approbation 
 was the soul of his noble daring. In the heat of the 
 conflict he would call upon her name as if there were 
 magic in the thought of her beauty to sustain his 
 strength and courage. Thus the air at the tourna 
 ments was rent with the names of fair ladies, and 
 "On, valiant knights ! fair eyes behold you," was the 
 spirit-stirring cry of old warriors who could no longer 
 join in the conflict themselves. 
 
 In those days kingdoms were lost and won, and 
 life itself was thrown away like a worthless bauble, 
 all in the service of the ladies. 
 
 In the days of Alphonso XI., King of Spain, in 
 the beginning of the fourteenth century, the gallantry 
 of knighthood made it a rule, that if any knight insti 
 tuted an action against the daughter of a brother 
 knight, no lady or gentlewoman should ever be his 
 lady-love or wife. If he happened, when riding to 
 
1 34 Gallantry. 
 
 meet a lady or gentlewoman of the court, it was his 
 duty to alight from his horse, and tender his service, 
 upon pain of losing a month's pay, and the favor of 
 all the dames and damsels. The same statute of gal 
 lantry decread, that he who refused to perform any 
 service which a fair lady commanded, should be 
 branded with the .jtitle, " The Discourteous Knight." 
 
 At the court of the Scottish kings, the knight was 
 obliged to swear: " I shall defend the just action and 
 quarrel of all the ladies of honor, of all true and 
 friendless widows, of orphans, and of maidens of 
 good fame." 
 
 Such was the gallantry of knighthood. It gave 
 woman not only love, but respect and protection. 
 
 In this respect there was a great resemblance be 
 tween the Knights and the Troubadours. Both 
 devoted themselves to the glory of their ladies the 
 former as heroes, the latter as poets. The knight ser 
 ved his lady with his sword, the troubadour with his 
 songs. In fact, it was the chivalrous devotion to the 
 beauty of woman, that particularly manifested itseli 
 
Gallantry. 1 fo 
 
 in the sudden and magical unfolding of that poesy 
 which received among the Provengals the name of 
 " La gaie Science" and which, diffusing its influence 
 over all the intellectual nations of Europe, gave birth 
 to a rich and various literature of chivalrous poetry 
 and love-songs. "We find it especially in the literature 
 of the Troubadours. As a specimen let me quote an 
 example from the poetry of Gruido Cavalcanti, who 
 with a sort of fine madness sang perpetually of his 
 love for a beautiful Spanish girl of Tobosa. 
 
 "Who is this, on whom all men gaze as she approaches; who 
 causeth the air to tremble around her with tenderness; who 
 leadeth love by her side 1 in whose presence men are dumb, and 
 can only sigh? Ah I Heaven! what power in every glance of 
 those eyes! She alone is the lady of gentleness beside her 
 all others seem ungracious and unkind. Who can describe her 
 sweetness, her loveliness ? To her every virtue bows, and beauty 
 points to her as her own divinity." 
 
 That, ladies, is the way they used to make love in 
 the age of the Troubadours. Love was certainly a 
 very earnest, and sometimes a very fearful thing in 
 those days. 
 
136 Gallantry. 
 
 We may take as an illustration the tragic fate of the 
 poet Cabestaing, a troubadour of noble birth, who be 
 came enamored of the charms of Lady Marguerita, 
 wife of Kaimond of Castle Eoussillon. The poet 
 declared his love in the following strain 
 
 " Gay is my song ; for the softest love inspires me I thou, 
 whose beauty transports my soul, may I be forsaken, may I be 
 cursed by love if I give my heart to another. Was my faith to 
 heaven equal, I should instantly be received into paradise I 1 
 have no power to defend myself against your charms ; be honora 
 ble therefore and take pity on me. Permit, at least, that I kiss 
 your gloves ; I presume not to ask any higher mark of your 
 favor." 
 
 To this song the Lady Marguerita replied, 
 
 " I swear to thee thou shalt never have cause to change thy 
 opinion. Never, no never will I deceive thee." 
 
 Through the imprudence of the lady, this love be 
 came known to her husband, Lord Eaimond, and in a 
 passion of jealousy he formed a pretext to draw 
 Cabestaing oat of the castle, where he stabbed him, 
 cut off his head, and tore out his heart, which he took 
 
Gallantry. 137 
 
 to his cook with orders to have it dressed in the man 
 ner of venison, and then had it served up for his wife 
 to eat. After she had partaken of the meal, he asked 
 if she knew what she had been eating. "No," says 
 she, " but it is most delicious." " I believe it," said 
 he, " since it is what you have long delighted in," and 
 exhibiting the head of Cabestaing, exclaimed ; " behold 
 him whose heart you have just eaten !" At this 
 shocking sight, at these horrible words, she fainted . 
 but soon recovering her senses, she cried out: "Yes, 
 barbarian, I have found this meat so exquisite, that 
 lest I should lose the taste of it, I will never eat any 
 other," and she instantly precipitated herself from the 
 balcony, and was dashed to pieces. 
 
 But in the gallantry of the Troubadours it was 
 generally the opposite sex which suffered sorrows and 
 death for their love. 
 
 The author of the Life of Petrarch relates an 
 interesting story of the unsuccessful love of Richard de 
 Berbesieu, a poet and Troubadour of no mean genius, 
 who fell in love with a rich Baroness, who was the 
 
138 Gallantry. 
 
 wife of Geoffroi de Tours. She received the poet's 
 professions with pride, as there was nothing she wished 
 for so much as to be celebrated by a poet of his 
 genius ; but as he soon discovered that this was her 
 only object in encouraging his passion, he complained 
 bitterly of her rigor, and finally quitted her for another 
 lady, who, after encouraging him, expressed the great 
 est disdain for his caprice. " Go," said she, "you are 
 unworthy of any woman's love. You are the falsest 
 man in the world, to abandon a lady so lovely, so 
 amiable. Go, since you have forsaken her, you will 
 forsake any other." 
 
 The poet took her advice and returned and sought 
 the grace of Madame de Tours again, but she scornfully 
 refused him, and in the rage of his disappointment 
 he composed the following invective against women : 
 
 "To seek for fidelity in women, is to seek for holy things 
 among the carcasses of dead and putrid dogs to confide in 
 them is the confidence of the dove in the kite. If they have no 
 children they bestow a supposed offspring, that they may inherit 
 the dowry which belongs only to mothers. What you love the 
 
Gallantry. 1 39 
 
 most, their arts will cause you to hate ; and when they have 
 filled up the measure of their iniquity, they laugh at their disor 
 ders, and justify their guilt." 
 
 Overwhelmed with despair, our troubadour retired 
 into a wood, where he built himself a cottage, resolv 
 ing never more to appear in the world unless he could 
 be restored to the favor of Madame de Tours. 
 
 All the knights of the country were touched with 
 his fate. When two years had elapsed, they came 
 and besought him to abandon his retreat, but he 
 remained firm to his first resolution. At last, all the 
 knights and ladies assembled, and went to bespeak 
 Madame de Tours to have pity on him ; but she answered 
 that she would never grant this request till a hundred 
 ladies and a hundred knights, who were truly in love, 
 came to her with hands joined, and knees bent, to 
 solicit the pardon of Berbesieu. On this condition she 
 promised to forgive him. This news restored hope to 
 the poet, and he gave vent to his grief in a poem 
 which began with this paragraph : 
 
 " As an elephant, who is overthrown, cannot be raised up till 
 
140 Gallantry. 
 
 a number of elephants rouse him by thek cries, so neither should 
 I have ever been relieved from my distress, if these loyal lovers 
 had not obtained my grace, by beseeching it of her who alone can 
 bestow felicity." 
 
 The ladies and knights assembled according to the 
 number prescribed; they went to intercede for this 
 unfortunate lover, and they obtained for him the par 
 don promised. But Madame de Tours died soon 
 after ; and her troubadour not being able to live in a 
 country which called to his mind the sufferings he had 
 undergone, and the loss of his beloved mistress, with 
 drew into Spain, where he ended his days. 
 
 This seems more like a romance than a story of 
 real life, but the history of the Troubadours is full of 
 actual events still more strange and romantic. The 
 student of history will be struck with the sincerity 
 and genuine earnestness of the gallantry of those days. 
 
 I have read with admiration the confession of "Wil 
 liam Magret, a poet of Yiennois, who addressed this 
 remarkable message to Peter II. who was killed at the 
 battle of Muret : " Since God has placed you in hea- 
 
Gallantry. 141 
 
 ven, be mindful of us who are left on earth." But 
 what has most charmed me is the simple manner in 
 which he describes his love: "I am so distracted 
 with love, that being seated, I perceive not those who 
 enter, and do not rise to receive them; and I seek 
 for that I hold in my hand. As I believe in that God 
 who was born on Christmas, I never committed fault 
 or crime to the lady of my love, except it was to extin 
 guish the lights to hide my confusion from her, and 
 lest she should perceive the tears that roll down my 
 cheeks, when I contemplated her sweetness." 
 
 It was not uncommon in those days for the lover to 
 fast, and torture himself, and perform incredible feats 
 of self-denial, to prove the sincerity of his love for 
 his mistress. Sometimes during the intense heat of 
 summer, they would wrap themselves in the thickest 
 and warmest clothing and run up the steepest hills, 
 walk bare-foot over the burning sands, and then 
 during the frosts of winter they would clothe them 
 selves in the thinnest garments, and expose themselves 
 to the frosts and biting winds, to prove that "love 
 
1 42 Gallantry. 
 
 could suffer all things for love." And sometimes these 
 poor fanatics were frozen to death while on these 
 pilgrimages of love. 
 
 There can be no doubt that gallantry had, at least, 
 an element of sincerity in it, in those days. The deep, 
 intense earnestness of their love-songs is sufficient 
 proof of this. There was something almost profane 
 in the devotion which these Troubadours exhibited 
 to woman. Take for instance the following extract 
 from Peri Kogier, a troubadour of great poetical 
 genius who flourished in the twelfth century 
 
 " Without doubt God was astonished when I consented to 
 separate myself from my lady : yes, God cannot but have given 
 me much credit, for he is well aware that if I lost her, I could 
 never again know happiness, and that he himself possesses 
 nothing that could console me. Oh ! sweet friend I when the 
 soft breeze comes wafting from the loved spot you inhabit, it seems 
 to me that I inhale the breath of Paradise. Oh, if I can but 
 enjoy the charm of your glances, I do not aspire to any greater 
 favor I believe myself in possession of God himself." 
 
 The object of this profane adoration was the beauti 
 ful Ermengarde, the daughter of Yiscount Emeric II. 
 
Gallantry. 143 
 
 of Narbonne, who, though she accepted the admira 
 tion of the poet, was obliged to send him away from 
 her court, for the protection of her own reputation. 
 
 It was not an unfrequent occurrence for these gal 
 lant knights of the quill to fall in love with fair 
 ladies whom they had never seen, and to burn with a 
 flame for charms which they had only heard described, 
 and which they would waste their lives in trying to 
 
 Thus Jauffre Eudel, having heard a description of 
 the beauty of the Princess Melindeusende, daughter 
 of the Count of Tripoli, and the affianced bride of 
 Manuel, Emperor of Constantinople, became so ena 
 mored with the idea of her charms, that he quitted his 
 native land, and established himself near the being 
 whose loveliness he had sung but never seen. But, 
 alas ! his heated imagination was undermining his 
 health, and he dropped dead at the very moment he 
 attained the object of his desires, and beheld for the 
 first time the fair phantom of his dreams. 
 
 But I must close this sketch of tlfe gallantry of the 
 
Gallantry. 
 
 Troubadours with an extract from William Montagu o 
 gont, a famous knight of Provence, a fine poet, and a 
 tender lover. The object of his sonnets was the 
 beautiful JafFeraude of the castle of Lunel : 
 
 " Love inspires the greatest actions 1 Love engages the most 
 amiable conduct ! Love fills with joy 1 To act fraudulently in 
 love, is a proof you have never loved. You cannot love, nor 
 ever ought to be loved, if you ask anything of your mistress 
 which virtue condemns. It is not love that seeks dishonor of 
 virtue. Love has no will but that of the beloved object, nor 
 seeks aught but what will augment her glory. True lovers are 
 known by these rules ; he who follows them, G-od will reward ; 
 but the deceiver shall come to shame. Never did I form a wish 
 that could wound the heart of my beloved I" 
 
 There is an instinct in every true woman's heart, 
 that teaches her that the sentiments of this noble 
 Troubadour are true, and every man who scouts them 
 shows himself unworthy of woman's confidence. 
 
 "From the time that gallantry arose with the insti 
 tution of Chivalry, up to the period to which I have 
 now traced it in the literature of the Troubadours, it 
 was a great refiner and softener of manners, and it was 
 
Gallantry. 
 
 a great fnena to woman. It gave her a character of 
 dignity, truth, refinement, and genuine nobility, which 
 she had never before possessed. 
 
 But the good it was destined to do soon reached its 
 meridian; and what was born of the rugged and 
 honest spirit of chivalry soon degenerated into effemi 
 nacy, thence it sank into mere voluptuousness, and 
 thence into crime. 
 
 "Witness, for instance, the slough into which gal 
 lantry had fallen at no later day than the times of 
 Charles. Compare the poetry of Thomas Carew, a 
 man of great learning, wit, and genius, attached to the 
 court of this monarch, with the gallant poetry of the 
 Troubadours of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, 
 and it is like descending from the fresh mountain air 
 into the putrid atmosphere of a charnel-house. The 
 following verse from Carew is a fair specimen of the 
 effeminacy of the gallant poetry of that time : 
 
 " In her fair clieeks two pits do lie, 
 To bury those slain by her eye ; 
 So, spite of death, this comforts me, 
 7 
 
146 Gallantry. 
 
 That fairly buried I shall be. 
 
 My grave with rose and lily spread, 
 
 0, 'tis a life to be so dead. 
 
 Come then and kill me with thy eye, 
 
 For if thou let me live, I die." 
 
 The gallant, who in the days of chivalry was either 
 a bold knight, fighting for the glory of his country 
 and the honor of his fair lady, or a scarcely less chi 
 valrous Troubadour singing her charms in strains 
 that made the age in love with virtue, has here 
 descended to a false, intriguing, and corrupt adulator, 
 whose love is a fever, and whose gallantry is a trap 
 for a woman's honor. 
 
 Louis XIV., though he was perhaps the most 
 gallant monarch that ever lived, was still unlike 
 Charles II. ; and his court, though one of the gayest in 
 the history of the world, was unstained by many of 
 the excesses that disgraced that of Charles II. Louis 
 XIY. was a gallant without being a roue*; though 
 we are able to say these pleasant things of the 
 French king only when we compare him with the 
 
Gallantry. 147 
 
 English Charles. But it may perhaps be passed to 
 the credit of his self-respect and refined taste, that the 
 ladies who were his favorites were among not only 
 the most beautiful, but the most refined and we may 
 almost say the best women of France. 
 
 "We may refer to the beautiful and gentle-minded 
 Madame de la Yalli&re, who really loved the man, and 
 not the sovereign, in Louis XIY. When the death of 
 the son she had by that king was announced, she 
 said " Alas ! I have less reason to be grieved for his 
 death than for his birth." 
 
 Many years before this accomplished lady died, she 
 retired into a convent, and while there she wrote a 
 devotional treatise entitled "Keflections upon the 
 Mercy of God." The eloquent Bossuet preached a 
 sermon upon her taking the veil, at which were pre 
 sent Louis the Fourteenth's queen and all the court. 
 The text was peculiar, especially for Louis's queen to 
 hear " And he that sat upon the throne, said, I will 
 renew all things." 
 
 A celebrated picture of the Magdalen, painted by 
 
] 48 Gallantry. 
 
 Le Brun for the convent in which Madame de la 
 Valliere resided, was for a long time supposed to be a 
 portrait of this beautiful and sincere penitent. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon, another lady of Louis the 
 Fourteenth, was not less charming and intellectually 
 accomplished. She must have been very beautiful. 
 The Abbe* de Choisy dedicated his translation of Tho 
 mas- A' Kempis to her, with this motto from the 
 Psalms : 
 
 " Hear, my daughter, and see, and incline thine ear, and the 
 king shall desire thy beauty." 
 
 This gifted lady once made this confession to her 
 niece. " I was naturally ambitious. I fought against 
 that passion. I really thought I should be happy, 
 when that ambition was gratified. That infatuation 
 lasted only three days." Her influence upon the 
 king was always refining and beneficent. One day 
 she asked him for some alms. "Alas! Madame," 
 replied the Prince, " what I give in alms are merely 
 fresh burdens upon my people. The more I give 
 
Gallantry. 149 
 
 away the more I must take from them." " This, sire, 
 is true," replied Madame de Maintenon, "but it is. 
 right to ease the wants of those whom your former 
 taxes to supply the expenses of your wars and of 
 your buildings have reduced to misery. It is truly 
 just that those who have been ruined by you, should 
 be supported by you." 
 
 This lady survived the king several years, and the 
 Eegent Duke of Orleans took care that the pension 
 left her by the king should be regularly paid to her. 
 
 When Peter the Great visited Paris, he was very 
 desirous of seeing Madame de Maintenon. She was 
 very infirm, and in bed when he visited her. He 
 drew aside the curtains to look at that face which had 
 captivated her sovereign. A blush overpowered her 
 pale and withered cheek, and the Czar retired. 
 
 Such were the ladies upon whom the gallant Louis 
 XIY. bestowed his love. If we must regard them as 
 fallen, we are compelled to look upon them as beau 
 tiful flowers growing in a morass. 
 
 Francis the First, another king of France, was also 
 
i Jo Gallantry. 
 
 a model of gallantry in his way. Indeed he was an 
 accomplished prince in all respects. "When, after 
 prodigies of valor, he lost the battle of Pa via, he sent 
 his mother, Louisa of Savoy, the news of his cap 
 tivity in a dignified and expressive sentence which 
 will ever be remembered, " Tout est perdu, Madame, 
 hormis Vhonneur" "All is lost, Madam, except honor." 
 
 When this accomplished prince delivered up his 
 sword to Lannoi, the Spanish general, he said, " Sir, 
 I deliver you the sword of a monarch, who is entitled 
 to some distinction, from having with his own hand 
 killed so many of your soldiers before he surren 
 dered himself, and who is at last a prisoner, from a 
 wretched reverse of fortune, rather than from any 
 cowardice." 
 
 This monarch was as gentle and refined as a lover, 
 as he was brave as a soldier, and great as a king. It 
 was he who declared that, "A court without ladies, 
 is like spring without flowers." And yet he once 
 engraved upon a window at Eambouillet, with a 
 diamond, the following verse : 
 
Gallantry. 151 
 
 " Lovely sex, too given to rage, 
 Lovely sex. too prone to change ; 
 Alas ! what man can trust your charms, 
 Or seek his safety in your arms." 
 
 The Spaniards are about the most gallant people 
 of modern nations. Indeed, in Spain, there jet 
 lingers a remnant of the ancient feeling of real gal 
 lantry. 
 
 Madrid is vocal almost every night in the year 
 with the most charming love-songs chanted under the 
 windows of a thousand fair ladies. It sometimes 
 occurs that two parties happen to meet in honor of 
 the same lady, and then a regular pitched battle is 
 quite likely to follow. A beautiful woman is sure to 
 be respected almost to adoration in Spain. Even the 
 common people will greet her with tokens of admi 
 ration in the street, and exclaim, "Blessed be the 
 mother that gave birth to such beauty." I have seen 
 the students throw down their cloaks in the dust to 
 form a carpet for a beautiful woman to cross the 
 street upon ; and all this from no affectation of gal- 
 
1 52 Gallantry. 
 
 lantry, but from a genuine and honest admiration 
 In this respect there is a wide difference between the 
 Spanish and French. The attachment of the sexes, 
 which in France is a light, variable feeling, is in 
 Spain a serious and lasting sentiment. Similar 
 differences may be observed in the mode in which 
 each nation pursues its amusements, such as music 
 and dancing, which are favorites with both. Spanish 
 music is grave and tender, being in some measure an 
 imitation of the ancient music of the Moors, improved 
 by lessons from the Italian school. 
 
 There is no such thing as genuine gallantry either 
 in France or England. In France, the relation between 
 the sexes is too fickle, variable, and insincere, for any 
 nearer approach to gallantry than flirtation ; while in 
 England the aristocracy, which is the only class in 
 that country that could have 'the genuine feeling of 
 gallantry, are turned shop-owners and tradesmen. 
 The Smiths and Jones's who figure on the signboards 
 have the nobility standing behind them as silent 
 partners. The business habits of the United States 
 
Gallantry. 1 53 
 
 and the examples of rapid fortunes in this country, 
 have quite turned the head of John Bull, and he is 
 very fast becoming a sharp, thrifty, money -getting 
 Yankee. A business and commercial people have no 
 leisure for the cultivation of that feeling and romance 
 which is the foundation of gallantry. The activities 
 of human nature seek other more practical and more 
 useful channels of excitement. Instead of devoting 
 a life to the worship and service of the fair ladies, 
 they are building telegraphs, railroads, steamboats, 
 constructing schemes of finance, and enlarging the 
 area of practical civilization. 
 
 But still this age has a kind of gallantry, a sort of 
 devotion to the sex, which perhaps deserves no 
 higher name than flirtation, and means, I believe, 
 generally, making a fool of a woman, by attentions 
 which are hollow, fickle, and too often insincere. 
 
 This modern gallant, or flirt, is a poor imitation of 
 the genuine gallant of the days of chivalry. He is 
 covered over, as with a cloak, with an outside devo- 
 
 tion to woman. 
 
 7* 
 
1 54 Gallantry. 
 
 He is made of nothing but hands and feet to serve 
 her. His eye is practised and quick to see all her 
 wants, even before she knows them herself. If she 
 drops her fan, he catches it before it has time to reach 
 the floor. If she wants a glass of water, he glides 
 over the carpet like a shadow, and places it in her 
 hand even before she has been able to finish the sen 
 tence which makes known her wishes. He is the first 
 one to discover any new or rare article of her ap 
 parel, and does not hesitate to point it out at once, 
 and will declare that she never appeared in anything 
 so becoming, and that she really never looked so 
 charming before. And, ten to one, he will whisper 
 her that he is afraid that every woman present will 
 be jealous of her charms. And all this, if she is not 
 one of the " strong-minded," or at least if she is not 
 well instructed in the ways of the world, and especially 
 in the ways of men, will be successful. Mary "Wol- 
 stoncraft exclaims " How many women has the 
 cold unmeaning intercourse of gallantry rendered 
 vain and useless !" Alas, I am ashamed to think of 
 
Gallantry. ] 55 
 
 how many, and yet justice would dictate a word of 
 apology for my sex, for are we not made, from our 
 cradle to our womanhood, to feel that beauty is our 
 sole capital to begin life with ? What wonder, then, 
 we should listen approvingly, and at length affection 
 ately, to the one who tells us that we are rich in this ? 
 The cold censure of the world may fall heavily upon 
 the poor victim of delusion and flattery, yet I have 
 somehow a feeling that the eye of Omniscience looks 
 down pityingly upon the errors consequent upon those 
 snares which this species of gallantry throws perpe 
 tually in the pathway of woman. And this kind of 
 gallantry is getting progressively falser, meaner, and 
 more pernicious, as it comes down further from the 
 age of chivalry that produced the genuine sentiment. 
 Lord Chesterfield makes the following shameless con 
 fession. " I will own to you, under the secresy of 
 confession, that my vanity has very often made me 
 take great pains to make many a woman in love with 
 me if I could, for whose person I would not have 
 given a pinch of snuff." There, ladies, is the con- 
 
1 56 Gallantry. 
 
 fession of the king of modern gallants, for you. Bui 
 then, that is a game at which the women can play as 
 well as the men, though as a general thing I am in 
 clined to believe that the women get the worst of it, 
 for they have more heart and natural sincerity, and 
 are therefore more likely to get wounded. 
 
 But let no woman deceive herself with the idea 
 that there is any meaning or any sincerity in the 
 thousand sweet and pleasant things, the man of this 
 kind of gallantry breathes in her ear. The feigned 
 respect of this gallantry is a mere over-acted farce. 
 Whatever they may say and words are never want 
 ing of course their admiration of woman lies not in 
 their hearts, but in their eyes and on their tongues. 
 These furious worshippers of women would scorn 
 even a Diana herself, were she a little on the wane ; 
 and while professing themselves slaves to the whole 
 sex, " the beauteous are their prey, the rest their scorn." 
 
 Oh, how they will swear that they love you love you 
 to distraction love the very ground you walk upon 
 dream of you all night, and sigh for you all day 
 
Gallantry. 157 
 
 Without your love, existence has grown a burden 
 the very sky above them is in darkness, and every 
 flower on the earth has withered and lost its fragrance. 
 Your eyes alone are the stars of their sky, your love 
 the only solace of life. 
 
 Now is not this very fine, ladies ? But then it is 
 all, all deception. It is a mere trap to catch the un 
 wary. The man who truly loves you, never runs 
 on in that style. In real love there is a diffidence, a 
 natural modesty, and a profound and almost silent 
 respect, which never can assume the bold and impu 
 dent language of flattery. 
 
 So I beg young ladies never to have the least fear 
 that a man who makes love to them after this extrava 
 gant fashion, is going to do himself the least harm, if 
 they should refuse his suit. Be sure these gallants 
 have no idea of dashing out their brains for any 
 woman. It will be a great deal for them if they even 
 deign a sigh for the ruined victim of their deception. 
 Like JEneas, they will take their siesta in comfort, 
 though their poor Didos are broken-hearted ; and like 
 
1 58 Gallantry. 
 
 another braggadocio of Troy, they have no gallantry 
 even where their object is achieved as Mr. Pope 
 translates it : 
 
 " No more Achilles draws 
 His conquering sword in any woman's cause." 
 
 In Poland there still lingers,- as in Spain, a remnant 
 of the ancient feeling of gallantry. But it often ex 
 hibits itself in shapes which would surprise the busi 
 ness-minded lovers of the United States. In Poland 
 I have seen the shoe of a beautiful woman filled with 
 champagne, and passed up and down the table for a 
 drinking-cup for the gentlemen. But this compliment 
 I have never seen paid except to a lady who was 
 celebrated for a beautiful foot. 
 
 In that country I also witnessed a very marked 
 little piece of gallantry. A lady was performing a 
 short journey on horseback with several gentlemen, 
 when a heavy rain set in, and the gentlemen all took 
 off their coats and pinned them together, so as to 
 form a mantle, which completely covered her from 
 
Gallantry. 1 59 
 
 her shoulders to her feet, while they rode for over an 
 hour in their shirt-sleeves, through the pelting rain. 
 
 Alas ! poor Poland. It is sad to think of so gal 
 lant and brave a people, broken up and scattered to 
 the ends of the earth. 
 
 There are at the present time in the United States, 
 <7iany exiles from this nation, pursuing in silence, 
 almost in secresy, all kinds of humble toil for a main 
 tenance; men whom I once knew to be among the 
 most wealthy, gallant, and accomplished gentlemen 
 of Europe. But if justice has not forsaken the earth, 
 that wronged and glorious people will one day take 
 its place among the nations. 
 
 In Italy there are hardly any remains of the old 
 chivalric spirit of gallantry, and what little there is, 
 is confined to the ladies who become distinguished in 
 the field of art. A beautiful woman who has genius 
 in any line of art, will awaken at least the external 
 show of gallantry; but all other women in that 
 country, however beautiful they may be, must be 
 with miserable imitations of it. 
 
1 60 Gallantry. 
 
 The late Emperor Nicholas was one of the most 
 gallant monarchs in modern times, in the new sense 
 of that. word. But there was the real old spirit of 
 gallantry in his blood. His marriage with the charm 
 ing Princess of Prussia had an amusing piece of gal 
 lantry in it. It is customary, when a monarch is to be 
 married, to have the whole affair arranged by the courts 
 of the marrying parties. But not so with Nicholas. 
 He determined to pick out his own wife, and he went 
 rambling about among the courts of Europe in search 
 of a woman who had those peculiar personal charms 
 which could captivate his heart. At last he found 
 such a one in the person of the young and beautiful 
 Princess of Prussia. At her father's court he tarried 
 long enough to become well acquainted with her qua 
 lities of mind and heart ; and one day at dinner he 
 rolled a small ring in a piece of bread, and handed 
 it to the princess, saying to her in an under-tone, 
 " If you will accept my hand, put this ring on your 
 finger." And that is the way he popped the ques 
 tion. She took no time to deliberate, in the fashion 
 
Gallantry. 161 
 
 of cunning prudes, but suffering her heart to tell the 
 truth, at once and instantly put the ring on her finger. 
 Nicholas was one of the finest looking men I ever 
 saw, and at the time of his marriage, he and his 
 spouse were considered the handsomest couple in 
 Europe. 
 
 Notwithstanding the innumerable little gallantries 
 of Nicholas, he was always kind, attentive, and affec 
 tionate to his wife; and she had the wisdom and 
 amiability never to annoy him with any of the re 
 proaches of jealousy. 
 
 In 1830 she lost her beauty by a most singular 
 freak of nature, occasioned by a fright she received at 
 the moment when the Emperor rushed into the pre 
 sence of the infuriated mob that sought his life, and 
 commanded them to "down on their knees" before 
 him. 
 
 It was after this that Nicholas fell in love with that 
 young and beautiful Nellydoff, one of the maids of 
 honor to the Empress. The Empress, though per 
 fectly aware of this affair, always treated Nellydoff 
 
1 62 Gallantry. 
 
 with the greatest respect in public. This love affair 
 was terminated only by the death of Nicholas ; but it 
 did not prevent him from numerous other intrigues. 
 
 But in such affairs Prince Paul Esterhazy of Hun 
 gary beat Nicholas. He actually settled pensions 
 upon several hundred ladies, all of whom had been 
 his favorites. It was said that his Highness was un 
 able to count the number of his conquests. When I 
 saw him he was sixty years of age, and I remember 
 him as the most richly and splendidly dressed prince 
 I had ever seen. 
 
 Ring Louis, of Bavaria, is one of the most gallant 
 monarchs, as he is one of the most accomplished men 
 of genius in Europe. The intelligent European in 
 this country has had many a hearty laugh at the 
 opinion the press of the United States appears to 
 entertain of this king. He is not only one of the 
 most refined and high-toned gentlemen of the old 
 school of manners, but he is also one of the most 
 learned men, and one of the cleverest men of genius 
 in all Europe. To him art owes more than to any 
 
Gallantry. 163 
 
 other monarch, who has ever lived. Not only is it 
 true that some of the most valuable discoveries and 
 improvements in modern arts are due to his patron 
 age, but his greatest service has been felt in the im 
 petus which he has given to the general spirit of art 
 throughout the German States. 
 
 In Europe, he has long been called the "artist- 
 king." You will find his name referred to with ad 
 miration and praise, in almost every volume of the 
 " Art-Union Journal." In volume X. of 1848, you 
 may read this sentence : " Till now, history has had 
 no monarch who protected and fostered the arts to 
 such an extent as King Louis ; even the entire illus 
 trious house of Medici did not produce in a whole 
 century, as much as the king alone in less than a 
 fourth part of that time." 
 
 "When Louis voluntarily descended from the throne, 
 he said : " It took me about an hour's consideration 
 to resign the crown, but it required two days to sepa 
 rate me from the idea of being protector of the fine 
 arts." On the occasion of his abdication, the artists 
 
164 Gallantry. 
 
 united in an address to the king, expressive of their 
 profound admiration for his genius, and of their re 
 grets that art had lost the patronage of a throne. 
 
 'King Louis is the author of several volumes of poems, 
 which are evidence of his natural genius, and of his re 
 fined and elaborately cultivated tastes. His celebrated 
 poem entitled South, if he had written no others, would 
 have fixed his claim to the right of being considered 
 a poet. And it is conceded that Europe has rarely, 
 if ever, possessed a monarch so classically learned as he. 
 
 As a king, he was great in the arts, a friend of 
 peace, abhorrent of war, and adverse to the tricks 
 and stratagems of diplomacy. He was the greatest 
 and best king that Bavaria has ever had. It 
 would take half a million like his son, the present 
 occupant of the throne, to make one like the old king 
 himself. There stands the immortal witness of his 
 greatness, in that Munich, which he raised from a 
 third-class to a first-class capital among the nations of 
 Europe. But Louis had really little admiration for 
 that bauble, a crown. It was the last thing he took 
 
Gallantry. 165 
 
 pride in. His manners and Ms social habits were 
 rather those of a plain and honest gentleman, than of 
 a king. I never knew him to ride either in a car 
 riage or on horseback ; he always went on foot, and 
 almost always unattended and alone. He was always 
 simply and plainly dressed ; in fact, he never knew 
 how to dress. In the matter of old coats, he beat one 
 of your own most celebrated editors. He had an old 
 green coat which he was not a little proud of, having 
 worn it eight years. 
 
 His manners and his habits are more those of a 
 scholar and a man of genius, than a king. But he is 
 for all this one of the most gallant men in Europe, 
 gallant in the best and most poetical sense of the 
 word. He worships beauty like one of the old Trou 
 badours. In fact, his gallantry is a part of his enthu 
 siastic love of art. I have seen him stand in the 
 street, in the snow and ice, with his hat off, to con 
 verse with a fair lady. If she was really very beau 
 tiful, he would be quite sure to have her picture 
 painted for his gallery. 
 
1 66 Gallantry. 
 
 It is impossible for a coarse, unpoetical, and merely 
 animal nature to comprehend that fine adoration 
 which a genuine feeling of gallantry inspires in the 
 breast of a man for a beautiful woman. Indeed, in 
 the philosophy of these lower natures there is no 
 such thing as love in the world nothing in man or 
 woman to raise them above the beast. What they 
 are incapable of feeling themselves, they find it im 
 possible to comprehend in others, and hence the 
 vulgar inuendoes that babble perpetually from the 
 mouths of lust and sin. "What is called " Platonic 
 love," is always sneered at by those who are inca 
 pable of the fine feeling themselves. A dog or an 
 ape, whether on two or four legs, find it impossible to 
 imagine in others any feeling they are incapable of 
 realizing themselves. 
 
 But those who are acquainted with the history of 
 the chivalrous origin of gallantry, know that its most 
 glorious deeds and greatest sacrifices were inspired 
 by a love that was born of the soul, more than of the 
 senses. I have already intimated that the U. S. is 
 
Gallantry. 167 
 
 too much of a mercantile, too busy, and too practical 
 a nation, to entertain the old spirit of gallantry, which 
 requires leisure, and the cultivation of romance ; but 
 when I say this, I do not mean that there is not plenty 
 of courting in this country, though love, like every 
 thing else, is a business here ; that is I mean that the 
 gentlemen make love in a truly business-like manner. 
 They will manage the heart of a pretty woman as 
 easily as they do the stocks on change, and the panics 
 which they create in the social markets beat even the 
 revolutions and breakdowns in the regions of finance. 
 I believe that the American is regarded a dull fellow 
 who cannot win the heart of a lady, make a thousand 
 dollars, and establish a new bank, with the prospec 
 tive capital of three millions, before breakfast. And 
 it may not unfrequently happen that he will lose his 
 mistress, his money, and his bank before supper of 
 the same day, 
 
 But for all this I believe there is a great deal of genu 
 ine truth and honest love of woman, among the lords 
 of creation in the U. S., and it is none the less honor- 
 
i68 Gallantry. 
 
 able to woman if it refuses to adorn itself with the 
 artificial embellishments of gallantry. It is not a whit 
 the less honest, either, for being of a somewhat Davy 
 Crockett style. Love in this country will a dive the 
 deepest, and come up the dryest," of any country on 
 earth, and it is, therefore, quite as brave, honest, and 
 sincere a love, as is found anywhere else ; though it 
 often clothes itself in the language of extravagance and 
 exaggeration. "What I mean is illustrated by a letter 
 which is still to be seen (or was a few years ago), in 
 one of the public libraries of Paris, in the hand writing 
 of your illustrious countryman, Dr. Franklin. The 
 letter is in very bad French, but in very good gallantry. 
 While the great man was U. S. Minister to Paris, 
 he formed a friendship with a very charming lady, 
 who was said to be most enthusiastic in her admira 
 tion of him ; and after he had bid her good-bye, pre 
 vious to leaving for the U. S., she wrote him a letter 
 entreating him to postpone his departure if possible 
 for a day or two. To this letter the Doctor sent the 
 following reply : 
 
Gallantry. 169 
 
 "If Dr. Franklin was engaged to go to Paradise at eight 
 o'clock in the morning, he would put it off till four in the after 
 noon, for the sake of one hour more in the society of so enchant 
 ing a daughter of earth." 
 
 A French gentleman who called my attention to 
 this remarkable note, affected to laugh at its bad 
 French, and at the extravagance of the language, but 
 I expressed my surprise that he should think anything 
 too extravagant in love, at the same time assuring 
 him that I had never met a Frenchman in all my life, 
 who would not postpone the idea of Paradise alto 
 gether for the sake of a pretty woman. 
 
HEROINES OF HISTORY. 
 
HEROINES OF HISTORY. 
 
 IN attempting to give a definition of strong-minded 
 women, I find it necessary to distinguish between 
 just ideas of strength and what is so considered by 
 the modern woman's rights movement. 
 
 A very estimable woman, by the name of Mrs. 
 Bloomer, obtained the reputation of strong-minded by 
 curtailing her skirts six inches, a compliment which 
 certainly excites no envious feeling in my heart ; for 
 I am philosophically puzzled to know how cutting six 
 inches off a woman's dress can possibly add anything 
 to the height of her head. 
 
 There have been a great many wonderful discoveries 
 in phrenological science of late years, but I have not 
 heard that Mr. Fowler has pushed his investigations 
 
174 Heroines of History. 
 
 so far as to be able to affirm that the skirt is the seat 
 of the mind. At the present rate of scientific disco 
 very, however, it may not be long before such a pro 
 position will be seriously put forth by some distin 
 guished reformer ; but until then we must be permit 
 ted to adhere to the ancient idea of strength, and to 
 measure a woman by the old-fashioned intellectual 
 standard, before we venture to affirm that she is 
 strong-minded. 
 
 One or two hundred women getting together in a 
 convention and resolving that they are an abused 
 community, and that all the men are great tyrants 
 and rascals, proves plainly enough that they the 
 women are somehow discontented, and that they 
 have, perhaps, a certain amount of courage, but I can 
 not see that it proves them to have any remarkable 
 strength of mind. 
 
 Really strong-minded women are not women of 
 words but of deeds, not of resolutions but of actions. 
 History does not teach me that they have ever con 
 sumed much time in conventions and in passing reso- 
 
Heroines of History. 175 
 
 lutions about their rights ; but they have been very 
 prompt to assert their rights, and to defend them too, 
 and to take the consequences of defeat. 
 
 When Barri de St. Auner, Henry the Fourth's 
 Governor of Leucate, was on a journey to the Due 
 de Montmorenci, he was seized by the Spanish 
 soldiers who were on their way to besiege that town, 
 and who rejoiced that, having the Governor in their 
 possession, the gates of the place would readily be 
 opened to them ; but Constantia de Cecelli, the gov 
 ernor's wife, at once assembled the garrison and put 
 herself so resolutely at their head, pike in hand, that 
 she inspired the weakest with courage, and the besie 
 gers were repulsed wherever they presented them 
 selves. Shame, and their great loss, having rendered 
 the besiegers desperate, they sent a message to this 
 heroic woman, telling her if she did not yield the 
 City they would hang the Governor, her husband. 
 She replied with tears in her eyes, " I have riches in 
 abundance, I have offered them and do still offer 
 them all for his ransom, but I would not ignomi- 
 
176 Heroines of History. 
 
 niously purchase a life which he would reproach me 
 with and which he would be ashamed to enjoy. I will 
 not dishonor him by treason against my king and 
 country." 
 
 The soldiers made another unsuccessful attack, and 
 then savagely put her husband to death, and raised 
 the siege. Henry IY. afterwards sent this lady the 
 brevet of Governor of Leucate with the reversion for 
 her son. 
 
 That, now, is the example of a real strong-minded 
 woman, and history is full of such examples, which 
 indicate the courage and intellect of woman, and her 
 right to claim equality with the harder sex whenever 
 Heaven has imparted to her the gift of genius. I 
 can hardly see how it is possible that any woman of 
 true genius should ever feel the necessity of calling 
 together conventions for the purpose of resolving 
 that she is abused. One woman going forth in the 
 independence and power of self-reliant strength to 
 assert her own individuality, and to defend, with 
 whatever means God has given her, her right to a 
 
Heroines of History. 177 
 
 just portion of the earth's privileges, will Jk> more 
 than a million of convention- women to make herself 
 known and felt in the world. There is such a great 
 difference between strength of mind and strength of 
 tongue I Men only laugh at a convention of scolds, 
 and pay no more attention to what they say than to 
 the chattering of a flock of blackbirds ; but they will 
 gaze with admiration and respect on a woman who 
 sets herself to a brave and manly task, and actually 
 accomplishes a heroic deed. Genius has no sex. 
 Look back upon the page of history, and see how 
 
 clearly this fact is proved. When women attack and 
 * 
 
 defend fortifications, when they command armies and 
 obtain victories, what do you call it? That is no 
 drawing-room business. If a Jean de Montfort can 
 do a better business at defending her Duchy of 
 Bretagne, with sword in hand, than any man of her 
 day, why, then, let her fight. You surely would not 
 call her off to the business of frying pancakes and 
 brushing down cobwebs. Let woman, like man, do 
 that for which nature has best fitted her. Look at 
 
178 Heroines of History. 
 
 Margaret of Anjou, the active and intrepid soldi ei 
 and general, whose genius supported for a long time 
 a feeble husband, taught him how to conquer, 
 replaced him upon a throne from which he had 
 fallen, twice relieved him from prison, and, though 
 oppressed by fortune and by rebels, did not bend 
 until after she had decided in person twelve battles ! 
 What have you to say about the " sphere" of such a 
 woman as that? Would you take her from her 
 career of glory on the battle-field and apprentice her 
 to the business of dress-making ? And, with such an 
 example before you, will you pause to dispute about 
 the intellect of woman ? 
 
 Look again at Jane of Belleville, widow of Mons. 
 de Chisson, who was beheaded at Paris* on the suspi 
 cion of carrying on a correspondence with England 
 and the Count de Montfort. Filled with despair at 
 the death of her husband, and exasperated at the 
 shame heaped upon his name, she sent her son 
 secretly to London, and when she was assured +hat 
 he was safe, she sold her jewels, fitted out three ships. 
 
Heroines of History. 179 
 
 and put to sea to revenge the death of her husband. 
 She made several successful descents upon Nor 
 mandy, and the inhabitants of that province were 
 forced to be idle spectators whilst their villages were 
 in a blaze at the hand of one of the handsomest 
 women in Europe, who, with a sword in one hand 
 and a torch in the other, urged on the carnage, and 
 directed all the horrors of the war. 
 
 There can be no doubt of woman's intellect and 
 woman's power in that affair ; but we shall be told 
 that such examples are almost solitary cases. No, 
 they are not. It will puzzle any man to find in the 
 pages of history as many instances of real and start 
 ling heroism in his sex as I could hunt up in mine. 
 There have been whole eras in which the heroism of 
 woman shone out with a general lustre which made it 
 the rule and not the exception of her character. 
 Such was particularly the case in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth, centuries, especially in Hungary and in the 
 islands of the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, 
 when they were invaded by the Turks. 
 
180 Heroines of History. 
 
 Once, indeed, for the space of four hundred years, 
 the heroism of woman was a potential power in 
 Europe, showing itself in the midst of convulsions 
 and great revolutions. 
 
 Of course all well-read people (and almost every 
 body in this country is well-read) have some general 
 knowledge of the heroic history of the women of 
 Cappadocia, called the Amazons : and although 
 much that ancient history records of them may be 
 fabulous, yet enough is proved to show that the men 
 of that day played an entirely subordinate part both 
 in the halls of legislation and the strife of the battle 
 field. Old Priam is made to say : 
 
 " In Phrygia once were gallant armies known. 
 And I to join them raised the Trojan horse : 
 Against the manlike Amazons we stood, 
 And Banger's stream ran purple with their blood." 
 
 According to Diodorus, the Amazons were regular 
 woman's rights women ; for they made laws by which 
 the women were enjoined to go to the wars, and the 
 men were kept at home in a servile state, spinning 
 
. Heroines of History. 181 
 
 wool and doing all manner of household work. No 
 woman was allowed to marry till she had slain at 
 least one enemy on the battle-field. 
 
 The right breasts of all the female children were 
 seared with a hot iron, in order to give the freest use 
 of the right arm in wielding the sword or in shooting 
 arrows ; and they even debilitated the arms and thighs 
 of the male children, that they might be rendered un 
 fit for war. That, I should say, was carrying the 
 woman's rights question to an extent that ought to 
 satisfy even our modern agitators. But in justice to 
 these terrible Amazon women, it must be confessed 
 that the world has never known better and braver 
 warriors than they. 
 
 And at a much later day the habits and manners of 
 chivalry, by bringing great enterprises, bold adven 
 tures, and extravagant heroism into fashion, inspired 
 the women with the same wild taste. In consequence 
 of the prevailing fashion, fine ladies were seen in the 
 midst of camps and armies. They gave up the soft 
 and tender passion and delicate offices of their sex, 
 
182 Heroines of History. 
 
 for the toilsome occupations of war. During the 
 Crusades, while animated by the double enthusiasm 
 of religion and valor, they often performed the most 
 incredible exploits on the field of battle, and died with 
 arms in their hands by the side of their lovers. 
 
 The heroism of the women of Suli was scarcely 
 eclipsed by that of the noble Spartans who fell in the 
 pass of Thermopylae. They bore all the brunt of the 
 terrible attacks of Ali Pacha, shedding their dearest 
 blood in defence of their native fastnesses, defying 
 tyranny, and setting an example of a patriotism which 
 stands even with the highest monument which the 
 heroism of man ever raised to his fame. All was a 
 festival of death behind the terrible and resistless" 
 march where the Suliot women brandished the wea 
 pons of war. 
 
 The army of the Arabian chief Kalad was accom 
 panied by a phalanx of women, who performed all 
 the duties of cavalry, and formed a distinguished por 
 tion of the army. I have read that the present king 
 of Siam has a chosen band of female warriors formed 
 
Heroines of History. 183 
 
 of the most beautiful women of his land. The world 
 is familiar with the heroism of the Prefect Gregory's 
 daughter, who repulsed the immense and powerful 
 army of Abdallah ; and we all remember Joan of 
 Arc, whose cruel death will ever be a stain on the 
 escutcheon of England. 
 
 The Countess of St. Belmont used to take the 
 field with her husband and fight by his side. She 
 sent several Spanish prisoners which she took to 
 Marshal Tenonieres, and at home this beautiful lady 
 was all affability and sweetness, and devoted herself 
 to study and to acts of piety. The history of the 
 Countess of Belmont always reminds me of some 
 exquisite lines of Moore : 
 
 " Yet there was light around her brow, 
 A holiness in those bright eyes, 
 Which showed, though wandering earthward now, 
 Her spirit's home was in the skies. 
 Yes, for a spirit pure as hers, 
 Is always pure, e'en while it errs, 
 As sunshine broken in the rill, 
 Though turned astray, is sunshine still." 
 
184 Heroines of History. 
 
 Portia, the beautiful daughter of Cato of Utica, was 
 not only an adept in philosophy, but she gave proofs 
 of the highest spirit of heroism. 
 
 When Brutus, her husband, was preparing for the 
 assassination of Caesar, she shrewdly guessed that some 
 great and dangerous enterprise was on his mind, but 
 Brutus would not trust her with the secret ; and she 
 resolutely cut herself with a knife to show by con 
 stancy and patience in suffering pain, that she was 
 capable of heroic deeds, and fit to be trusted with 
 desperate secrets. When Brutus saw this, he lifted 
 up his hands to heaven, and begged the assistance of 
 the Gods, that he might live to be a husband worthy 
 of such a wife as Portia, and he communicated to 
 her the plan for killing Caesar ; and when she heard 
 that Brutus had been taken, and had killed himself, 
 she heroically followed his example, and died by 
 swallowing burning coals. 
 
 The Countess of Derby was one of the best heroines 
 of English History. In that memorable struggle be 
 tween, the House of Stuart and the Parliament, she 
 
Heroines of History. 183 
 
 was the last person in the British dominions who con 
 sented to yield. Collecting all her vassals in Latham 
 castle, she defended it with the greatest bravery, after 
 the heart of every male hero had given out. 
 
 "When Eobert, Duke of Normandy, was wounded 
 by a poisoned arrow, the physicians declared that 
 nothing could save him but to have the wound sucked 
 by some one, whose life would surely fall a sacrifice ; 
 the Duke disdained to save his own life by hazarding 
 that of another, but Sibilla, his wife, performed the 
 fatal office, and died to save her husband. 
 
 Thus all history is full of startling examples of 
 female heroism, which prove that woman's heart is 
 made of as stout a stuff, and of as brave a mettle as 
 that which beats within the ribs of the coarser sex. 
 
 And if we were permitted to descend from this 
 high plane of public history, into the private homes 
 of the world, in which sex, think you, should we 
 there find the purest spirit of heroism ? Who suffers 
 sorrow and pain with the most heroism of heart ? 
 Who in the midst of poverty, neglect, and crushing 
 
i86 Heroines of History. 
 
 despair, holds on most bravely through the terrible 
 struggle, and never yields even to the fearful demands 
 of necessity, until death wrests the last weapon of 
 defence from her hands ! Ah, if all this unwritten 
 heroism of woman could be brought to the light, even 
 man himself would cast .his proud wreath of fame at 
 her feet ! 
 
 The discovery of America is due to the far-seeing 
 sagacity and patronage of a woman, Queen Isabella 
 of Aragon ; for when the king and his court had re 
 fused with scorn the petition of Columbus, the great 
 discoverer had recourse to the queen, who furnished 
 him with the means and aid, which resulted in his 
 triumphant success. 
 
 Isabella united" all the graces and feminine qualities 
 of the woman with the soul and daring of a hero, the 
 profound and artful address of a politician, the exten 
 sive views of a legislator, and the courage of a 
 conqueror. She attended the council chamber, she 
 mounted on horseback and paraded the ranks of the 
 army, animating them to battle and conquest ; while 
 
Heroines of History. 187 
 
 her name appears jointly with, that of Ferdinand in 
 all public acts, and she was really the mind of the 
 throne and the hero of the battle-field. 
 
 Not only have women distinguished themselves as 
 warriors, but they have shone as transcendent stars 
 in the firmament of state. As diplomatists and poli 
 ticians, many women have shown that they were 
 intellectually equal to the wisest men. "What mon 
 arch of her day can boast of greater intellectual powers 
 than Semiramis ? though with sorrow it must be con 
 fessed that she possessed all the vices as well as the 
 intellect of a male monarch. She prevailed upon her 
 infatuated husband to invest her with the sovereignty 
 for the space of five days an interregnum which she 
 commenced by putting him to death. History also 
 accuses her of having afterwards selected her favorites 
 in succession from the flower of the army, putting 
 them afterwards to death, lest they should be living 
 witnesses of her crimes. "We have good reason to be 
 shocked at the terrible deeds of this mighty woman ; 
 and her example has been adduced to prove that wo- 
 
i88 Heroines of History. 
 
 men cannot hold power without abusing it. But 
 with all her crimes Semiramis was far less wicked 
 than hundreds of male monarchs, who have murdered 
 their wives, and even their own children, when they 
 stood in the way of ambition or their passions. 
 
 What monarch of ancient times had a more splen 
 did reign than Zenobia, queen of Palmyra and the 
 East? Her intellect, her sagacity, and her courage 
 made her the peer of any male sovereign of her time. 
 But alas ! as hundreds of crowned men have done, she 
 sullied all this by an act of cowardice for which she 
 ought never to be forgiven, by throwing the blame 
 of her obstinate resistance to the Komans upon her 
 prime minister, Longinus, who was in consequence 
 immediately borne away to death by Aurelian. But, 
 as Gibbon well writes, u the fame of this great man 
 will survive that of the queen who betrayed him." 
 
 In the list of great female sovereigns few have been 
 more celebrated than Queen Elizabeth; and what 
 man has ever sat on the proud English throne who 
 was wiser in diplomacy, or firmer in rule than she ? 
 
Heroines of History. 189 
 
 She lias been called " England's most gigantic mon 
 arch," a thing which may be said without shame to 
 any king who ever lived. We speak this of her 
 intellect alone, for we are incapable of feeling any 
 admiration for the heart of Elizabeth. Her dissimu 
 lation, her jealousy, and her ungenerous treatment 
 of Mary, have thrown a black shadow upon her heart 
 which the sun of time can never lift. 
 
 What does history say of the intellect, the genius, the 
 diplomatic skill of Catharine II., Empress of Eussia ? 
 What king in her day was a match for her ? She was 
 bold, grasping, ambitious, and intellectually powerful 
 enough to make half a dozen of such male monarchs 
 as are now seated upon the thrones of the world. 
 
 And we may say as much of Christina of Sweden, 
 who excelled in every masculine power. Indeed this 
 giantess ungraciously despised everything that was 
 feminine. On one occasion she dismissed her female 
 attendants, and laid aside the garb as well as the 
 manners of her sex, saying : "I would become a 
 man ; yet I do not love men because they are men, 
 
190 Heroines of History. 
 
 but because they are not women." She was called 
 the "female Samson." Olympias, the consort of 
 Philip of Macedon, and mother of Alexander, was 
 scarcely less gifted or less a hero in her passions 
 and power ; and we might add a long list of women 
 who have been intellectually more than a match for 
 the cunningest man-monarchs of their day. 
 
 I do not by any means hold up these gigantic women 
 as models of character ; but then, bad as they were, 
 they were infinitely better than the general run of the 
 male rulers of those days. It is only because they 
 were women, that history has singled out the bad of 
 their lives, and refuses to dwell upon the great and 
 brave deeds which place them equally by the side of 
 the greatest heroes or monarchs of the harder sex. 
 Let historical justice be done to the intellect of woman, 
 and I am content to leave the history of her heart and 
 moral life, without comment, to defend itself by con 
 trast with that of the other sex. 
 
 It is true, that there is hardly a great or heroic 
 woman of history, whose name has escaped the con- 
 
Heroines of History. 191 
 
 tagion of scandal. Queen Elizabeth, Mary of Scot 
 land, Margaret of Anjou, Catharine of Eussia, Chris 
 tina of Sweden, the Empress Josephine, even poor 
 Joan of Arc, and almost every great woman of anti 
 quity, have shared a common fate in this particular, 
 while great men have passed measurably unscathed 
 because, I suppose, the world had no right to expect 
 any degree of morality in the life of a great man. 
 But woman ah ! she must be a saint, even while she 
 hurls a tyrant from his throne, and does the rough 
 work of war and revolution. "Well, so she should be, 
 and thus leave to man the entire monopoly of all the 
 sin of the world ! 
 
 While the male historian seeks for faults in the 
 lives of the great female characters of history, let me 
 ask him where, on his side of the house, he can point 
 to such illustrious examples of virtue and heroism as 
 are seen in the history of Lucretia and the Princess 
 Octavia? But though it has to be admitted that 
 woman has distinguished herself on the battle-field 
 and in the Senate, it has been said that she has never 
 
192 Heroines of History. 
 
 risen anything near to an equality with man in the 
 department of science and literature. 
 
 That woman's mind, like her physique, is generally 
 less coarse, and strong, and heavy than that of man, 
 must be admitted ; but what she lacks in strength she 
 gains in speed, and she has shown an aptness for 
 learning, and even a capacity for profound study, 
 which commanded the admiration of the heaviest 
 philosophers of the other sex. 
 
 Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, was one of the 
 most learned persons in the study of the sciences in 
 all Rome, and her public lectures on philosophy were 
 listened to by all the wise men of her time. 
 
 What man in the eighteenth century was more 
 classically learned than Madame Dacier? She not 
 only translated Homer, and several other of the Greek 
 and Latin classics, but she assisted her husband in the 
 translation of Plutarch's Lives, and performed deeds 
 of scholarship which called forth the admiration of 
 the learned world. 
 
 The most accomplished linguist of the last century. 
 
Heroines of History. 193 
 
 was a woman by the name of Elizabeth Carter. She 
 not only translated works from the Greek, Latin, and 
 Hebrew, but she spoke with great fluency and ease 
 French, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, German, and 
 Spanish. Helena Lucretia Canaro was the most 
 learned person in Yenice, in her time. She was ad 
 mitted to the University at Kome, where she had the 
 title of " humble" given to her, in consequence of her 
 quiet devotion to study; and she had a doctor's 
 degree conferred upon her at Padua. All who passed 
 through Yenice were more solicitous to see her than 
 any of the curiosities of that superb old city. 
 
 Jane of Aragon was so celebrated for her learning, 
 wit, beauty, and courage, that a collection of poems 
 in her praise was published at Yenice, in the Latin, 
 Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, Sclavonic, Polish, 
 Hungarian, Hebrew, and Chaldean languages. The 
 Marchioness of Chatelet, Ann Clifford, Sophonisba, 
 daughter of Asdrubal of Carthage, and hundreds of 
 others who might be named, were scarcely less gifted 
 in the circles of science and learning. Some of the 
 
194 Heroines of History. 
 
 most celebrated authors of France have been women 
 What male author of her time, in France, presumed to 
 stand by the side of Madame de Stael for vigor and 
 strength of intellect ? And Madame de Genlis was 
 really the author of more valuable and successful 
 works of literature than all the male authors of France, 
 in her time, put together. And the most powerful 
 writer of France, at this day, is a woman George 
 Sand. The genius and mental powers of Madame 
 Eoland gave her a place among the highest minds of 
 France. Among the distinguished authors of even 
 proud England, Lady Montague holds a distinguished 
 place. She stood at the head of the literary wits of 
 her day ; and even Pope and Horace "Walpole were 
 not averse to admitting her " equality " of intellect. 
 It was this gifted lady who had the immortal honor 
 of introducing inoculation into England, having first 
 heroically tried its efficacy on her own child. To skip 
 over a long list of distinguished literary women of 
 England, who are among the best authors that country 
 has produced, I may mention that the most consider- 
 
Heroines of History. 
 
 able English, author of the present day has a rival in 
 the genius of his own wife & thing which very few 
 men can brook, and Sir Edward Bulwer is by no 
 means an exception to this vanity of his sex ; for I 
 blush to say that he has not even allowed his wife's 
 good fame to remain undisturbed. 
 
 But then, that is a thing which has rarely ever been 
 allowed to a woman of genius who has devoted her 
 pen to the public service, or mingled in the popular 
 tumults of the world. It was not allowed to Madame 
 de Stael, Madame de Grenlis, Lady Montague, any 
 more than it was allowed to that greatest ornament of 
 ancient literature, the gifted and beautiful Aspasia, 
 who was called the "mistress of Pericles." 
 
 But there is a class of heroines who have been more 
 powerful in the world than the mighty women of the 
 sword or of the pen. I mean those who have united 
 great personal beauty with rare intellectual powers ! 
 In such women there is a power stronger than strength. 
 The annals of Greece and Rome, from the memorable 
 days of Troy, down to the Roman age, furnish nothing 
 
196 Heroines of History. 
 
 more remarkable than the omnipotent sway of female 
 genius and beauty in the affairs of the world. The 
 first revolution in which kingly power was destroyed 
 was a woman's deed. And the next revolution in 
 which plebeians were elevated to the consulship was 
 also the work of woman. 
 
 It was the beauty and genius of Aspasia that caused 
 the famous war of the Peloponnesus, and conducted 
 Athens to its most refined epoch. It was the power 
 of female intellect and beauty that drove into banish 
 ment such great men as Aristotle and Euripides, at a 
 time when their genius was the chief glory of their 
 country. Indeed there has been no age of history yet, 
 when the combined power of intellect and beauty in 
 a woman has not made her greater than either diplo 
 macy or the sword. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of this type of heroines 
 was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. To the great beauty 
 and gracefulness of her person, Cleopatra added the 
 attractions of wit, affable manners, and high mental 
 acquirements. Amid the pleasures and avocations of 
 
Heroines of History. 197 
 
 a court, she ceased not to cultivate learning ; and, in 
 addressing ambassadors of different languages, she 
 astonished them with the correctness and fluency of 
 her diction. If you say of this great woman, that it 
 was by ambition and passion that she finally lost her 
 power and her life, I shall ask you of how many 
 thousands of male monarchs has the same thing been 
 more than true ? 
 
 Cleopatra was born in troublesome times, and drew 
 her first breath in the contagion of a licentious court ; 
 while in tender years, she was raised to the seducing 
 eminence of a throne, and surrounded by a crowd of 
 flatterers, who neither dared to reprove, nor desired 
 to correct, the increasing follies of her conduct. 
 
 As a beauty, she was admired ; as a queen, she was 
 addressed with adulation ; and possessing the means 
 of indulgence, she yielded to pleasure in all its various 
 forms. 
 
 I do not offer one excuse for her faults. I only 
 demand that a great woman should be judged by the 
 same rules by which a great man is judged. If the lords 
 
198 Heroines of History. 
 
 of creation demur to this, I shall challenge them to 
 show me by what divine right they are justified in a 
 career of pleasure which should be forbidden to 
 woman ! 
 
 The mighty Thermatis, another Queen of Egypt, 
 was made quite as powerful by her beauty and intel 
 lect, as Cleopatra. In fact, in almost every ancient 
 court, the beauty and wit of women was the secret but 
 potent power which controlled the councils of diplo 
 macy and the state. It was the power behind the 
 throne which was greater than the throne itself. The 
 lady in Hudibras did not exceed the truth when she 
 gave the following humorous description of her 
 powers : 
 
 " We manage things of greatest weight, 
 In all the world's affairs of state ; 
 We make and execute the laws, 
 Can judge the judges and the cause j 
 We rule in every public meeting, 
 And make men do what we judge fitting. 
 Are magistrates in all great towns, 
 Where men do nothing, "but wear gowns I 
 
Heroines of History. igg 
 
 We are your guardians, that increase 
 Or waste your fortunes as we please j 
 And as you humor us, can deal 
 In all your matters, ill or well." 
 
 And this is as true of modern as of ancient courts. 
 Eousseau asserts that " all great revolutions were owing 
 to women." The French revolution, the last great 
 and stirring event upon which the world looks back, 
 arose, as Burke ill-naturedly expresses it, "amidst the 
 yells and violence of women." We accept the com 
 pliment which Burke here pays to the power of woman, 
 and attribute the coarseness of his language to the 
 bitter repugnance which every Englishman of that day 
 had to everything that was French. 
 
 No, Mr. Burke, it was not by "yells and violence" 
 that the great women of France helped on that mighty 
 revolution it was by the combined power of intellect 
 and beauty. Nor will women who get together in 
 conventions for the purpose of berating men, ever 
 accomplish anything. They can affect legislation only 
 by quiet and judicious counsel, with such means as 
 
2oo Heroines of History. 
 
 control the judgment and the heart of legislators, 
 And the experience of the world has pretty well 
 proved that a man's judgment is pretty easily con 
 trolled when his heart is once persuaded. 
 
 These convention women, it is to be hoped, would 
 make good wives and mothers, if they should ever 
 turn their thoughts in that direction ; but they cer 
 tainly are very poor politicians. 
 
 They may rest assured, too, that they will never 
 get the right to vote by clamorously demanding it in 
 public. No, the wise and cunning of my sex all 
 know that, in politics, they must not even let the right 
 hand know what the left hand doeth. And what do 
 I care who carries the votes to the box, if I am allowed 
 to say how the voting shall be done? The will of 
 every intellectual and adroit woman does go to the 
 ballot-box, with a voice a hundred fold more potential 
 than if she rushed into the coarse crowd to carry it 
 there herself. In such a contact the mass of women 
 would only lose the delicacy and refinement which 
 now constitute their only charm, without getting any 
 
Heroines of History. 201 
 
 benefit for the terrible sacrifice. The kitchen and the 
 parlor, and all the sacred precincts of home, would be 
 immeasurably impaired, while there would be no gain 
 whatever to the councils of the state. If a woman is 
 qualified to be a happy wife and a good mother, she 
 need never look with envy upon the more gifted 
 woman of genius, whose mental powers, by fitting her 
 for the stormy arena of politics, may have unfitted her 
 for the quiet walks of domestic life. In the woman 
 of rare mental endowments, there may be a necessity 
 in her own nature, forcing her into a field of action 
 altogether different in its sphere from the duties usually 
 allotted to woman. Where this is the case, she must 
 obey her destiny ; but the woman who has only those 
 humbler charms which fit her to be the light and the 
 presiding goddess of the beautiful circle of " home," 
 is really to be envied by her more gifted sister whose 
 powers tempt her out upon the turbulent sea of poli 
 tics and diplomacy. 
 
 But, alas ! woman's lot in this sphere of home is too 
 often a sad and thankless one. It is demanded of her 
 
2O2 Heroines of History. 
 
 that she make a home whether her husband provides 
 the means or not, and it must be a happy one, though 
 his temper is as savage as that of a tiger. 
 
 And how many thousands of women do make a 
 home, and, for their children, a happy one too, when 
 spendthrift husbands have deprived them of all 
 resources but their own industry and skill ? and how 
 many millions of the " lords of creation " really live on 
 the skill and industry of their wives ? The greatest 
 tragic actress that ever lived, Maria Arne, was only 
 tempted on to the stage after the extravagance of her 
 husband, Theophilus Gibber, had left her no other 
 resources. Her debut was so much admired, that her 
 salary was voluntarily doubled after the first night. 
 When Garrick was made acquainted with the circum 
 stances of this worthy lady's death, he exclaimed, 
 " Then Tragedy has expired." 
 
 Laura Barri, a celebrated Italian lady, was a scarcely 
 
 * */ / J 
 
 less illustrious example of the same thing. She began 
 to read lectures on natural philosophy, and continued 
 the practice until she died. Her singular acquire- 
 
Heroines of History. 203 
 
 ments procured her the honorable title of Doctor of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 History is full of such examples. But what should 
 most command our admiration is that unwritten 
 page of history where millions of heroic women have 
 toiled on through disease, and poverty, and desertion, 
 too brave to give up, even under the most terrible 
 burdens, and too proud to let the world see the oceans 
 of tears they shed in secret. "While discouraged man, 
 inglorious, flies to the gaming table, or seeks oblivion 
 in the bottle, his heroic wife sits, almost the night 
 through, sewing by the dim light of a candle, to earn 
 the wherewith for to-morrow's breakfast ! She is the 
 only heart in that household which does not yield to 
 despair the only prop which does not break under 
 the pitiless weight of misfortune ! 
 
 What do men mean when they call woman the 
 weaker sex ? Not, surely, that she is less strong and 
 brave of heart and purpose to meet the tidal shocks 
 of life ! Not that she is not every whit the peer of 
 man in all the elements of heroism and genuine 
 
204 Heroines of History. 
 
 nobility of soul ! That masculine philosophy whict 
 regards and would treat woman as an inferior being, 
 is not only an insult to that God who created her as 
 the equal companion of man, but it is contradicted by 
 every stage of history and experience. Her excel 
 lence may be generally displayed in a less ostentatious 
 field than man's, but still the idea of perfect equality 
 is not impaired on that account. 
 
 ISTor does this idea of woman's equality destroy the 
 idea that the woman who is a wife should study to 
 reflect the opinions and the honor of her husband, 
 provided he is a man who has opinions and honor to 
 be reflected. I fully endorse the sentiment of Plutarch, 
 that " a wife should be as a mirror to represent her 
 husband," provided he is such a husband as an honor 
 able woman could justly represent. 
 
 Erasmus said, " As a looking-glass, if it be a true 
 one, faithfully represents the face of him that looks 
 in it, so a wife ought to fashion herself to the affection 
 of her husband, not to be cheerful when he is sad, nor 
 sad when he is cheerful." 
 
Heroines of History. 203 
 
 Such, it is bat just to confess, have also been the 
 sentiments of the greatest of women who have been 
 wives and mothers. The gifted and beautiful Cor 
 nelia, mother of the Gracchi, whom some frivolous 
 companions would have enticed from home and its 
 duties, said, pointing to her children, " These are my 
 jewels, my pastime, my opera, my amusements." 
 When the wife of Philo, the father of philosophy, was 
 asked why she wore no gold, she made this reply, 
 that she thought her "husband's virtues sufficient orna 
 ments." And it was the boast of the wife of Leonidas, 
 that "her countrywomen alone could produce men." 
 Thus in the best type of the female character, there 
 is a firmness which does not exclude delicacy, and a 
 softness which does not imply weakness. 
 
COMIC ASPECT OF LOVE. 
 
3 TO 3*3 A 
 
 t> 
 
COMIC ASPECT OF LOVE. 
 
 MY subject to-night is the comic aspect of love, 
 No doubt most of you have had some little experi 
 ence, at least in the sentimental and sighing side of 
 the tender passion ; and what I propose to do is to 
 give you the humorous or comic side. Perhaps I 
 ought to begin by begging pardon of the ladies for 
 treating so sacred a thing as love in a comic way, or 
 for turning the ludicrous side of so charming a 
 thing as they find love to be, to the gaze of men but 
 I wish to premise that I shall not so treat sensible or 
 rational love. 
 
 Of that beautiful feeling, less warm than passion, 
 yet more tender than friendship, I shall not for a 
 moment speak irreverently ; of that pure disinterested 
 
21 o Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 affection as charming as it is reasonable, which one 
 sex feels for the other, I cannot speak lightly. But 
 there is a certain romantic senseless kind of love, 
 such as poets sometimes celebrate, and men and 
 women feign, which is a legitimate target for ridicule. 
 This kind of love is fanciful and foolish ; it is not 
 the offspring of the heart, but of the imagination. I 
 know that generous deeds and contempt of death 
 have sometimes covered this folly with a veil. The 
 arts have twined for it a fantastic wreath, and the 
 Muses have decked it with the sweetest flowers ; but 
 this makes it none the less ridiculous nor dangerous. 
 Love of this romantic sort is an abstraction much too 
 light and subtle to sustain a tangible existence in the 
 midst of the jostling relations of this busy world. It 
 is a mere bubble thrown to the surface by the passions 
 and fancies of men, and soon breaks by contact with 
 the hard facts of daily life. It is a thing which bears 
 but little handling. 
 
 The German Wieland, who was a great disciple of 
 Love, was of opinion that " its metaphysical effects 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 211 
 
 began with the first sigh, and ended with the first 
 kiss !" Plato was not far out of the way when he 
 called it " a great devil ;" and the man or woman 
 who is really possessed of it, will find it a very hard 
 one to cast out. 
 
 There is a curious story extant in the old chroni 
 cles, that when the charms of a fair damsel had made 
 Alexander pause in his career of ambition, his tutor 
 and guardian, Aristotle, endeavored to arouse the 
 spirit of the hero, by ridiculing the weakness of 
 love ; and this was so far effectual as to cause the 
 great monarch to absent himself from his fair enchan 
 tress. She bewailed her fate for some time in soli 
 tude, and when she could endure the suspense no 
 longer, forced her way into the presence of her lord. 
 Her beauty again smiled away the dreams of glory 
 from his mind, and he accused Aristotle of having 
 been the cause of his absence. The fair lady was 
 enraged that the philosopher should thus interfere 
 with her happiness, and she assured Alexander that 
 she would give him proof that Aristotle had no right 
 
212 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 to give such advice, as he himself was equally suscep 
 tible to the charms of beauty. Accordingly the 
 next morning she repaired to the lawn before 
 Aristotle's chamber, and as she approached the 
 casement, she broke the stillness of the air by 
 chanting a love-ditty, the wild notes of which 
 charmed the philosopher from his studies. He 
 stole to the window, and saw a form fairer than 
 any image which even his own genius had invented. 
 Her face was unveiled, and her tresses strayed down 
 her neck, while her dress, like the drapery of an 
 ancient statue, displayed the elegance of her form- 
 She loitered about the place under pretence of pluck 
 ing a branch of myrtle to wreathe round her brow. 
 
 When she at length perceived that Aristotle eagerly 
 watched her, she stole underneath the casement, and 
 in a voice full of emotion, sang that she was riveted 
 to the spot by love. Aristotle drank in the delicious 
 sounds, and her beauty appeared to him more resplen 
 dent than ever. Keason faintly whispered that he 
 was not born to be beloved, for his hair was now 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 219 
 
 white with age, and his forehead wrinkled with care ; 
 but the lady carelessly passed close to his window, 
 and in his admiration he caught the floating folds of 
 her robe. She affected anger-, and he then avowed 
 his love. She listened to* his confession with an 
 artful surprise of manner, which fanned still more 
 the flame of his heart, and then answered him with 
 reproaches for having sought to withdraw from her 
 the love of Alexander. The philosopher swore that 
 lie would again bring his pupil to her feet, if she 
 would confer some sign of favor upon himself. She 
 feigned an intention of complying, but declared that 
 he must first indulge her in a foolish whim which 
 long had distracted her fancy, and this was an almost 
 insane wish to ride upon the back of a wise man. 
 He was by this time so intoxicated with her beauty, 
 that he could deny her nothing, and he immediately 
 threw himself on his hands and knees, and she at 
 once sat upon his back and urged him forward. In 
 a minute they reached the terrace under the royal 
 windows, and the King had a fair view of the singu- 
 
214 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 lar spectacle. A peal of laughter from the windows 
 awoke the philosopher to a sense of his position, and 
 when he saw his pupil, he owned that youth might 
 well yield to love, when it had power to break even 
 the frost of age. 
 
 But there is another and more authentic piece of 
 history in which a gentle maiden was the horse who 
 bore her lover upon her back. Eginhart, who was 
 chaplain and secretary to the Emperor Charlemagne, 
 secretly won the love of Emma, the beautiful daugh 
 ter of his majesty. Once these lovers sat up the 
 whole night, not taking due note of time, until the 
 grey light of morning peeped in upon them. His 
 young reverence, the chaplain, then perceived to his 
 horror, that during the night there had been a great 
 fell of snow. Now what was to be done? The 
 traces of hi a footsteps would discover the mystery and 
 make it certain that a man had left the apartments of 
 the princess. But did you ever hear of a woman's 
 wits forsaking her at such a critical moment? The 
 fair Emma's did not forsake her, for she took her 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 215 
 
 lover upon her shoulders, and carried him through 
 the court-yard, which left in the tell-tale snow only 
 the harmless print of a woman's foot. But, alas 1 as 
 the course of true love never did run smooth, the 
 Emperor Charlemagne being up at a very early 
 hour, discovered his daughter wading through the 
 snow, with that unique burden on her back. He 
 said nothing to the young lovers, but the next day 
 summoned his council, and made the affair known to 
 them, asking what should be done. All the minis 
 ters agreed that summary punishment should be 
 visited upon the guilty chaplain. " No," said the 
 Emperor ; " it is easier for me to raise Eginhart to a 
 situation in which he will be worthy of my daughter, 
 than to publish her imprudence." He then sum 
 moned the culprit before the council, and said to him, 
 " To reward your long services, I will give you my 
 daughter, who carried you upon her back." This 
 story I believe to be as well authenticated as any 
 piece of history of its age, and it derives an extra 
 charm from the lady who thus turned porter for her 
 
2 1 6 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 love being the young and beautiful daughter of so 
 great an emperor. Indeed it is into what are called 
 the higher and more refined circles that you have to 
 look for the best specimens of sentimental love. 
 
 Of the refinements of love, the great mass of men 
 can know nothing. The truth is, that sentimental 
 love is so much a matter of the imagination, that the 
 uncultivated have no natural field for its display. In 
 America, you can hardly realize the full force of this 
 truth, because the distinctions of class are happily 
 nearly obliterated. Here intellectual culture seems to 
 be about equally divided among all classes. I sup 
 pose it is not singular in this country to find the 
 poorest cobbler, whose little shanty is next to the 
 proud mansion of some millionaire, a man of really 
 more mental attainments than his rich and haughty 
 neighbor; in which case the millionaire will do 
 well to look to it, that the cobbler does not make 
 love to his wife ; and if he does, nobody need care 
 much, for the millionaire will be quite sure to reci 
 procate. 
 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 217 
 
 The great statute, " tit-for-tat," is, I believe, equally 
 the law of all nations ; besides, love is a great leveller 
 of distinctions, and it is in this levelling mission that 
 it performs some of its most ridiculous antics. When 
 a rich man's daughter runs off with her father's 
 coachman, as occasionally happens, the whole country 
 is in a roar of laughter about it. There is an innate, 
 popular perception- of the ridiculousness of such a 
 thing ; not that the love in itself is ridiculous, but 
 everybody sees and feels that in such cases it is mis 
 placed and grotesque. 
 
 Every one perceives that the woman's heart has 
 taken the bit in its mouth, and run away with her 
 brains. But, as comedy is often nearly allied to 
 tragedy, so sorrow is sure to come as soon as the 
 little honeymoon is over. This romantic love cannot 
 flourish in the soil of poverty and want. Indeed, all 
 the stimulants which pride and luxury can administer 
 to it, can hardly keep it alive. The rich miss who 
 runs away with a man far beneath her in education 
 
 and refinement, must inevitably awake, after a brief 
 10 
 
21 8 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 dream, to a state of tilings which have made her un for 
 tunate for life; and he, poor man, will not be less 
 wretched, unless she has brought him sufficient money 
 to give him leisure and opportunity to indulge his 
 fancies with that society which is on a level with his 
 own tastes and education. 
 
 So do you not perceive, now, that the eagerness of 
 the sentimental lover, and the number of hours con 
 sumed in courtship, become indeed ridiculous when 
 measured with the duration of his love? How 
 earnest and incessant is the sportsman's pursuit of 
 game but soon evening comes on, the field is won, 
 and all the enthusiasm ends in an apoplectic snore 
 in the big arm-chair ! Even so it is with many a 
 lover ; we imagined at first that it was impossible his 
 affection should ever cloy alas ! the heart that seemed 
 to be all on fire, reveals now only the cinders of 
 a dying passion ! 
 
 Novelty is a great gloss of love, but it is a varnish 
 that soon wears off in the contact of constant associa 
 tions. 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 219 
 
 Dean Swift humorously says that " married people, 
 for being so closely united, are but the apter to cease 
 loving, as knots, the harder they are pulled, break 
 the sooner." I am afraid that the experience of too 
 many will confirm this philosophy. I have often 
 wondered why some ingenious Yankee has not disco 
 vered some famous salt, to keep the sweets of matri 
 mony from cloying. If you could only salt down 
 love, and thus preserve it, what a blessing it would 
 be to thousands ; but I fear it would be a difficult task. 
 
 There are, however, many homes where connubial 
 discord never finds entrance ; though but few where 
 monotony cannot insinuate itself. Discord is an in 
 cendiary who sets fire to the house of love, over one's 
 very hea'd; but monotony is an underminer, who 
 saps the foundations, and when there is a fall, love is 
 for ever buried in the ruins. How silly then is the 
 old touch-word of love "let us never part." In 
 direct opposition to this, my advice to you is to .part 
 as often at least as is necessary to give a little tinge 
 of freshness to your reunion. 
 
22o Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 A young married lady once said to me, " Oh how I 
 wish my husband and myself were as happy as when 
 we were courting!" "Well," I replied, "why then did 
 you not keep on courting ?" When husband and wife 
 cease to court each other, the romantic passion will 
 soon ily the house. 
 
 It is a great deal easier work to win a lover, than 
 to keep him. It is certainly a laughable sight to see 
 what pains men and women take to catch each other, 
 and how little pains they take to hold on to each other. 
 The ancients did well to represent Cupid as a blind 
 god, for he not only makes men and women run 
 blind after each other, but he leaves them equally 
 blind as to the means of keeping each other. 
 
 But the ancients not only represented Cupid as 
 blind, but he was also described as the mightiest of 
 the gods, sometimes even above Jupiter himself; and 
 if we had time to go over the history of the world, we 
 should find that many of the greatest events are the 
 bli ad deeds of this blind divinity. 
 
 One of the most comical combats in the history of 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 221 
 
 love, took place in the reign of the Emperor Maxi 
 milian II. Two noblemen, one a German, the 
 other a Spaniard, who had each rendered great ser 
 vice to the Emperor, asked the hand of Helena his 
 daughter in marriage. Maximilian replied, " that as 
 he esteemed them both alike, it was impossible for 
 him to choose between them, and that, therefore, their 
 own prowess must decide it ; but not being willing to 
 risk the loss of either by engaging them in deadly 
 combat, he ordered a large sack to be brought, and 
 declared that he who should put his rival into it, 
 should have his fair Helena." 
 
 And this whimsical combat was actually performed 
 in the presence of the Imperial Court, and lasted an 
 hour. The unhappy Spanish nobleman was first 
 overcome, and the German baron succeeded in enve 
 loping him in the sack, took him- upon his back, and 
 laid him at the feet of the Emperor. I suppose this 
 is the origin of the phrase, "gave him the sack" so 
 common in the literature of courting, and which is, I 
 believe, a doomsday word in the ears of discarded or 
 
222 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 rejected lovers. But love lias not confined its comi 
 calities and its extravagant freaks to the region of 
 the state and diplomacy, but it has climbed up even 
 to the gravity of the church, and played its pranks 
 with the dignity and sanctity of religion and holy 
 orders. 
 
 The Ancient History of the Church affords many 
 of the most comic illustrations of our subject ; but 
 they are such melancholy examples of human weak 
 ness and folly, that we must feel a sense of pain even 
 in the laughter they excite. 
 
 In the 13th century in France, there was a most 
 extraordinary sect of fanatics, which went by the 
 name of the " The Lovers' League" Their zeal was 
 to prove the excess of their love by their invincible 
 obstinacy in withstanding the seasons. 
 
 The married and single men and women who were 
 initiated into that order, were bound by solemn oath 
 to cover themselves with the thinnest apparel in the 
 most frosty weather, and also to bundle themselves 
 up in the warmest clothing in the hottest days of sum- 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 223 
 
 mer. In the warmest seasons they lighted great 
 fires, and in the coldest there was not a coal allowed 
 upon the hearth. Their chimneys in mid- winter were 
 trimmed with fresh foliage, and all the evergreens of 
 summer. If one of the members of this sect entered 
 the house of a brother, the husband instantly left, put 
 the visitor's horse into the stable, and never returned 
 to his own house until the visiting brother was gone : 
 and so, in turn, he was treated in the same hospitable 
 way, when he went to visit. 
 
 This religious sect won to its faith many men and 
 women of intellect and position. But the habit of 
 freezing themselves in winter and roasting in sum 
 mer, and other excesses, seems to have made such fear 
 ful inroads upon their health, that the ridiculous sect 
 died gradually out in ten or fifteen years. 
 
 At a little earlier date there was a sect in Italy 
 called the Fratricelli, which was a sort of free love 
 church. They had for their chiefs those who professed 
 great religious sanctity, and who under the pretence 
 of morality led the most dissolute lives. The sect 
 
224 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 spread rapidly, until it was forcibly suppressed by the 
 thirteenth general council at Vienna, under the Ponti 
 ficate of Pope Clement Y. 
 
 The Mormons, and numerous other modern reli 
 gionists, give a similar proof of the ridiculous results 
 which spring from a combination of fanaticism and 
 love. When religious fanaticism works by love, good 
 bye to all the wholesome restraints of chastity and 
 law. 
 
 When we see these things as far off as the 13th cen 
 tury, we can laugh at them; even no further than Salt 
 Lake City they are very funny ; but it would no 
 longer be a subject of amusement if such practices 
 were brought to our own doors, and into our own 
 families. For instance, suppose that borne along from 
 one degree to another on the tide of religious enthu 
 siasm, the wife's affections should gradually relax 
 their tender and beautiful hold upon the circle of 
 home, and should so far wander abroad as to find the 
 excitement of the evening meeting indispensable to her 
 happiness ! Her imagination once unduly aroused by 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 225 
 
 a new and novel enthusiasm, would bear her on very 
 rapidly into new attachments, and into outside circles 
 of enjoyment and affection. And then suppose that 
 the husband's house should at all times be as open to 
 the minister as was the house of a member of the 
 lovers' league to a visiting brother, how long do you 
 think it would be before the ministering brother 
 would have a greater influence over the wife for good 
 or evil, than the husband ? 
 
 I have no means of judging except from general 
 principles of human nature. Whatever invades the 
 sanctity and unity of home ; whatever strikes even at 
 the exclusiveness of home; whatever admits outside 
 authority or outside enthusiasm of any kind, to share 
 a fraction of the affection and the interest of the home, 
 opens the door to the insidious spirit of temptation 
 and intrigue ; and if all the absurd and demoralizing 
 vagaries of the free love fanaticism follow in their 
 train, you may thank the hand, whosesoever it was, 
 which first drew the wife's or the husband's enthusiasm 
 
 into other circles than those of home. 
 10* 
 
226 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 Mahomet several times altered the spirit and the 
 letter of his spiritual revelations at the dictation of 
 love. It was love that induced him to insert into the 
 Koran the article which permits husbands to fall in 
 love with their handsome female servants. 
 
 Mahomet had two wives when he became enamor 
 ed of one of his slaves, named Moutia, of singular 
 beauty. His wives publicly reproached him with 
 this, and to make it all right, he was obliged to make 
 .Allah speak, which he did in the fifty-sixth chapter 
 of the Koran, where he declares that it had been re 
 vealed to him that all good Mussulmans might make 
 love to their slaves in spite of their wives. This 
 pretty Moutia, whose charms brought down such a 
 singular revelation from Allah, was an Egyptian by 
 birth, and by education a Christian, and it was said 
 that the government of Egypt had presented her to 
 Mahomet. But no sooner had heaven been made to 
 sanction concubinage, than it also fully authorized 
 adultery, for the prophet becoming enamored of the 
 wife of one of his freedmen named Gaib, he carried 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 227 
 
 her off and married her. This occasioned a great 
 scandal at first, but Mahomet put a stop to all mur 
 murs, by making an addition to the thirty-third chap 
 ter of the Koran, where he makes Allah declare that 
 he had married Zanib to his prophet! And as this 
 new article might justly awaken the apprehensions of 
 all husbands who had pretty wives, Mahomet made 
 Heaven declare also that if he should ever in future 
 become enamored of married women, they should be 
 sacred ; and this . was perfectly satisfactory to the 
 husbands. // 
 
 There is indeed no end to the vagaries of love 
 when once it is connected with the religious element, 
 or even with philosophical enthusiasm. The religious 
 Mormons, and the philosophical Free-lovers, are suffi 
 cient evidences of that. 
 
 The vagaries of this free-love philosophy are as 
 old in the world as sin. But they have never accom 
 plished anything, yet, with all their fine-spun theo 
 ries, but to tempt and destroy women. Upon man 
 they have only had the effect to degrade his own 
 
228 Comic Aspect of Love. 
 
 soul, while they have not much injured his public 
 position, because he has the making of public opinion 
 in his own hands. Give woman an equal share in 
 the manufacture of public opinion, and she might 
 then more safely compete with man in practising this 
 demoralizing philosophy with impunity. 
 
 But as it is, man has a complete monopoly of this 
 whole business, and all that woman can safely do is 
 to touch not, and taste not, the fruits of such ridicu 
 lous vagaries. She must make the principle con 
 tained in the following lines from Goethe's Faustus 
 the rule of her being : 
 
 "Ah! maiden, fair! 
 
 What dost thou there, 
 
 Pr'ythee declare, 
 A.t the door of thy love ere morning? 
 
 What can'st thou win ? 
 
 Pure from all sin ; 
 
 He lets thee in, 
 Will he let thee out so at dawning? 
 
 " Now stars are bright, 
 Wait for the night, 
 
Comic Aspect of Love. 229 
 
 If not, good night, 
 Good night to your fame, says the singer. 
 
 Keep her from harm, 
 
 List not his charm, 
 
 Fly from his arm, 
 If he show not the ring on his finger." 
 
WITS AND WOMEN 
 
 OF 
 
 PAR 
 
 is 
 
WITS AND WOMEN OF PARIS. 
 
 THE French, wits tell a laughable story of an un- 
 travelled Englishman who, on landing at Calais, was 
 received by a sulky red-haired hostess, when he in 
 stantly wrote down in his note-book "All French 
 women are sulky and red-haired." 
 
 We never heard whether this Englishman after 
 wards corrected his first impressions of French women, 
 but quite likely he never did, for there is nothing so 
 difficult on earth as for an Englishman to get over 
 first impressions, and especially is this the case in 
 relation to everything in France. An aristocratic 
 Englishman may live years in Paris without really 
 knowing anything about it. In the first place, he 
 goes there with letters of introduction to the Faubourg 
 
234 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 St. Germain, where lie finds only the fossil remains 
 of the old noblesse, intermixed with a slight proportion 
 of the actual intelligence of the country, and here he 
 moves round in the stagnant circles of historical 
 France, and it is a wonder if he gets so much as a 
 glimpse of the living progressive Paris. There is 
 nothing on earth, unless it be a three thousand year 
 old mummy, that is so grim, and stiff, and shrivelled, 
 as the pure old French nobility. 
 
 France is at present the possessor of three separate 
 and opposing Nobilities. 
 
 1st. There is the Nobility of the Empire, the Na 
 poleonic nobility, which is based on military and civil 
 genius. 
 
 2d. There is the Orleans Nobility, the family of the 
 late Louis Philippe, represented in the person of the 
 young Count de Paris. 
 
 3d. The Legitimists, or the old aristocracy of the 
 Bourbon stock, represented in the person of Henry 
 the Fifth, Due de Bordeaux, now some fifty years old, 
 and laid snugly away in exile in Italy. 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 235 
 
 It is worthy of remark that the Orleanists and the 
 Legitimists do not bear to each other much more love 
 than they do the Bonaparte family. 
 
 In fact, both Legitimists and Orleanists winked at 
 the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon, because they pre 
 ferred to accept what they deem a temporary outside 
 rule, rather than to give way one to the other. Those 
 who are familiar with the actual state of things in 
 France know very well that Louis Napoleon obtained 
 the throne through the mutual jealousies of the Legi 
 timists and the Orleanists, and we may add that he 
 holds that throne by the same tenure ; and whenever 
 the interests of those opposing families become one, 
 then will the present Emperor have to battle sharply 
 to retain his throne ; and that time may not be far off. 
 
 The Due de Bordeaux, who is without issue, is the 
 last of the old Bourbon line, and when he dies that 
 branch of the royal claimants will become extinct, and 
 then the Count de Paris will be the sole legitimate heir 
 to the throne of France. Then the now divided inte 
 rests will become one. 
 
236 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 To this consolidated aristocracy we may add that 
 other power most considerable in France, the Socialist 
 or Democratic party, who thoroughly hate Louis Na 
 poleon, and will jump at the first opportunity to 
 revenge themselves upon what they regard as his 
 treachery to the republic. The Emperor is himself 
 keenly sensible to the fact that whenever all these in 
 terests become consolidated into one against him, as 
 by the accident of the death of one man they are quite 
 sure to do, he will be terribly shaken upon his throne. 
 This is probably the real reason of his anxiety to seal 
 a fast friendship between himself and England, in 
 which project he is encouraged by the fact that Eng 
 land really owes the Bourbons no particular good 
 will. Now it is this old Bourbon or Legitimate line 
 that we mean when we speak of the aristocracy of 
 France. This nobility has all the old and most 
 revered names of France names rendered dear to the 
 French by association with the early battles and 
 proudest history of the country. 
 
 This nobility lives in isolation from the rest of 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 237 
 
 France. They regard their country as now in a 
 state of anarchy. They did not acknowledge Louis 
 Philippe, and they patiently wait for the time when 
 a legitimate sovereign shall sit once more on the con 
 secrated throne of the Bourbons. 
 
 This proud old Nobility never marry out of their 
 own ranks. The English nobleman may marry a 
 tradesman's daughter, but a French nobleman of this 
 branch would as soon renounce his religion as do 
 that. They are not a part of society in France, 
 rarely ever appear at public places of amusement, or 
 show themselves in any of the ordinary thorough 
 fares of the people. However poor they may be, 
 they still quietly and proudly wrap themselves in 
 the dignity of their birth, and shut their eyes and 
 ears to all the activities of living France. 
 
 There was one lady of this Nobility, bearing the 
 historic name of Forbin Jansen, who made a mesalli 
 ance for her second marriage, with a celebrated 
 painter by the name of Jaquard. For this she was 
 banished from society, but being a most estimable 
 
238 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 lady, she retained the respect of many individuals of 
 the Nobility, who quietly continued her society. Cir~ 
 cumstances brought me to the acquaintance, and I 
 may say to the friendship of this lady. She was a 
 great admirer, and by her influence a patron of art 
 and genius in whatever profession it displayed itself. 
 I had to ascend six flights of stairs, where I found 
 the old marquise surrounded with poverty, but still 
 with all the airs of real nobility. There, in that 
 garret, she received the most distinguished names of 
 old France ; and although in great poverty, she is still 
 a leading oracle of the ancient legitimist nobility. 
 With that nobility wealth or poverty is nothing ; all 
 is birth. 
 
 Much is said and much believed in this country 
 about the intrigues among the different classes of the 
 French, but in justice to them it must be said that 
 nearly all these intrigues are somehow based in intel- 
 lectualism. Intellectual beauty goes farther in Paris 
 than in any other part of the globe. 
 
 It is not uncommon to see an old lady of sixty 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 239 
 
 years the idol of a man of thirty. Mdlle. Mars, the 
 great comic actress of France, when she was sixty 
 years old, won the heart and mind of Count de 
 Morny, who was but twenty-six, and one of the 
 handsomest men in France. I have seen him 
 myself at the Italian opera in Paris, hang over her 
 chair, as though he were about to dissolve into sighs ; 
 it was spring madly laying its head of flowers in the 
 lap of winter. And yet she was not even in her 
 youth, beautiful ; but she knew how to be charming. 
 And above all, and more than all, she, had genius, 
 which always goes so far with the French gallant. 
 The world is familiar with the fact that when she 
 was robbed of all her diamonds, this young Count 
 presented her with a new set worth over four hun 
 dred thousand francs ! 
 
 The famous Dejazet, another actress of great comic 
 genius, when she was forty-five years old, though 
 neither beautiful nor refined in her manners, ran 
 away with the hearts of half the young men of Paris. 
 The son of that General Bertrand who shared the 
 
240 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, became totally 
 ruined in his fortune by this celebrated wit. There 
 was a time when no feast for literary people in Paris 
 was complete without her. Her wit sparkled like 
 champagne. Her repartees were inimitable, and 
 were repeated from mouth to mouth all over Paris. 
 Nothing could equal the magnificence and elegance 
 of her house her kind heart was like a deep well 
 for ever flowing. 
 
 Young, and when her genius was in the first fresh 
 tide of its fame, a young nobleman, not over gifted 
 with brains, used to wait upon her almost every day 
 with some valuable present, as a testimony of the 
 admiration her mental gifts had won. But one day 
 he came without a present, and, in a confused manner, 
 told her in the presence of her company that he should 
 hereafter bring a present only every other day ; " then," 
 said she, " come only every other day." 
 
 No description which I can give can convey a just 
 idea of the fascination of society among such wits as 
 Dejazet; and nowhere do you find that kind of 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 241 
 
 society so complete as in Paris. Nowhere else do you 
 find so many ^ women of wit and genius mingling in the 
 assemblies and festive occasions of literary men ; and 
 I may add that in no part of the world is literary 
 society so refined, so brilliant, and charmingly intel 
 lectual as in Paris. It is a great contrast to literary 
 society in London or America. Listen to the follow 
 ing confession of Lord Byron : " I have left an 
 assembly filled with all the great names of haut-ton in 
 London, and where little but names were to be found, 
 to seek relief from the ennui that overpowered me, in 
 a cider cellar ! and have found there more food for 
 speculation than in the vapid circles of glittering dill- 
 ness I had left." 
 
 Could the noble poet have found in London the 
 society that gathers around such wits and men of 
 genius as Dumas, Yictor Hugo, MeYy, Samson, in 
 Paris, he would have been spared the humiliation of 
 seeking the society of a cider-cellar to save himself 
 from ennui. Around these last-mentioned literary 
 
 lights revolved the intelligence and wit of Paris during 
 
 11 
 
242 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 my residence there six years ago. Of these Dumas 
 was the first, as he would be in any city of the world. 
 He is not only the boon companion of princes, but the 
 prince of boon companions. He is now about fifty-five 
 years old a tall, fine looking man, with intellect 
 stamped on his brow, and wit sparkling in every look 
 and motion. Of all the men I ever met with, he is 
 the most brilliant in conversation. His nature is over 
 flowing with generosity, and he is consequently always 
 out of pocket. He receives immense sums for his 
 writings, but they never meet his expenses. Indeed, 
 one of the funniest things in Paris is the perpetual 
 flight of Alexander Dumas from his creditors. To 
 elude them he used sometimes to live from house to 
 house, among his friends. He once went to borrow 
 five francs of a wealthy old lady, who said, " Oh, 
 Monsieur Dumas, a hundred if you want it." But he 
 said, " Only five, to pay my cab hire." He was a great 
 favorite of this excellent old lady, and in the conver 
 sation she informed him that she had just finished her 
 preserves for the winter, and insisted on his taking a 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 243 
 
 pot as a present. The servant girl took it down to 
 Dumas's cab, whereon he immediately handed her the 
 five-franc piece which he had borrowed of her mistress 
 the only actual money he was at that time in posses 
 sion of. Such is Alexander Dumas's appreciation and 
 use of money. 
 
 Another time Dumas met a poor artist who told 
 him he was starving, and had not a penny to save 
 himself. Dumas had not a penny either, but he found 
 a gentleman who knew him, and went with him into 
 the first bank they passed. He said to the banker, "I 
 am Alexander Dumas." All immediately paid their 
 respects to him ; he continued, " Here is a gentleman 
 whom you know, who knows that I am Dumas, and 
 here is a poor artist who is starving, and I have no 
 money to give him. I wish you to accept a bond from 
 me on the first book I write for fifty francs." It was 
 accepted, and the poor artist went on his way rejoic 
 ing. 
 
 It very often happens that when Dumas is visiting 
 a friend, one of his creditors is announced, and he 
 
244 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 instantly makes for his hat, and flies before his foe 
 like a Mexican lancer. He owes everybody in Paris ; 
 out of a hundred men you meet, you may be sure that 
 seventy-five of them are Dumas's creditors. 
 
 His marriage was an act of flight from a creditor. 
 The lady was an actress, Mdlle. Ada, who had neither 
 beauty, genius, nor a spotless character to commend 
 her but her father was a broker to whom poor Dumas 
 owed immense sums of money, and he was pushing 
 Dumas to the last extremity of the law for his money. 
 But Dumas had no money, and the old broker, seized 
 with a bright thought, proposed to forgive him the 
 whole amount if he would marry his daughter Ada. 
 This alternative Dumas preferred to going to jail, so 
 he did marry her if such a life as they afterwards 
 led could be called a married life. 
 
 One afternoon, on stepping suddenly into his own 
 drawing-room, he caught a stranger gentleman in the 
 act of giving a kiss to his wife. He gazed at him with 
 wonder for some time, and then exclaimed, u Good 
 heavens, and without his being obliged to !" 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 245 
 
 Dumas lias always been a great favorite with the 
 Orleans family ; in fact, I know not what society in 
 France is not glad to receive him, though he has a 
 horror of society, in the usual acceptation of the term. 
 He is always sought for at convivial suppers, and is 
 always sure to attend them. 
 
 Eoger de Beauvoir, another wit and writer of 
 romance and poetry, was one of the three men that 
 kept Paris alive when I was there. He was most 
 eccentric, a great ladies' man, always dressed like a 
 Cupid taken out of a band-box. His fights with his 
 creditors were the most remarkable part of his history. 
 One time he emptied the contents of his bath-tub on 
 the head of his creditor, who fled in terror, never to 
 come back again. At another time he threw all the 
 wood and coal of his huge French fireplace on several 
 unfortunate creditors who were standing in the court 
 yard attempting to gain admittance, and refusing to 
 leave without some kind of satisfaction, which they got 
 at last in the shape of burning coals on their heads. 
 But Koger was a genius, and always managed by an 
 
246 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 invitation to a supper party to silence his creditors, 
 promising that they should have the honor to hear and 
 see the male and female celebrities of the day. 
 
 Samson, another of this trinity of wits, was an actor 
 and a teacher of the great Kachel. He was an excellent 
 man, highly respected, and his decision in all theatri 
 cal matters was law. He always reminded me of a 
 passage from Ben Jonson descriptive of a town wit 
 " Alas ! Sir Horace is a mere sponge ; nothing but 
 humors and observations, he goes up and down suck 
 ing from every society, and when he comes home, 
 squeezes himself dry again. He will tell all he 
 knows. He would sooner lose his best friend than 
 his best jest. J ' 
 
 But Samson was an amiable jester, and always 
 inclined to the good-natured side of human nature. 
 In this respect he was a great and happy contrast to 
 another celebrated person I used to meet with, Jules 
 Janin, the malicious and caustic critic of the " Journal 
 des Debate" Samson used to call him the execu 
 tioner, and he bore another name, "the guillotinist of 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 247 
 
 artists." Every one feared him, and everybody was 
 particularly civil to him through fear. I do not know 
 (his wife not excepted), of any one that loves him in 
 all Paris. The charming Countess de Merlain, a lite 
 rary woman herself, and whose saloons were ever 
 crowded by talent and genius, always said of him that 
 whenever he entered her presence she had after each 
 visit one grey hair the more. 
 
 But there is no doubt of his ability as a critic and 
 translator ; he always appeared as if he were locked 
 up, lest the world should see into his heart. But he 
 has great power in his way in Paris, a competent critic 
 in art being always a great man there. Love of art is 
 a distinctive trait of the French nation. In fact you 
 see art in everything there. The cook is an artist, 
 who compounds his flavors with as nice a respect to 
 science, as does the painter in combining his colors. 
 The French woman is an artiste in the selection of her 
 toilette ; and even the youth who arranges Cashmere 
 shawls, laces, or what not, in a shop window, shows the 
 artistic feeling also. It will not perhaps be a matter 
 
248 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 of indifference to ladies to know that the celebrated 
 Mons. Constatin (a Portuguese nobleman in exile), 
 celebrated for his artificial flowers, of which there ia 
 no equal, is so particular about his finest specirrens 
 that he has the real flower put into a glass of water and 
 the imitated one by its side in another, and the young 
 ladies employed in its manufacture are all made to say 
 which is the real and which the artificial ; should one 
 of them tell the difference, the flower is destroyed and 
 recommenced over again. In fact, everything is art 
 in Paris. There are artists in coat-making (other 
 wheres called tailors) ; artists in shoemaking ; artists in 
 hair ; and even I remember one day seeing on a little 
 sign-board " artist in blacking boots." 
 
 One of the most remarkable and the most noted 
 persons to be met with in Paris is Madame Dudevant, 
 commonly known as Georges Sand. She is now about 
 fifty years of age (it is no crime to speak of the age of 
 a woman of her genius), a large, masculine, coarse-fea 
 tured woman, but with fine eyes, and open, easy 
 frank, and hearty in her manner to friends. To a dis- 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 249 
 
 cerning mind her writings will convey a correct idea 
 of the woman. You meet her everywhere dressed in 
 men's clothes a custom which she adopts from no 
 mere caprice or waywardness of character, but for the 
 reason that in this garb she is enabled to go where she 
 pleases without exciting curiosity, and seeing and 
 hearing what is most useful and essential for her in 
 writing her books. She is undoubtedly the most mas 
 culine mind of France at the present day. 
 
 Through the folly of her relations she was early 
 married to a fool, but she soon left him in disgust, and 
 afterwards formed a friendship with Jules Sandeau, a 
 novelist and clever critic. It was he who discovered 
 her genius, and first caused her to write. It was the 
 name of this author, Jules Sandeau, that she altered 
 into George Sand, a name which she has made im 
 mortal. 
 
 Georges Sand in company is silent, and except when 
 the conversation touches a sympathetic cord in her 
 nature, little given to demonstration. Then she will talk 
 earnestly on great matters, generally on Philosophy 
 
250 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 or Theology, but in vain will you seek to draw 
 lier into conversation on the little matters of ordinary 
 chit-chat. She lives in a small circle of friends, where 
 she can say and do as she pleases. Her son is a poor 
 weak-brained creature, perpetually annoying the whole 
 neighborhood, by beating on a huge drum night and 
 day. She has a daughter married to Chlessindur, the 
 celebrated sculptor but who resembles but little her 
 talented mother. Madame Georges Sand has had a 
 life of wild storms, with few rays of sunshine to 
 brighten her pathway ; and like most of the reformers 
 of the present day, especially if it is her misfortune 
 to be a woman, is a target placed in a conspicuous 
 position to be shot at by all dark unenlightened human 
 beings, who may have peculiar motives for restraining 
 the progress of mind ; but it is as absurd in this glorious 
 nineteenth century, to attempt to destroy freedom of 
 thought, and the sovereignty of the individual, as it 
 is to stop the falls of Niagara. 
 
 There was a gifted and fashionable lady (the 
 Countess of Agout), herself an accomplished authoress, 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 251 
 
 concerning whom and Georges Sand a curious story 
 is told. They were great friends, and the celebrated 
 pianist Liszt was the admirer of .both. Things went 
 on smoothly for some time, all couleur de rose ; when 
 one fine day Liszt and G-eorges Sand disappeared sud 
 denly from Paris, having taken it into their heads to 
 make the tour of Switzerland for the summer together. 
 Great was the indignation of the fair Countess at this 
 double desertion ; and when they returned to Paris, 
 Madame d'Agout went to Georges Sand and imme 
 diately challenged the great writer to a duel, the 
 weapons to be finger-nails, etc. Poor Liszt ran out of 
 the room and locked himself up in a dark closet 
 till the deadly affray was ended, and then made his 
 body over in charge to a friend, to be preserved, as he 
 said, for the remaining assailant. 
 
 Madarn^ d'Agout was married to an old man, a 
 book- worm, who cared for naught else but his Li 
 brary ; he did not know even the number of children 
 he possessed, and so little the old philosopher cared 
 about the matter that when a stranger came to the 
 
252 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 house, lie invariably, at the appearance of the family, 
 said, ' ' Allow me to present to yon my wife's children , ' ' 
 all this with the blandest smile and most contented 
 air. 
 
 I once asked Georges Sand which she thought the 
 greatest pianist, Liszt or Thalberg ; she replied Liszt is 
 the first, but there is only one Thalberg. If I were 
 to attempt to give you an idea of the difference between 
 Liszt and Thalberg, I should say that Thalberg is like 
 the clear, placid flow of a deep grand river while 
 Liszt is the same tide foaming, and bubbling, and dash 
 ing on like a cataract. If Liszt were to come to this 
 country, he would raise a furore, as he did in Hun 
 gary, where the gallant Hungarians, beside them 
 selves with admiration, presented the piano-forte 
 player with a handsome sword ; forgetting the ridi 
 cule of a weapon of destruction in hands that never 
 destroyed or fought anything else but a piano-forte. 
 
 Now to return a moment to Georges Sand. The 
 stories of her indelicate eccentricities, so freely circu 
 lated in the press of the United States, are perfect 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 253 
 
 fabrications. She is a large-brained and large-hearted 
 woman, conscious of her own strength, and therefore 
 independent in her opinions. All the absurd tales about 
 this great-minded woman, are probably not so much 
 intended by those that invented them for malice, as 
 for the sake of making some interesting gossiping 
 paragraph about this celebrated woman. 
 
 I am happy that there was one American author, the 
 late lamented Margaret Fuller, who had not only the 
 intellect to rightly understand her, but the courage 
 to defend her. 
 
 In Paris literary people and artists form a distinct 
 society of their own, where others find it sometimes 
 impossible to enter. "What need Georges Sand care 
 for the artificial, and I may add the hypocritical pre 
 tensions of what calls itself par excellence society? 
 When that society has all vanished like a vapor, 
 when not a vestige is left of it, she will still live in the 
 memory and the admiration of posterity. 
 
 The incidents of her life which have furnished food 
 for siliy people and lovers of scandal, will be forgotten, 
 
254 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 and the light of her genius will shine in the circles 
 that shall gather around thousands of hearths in every 
 country. 
 
 Georges Sand gives a laughable account of an old, 
 shrivelled, and miserable-looking piece of parchment 
 in the shape of a Countess, who came hobbling into a 
 company in the cholera time, smelling something from 
 a good-sized bottle and exclaiming : " Oh, this is very 
 dreadful, the cholera is making frightful progress." 
 It was all very well when the people only were 
 attacked. They were justly punished for their sins, 
 and their provoking insolence. But the matter is 
 really now becoming more alarming. The disease is 
 beginning to invade the ranks of society. Monsieur 
 
 Le Marquis B was carried off this morning ; he 
 
 died a beautiful death!" 
 
 The thing to be noticed in this anecdote is the dis 
 tinction made between the people and society ; and I 
 think you will agree with me that persons who are 
 received and respected by the former, need not bother 
 themselves much about the latter. 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 255 
 
 I have occasionally met Kachel in the company of 
 literary people and artists in Paris, but she was never 
 a feature, never even a prominent member of such a 
 party. As she loved nothing but money, nothing else 
 appeared to love her. She had no talent for conversa 
 tion. She had indeed but one gift, that of delivery 
 of concentrated mimicry, in which she was unsurpassed. 
 
 Lamartine I have often met on business, but not in 
 company. He seldom goes anywhere. He is a dreary, 
 lonely man, who shuns crowds, and isolates himself in 
 a beautiful world of his own. His wife is an English 
 woman, who has small sympathy with the French 
 manners, which fact may further contribute to keep 
 ing him from the world; and besides he has not 
 recovered and never will, the death of his only child, 
 a sweet young thing fifteen years old, who died in 
 Syria of consumption. 
 
 In this connexion I may name old Professor Tissot 
 of the French Academy, and the oldest Academician in 
 France. The scientific world is as familiar with his 
 name as with the name of science itself. He is a rem- 
 
256 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 nant of dead France ; a guide-book through all the 
 labyrinths of its revolutions, and scenes of blood. He 
 witnessed the reign of terror, the execution of Madame 
 Roland, and that of Charlotte Corday, and the fall and 
 death of Robespierre. He was an intimate friend of 
 Madame de Stael, was a spectator of the accession of 
 the Empire, of the downfall of the Empire, of the 
 restoration of the Bourbons, of the downfall of the 
 Bourbons, of the accession of the younger branch of 
 the house of Orleans, of its downfall, and of the 
 return of the Bonapartes. 
 
 He it was that furnished Lamartine with much of 
 his materials for his "History of the Girondins." 
 He wanders about Paris, pointing out the places of 
 the past, showing you where Danton, Robespierre, 
 Marat, and Mirabeau lived, and where all the horrors 
 of the reign of terror took place. He comes some 
 times among his friends and relates his tales of horror. 
 The old man could not be satisfied with living in any 
 decently named street of the present day, but has 
 resided with his old wife in the ancient part of Paris, 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 257 
 
 giving his address Professor Tissot, rue de 1'Enfei 
 (Hell street). 
 
 The old man is much esteemed by the students, and 
 though pensioned by government, still lectures to his 
 pupils. Such another relic of past events I venture 
 to say does not exist in the world. 
 
 I have now sketched my impressions of some of 
 the really celebrated literary people and artists with 
 whom I have a personal acquaintance, but had almost 
 forgotten one who never will be forgotten in the 
 hearts of the reading people throughout the world, 
 and who has lately gone to his rest. You will at once 
 know that I am speaking of Eugene Sue. His courage 
 in avowing his opinions in the face of whatever oppo 
 sition, and even of threats, marks him as one of the 
 great heroes of the age. He was an honest, sincere, 
 truth-loving man; and it will be long before Paris 
 can fill the place which death has made vacant. 
 
 I have something more to say of the social and 
 moral aspects of life in Paris, which impressed me as 
 being not essentially different from life in the other 
 
2j8 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 capitals of the civilized world, except in its disuse of 
 masks and false pretensions. Vice has got an ugly 
 fashion of going naked in Paris, while in London and 
 New York it dresses itself up in garments of respect 
 ability, if not of absolute piety, and so disguises and 
 hides itself, that externally it ceases to be apparent. 
 But after all that has been said about the immoralities 
 of Paris, the difference between that city and London 
 and New York is more in appearance than in reality. 
 In attempting a sketch of social life in the French 
 capital, I am obliged to speak of the women, because 
 I do not suppose that any one expects any particular 
 amount of morality among the men. There is no 
 city where young girls are so entirely protected from 
 every temptation as in Paris. The treatment of young 
 unmarried women there is entirely Oriental. They are 
 watched by mothers with extremest care, not only be 
 cause it is believed to be right as a principle, but because 
 no young lady has the least prospect of a respectable 
 marriage, if the idea gets abroad that this watchfulness 
 has been for a single moment relaxed. A mother whc 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 259 
 
 should allow her daughter to walk out alone but once 
 with a young man, is regarded as having disgraced 
 her child, and the poor girl is immediately pointed at. 
 Even after the marriage contract is signed, they are 
 allowed but little liberty of intercourse, and never see 
 each other except in the presence of others. They sit 
 at opposite sides of the room, and any show of affec 
 tion would be considered not only ridiculous but ill- 
 bred. As one extreme follows another, the French 
 ladies, when once they are emancipated by marriage 
 (and marriage in France in the fashionable world is a 
 complete emancipation from restraint), make up for 
 lost time. The wife in Paris is as free as the girl is 
 restrained. You must understand that nine-tenths 
 of all marriages are brought about by calculation and 
 reason, and not at all by affection. Marriage there is 
 not a union of persons, but a union of properties or 
 of worldly interests. A wealthy person went to a 
 banker and sa^d, "I want to marry your daughter; 
 here are the title-deeds of my estates." Nothing more 
 was requisite, the match was sealed, and the daughter. 
 
260 Wits and Women of Pans. 
 
 rejoicing in the marriage trousseau, was transferred tc 
 the purchaser. Generally speaking, however, it is the 
 young lady who has to buy the husband. I have 
 read of a peasant who was about to lead to the altar 
 a young bride, all blushes and muslin, when her father 
 observed: "Now I think of it, I must remind you 
 that the great cherry-tree in the orchard remains 
 mine." "No," said the bridegroom, "it must be 
 mine." "No," said the father, "it remains mine." 
 "Well then," said the bridegroom, "I will not marry 
 your daughter." And so the ceremony was stopped. 
 But I have heard a still more laughable story. A 
 washerwoman had betrothed her daughter, a girl of 
 fifteen years old, to a barber, and promised to give 
 her a dowry of five hundred francs. The day before 
 the marriage, the girl came to the shop and peeped in 
 at the door, saying, " Mother says she has changed 
 her mind about the dowry." The barber, who had 
 the nose of one of his customers between his thumb 
 and finger, looked over his shoulder and replied, 
 "You are joking." "No," said the bride apparent. 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 261 
 
 " mother wants the money herself." " Then tell her/' 
 said the barber, making a gash on his victim's chinj 
 " that I sha'n't marry you." This may appear an 
 exaggeration, but it is not so. It is quite common to 
 hear of marriages being broken off in Paris on this 
 account. What is marriage worth under such .cir 
 cumstances? What protection is marriage to a wo 
 man where her heart is not the object of the alliance ? 
 It is undoubtedly true that comparatively few mar 
 riages remain long undisturbed in Paris. Woman is 
 possessed with a higher and holier feeling than the 
 mere selfish disposition of her person. The reason 
 why the works of Georges Sand have had great in 
 fluence, is because they correspond with the state of 
 female public opinion. She did not invent, but she 
 drew attention to existing grounds of complaint. 
 The French women have wept over "Indiana," and 
 read " Consuelo" with approving heart. 
 
 If the wives of Paris are accused of intrigues, it is 
 because marriage is less an affair of the heart than 
 the purse. The French woman is naturally intelli- 
 
262 Wits and -Women of Paris. 
 
 gent, and consequently seeks for intelligence in those 
 around her. In England you hear of young ladies 
 eloping with their fathers' footmen, and in America 
 a lady may be captivated in the same way ; but in 
 France, a woman never intrigues with those in inferior 
 position to herself. 
 
 The great evil of Paris is that there is no such insti 
 tution there as Home ; as a general fact that sanctifier 
 of the heart that best shelter and friend of woman 
 that beautiful feeling called " Home " does not exist. 
 The nearest approach to this deplorable state of things 
 is found among the business people of the United 
 States. I have noticed this particularly in New York, 
 where the merchant is never at home, except to sleep, 
 and even then his brain is so racked with per cents, 
 advances, or depressions in prices, the rise and fall of 
 stocks, &c., that he brings no fond affection to his 
 family. The husband's brain is a ledger, and his 
 heart a counting-room. And where is woman to find 
 in all this the response to a heart overflowing with 
 affection ? And this is as true in New York as in Paris. 
 
Wits and Women of Paris. 263 
 
 Indeed, as for intrigues, New York may almost rival 
 Paris. There is no country where the women are 
 more fond of dress and finery than the United States, 
 and history shows us that there is no such depraver 
 of women as this vanity. A hundred women stumble 
 over that block of vanity, where one falls by any 
 other cause. And if the insane mania for dress and 
 show does not end in a general decay of female 
 morals, then the lessons of history and the experience 
 of all ages must go for naught. 
 
 Georges Sand relates an instance of having seen a 
 blooming beauty wandering along the streets of Paris, 
 where she was accosted by a young student, who said, 
 "Where are you going?" She replied, "Nowhere." 
 " Then," said he, " as we are both bound for the same 
 place, we will both go together." Alas, there are so 
 many young women in Paris who are going "no 
 where," and there are so many foolish young men to 
 go with them. How many of those girls that go " no- . 
 where," who would have been types of noble, indus 
 trious, frugal women, are fallen down and run over 
 
264 Wits and Women of Paris. 
 
 by the waysides of life, without one good Samaritan 
 to lift them up again, and to tell them that we have 
 all to live to go somewhere. 
 
 It is well known to those who have read Sterne, 
 that when the accusing spirit flew up to Heaven, with 
 Uncle Toby's sin, the recording angel, as he wrote it 
 down, dropped a tear upon it, and blotted it out for 
 ever. 
 
 If there be yet another tear in Heaven, I pray that 
 it may be shed upon the spot that records the sins of 
 Paris. 
 
ROMANISM. 
 
 12 
 
ROMANISM. 
 
 I KNOW not that history has anything more won 
 derful to show than the part which the Catholic 
 Church has borne in the various civilizations of the 
 world. 
 
 What a marvellous structure it is, with its hier 
 archy ranging through long centuries, almost from 
 apostolic days to our own ; living side by side with 
 forms of civilization and uncivilization, the most 
 diverse and the most contradictory through all the 
 fifteen hundred years and more of its existence; 
 asserting an effective control over opinions and insti 
 tutions ; with its pontificate (as is claimed) dating from 
 the fisherman of Galilee, and still reigning there in 
 the city that heard Saint Peter preach, and whom it 
 
268 Romanism. 
 
 saw martyred; impiously pretending to sit in his 
 chair and to bear his keys ; shaken, exiled, broken 
 again and again by schism, by Lutheran revolts and 
 French revolutions; yet always righting itself, and 
 reasserting a vitality that neither force nor opinion 
 has yet been able to extinguish. Once with its foot 
 on the neck of kings, and having the fate of empires 
 in its hands, and even yet superintending the grandest 
 ecclesiastical mechanism that man ever saw ; ordering 
 fast days and feast days, and regulating with Omnipo 
 tent fiat the very diet of millions of people ; having 
 countless bands of religious soldiery trained, organ 
 ized, and officered as such a soldiery never was 
 before nor since ; and backed by an infallibility that 
 defies reason, an inquisition to bend or break the will, 
 and a confessional to unlock all hearts and master the 
 profoundest secrets of all consciences. Such has been 
 the mighty Church of Eome, and there it is still, cast 
 down, to be sure, from what it once was, but not yet 
 destroyed ; perplexed by the variousness and freedom 
 of an intellectual civilization which it hates and 
 
Romanism. 269 
 
 vainly tries to crush; laboriously trying to adapt 
 itself to the Europe of the nineteenth century, as it 
 once did to the Europe of the twelfth ; lengthening 
 its cords and strengthening its stakes, enlarging the 
 place of its tent, and stretching forth the curtains of 
 its habitations even to this Kepublic of the New 
 "World. 
 
 Such is the tremendous fabric of Eome, standing 
 out on the foreground of the world's history, and 
 bearing upon its scarred bosom the marks of the vari 
 ous civilizations and barbarisms through which it has 
 
 Eegarded in the light of a merely human institu 
 tion, it is worthy of the profoundest study of man ; 
 but the moment it puts in a claim of divine origin 
 and appointment, it sinks beneath the contempt of 
 human reason. If it-comes before us in its sacerdotal 
 robes and bids us bow our faith to its monstrous pro 
 fanities, we shake it from us and cast it off with dis 
 gust and horror; but in its human aspects, in its 
 moral and political career, we will look fairly at it 
 
270 Romanism. 
 
 and inquire, how it came to pass that an institution 
 so loaded with the crimes and groans of ages, and 
 stained with the blood of martyrs, and fraught with 
 such shocking absurdities, could hold on so long, and 
 play the part it has in the history of the world's pro 
 gress. 
 
 It will not do to dispose of this question by simply 
 saying that the Catholic Church was all a lie and 
 cheat in the beginning (a lie and cheat most truly it 
 is now, as most other institutions of barbarism would 
 be if transplanted to the present time), nor will it do 
 to call its origin a deliberate scheme for usurping the 
 rights of mankind ; for it was not that ; it was as 
 natural a growth out of the social, moral, and political 
 causes operating in the first six centuries as the insti 
 tutions of the troubadours, of chivalry, and of feud 
 alism were of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. 
 
 It grew up slowly and naturally, was moulded 
 into its ultimate form by the pressure of many times, 
 and bears the marks as much as any other institu 
 tion of the various ages and states of civilization that 
 
Romanism. 271 
 
 have successively been cotemporaneous with. it. 1 
 can see that it was the product of Christianity coming 
 in contact with the old Pagan modes of thought and 
 feeling, which at that time had full possession of the 
 Roman world ; its doctrines were not priestly manu 
 factures, they were simply the expression of prevalent 
 tendencies of the Pagan mind, and the effect of gene 
 ral causes in the moral world. 
 
 For instance, it is plain enough to see where its 
 image- worship and hero-worship came from ; for, far 
 as these things are removed from the spirit and pre 
 cepts of Christ, they were actually wants of the popu 
 lar mind, trained in the long school of Paganism, 
 and familiar with the picturesque materialism of the 
 Greek philosophy. Komanism in its origin was a 
 compromise between Christianism and Paganism, by 
 which nearly all the superstitions and immoralities 
 of the latter contrived to get themselves baptized 
 with the Christian name. And this fatal compro 
 mise was the work of the people more than of the 
 priest ; thus the decision of the Council of Ephesua 
 
272 Roman ism 
 
 (held under Pope Celestine, A. D. 431), that it should 
 be permitted to invoke Mary of Nazareth by the 
 style and title of "Mother of God," was received by 
 the people out of doors with shouts of exultation; 
 the prelates as they issued from the synod were 
 saluted with every expression of applause, and the 
 victory was celebrated by a general illumination. 
 
 The doctrine was not made by the priests, it was 
 made for them ; forced upon them, in fact, by irresist 
 ible popular sentiment ; and their share in the busi 
 ness was little more than to register the act of the 
 multitude. The confessional, with its appended pen 
 ances, the purgatory and masses for the dead, the 
 consecration of saintly names and relics, the rise of 
 monasticism, with its fasts and vigils, were all the 
 product of general impulses of Pagan feeling, finding 
 voice and expression in connexion with Christian 
 ideas. 
 
 So, too, the dogmatizing theology of Eome, the 
 iOng creeds fenced by short and sharp anathemas, 
 were no arbitrary creation of the early priests, but 
 
Romanism. 275 
 
 were a result of that taste and talent for theological 
 syllogizing, which the church borrowed from the sub 
 tile and disputatious Greek mind. In fact, the whole 
 thing was little more than a Christian translation of 
 Paganism, in which, by a sort of metempsychosis, the 
 soul of ancient Greece seemed to live over again. 
 
 So, after all, there is nothing very shocking nor 
 very strange in the rise and growth of this vast fabric 
 of Eome ; it rose out of a great number of interests, 
 or intellectual and moral wants and habits embodied 
 into an organized institution by a succession of power 
 ful minds, themselves partaking of these varied influ 
 ences, and often giving expression to them in con 
 nexion with the most vulgar superstitions of the 
 times. 
 
 And herein lies the great secret of the strength and 
 success of Eome ; in its perpetual willingness to com 
 pound with whatever popular vice or superstition, 
 for the sake of unlimited dominion over the public 
 mind. By this means it has acquired a fearful con 
 trol over opinions and institutions during the fifteen 
 12* 
 
274 Romanism. 
 
 hundred years of its reign, and it is impossible to say 
 how far the providence of God may have compel* 
 led the vast worldly forces of this Church to con 
 tribute to the general safety and blessing of hu 
 manity. 
 
 "Who shall say that he who " makes the wrath of 
 man to praise him," did not also make this stupen 
 dous power subservient to his will, during the dark 
 and perilous ages of the past? "Who can say that it 
 was not a great thing for Europe, during the centuries 
 of darkness and confusion that came in between the 
 downfall of the Roman Empire and the revival of 
 law and settled government, to have such a Church ; 
 a power professing to be not of this world, and declar 
 ing itself greater than the world; reposing upon 
 ideas, and often successfully asserting them, in oppo 
 sition to the brute force which was then the only other 
 great European power ? Who can say that it was 
 not much for Europe to have had an intellectual and 
 moral power like that, visibly embodied, and fixed 
 in an institution which could not be moved by the 
 
Romanism. 275 
 
 shocks of falling states ; a power winch had its mis 
 sionaries out in the far north of Germany, and Anglo- 
 Saxon Brittany, sowing the seeds of moral dominion ; 
 which could interpose, and often did interpose, be 
 tween oppression and its yictim ; proclaimed truces of 
 Grod to the ferocious savagery of war ; took the charge 
 of those young Italian Eepublics, which otherwise 
 must have been crushed between jostling kingdoms ; 
 cherished in the consecrated asylum of its abbeys 
 and monasteries, germs of civilization, which, if cast 
 carelessly out on the embattled elements, would have 
 been trodden under foot of contending warriors ; and 
 kept up during those dark ages, an action upon popu 
 lar sentiment and opinion, which, with all its defects 
 and misdirections, saved the world from falling into 
 utter and irredeemable barbarism. It is easy to say 
 that all this was superstition and idolatry, for so it 
 was ; but it was infinitely more humanizing than the 
 old superstition which it displaced, giving the popular 
 imagination idols, images, that were types not of its 
 own barbarism, but of the good and of the beautifully 
 
276 Romanism. 
 
 true, substituting Holy Families for Thor and Odin, 
 and the Cross, emblem of hope to mankind, for the 
 beak and claw of the Roman eagle. 
 
 This much history compels us to say in praise of 
 Eome. We cannot deny it the merit of having 
 worked well during those terrible ages. So long as 
 its doctrines and ceremonies expressed the highest 
 ideas that benighted men had ; so long as it was in 
 advance of the average intellect and heart of the 
 ages ; so long as it was the result of vital organic 
 growth, and not, as now, of dead mechanical pressure ; 
 so long we cheerfully accord it the merit of having 
 done the best it could, and we can say no more 
 for it. 
 
 Its struggle ever since has been to drag the heart 
 and brain of man backward into the night out of 
 which it came. It has been the scourge of modern 
 civilization, obstinately keeping the free progressive 
 spirit of man locked up in the same eternal prison of 
 an arbitrary ritual, and an artificial creed, containing 
 dogmas at which common sense revolts, enforced by 
 
Romanism. 277 
 
 Anathemas at which humanity shudders ; so ordering 
 things that there could be no change or progression, 
 without a life and death conflict; compelling the 
 spirit of reform to be revolutionary ; giving Europe 
 a whole century of Eeligious war ; and bequeathing 
 to European civilization a spirit of intolerance, 
 tyranny, and fiery denunciation, which, but for the 
 presence of a spirit stronger than itself, would have 
 left the world at this time as far from Chistianity and 
 Christian civilization, as in the days of Hildebrand 
 and Innocent the Third. 
 
 The only wonder is that such a church should be 
 able to push its fortunes so far into the centre of 
 modern civilization, with which it can feel no sym 
 pathy, and which it only embraces to destroy. I 
 confess I find it difficult to believe that a total lie 
 could administer comfort and aid to so many millions 
 of souls ; and the explanation is, no doubt, that it is 
 not a total lie ; for even its worse doctrines are 
 founded on certain great truths which are accepted 
 by the common heart of humanity. They are, as we 
 
278 Romanism. 
 
 may say, caricatures of truths which seize the vulgai 
 imagination with a powerful grasp, and cause it to be 
 enchanted with the very slavery they impose. Take 
 for instance its doctrines of universality, infallibility, and 
 apostolic succession, and we find that they are all simply 
 exaggerations or caricatures of great Christian truths. 
 There is such a thing as universal truth, and there 
 is such a thing as Apostolic succession, made not by 
 Edicts, Bulls, and Church Canons, but by an interior 
 life divine and true. But all these Kome has per 
 verted, by hardening the diffusive spirit of truth into 
 so much mechanism cast into a mould in which it 
 has been forcibly kept ; and by getting progressively 
 falser and falser, as the world has got older and wiser, 
 till the universality became only another name for a 
 narrow and intolerant sectism, while the infallibility 
 committed itself to absurdity after absurdity, at which 
 reason turns giddy, and faith has no resource but to 
 shut her eyes ; and the Apostolic succession became 
 narrowed down into a mere dynasty of Priests and 
 Pontiffs. A hierarchy of magicians, saving souls by 
 
Romanism. ^79 
 
 machinery, opening and shutting the kingdom of 
 heaven by a sesame of incantations which it would 
 have been the labor of a lifetime to make so much 
 as intelligible to St. Peter or St. Paul. 
 
 In this abyss of superstition and moral pollution, 
 when the voice of Luther came upon it like thunder ; 
 when priests and monks had taken to sell salvation 
 on slips of paper or parchment ; when heaven, salva 
 tion, the grace of God, were made marketable com 
 modities, priced and ticketed, bought and sold, till 
 thinking men began to doubt whether there really 
 could be any heaven at all ; it was time for the spirit 
 of God that was in man to speak out against that 
 hierarchy of priests who were preying on the credulity 
 of .mankind. This was the spirit and power of the 
 Lutheran protest against Eome. It was not creed 
 against creed, it was not creed at all in the beginning ; 
 it was reality against formalism, the prophet against 
 the priest. It was not so much the casting off of 
 theological absurdities, as it was the uprising of the 
 human heart against ecclesiastical immoralities. 
 
280 Romanism. 
 
 So with the immoral but very profitable traffic which 
 Rome carried on with relics of the dead. It cunningly 
 seized upon one of the strongest cords of human 
 nature; for although we call it superstition, yet is 
 there a profound feeling at the bottom of this venera 
 tion for relics. How oft have we wept with affection 
 over a lock of hair, or some such dear memento of a 
 departed friend? With what loving devotion the 
 heart clings to the slightest thing that brings back to 
 us a name hallowed in our affections ? The shirt in 
 which Henri IY. of France received the dagger of 
 Ravaillac is still preserved and exhibited to the admir 
 ing patriot. The friends of Nelson preserve the coat 
 in which he fell at Trafalgar. And so the patriotic 
 American will perform his pilgrimage to the old 
 Stone House at Newburgh, once the head-quarters of 
 "Washington, filled with sacred mementos of the Revo 
 lution ; and how do your people bend with affection 
 and emotion over the immortal tomb at Mount Yer- 
 non ! The feeling to which these things appeal is one 
 of the deepest and holiest of human nature, and it has 
 
Romanism. 281 
 
 oeen successfully used by Eome to rob the poor and 
 enchant the human heart with its pretensions. The 
 mind turns away with disgust from the monstrous 
 impostures which it has practised in the traffic of 
 relics. Lord Oxford mentions having seen for sale at 
 a small town in Italy, among other relics, a finger nail 
 from the hand of St. Peter, a bit of the worm that 
 never dies, preserved in spirits, a quill from the cock 
 that crew at the crucifixion, and the chemise of the 
 Holy Virgin. His lordship says: "The good man 
 that showed us all these commodities was got in such 
 a train of calling them the blessed this, and the blessed 
 that, that at last he showed us a ' bit of the blessed 
 fig-tree that Christ cursed.' " 
 
 There was a time when the Bishop of TreVes, like 
 Leo. X., wanted money for the completion of his 
 cathedral. That church possessed a relic, the coat 
 without seam worn by our Saviour. This the bishop 
 determined should be the " golden fleece" of Treves. 
 He summoned pilgrims to pay their veneration to the 
 garment, and with magnanimous audacity, founded 
 
282 Romanism. 
 
 the pilgrimage on the bull of Leo. X. in 1514. That 
 bull promised " a full remission of sins in all future 
 times to all believers who go in pilgrimage to the 
 exhibition of the Holy Coat at Treves, sincerely con 
 fess and repent of their sins, or at least have a firm 
 intention to do so, and moreover contribute largely to 
 the decoration of the Cathedral at Troves." A million 
 and a half of people obeyed this call in six weeks, 
 and the deluded multitude were heard on bended knees 
 to say, " Holy Coat, to thee I come ; Holy Coat, to 
 thee I pray ; Holy Coat, pray for me." 
 
 Now who shall compute the stupifying and brutal 
 izing effects of such a religion ? "Who will dare say 
 that a principle which so debases reason is not like 
 bands of iron around the expanding heart and strug 
 gling limbs of modern freedom ? Who will dare tell 
 me that this terrible Church does not lie upon the 
 bosom of the present time like a vast unwieldy and 
 offensive corpse, crushing the life-blood out of the 
 body of modern civilization ? It is not as a religious 
 creed that we are looking at this thing; it is not for its 
 
Romanism. 283 
 
 theological sins that we are here to condemn it ; but it 
 is its effect upon civilization and upon political and 
 social freedom that we are discussing. "What must be 
 the ultimate political night that settles upon a people 
 who are without individuality of opinions and inde 
 pendence of will, and whose brains are made tools of 
 in the hands of a clan or an order I Look out there into 
 that sad Europe, and see it all ! See, there, how the 
 Catholic element everywhere marks itself with night, 
 and drags the soul, and energies, and freedom of the 
 people backwards and downwards into political and 
 social inaction into unfathomable quagmires of death I 
 
 You see it upon the soil, upon commerce, upon 
 trade, upon industry, upon every resource of national 
 greatness, upon the very face of the people, where 
 submission and ignorance sit enthroned over the 
 crushed and degraded intellect. In all Catholic coun 
 tries on the face of the globe the jail is greater than 
 the school-house the hospital for the infirm, than the* 
 means of self-support and self-respect. 
 
 Look for instance at Catholic and Prokstant Ger- 
 
284 Romanism. 
 
 many. The quick eye of Mirabeau saw the great 
 disparity. He said, " The want of knowledge and 
 industry of Catholic Germany must be attributed to 
 the bigotry which in those superb countries sways 
 both government and people. Festivals, processions, 
 pilgrimages, mummery, render the latter idle, stupid, 
 and careless. The sway of the priests renders them 
 ignorant, despotic, cruel, and above all, implacably 
 inimical to everything that might enlighten the human 
 mind. These two causes are eternally destructive of 
 all human knowledge, and the ruin of knowledge 
 brings on that of commerce and industry." 
 
 The Dictionnaire de la Conversation says : " The way 
 of the Austrian government has ever been to insure 
 the strengthening and development of the statu quo." 
 There is neither liberty of thought, of commerce, nor 
 of home in Austria. Progress is the terror of all 
 Catholic countries, but especially of Austria, Bavaria, 
 and Italy I 
 
 To go no further back than the sixteenth century, 
 from that time until now, no change has come over 
 
Romanism. 28$ 
 
 tlieir policy. There they are as they were three cen 
 turies ago, down in eternal stagnation and immobility. 
 
 And the people the poor people the victims, 
 without education, without means of industry, without 
 the sanctity of home, without anything but the priest 
 hood and the police ! 
 
 Alas, Austria ! you do not see that in refusing to 
 progress, you go backwards. It is not for nations to 
 stand still ; if they are not rising, they are sinking ; 
 Catholic Germany and Italy are sinking. But just 
 step over into Protestant Prussia, and see how she is 
 proudly marching up the hill at the head of liberal 
 progress. See her education universally diffused, and 
 freedom of opinion everywhere allowed. See com 
 merce, trade, and industry emancipated from the 
 slavery that crushes them in Austria. See plenty 
 smiling from the fields of toil, and industrial activity 
 chasing away the spectres of pauperism and social 
 ruin, that everywhere stalk abroad like a mighty army 
 of death over the face of all Austria. 
 
 The contrast I have drawn here between Austria 
 
286 Romanism. 
 
 and Prussia, holds good for all other Catholic countries 
 of Europe, excepting Belgium, over which the bright 
 light of liberty is shining. She has found that wher 
 ever you trace the influence of priests, politically, there 
 night and gloom and tyranny follow behind. Let us 
 next view Switzerland, dear Switzerland, which kind 
 ly opened its. arms to receive me, and made me for a 
 time the guest of the republic, when I was compelled 
 at last to fly before the infuriated bands of the Jesuits 
 of Austria. My heart will ever beat warmly for 
 Switzerland, but it must beat sadly, too, when I think 
 of the moral and social degradation into which one 
 half of it is plunged and held down by the same hand 
 which crushes the south of Germany, and which drove 
 me and so many others out of Germany and Bavaria 
 because I had defied its power, resisted its bribes, and 
 caused at least one government to place itself in oppo 
 sition to its schemes for enslaving the whole of Germany 
 and breaking up the republic of Switzerland. 
 
 Thank heaven these events are matters of history, 
 which will one day vindicate me from the assaults of 
 
Romanism. 287 
 
 that remorseless band, who have caused my name to 
 be assailed all over the world, because they had no 
 other means to destroy a woman who had ventured 
 into the arena of politics against them and their 
 enslaving diplomacy. 
 
 Shelley said, when travelling in Switzerland, that 
 he could tell a Protestant from a Catholic Canton by 
 the dirty faces in the latter. Alas ! that dirty face 
 looks out of everything ; out of the education, the 
 industry, the commerce, and the whole social fabric 
 of all its Cantons in Switzerland. To see this, we 
 have but to draw a parallel between the Protestant 
 and Catholic Cantons as they sit there beside each 
 other, under the same sky and climate, with a simi 
 lar soil and territorial extent. 
 
 Let us contrast Protestant Zurich, with Catholic 
 Tessin, the latter of which has been slowly decreas 
 ing in population since the beginning of the present 
 century, and what is left of it is poor, dirty, ragged, 
 a prey to tax-gatherers and holy orders. Land 
 naturally fertile, left uncultivated, the people without 
 
288 Romanism. 
 
 education, without ambition, and without any of the 
 prosperity of progressive civilization. Such is pool 
 Tessin, lying there in hopeless stagnation and gloom, 
 a political and moral dwarf, and dead at that, in the 
 midst of the grand and gigantic scenery of the Alps. 
 But take a view of its Protestant neighbor Zurich, 
 and see how changed the scene, compared with 
 Tessin. The land in Zurich appeared to me to be 
 sterile and naturally unproductive. But the indus 
 trious activity of its inhabitants has overcome these 
 impediments of nature, and where the earth was so 
 barren that the hand of toil could not force abun 
 dance out of it, I saw manufactories arising, and 
 heard the clatter of machinery, and beheld the tide 
 of commerce bearing wealth and prosperity to its 
 inhabitants. Seldom does beggary crouch in its 
 streets ; only in an hour's time I had stepped into 
 another civilization. New manners, new morals, 
 new homes, new men and women compared with 
 that sad fossil of society, lying just back there in 
 Tessin. I said at once, this Canton must have been 
 
Romanism. 289 
 
 a long time Protestant, to present such a scene of 
 civilization and activity. And when I turned to the 
 page of its history, I found that it had indeed been 
 educated in the Eeformation. 
 
 As this spot was one of the centres of the Kefor- 
 mation, it is now one of the centres of Swiss civil 
 ization. 
 
 Look next at Lucerne, with its naturally rich soil, 
 lying in the very heart of Switzerland, geographi 
 cally placed to be the centre of trade, commerce, and 
 wealth ; but alas ! none of these things are there ; 
 even its roads are left uncompleted, because its 
 besotted inhabitants, still embued with an ancient 
 superstition, believe that by enlarging the roads, they 
 open themselves to the enemy. You will not need 
 to be told that this is a Catholic Canton. It is the 
 centre of the Catholic interest in Switzerland, and 
 has the honor of being the residence of the Pope's 
 Nuncio. 
 
 Poor Lucerne ! made so beautiful by the hand of 
 
 God, but treated so badly by the hand of man. 
 
 13 
 
290 Romanism. 
 
 This Canton, when I saw it, did not seem to me tc 
 have had its face washed in a quarter of a century. 
 Sloth was on its fields, ignorance on the countenance 
 of its inhabitants, and filth everywhere. 
 
 What a contrast to Protestant Berne ! Here I 
 found the fields smiling with plenty. Education, 
 industry, and trade, if nothing else, would have told 
 me that the Reformation had unlocked the prison 
 doors of this people. I shall never forget how beau 
 tiful the people looked to me in their clean and 
 comfortable homes, and their refined and simple 
 manners. It will puzzle the traveller to find a 
 happier peasantry in Europe than that of the Canton 
 of Berne. 
 
 Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you go through 
 the various Catholic and Protestant Cantons of 
 Switzerland, you will find this comparison to hold 
 true with them all. No reflecting person can look 
 upon those scenes without being impressed with the 
 fact that Rome is an enemy to popular freedom, and a 
 scourge of modern civilization. 
 
Romanism. 291 
 
 The same thing stares at you in every Catholic 
 country in Europe. You see it in Spain, Portugal, 
 Italy, and the South of Ireland ; and then how do 
 you see it, also, in the two Americas I Compare South 
 with North America. Will you tell me that climate 
 produces the indescribable difference between the two ? 
 You are contradicted by the fact, that the advantages 
 of climate and soil are with South America ; and, as 
 if Providence had intended it to be the greatest pro 
 ducing country on earth, it has the most majestic and 
 the longest rivers in the world. I shall not pause to 
 picture the wretched condition of South America, nor 
 shall I attempt to describe the prosperity of North 
 America. I begin to get dizzy myself when I think 
 of it ; and to what are you indebted for your superio 
 rity ? To that sharp individualism, that spirit of pro 
 gressive freedom, involved in the principles of the 
 reformation. 
 
 In 1781 Raynal wrote this of your country, " li 
 ten millions of men ever find an assured subsistence 
 in t]}ese provinces, it will be a great deal." Well, if 
 
292 Romanism. 
 
 that little party which, came out in the Mayflower had 
 been Catholics instead of Puritans, if they had brought 
 with them the spirit of Eome, instead of the Eeforma- 
 tion, and if those who followed them to these shores, 
 had brought the same religion, you would not have 
 been over ten millions of people to this day ; then the 
 world would have had neither Steamboats nor Tele 
 graphs. These things are too fast for Eome. She 
 looks to the past. She stands with her back to the 
 present: She inhabits the Statu-quo and hates and 
 would destroy, if she could, that principle of progress, 
 which gave you your national existence. America 
 does not yet recognise how much she owes to the Pro 
 testant principle. It is that principle which has given 
 the world the four greatest facts of modern times 
 Steam-boats, Bail-roads, Telegraphs, and the American 
 Eepublic ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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