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 are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
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 SPOTTISWOODE AND ont >“ NEW-STREET squat 
 
 AND FPARLIAMENT STREET 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL AND OGRITICAL 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM REVIEWS, 
 
 WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. 
 
 A NEW SERIES. 
 
 pierre Weak) Hoge QC: 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 iN CY aoe tl: 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 1873. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
324 
 
 H329 by 2 ¢ LJ 
 \673 eG 
 2 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 2 PAGE 
 VARIETIES OF History AND Arr . : : ; 1 
 Epwarp Livingstone. : Q : ser 
 RICHARD THE THIRD =i. Se Aes : ; ens }«) 
 QuEEN Marie ANTOINETTE : ; : re ts bate) 
 Tue CouNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI . ; . 189 
 Sir Henry Honuann’s RECOLLECTIONS . : 0 
 Lapy PALMERSTON - : : : ASAE 
 Lorp LANSDOWNE ‘ : : : a aU0a 
 Lorp DaLLIncg AND BULWER ; ; , VAS, 
 Morr azovut Junius ; : : ; sot t 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 (From THE EpinpurcH Review, OctosER 1866.) 
 
 Causeries Cun Curieux: Variétés d Histoire et ad Art, 
 terées Pun Cabinet @Autographes et de Dessins. Par 
 F. Feuillet de Conches. Tomes Premier et Second, 1862; 
 Tome Troisiéme, 1864. Paris. 
 
 THE title of this book is untranslatable. There is no 
 English equivalent for causerie, which is something less 
 formal, continuous, and pretentious than ‘ conversation,’ 
 something more intellectual, refined, and cultivated 
 than ‘talk.’ An earnest preoccupied man may con- 
 verse: an over-excited or coarse-minded man may 
 talk ; but neither the one nor the other can causer in 
 the precise French acceptation of the word. Boswell 
 says, ‘ Though his (Johnson’s) usual phrase for conver- 
 sation was “talk,” yet he made a distinction; for when 
 he once told me that he dined the day before at a 
 friend’s house, with “a very pretty company,” and I 
 asked him if there was good conversation, he answered, 
 ‘No, sir, we had ‘talk’ but no conversation; there 
 was nothing discussed.”’ On another occasion, how- 
 ever, when he said there had been good ‘talk,’ Bos- 
 well rejoined, ‘ Yes, sir, you tossed and gored several 
 persons.’ Positiveness, loudness, love of argument and 
 eagerness for display, are fatal to causerve; which we 
 take to consist in the easy, careless, unforced flow of 
 
 VOL. Il. , 2» 
 / 
 
Z VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 remarks, fancies, feelings, or thoughts,—the results of 
 reading, observation, or reflection: begun without de- 
 fined object or formed purpose, and continuing its 
 course like Wordsworth’s river, which ‘ windeth at its 
 own sweet will,’ or Burns’s verses when he trusted to 
 the inspiration of accident— 
 ‘And how the subject theme may gang, 
 Let time and chance determine ; 
 Perhaps it may turn out a sang, 
 Perhaps turn out a sermon.’ 
 
 In strictness, therefore, perhaps the title of causeries 
 should only be given to such a book as we should call 
 ‘Table-Talk.’ But we are not disposed to quarrel with 
 M. Sainte-Beuve for giving it to his valuable collection 
 of familiar essays, critical and biographical, the justly 
 celebrated ‘ Causeries de Lundi;’ still less to find fault 
 with M. Feuillet de Conches for bestowing it on a book 
 which, without any extraordinary stretch of fancy, we 
 can imagine to have grown out of conversations with 
 persons of congenial pursuits,—the scene varying be- 
 tween the library, the picture-gallery, the museum, and 
 the collector’s cabinet. Each freely and frankly com- 
 municates the discoveries he has made or the informa- 
 tion he has collected : the piece justificateve, or illustra- 
 tive document, in the shape of an autograph letter, 
 manuscript, engraving, or portrait, is produced or ap- 
 pealed to: then come inquiry, comment, amicable 
 difference, and discussion ; till materials are accumu- 
 lated for a book rivalling the ‘ Curiosities of Literature’ 
 in erudition, and far surpassing it in accuracy, penetra- 
 tion, and suggestiveness. Indeed, we have rarely met 
 with one which opens so many fruitful fields of inquiry, 
 supplies so many important topics of speculation, or 
 brings the critical faculty so pleasantly and profitably 
 into play. 
 
 The tendency and utility of such a work are so 
 obvious that there was little need of the apologetic 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. a 
 
 preface of sixty pages, addressed to the celebrated ad- 
 vocate and jurisconsult, M. Chaix d’Est-Ange. Con- 
 sidering how chronicles, journals, correspondence, 
 household-books, news-letters, broad sheets, loose scraps 
 ‘of every kind, have been ransacked and turned to 
 account by recent writers of note,—the literary world 
 in general, and historians in particular, would seem to 
 be sufficiently awake already to the value of well- 
 authenticated details and contemporary evidence, how- 
 ever homely and minute. M. Philarete Chasles might 
 safely have been left unanswered when he exclaimed, 
 ‘What care I about the patience or scrupulousness of 
 a former frequenter of the Alexandrian library who 
 should have saved for me, in twenty-five volumes folio, 
 the ballets-doux of Cleopatra and the bills of her washer- 
 woman and jeweller.’ Twenty-five volumes in folio 
 would be a large order, but can it be doubted that 
 Cleopatra’s bills, to say nothing of her billets-douz, 
 would help to throw lght on the habits and manners 
 of the lady, the country, and the time? Can M. Phi- 
 laréte Chasles have forgotten the philosophic reflection 
 of Pascal that, if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the 
 whole face of the world might have been changed? 
 Minute personal details have been rightly treasured by 
 biographers; and we feel grateful to Mr. Forster for 
 printing the bill of Goldsmith’s tailor, Mr. Filby of 
 Water Lane, although it does not specify the charge 
 for the famous peach-coloured coat which provoked 
 the sarcasm of Johnson. 
 
 At the same time we are not sorry that M. Feuillet 
 de Conches has been seduced into a vindication of his 
 plan; for, if superfluous, his preface is the opposite of 
 commonplace or dull. It comprises a brief and rapid 
 but masterly appreciation of the leading French 
 memoirs; and after illustrating by instances the ad- 
 vantages of biographical details and private letters in 
 estimating books as well as men, it proceeds to give 
 
 B 2 
 
4 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 proofs of the serious liability incurred by authors who 
 are content with secondhand authority. 
 
 ‘When we write a book, it is our reflection, our reason, 
 that speak ; we express only our ideas, sometimes only the 
 hypocrisy of our ideas. When we write letters, we more 
 commonly express our sentiments and our passions. Read, 
 for example, the elegant pages in which Sallust raises altars 
 to poverty, proclaims the ineffable sweetness and the eminent 
 dignity of the Stoic moralists, stigmatises with burning 
 declamation, with virtuous anger, the corruption of Rome, 
 the extortion in the provinces. Is it after reading this that 
 we shall recognise this Sallust, the corrupter of the domestic 
 hearth, the bloodstained tribune, the slave of Cesar, the 
 iment extortioner, whose famous museum-gardens were 
 built with the gold and the tears of Numidia? Incredible 
 power of abstraction! prodigious miracle of taste and art ! 
 This man, branded with infamy, talks of virtue like Cato: 
 pen in hand he becomes virtuous. 
 
 ‘Shall we believe also in the disinterestedness of Seneca, 
 in his philosophy, his austerity, his clemency, by reading 
 nothing but his moral treatises, from which morals seem to 
 flow rather than words. Read his life, and you will avert 
 your looks. Alongside of some real public and private 
 virtues, what shameful weaknesses! What infamy and 
 erime! He knew how to die: he did not know how to 
 live.’ 
 
 When Seneca wrote his treatise in praise of poverty, 
 he had some millions sterling out at usurious interest ; 
 and it was the pointed saying of South, that when he 
 (Seneca) recommended people to throw away their 
 money, it was with the view of picking it up himself. 
 
 Amongst moderns there is the familiar tale of Rous- 
 seal, invoking parental care for infancy and sending 
 his own children to a foundling hospital; and the less 
 known contrast between the published sentimentalism 
 and the private conduct of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 
 the author of ‘ Paul and Virginia,’ who has been handed 
 down to posterity, upon the not quite unimpeachable 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 9) 
 
 testimony of his wife, as a man of desolating egotism, 
 violent against the feeble, mendacious with the power- 
 ful. ‘I have gathered from the mouth of an intimate 
 friend of this worthy woman, adds M. Feuillet de 
 Conches, ‘ the most startling eee: of this pretended 
 good man.’ ? 
 
 Fortunately for poor Hahaity there is a compen- 
 
 sating process or principle simultaneously at work, by 
 aid of which the private characters of authors neutralise 
 the repelling impressions of their works. The Count 
 Joseph de Maistre has proclaimed the hangman the 
 keystone of the social edifice. He has deliberately laid 
 down that, in the study of philosophy, contempt for 
 Locke is the beginning of wisdom; that the Essay on 
 the Human Understanding ‘is most assuredly, deny it 
 who may, all that the absolute want of genius and style 
 can produce most Wwearisome;’ that Bacon is a 
 charlatan; that the De. Augments is ‘ perfectly null 
 and contemptible :’ and the Novum Organon ‘ simply 
 worthy of Bedlam.’ No writer of anything like equal 
 eminence has given expression to so startling an amount 
 of prejudice, illiberality, and insulting arrogance in his 
 books; whilst his familiar letters teem with proofs of a 
 kindly and loving nature, of candour, toleration, and 
 Christian charity. 
 
 We are also told to be on our guard against drawing 
 too broad an inference from some one memorable pas- 
 sage or action with which a name has been inextricably 
 and disadvantageously mixed up. ‘If there are certain 
 cries of the heart which paint the entire man and 
 betray the secrets of his soul, he may in an emergency 
 let drop ill-considered words which are in contradiction 
 to his real sentiments, to his whole life.’ Or, to adopt 
 the language of Bruyere, ‘Je ne sais s'il est permis de 
 
 1 The groundlessness of the imputations based upon this testimony has 
 
 been fully exposed by M. Aimé Martin in the ‘Introduction to the 
 Correspondence of Bernardin de St.-Pierre.’ 
 
6 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 juger des hommes par une faute qui est unique, et si 
 un besoin extréme, ou une violente passion, ou un 
 premier mouvement, tirent 4 conséquence.’ ‘Thus, we 
 are not to believe Barnave a Robespierre because, 
 when the death of Foulon was announced amidst the 
 indignant murmurs in the Constituent Assembly, he 
 exclaimed, ‘ Le sang gui coule est-cl done si pur quon 
 ne puisse en répandre quelques gouttes?’ He lived to 
 make ample reparation for this outrage. Nor will it 
 be forgotten that the Vicomte de Bonald was honest, 
 firm, and high-minded, although, hurried away by in- 
 tolerance, he impatiently replied to those who objected 
 to making sacrilege a capital crime, ‘Hh bien! les 
 coupables tront devant leur juge naturel!’ 
 
 In order to inculcate the value of documents, M. 
 Feuillet de Conches has unsparinely exposed celebrated 
 authors who have proceeded on the mon siége est fait 
 principle; and he relates an anecdote which will be 
 new to most readers. M. de Lamartine, meeting M. 
 Alexandre Dumas soon after the publication of the 
 History of the Girondins, inquired anxiously of the 
 famous romance-writer if he had read it. ‘ Our; cest 
 superbe! Crest de Uhistoire élevée a la hauteur du 
 roman,’ 
 
 It would seem that the taste for rare books and 
 autographs leads to frequent neglect of the tenth com- 
 mandment and occasional breaches of the eighth. A 
 friend calling on Archbishop Usher found him busily 
 engaged in placing his choicest books and manuscripts 
 under lock and key, a precaution which he explained 
 by mentioning that he expected a party of bibliophiles 
 and collectors to dinner. ‘What most of all and still 
 afflicts me,’ complains Evelyn, ‘ those letters and papers 
 of the Queen of Scots, originals and written with her 
 own hand, which I furnished to Dr. Burnet, are pre- 
 tended to have been lost at the presse. The rest I lent 
 to his countryman, the late Duke of Lauderdale, who 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 7 
 
 never returned them; so as by this tretchery my col- 
 lection being broken, I bestowed the remainder on a 
 worthy and curious friend of mine, who is not likely to 
 trust a Scot with anything he values.’ 
 
 A Scot is not always on the safe side in these matters. 
 Sir Walter, after mentioning the sepulchral vase of 
 silver sent him from Athens by Lord Byron, says that 
 there was a letter sent with this vase more valuable 
 than the gift itself. ‘I left it naturally in the urn with 
 the bones, but it is now missing. As the theft was not 
 of a nature to be practised by a mere domestic, I am 
 compelled to suspect the inhospitality of some indi- 
 vidual of higher station; most gratuitously exercised, 
 certainly, since, after what I have said, no one will 
 choose to boast of possessing this literary curiosity.’ 
 
 With such tendencies abroad, M. Feuillet de Conches 
 is quite right m warning collectors against the preda- 
 tory habits of their associates; although, when he 
 comes to particulars, his own personal grievances may 
 turn out more imaginary than real. 
 
 ‘We need not go out of France in search of such ad- 
 ventures. Woe to the too confiding collector who forgets 
 that of King Candanles; another Gyges might. nefariously 
 cut his throat after robbing him of his treasure! The lords 
 of the literary world know full well how to cajole them at 
 need, these poor collectors. One while they publish their 
 autographs, in spite of the owners; one while they borrow 
 what they never return, or do not even deign to cite their 
 names whilst making use of their treasures. 
 
 ¢« Sicut canis ad Nilum, bibens et fugiens.” Thus Lord 
 Brougham, to whom, through the channel of an illustrious 
 academician, I had lent letters of the eighteenth century for 
 his notices, published at Paris, of Voltaire and Rousseau, 
 has profited by my communications, and has not indicated 
 the source, so that, without falling into the grasp of the law, 
 I should not even have the right to reprint what belongs to 
 
 me.’ 
 
 No such consequences could ensue, had Lord 
 
8 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 Brougham withheld the required acknowledgment ; 
 and in the preface to ‘ Lives of Men of Letters of the 
 Time of George IIL.,’ edition of 1855, we find, ‘ Besides 
 the letters of Voltaire, communicated by Mr. Stanford, 
 and which were given in the former editions, there are 
 some of his, and one of Helvetius, now inserted, which 
 had been given in the French edition, having been 
 kindly communicated by M. Feuillet, a gentleman of 
 vreat respectability.’ 
 
 Another story 1s apparently so well authenticated by 
 references that we may assume it to be true in the 
 main. It relates to the Mallebranche correspondenee, 
 purchased at the Millon sale by a collector ancl lent to 
 a grand plilosophe (not named) who forthwith made 
 arrangements for publishing the letters and refused to 
 return the originals. 
 
 ‘Philosophy, I presume, has privileges which simplify the 
 domestic economy of property, and are denied to vulgar 
 simplicity. “Oh, physics! preserve me from metaphysics,” 
 exclaimed the great Newton every morning of his life. The 
 poor collector would not give in. He appealed to the 
 authority of the worthy and loyal academician (the witness 
 of the loan). Vain effort! A common friend, the author of 
 the excellent edition of Pascal after the originals, was not 
 more fortunate. Plato hugged his prize, his by right 
 divine. 
 
 ‘Comply with the conditions, objected M. F ...., or 
 restore. He who has bought and paid is the lawful owner. 
 To print in spite of him in the Journal des Savants, would 
 be the violation of his right ; for, after all, if he brought an 
 action against you, what right could you allege? “ My 
 right,” replied the philosopher, with a vivacity which had 
 at least the merit of frankness, “ My passion is my right.”’ 
 
 Taking for granted, then, that the value of original 
 documents and evidences of all sorts, as well as the 
 rights of property in them, are established by the 
 preface, we proceed to the main body of the work, 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 9 
 
 which opens with an attempt to ascertain what are the 
 oldest manuscripts and likenesses, painted or carved, 
 that are proved by history or tradition to have once 
 existed: how far down they can be traced ; and when 
 they were destroyed or lost sight of. 
 
 The sacred Archives come first, and questions arise, 
 what became of the tables which Moses deposited in 
 an ark? or of the copies of the law which the successive 
 kings of Israel were directed to write out? or of the 
 title-deeds which, like that of Hanameel’s field, ‘ were 
 put in earthen vessels that they might continue many 
 days’? The wars of the Jews, their eventual subju- 
 gation and dispersion, with the repeated spohation or 
 destruction of the holy buildings in which their archives 
 were deposited, sufficiently account for the disap- 
 pearance of the originals at an early period; including 
 the original of the Septuagint version of the Bible, made 
 (277 B.c.) from a copy, for which, according to Jose- 
 phus, an enormous sum was paid by Ptolemy. 
 
 The persecutions of the early Christians, and their 
 scattered state, will equally account for the rapid dis- 
 appearance of the autograph epistles of the Apostles 
 and the other writings composing the New Testament. 
 There is not so much as an authenticated scrap of the 
 handwriting of any of the Fathers of the Church. The 
 Greek copy of the Evangelists, known as the Codex 
 Alexandrinus, in the British Museum, is assigned to the 
 beginning of the fifth century, and the tradition attri- 
 buting it to St. Thecla, one of St. Paul’s virgin converts, 
 is apocryphal at best. The pretended autograph of the 
 Gospel according to St. Mark is still shown at Venice 
 in a dilapidated, fragmentary, and utterly illegible state. 
 Such as it is, it was brought with great ceremony from 
 a convent in Aquileia in 1420, and is held to be 
 nothing more than a devotional compilation for the use 
 of the nuns. The autograph of autographs (priceless as 
 the seamless coat) could it be recovered, would be the 
 
10 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 letter of our Saviour to Abgar, Prince of Edessa, pro- 
 mising to send a disciple to cure his leprosy and 
 teach his people the true faith. An Armenian historian 
 of the fourth century, who gives the text of the prince’s 
 application and the reply, says that Abgar, after having 
 been baptized by the Apostle Thaddeus, wrote to 
 Tiberius to confirm the miraculous life and death of 
 Christ. St. John of Damascus relates the same incident 
 with modifications. Procopius, in the time of Justinian, 
 mentions this holy letter, then augmented by a post- 
 script promising the city of Edessa that it should never 
 fall into the hands of enemies; and in 940 a.p. the 
 Roman emperor got possession of it; that is, he pro- 
 cured from Edessa a document in Greek which was 
 there treasured as the original. He had it magnificently 
 framed in gold and jewels, which probably caused its 
 destruction ; for it disappeared for good and all during 
 the revolution of 1185, when the people of Constanti- 
 nople rose and plundered the imperial palace. 
 
 Copies have been preserved ; the oldest extant being 
 one in the Escurial, made by a monk in 1455; and 
 the authenticity of the epistle was first questioned by 
 a celebrated philologist of the fifteenth century, Laurent 
 Valla, who went so far as to deny the existence of 
 Abgar. The controversy was learnedly and conscien- 
 tiously revived by an ecclesiastical historian of repute 
 in the last century. ‘ But, remarks M. Feuillet de 
 Conches, ‘ knowledge and good faith are not criticism.’ 
 So, spite of this testimony, the epistle in question has 
 been long since relegated to the company of counter- 
 feits, with the text of the sentence pronounced by Pon- 
 tius Pilate, with the letters of Christ which fell from 
 heaven after his ascension, with the letters of the 
 Virgin and the verses of the Sibyls, with the letters of 
 the Devil (of which facsimiles have been published by 
 Collin de Plancy, with the letter of the same Pontius 
 Pilate on the life of Jesus Christ, and finally that of 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 11 
 
 Publius Lentulus, which gives, from life, the portrait 
 of the Messiah. 
 
 The letter of Lentulus opens a subject of the deepest 
 and most reverential interest ; but it has been so fully 
 and admirably treated by Lady Eastlake that a bare 
 outline of the main argument may suffice in this place.! 
 This famous document purports to be a report from a 
 Roman proconsul to the senate, describing from actual 
 observation the form, features, voice, bearing, look, 
 and manner of the Messiah :—the pure and open brow, 
 the rich wine-coloured (vinez coloris) hair parted in 
 the middle and falling on the shoulders, the clear blue 
 eyes, the regular features with their grave yet sweet 
 expression ; painting, in short, so far as words can 
 paint, the very beau idéal popularly received of the 
 mortal attributes of the Divine Founder of our faith. 
 It has been confidently alleged that this letter was ex- 
 tracted by EKutropius from the archives of the senate : 
 that several Fathers of the Church made mention of it ; 
 and that portraits were painted after it by the command 
 of Constantine the Great. ‘To all this, the decisive 
 reply is, that there was no proconsul named Lentulus 
 in Judea at the period: that no trace of the letter is 
 discoverable in Eutropius: that none of the Fathers 
 (including St. Augustine, who speaks of pretended 
 portraits of Christ) make mention of it; and that the 
 earliest notice of it occurs in the fifteenth century, when 
 the famous preacher, Pere Olivier Maillard, produced 
 it in macaronic French. 
 
 Not content with these strong grounds for incre- 
 dulity, M. Feuillet de Conches maintains that it would 
 not be difficult to arrive at the source of the forgery, to 
 
 1¢The History of our Lord as Exemplified in Works of Art, &c. 
 Commenced by the late Mrs. Jameson. Continued and completed by 
 Lady Eastlake. London: 1864.’ We refer to the Introduction. See 
 also ‘Recherches historiques sur la Personne de Jésus-Christ,’ by 
 Peignot, 1829. 
 
12 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART, 
 
 pick out word by word the elements in the different 
 traditional portraits in writing which lie scattered 
 amongst the Fathers or the Greek ecclesiastical writers. 
 He proceeds to proof, and a valuable piece of criticism 
 is the result ; from which we shall simply borrow an 
 episodical passage or two on the startlmg doubt which 
 long vexed and divided the Fathers, namely, whether 
 the Divine Essence was reflected in the beauty of the 
 outward and visible form, or hidden, for the wisest and 
 best of purposes, under a mean and unattractive ex- 
 terior. 
 
 The New Testament gave no help to either side. 
 The Old Testament inflamed the controversy by an 
 apparent diversity. ‘Thou art fairer than the children 
 of men’ is the inspired language of the Psalmist. ‘ He 
 hath no form nor comeliness,’ is the similarly inspired 
 prophecy of Isaiah. The holy disputants, as was their 
 wont, declined any rational explanation or reconcilia- 
 tion of the texts ; and as no reference was made to the 
 authority of Lentulus, the fair inference is that none of 
 id ever heard of him. S&t. Justin declared 
 posftvely for ugliness: ‘ By appearing under an abject 
 and humiliating exterior, our Saviour did but add to 
 what the mystery of the redemption offers of sublime 
 and touching.’ ‘Tertullian was strong for the same 
 theory : ‘ Ne aspectu quidem honestus.’ ‘ Nec humanze 
 honestatis fuit corpus ejus.’ ‘Si inglorius, si ignobilis, 
 si inhonorabilis, meus erit Christus.’ The pagans, ac- 
 customed to deify beauty, saw their advantage and 
 struck in. ‘Your Christ is ugly,’ exclaimed Celsus 
 with true Epicurean logic, ‘ then he is not God.’ The 
 three great divines of the Western Church, St. Am- 
 brose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine, stoutly held out 
 for beauty ; and the opposite opinion, discredited in 
 Kurope, was eventually confined to the Manichzans 
 and some doctors of the Hast. 
 
 It may be collected from these disputes that no re- 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ABT. Ts 
 
 lable image or representation of the form and features 
 of Christ ling been handed down by tradition. There 
 is also much weight in the remark that the most 
 ancient effigies are stamped with a Greek or Roman 
 character, both in physiognomy and costume, without 
 any trace of the Arabian or Israelite type. Thus, before 
 the Byzantine style fixed a la grecque the face and cos- 
 tume of Jesus, the paintings of the Roman catacombs 
 gave him a Roman face and clothed him with the 
 toga and the palium. Dating from these productions, 
 there have been two principal types: the type of the 
 Western Church, and the type of the Eastern; varied . 
 to infinity by degrees of civilisation, by race, by 
 manners, and by clime. ‘The Greeks,’ says Photius, 
 ‘think that He became man after their image; the 
 Romans, that He had the features of a Roman; the 
 Indians, that of an Indian; the Ethiopians make Him 
 a black.’ Black Virgins, we need hardly repeat, were 
 painted and carved in ebony according to the received 
 tradition, and still abound in Cathoke countries. 
 
 The extent te which some of the great painters have 
 travestied sacred subjects is familiar to all students of 
 art; and the liberties taken by a ruder school are 
 amusing by their mingled absurdity and singularity. 
 
 ‘In some of his pictures Rembrandt made Abraham a 
 burgess of his time,’ and the Messiah a burgomaster of 
 Saardam. In the old paintings representing the fall of 
 Adam and Eve, it is not uncommon to find the forbidden 
 fruit varying with the country or province. in Normandy 
 and Picardy it is the classic apple, one of the riches of the 
 country ; in Burgundy and Champagne, the buneh of grapes ; 
 in Provence and Portugal, the fig and the orange; whilst in 
 America it is the guava. The guide to the paintings of 
 Mount Athos prescribes the fig. The fig-tree is under the 
 
 1 There is or was a picture, of the Dutch School, in which Abraham 
 is about. to kill Isaac with a blunderbuss, and an angel intervenes in a 
 manner resembling the expedient by which Gulliver saved the royal 
 palace of Lilliput trom the flames. 
 
14 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 protection of a Greek saint, Theodora, named the fig-eater. 
 In Greece, then, it is generally the fig which is adopted on 
 account of the sweetness and abundance of the fruit. In 
 Italy it is sometimes the fig, sometimes the orange, ac- 
 cording to the province, or caprice.’ 
 
 The Venerable Bede, not content with giving the 
 names and ages of the Magi or wise men of the Epi- 
 phany, enters into minute details of their personal 
 appearance and their respective gifts. Thus, Melchior, 
 a, white-haired sage, offers the gold: Gaspar, beardless 
 and fresh-coloured, the frankincense; and Balthasar, 
 dark and full-bearded, the myrrh. Bede followed the 
 tradition of his age, the seventh century. But what 
 did Cardinal Mazarin follow, or direct to be followed, 
 when he ordered for his gallery an unbroken series of 
 portraits of the Popes, beginning with St. Peter. A 
 similar series has been reproduced in mosaic at Rome, 
 and may also be seen in the schools of theology at the 
 Seminary of St. Sulpice; the portraits bemg about on 
 a par with those of the Kings of France, beginning 
 with Pharamond, at Versailles, or those of the Kings 
 of Scotland at Holyrood, which (as Sir Walter Scott 
 relates) elicited an acute criticism from a Persian am- 
 bassador. Addressing the housekeeper who was doing 
 the honours, he asked, ‘ You paint them yourself?’ and 
 on her modest profession of inability, he continued, 
 ‘You no able? you try, and you paint better.’ 
 
 The establishment of the National Portrait Gallery 
 under the auspices of Karl Stanhope and the discrimi- 
 nating superintendence of Mr. Scharf, and the Exhi- 
 bition at South Kensington, have enabled us to take 
 stock, as it were, of our possessions in this line of art, 
 and to determine with tolerable certainty which of our 
 earliest portraits may be accepted as authentic, i.e., as 
 paintings from the life. The earliest known in our 
 time was the portrait of Edward III. in St. Stephen’s 
 Chapel, Westminster. This was destroyed by fire in 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 15 
 
 1834, but careful copies had been fortunately taken 
 from it for the Society of Antiquaries in 1812. The 
 earliest extant, of recognised authenticity, is the por- 
 trait of Richard II. in Windsor Castle, where, how- 
 ever, there is a portrait of Edward IV. which good 
 judges (including Mr. Scharf) are inclined to think 
 genuine. They are not so sure of Her Majesty’s 
 portrait of Henry IV., although some put faith in it, 
 strengthened by the features and costume. The earliest 
 of the genuine pictures in the National Portrait 
 Gallery is a Richard III., next in quality and equal in 
 genuineness to the one at Windsor. The second 
 earliest in that collection is a Cardinal Wolsey. The 
 earliest at South Kensington are the portraits of Sir 
 John Dame by Memling, and Edward Grimston by 
 Petrus Christus. 
 
 We can abandon with comparative indifference any 
 small remains of faith we may have cherished in the 
 traditional likenesses of barbaric kings or popes; but 
 it is a very different matter when we are required to 
 believe that no trustworthy images of the heroes, 
 statesmen, poets, orators, and philosophers of classical 
 antiquity have descended to us: that the busts of 
 Alexander, Ceesar, Pompey, Hannibal, Pericles, Homer, 
 Virgil, Horace, Demosthenes, Cicero, Plato, Socrates, 
 Aristotle, with a host of others which we have been 
 wont to admire or venerate, are apocryphal. The 
 prima facie argument is rather favourable to many of 
 them. Fame is more lasting than brass, wre perennius, 
 but brass, bronze and marble are lasting enough to 
 have endured to our time and retain a faithful reflex 
 of form and features, of character and mind. We 
 know that the ancients were never tired of multiplying 
 statues of their great men, and that the highest 
 genius was employed on the greatest: Phidias, on 
 Pericles, Socrates, and Alcibiades: Praxiteles, on De- 
 mosthenes; Lysippus, on Alexander and Aristotle, and 
 
16 “VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 so on. Alexander isswed a decree reserving the right 
 of reproducing his image to three artists: Apelles, for 
 painting: Pyrgoteles, for stone engraving: Liysippus, 
 for statuary in bronze. The more statues the more 
 honour, and the number erected to the popular favour- 
 ites was immense. Unluckily they were knocked 
 down as eagerly as they had been set up when the 
 tide turned. No sooner had the news of the battle 
 of Pharsalia reached the capital, than all Pompey’s 
 statues were thrown down and mutilated. Augustus 
 began his reign by destroying all the busts and images of 
 the assassins of Cesar. At the same time he set about 
 forming a collection of the triumphal statues of the 
 great men who had contributed te the power of Rome: 
 and the imperial city at that time boasted many 
 private galleries rich with the spoils of Greece. If 
 Mummius burnt Corinth with most of its imestimable 
 treasures of art—that same Mummius who gave the well- 
 known warning to the carriers of what he appropriated 
 —Sylla thanked the gods for having granted him two 
 signal favours: the friendship of Metellus Pius, and 
 the good fortune of having taken Athens without de- 
 stroying it. 
 
 But independently of the risks of removal, and the 
 increased difficulty of identification, the accumulation 
 of all the finest productions of art in one place, and 
 that place the capital of the world, which ambition 
 or sedition periodically converted into a battle-field, 
 was one main cause of their being wholly lost, or of 
 their descending in an unsatisfactory condition to pos- 
 terity. Luror arma ministrat : anything or everything, 
 sacred or profane, becomes a weapon in a deadly con- 
 flict when the blood is up. ‘I expect little aid from 
 their hand,’ said Front de Bceuf, pointing to the stone 
 images of saints in his chapel, ‘ unless we were to hurl 
 them from the battlements on the heads of the villains. 
 There is a huge lumbering St. Christopher yonder, 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. iy! 
 
 sufficient to bear a whole company to the earth.’ The 
 Roman warriors thought and acted like the rude 
 Norman baron. When Titus Flavius Sabinus, the 
 brother of Vespasian, was besieged in the burning 
 capitol by the troops of Vitellius, he repaired breaches 
 and formed barricades with the statues of the Temple 
 of Jupiter. Fire and earthquake co-operated with 
 civil war and barbaric conquest to complete the work 
 of devastation: whatever was left unbroken or dis- 
 tinguishable lay buried under heaps of ruin; and 
 when the superincumbent mass of rubbish was cleared 
 away after the lapse of ages, the grand difficulty arose 
 of appropriating the proper names to the best preserved 
 images, and of duly assorting the arms, legs, heads, 
 and noses of the mutilated.! 
 
 This difficulty was aggravated by a known practice 
 of the ancients, which may have suggested to Sir Roger 
 de Coverley the notion of transforming by a few touches 
 of the brush the sign of ‘The Knight’s Head,’ set up 
 in his honour, into ‘The Saracen’s Head’! When the 
 Rhodians decreed the honour of a statue to a general, 
 he was desired to choose which he liked amongst the 
 existing votive statues, and the dedication was altered 
 by the insertion of his name. The prevalence and 
 antiquity of this method of substitution are proved by 
 Plato’s proposed law for compelling the statuary to - 
 form each statue out of a single block; and instances 
 abound of the change of heads from vanity, caprice, or 
 accident. A striking passage in Statius charges Ceesar 
 with the incredible folly of cutting off the head of an 
 equestrian statue of Alexander by Lysippus, and re- 
 placing it by a gilded effigy of himself. Tacitus states 
 that Tiberius decapitated a statue of Augustus to make 
 
 1 The contests between the Turks and Venetians for the possession of 
 Athens, which underwent several sieges, were similarly fatal to tha 
 buildings and monuments of antiquity. 
 
 VOL:: If, C 
 
18 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 room for his own head; and the gods of Greece, in- 
 cluding the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias, were similarly 
 treated by Caligula with a view to his own deification. 
 There is a statue of Pompey at Rome reputed to be the 
 very one at whose base, ‘ which all the time ran blood, 
 oreat Ceesar fell.’ But, objects M. Feuillet de Conches, 
 we must have recourse to some anecdote, suspicious as 
 ingenious, to be persuaded that the head, very badly 
 restored, is really the original head. Rome is full of 
 antiquity-mongers, who will supply any number of 
 consuls’ or emperors’ heads, arms, legs, or noses to 
 order. 
 
 Napoleon was a great admirer of Hannibal, and one 
 day, during a visit to the Louvre, stopped before 
 the bust which bears the name of his hero, and in- 
 quired of M. Visconti, the distinguished antiquary, 
 whether it was authentic. ‘It is possible, was the 
 reply ; ‘ the Romans erected his statue in three public 
 places of a city within the bounds of which, alone 
 among the enemies of Rome, he had cast a javelin. 
 Caracalla, who ranked him among the great captains, 
 also raised several statues to him; but all this is much 
 posterior to Hannibal.’ ‘This effigy,’ rejomed Napo- 
 leon, ‘ has nothing African about it. Besides, Hannibal 
 was blind of one eye, and this is not. Are there 
 any medals of the time confirmatory of this bust ?’ 
 ‘There are medals, also long posterior.’ ‘Then it has 
 been done apres coup. I do not believe in it.’ 
 
 Although the inference from the eye may not be 
 deemed conclusive by connoisseurs, that drawn from 
 the want of contemporary medals carries weight. 
 When medals and gems fail, the deficiency is not un- 
 frequently supplied by inscriptions or books. The fine 
 bust of Cicero at the Vatican is authenticated by a 
 passage in Livy as well as by medals. There are no 
 well-authenticated busts, medals, or gems of Virgil or 
 
 * 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 19 
 
 Horace;* although the biographers of Virgil do not 
 hesitate to describe him as tall and dark, with long 
 flowing hair, whilst the personal peculiarities of Horace 
 may be collected from his writings. The best bust of 
 Plato is apocryphal, which is probably the reason why 
 Mr. Grote’s great work, ‘Plato and the other com- 
 panions of Socrates,’ appears without a frontispiece. 
 
 This range of subjects is inexhaustible ; and our im- 
 mediate object is simply to skim the cream of a semi- 
 classical, semi-artistic causerve. We will now suppose 
 the conversation turning on some other singularities or 
 illustrations of classical antiquity, which throw light on 
 its intellectual or secret history, and suggest parallels 
 or contrasts with modern life and manners. 
 
 We can hardly persuade ourselves that we are not 
 listening to the story of an English or French collector, 
 when we are told of Libanius of Antioch hearing that 
 an [had and an Odyssey of prodigious antiquity were 
 about to be sold at Athens, and commissioning a friend 
 to purchase them. On receipt of the coveted treasure, 
 he sends a fine copy of the Iliad, more recent but cor- 
 rect, in acknowledgement of the friend’s services. He 
 next learns that a copy of the Odyssey which seemed 
 contemporary with Homer, is for sale, and purchases it. 
 But he is so ill-advised as to lend it, and as it is not 
 returned, we find him complaining and lamenting, very 
 much like Evelyn when he denounced the carelessness 
 or dishonesty of the two Scot borrowers, or the French 
 gentleman who was done out of the Malebranche’s 
 letters by the philosopher. Why, asks M. Feuillet de 
 Conches, did he not act like the Faculty of Paris who 
 held out against Louis XII., all absolute as he was, 
 refused to lend him an Arabian manuscript without a 
 deposit of a hundred gold pieces, and would not abate 
 
 1 The ‘ garden of Horace’ at the classic and romantic abode of Kneb- 
 worth is appropriately adorned with the best busts of Horace, modelled 
 after medals, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 a livre on seeing the royal treasurer forced to sell a 
 part of his own plate to make up half the security ? 
 
 The greatest private collection of autographs in 
 ancient Rome is said to have been that of Mucianus, 
 the friend of Pliny the Elder. He specially rejoiced 
 in the possession of the reputed letter of Sarpedon to 
 Priam, which he had discovered in a temple whilst he 
 was governor of Lycia. Among other celebrated au- 
 tographs in which the Greek and Roman collectors put 
 faith, may be named the letters of Artaxerxes and De- 
 mocritus to Hypocrates, the correspondence of Alex- 
 ander and Aristotle, the letter of Zenobia to Aurelian 
 in the handwriting of Longinus, and the letters of Titus 
 to Josephus testifying to the trustworthiness of his 
 history of the Jews. It might safely be taken for 
 eranted without evidence of the fact, that the auto- 
 oraphs of Livy, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, &c. &c., were 
 as eagerly sought after and as highly prized in ancient 
 times as those of the corresponding celebrities in our 
 own. But we are not left to conjecture. Pliny speaks 
 of having seen autographs of Cicero and Virgil. Quin- 
 tilian mentions manuscripts of Cicero, Virgil, Augustus 
 and Cato the Censor, apropos of certain differences and 
 singularities of orthography which the copyists had not 
 preserved. Cicero refers to an autograph of Ennius for 
 the same purpose. Aulus Gellius had seen a manu- 
 script of the Georgics, corrected by the author, as well 
 as a manuscript of the second book of the Aineid which 
 passed for the original, or at least came from the house 
 and the family of Virgil. The first known use of the 
 word autograph is in Suetonius, Litere Augustt Auto- 
 graphes 
 
 A great variety of materials were employed for 
 
 1 An eminent scholar, Le Pére Hardouin (1646-1727), maintained 
 that all the so-called classics were composed by the monks of the thir- 
 teenth century, with the exception of Pliny’s ‘ Natural History,’ Virgil’s 
 ‘ Georgics,’ and the ‘Satires and Epistles’ of Horace. 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. pd | 
 
 writing, besides the waxed tablets, without which no 
 Roman of condition went abroad. For epistolary cor- 
 respondence the Romans used a fine papyrus called 
 Augustan; the second quality was called Livian; the 
 third Claudian. They had also (adds M. Feuillet de 
 Conches) great eagle paper like ourselves. Curious 
 points of analogy abound in this portion of his book. 
 The ancients had ingenious cyphers for their secret 
 despatches, and sent private orders to their commanders 
 or ambassadors which could not be opened, so as to be 
 legible, without a peculiar contrivance or the key. 
 Ceesar’s usual method was to write by agreement the 
 fourth letter of the alphabet for the ‘first ; for example, 
 D for A, and so on, varying the arrangement occa- 
 sionally. The Romans had also shorthand writers, a 
 chosen number of whom were employed by Cicero to 
 take down a speech of Cato. Martial and Ausonius 
 bear testimony to the surprising skill of some of them. 
 We find emperors and consuls scribbling on monu- 
 ments, and as careless of profaning or defacing them as 
 modern travellers or bagmen. M. Letronne found the 
 names of Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, 
 inscribed on the statue of Memnon at Thebes. He 
 might also have copied from it, had he thought fit, 
 ‘Pierre Giroux le grand vainqueur, grenadier de la 
 deuaieme demi-brigade, division Desaix, passait par 
 Thebes, le 7 Messidor, An VII, pour se rendre aux 
 cataractes du Nil.’ | 
 The conceit of compressing the greatest quantities of 
 writing into a given space was carried to excess by the 
 Romans. Cicero speaks of the entire Iliad having been 
 written on just so much skin or parchment as was con- 
 tained in a nutshell—in nuce inclusam. This tour de 
 Force was rivalled by the poet mentioned by Pliny, who 
 contrived to inclose a distich in letters of gold within the 
 husk of a grain of corn, an exploit which may pair off 
 with that of the Frenchman who wrote the four canonical 
 
22 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 prayers on his nail. M. Feuillet de Conches has dis- 
 covered a marked analogy between the French bureau- 
 cracy and the Roman scribes, who formed a corpora- 
 tion of which Horace was a member. They had 
 gradually grown into considerable importance, and 
 must not be confounded with the copyists, masters and 
 journeymen, who answered to our printers and book- 
 sellers. The Sosii were the Murrays and Longmans of 
 the Augustan age of Rome. The patricians were 
 not ashamed to compete with them in this peculiar 
 line of business. The house of Atticus is deseribed as 
 an immense establishment in which skilful workmen, 
 mostly slaves, were busied in copying, pressing, and 
 binding for the book-market. One amongst them, 
 named Tiron, highly commended by Cicero, turned 
 out copies that took rank like Hlzevirs. 
 
 Women were much employed as copyists, and occa- 
 sionally as scribes or secretaries. We have heard, 
 prior to the abolition of serfdom, of white slaves in 
 Russia, embarked in commerce or eminent in art, vainly 
 offering enormous sums for enfranchisement ; and cases 
 of the same kind were of frequent occurrence in Greece 
 and Rome. Anactor was able and willing to give asum 
 equivalent to seven or eight thousand pounds sterling 
 for his liberty. One Canisius Sabrinus (mentioned by 
 Seneca), aman of enormous wealth who wished to shine 
 as a diner-out in spite of his natural dulness, procured 
 a dozen slaves who were made to learn by heart select 
 passages from the popular poets and instructed how to 
 prompt him when he broke down or had nothing to 
 say. As the required duty implied memory and tact, 
 these slaves are said to have cost him, on the average, a 
 hundred thousand sesterces (about 800/.) apiece. 
 
 Mural and monumental inscriptions apart, the oldest 
 specimens of Roman writing extant are those discovered 
 in Herculaneum. These are, a Terence of the fourth 
 century, and a Virgil of the fifth, both on parchment, 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART, pa 
 
 now in the Vatican. How happens it that, out of the 
 multitude of manuscripts in general circulation for 
 several centuries later, not a single known original, and 
 hardly one perfect copy, of an eminent classic author 
 has survived the darkages? The best solution will be 
 found in the never-ceasing war waged against learning 
 and knowledge by bigotry and ignorance, from the 
 decline of civilisation to its revival or new birth. ‘ The 
 Romans,’ says Disraeli the elder, ‘burnt the books of 
 the Jews, of the Christians, and’ of the philosophers ; 
 the Jews burnt the books of the Christians and the 
 Pagans ; the Christians burnt the books of the Pagans 
 and the Jews.’ Take, for instance, the fate of Livy, of 
 whom we have only thirty-five books, and those incom- 
 plete, out of one hundred and forty. Independently 
 of the long chapter of accidents common to all, he was 
 honoured by the senseless enmity. of Caligula, who 
 ordered his works, along with those of Virgil and 
 Homer, to be cast out of all the libraries. 
 
 Livy was afterwards treated much in the same fashion 
 by Gregory the Great, who placed him in the Jndex. This 
 same Pope (says Disraeli) ordered that the library of 
 the Palatine Apollo, a treasury of literature formed by 
 successive emperors, should be committed to the flames. 
 He issued this order under the notion of confining the 
 attention of the clergy to the Holy Scriptures. From 
 that time all ancient learning which was not sanctioned 
 by the authority of the Church, has been emphatically 
 distinguished as profane in opposition to sacred. This 
 pope is said to have burnt the works of Varro, the 
 learned Roman, that Saint Austin might escape from 
 the charge of plagiarism: the Saint bemg deeply in- 
 debted to Varro for much of his great work, ‘ The City 
 of God.’ 
 
 This is not the only irreparable loss that has been 
 attributed to plagiarism. Cicero’s treatise De Gloria 
 was extant in the fourteenth century and in the posses- 
 
24 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 sion of Petrarch, who lent it, and it was lost. Two 
 centuries later it was traced to a convent library, from 
 which it had disappeared under circumstances justify- 
 ing a suspicion that the guardian of the library, Pierre 
 Alcyonius, had destroyed it to conceal the fraudulent 
 use made of the contents for his treatise De Hesilio, 
 many pages of which (to borrow a simile from the 
 ‘Critic ’) lie upon the surface like lumps of marl on a 
 barren moor, encumbering what they cannot fertilise. 
 
 Leonard Aretin, believing himself the sole possessor 
 of a manuscript of Procopius on the War of the Goths, 
 translated it into Latin and passed for the author until 
 another copy unluckily turned up. The Causeur 
 relates a similar anecdote of Augustin Barbosa, Bishop 
 of Ugento, who printed a treatise De Officio Episco- 
 porum. His cook had brought home a fish wrapped 
 in a leaf of Latin manuscript. The prelate had the 
 curiosity to read the fragment. Struck with the sub- 
 ject, he ran to the market and ransacked the stalls till 
 he had discovered the book from which the leaf had 
 been torn. It was the treatise De Officio, which, 
 adding very little of his own, he published among his 
 works ‘to the greater glory of God.’ This was a 
 bolder stroke for fame than that of an Irish bishop, 
 still living, who incorporated a brother divine’s sermon 
 in his Charge. Plagiarism, however, was not esteemed 
 so heinous an offence as it is at present, and our actual 
 stores of thought and knowledge have been enriched 
 by it. Thus, Sulpicius Severus, the Christian Sallust, 
 is believed to have copied his account of the capture of 
 Jerusalem from the lost books of Tacitus. 
 
 How little comparative value was attached for some 
 time after the revival of letters to the classic master- 
 pieces, may be inferred from the confession of Petrarch 
 that he had seen several in his youth of which all trace 
 had subsequently been lost; among others, the Second 
 Decade of Livy. Its fate was curious, although not 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART, 25 
 
 perhaps singular. The tutor of a Marquis de Ronville, 
 playing at tennis near Saumur, found that his racket 
 was made out of a leaf of old parchment containing a 
 fragment of this Decade. He hurried to the racket- 
 maker to save the remains: all had passed into 
 rackets. 
 
 Tacitus had a better chance’ than Livy; for his 
 imperial namesake, after supplying all the public 
 libraries with his works, ordered ten fresh copies to be 
 executed annually; yet thirty books were lost, and the 
 manuscript of what are saved escaped by a miracle; a 
 single copy in a state of rapid decomposition having 
 been discovered in a convent in Westphalia. 
 
 We have lingered with pleasure over this classical 
 gossip, which is just such as may be supposed going on 
 at Lord Stanhope’s, Mr. Gladstone’s, or the Literary 
 Club, when Sir George Lewis, Lord Macaulay, Dean 
 Milman, and Mr. Grote were alive to join in it. 
 Decies repetita placebit ; and although such details may 
 not be new to the accomplished bibhopolist—to the 
 Duc d’Aumale or M. Van de Weyer, for example—we 
 are not afraid of falling under the sarcasm levelled in 
 Gil Blas at the pedant who solemnly narrated that the 
 Athenian children cried when they were whipped; ‘a 
 fact of which, but for his vast and select erudition, we 
 should have remained ignorant.’ 
 
 We shall pass more rapidly over the chapters de- 
 voted to China. But although the gloss of novelty has 
 been taken off by recent travellers, there is still a good 
 deal left in the Celestial Empire for the philosophical 
 inquirer to glean and speculate upon. ‘The respect 
 paid by the Chinese to paper or parchment on which 
 written or printed characters have been impressed, 
 contrasts strikingly with the European mode of thinking, 
 ancient and modern. Martial’s friend, Statius, tells 
 him that his book has all the air of paper in which 
 Eeyptian pepper and Byzantian anchovies are to be 
 
26 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 packed ; and the same vein of pleasantry may be traced 
 in a letter from Hume to Robertson: ‘I forgot to tell 
 you that two days ago I was in the House of Commons, 
 where an English gentleman came to me and told me 
 he had lately sent to a grocer’s shop for a pound of 
 raisins which he received wrapped up in a paper that 
 he showed me. How would you have turned pale at 
 the sight! It was a leaf of your History, and the 
 very character of Queen Elizabeth which you had 
 laboured so finely, little thinking it would soon come 
 to so disgraceful an end.’ After stating that the pub- 
 lisher, Millar, had come to him for information to trace 
 out the theft, he adds: ‘In vain did I remonstrate that 
 this was, sooner or later, the fate of all authors serius, 
 ocyus, sors exitura. He will not be satisfied, and begs 
 me to keep my jokes for another occasion.’ 
 
 To the Chinese, who regard the art of speaking to 
 the eyes by marks or signs as a gift from on high, 
 handwriting and printing, means for the reproduction 
 of thoughts, are sacred.’ The trade of ink-making is 
 esteemed honourable for the same reason. Hence in 
 China a scrap of printed paper or writing is never 
 wittingly trodden under foot or used as a wrapper: it 
 is carefully picked up; and in the vestibule of each 
 house is a perfuming-pan destined to receive and burn 
 all waste papers of the kind. ‘'Tea and other objects 
 of commerce, adds M. Feuillet de Conches, ‘are 
 always packed in blank paper.’ Thus, too, pocket- 
 handkerchiefs being in China an object of show and 
 luxury, every great dignitary is followed by a valet, 
 who, on visits of ceremony, carries his spitting-box and 
 presents him with small pieces of paper every time he 
 wishes to blow his nose. These pieces of paper are 
 blank, never printed or written. | 
 
 The same veneration for writing was professed by a 
 
 * The Mahometans have the same respect for paper, because a line of 
 the Koran may be written on it, 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. Ly 
 
 Christian saint, Francois d’Assise, who flourished in 
 the thirteenth century. If his eye fell on any scrap of 
 writing in his walks, he scrupulously picked it up, for 
 fear of treading on the name of the Lord or any pas- 
 sage treating of things sacred. When one of his disci- 
 ples inquired of him why he picked up with equal care 
 the writings of pagans, he replied, ‘ My son, it is with 
 the letters of these writings that we form the most 
 elorious name of God.’ 
 
 A religious respect for the staff of life, bread, is not 
 confined to the Chinese. We are told of a janissary 
 dropping out of a procession at Aleppo, and dismount- 
 ine to remove a piece of bread, lest it should be pro- 
 faned by the horses’ hoofs. During the great fire of 
 London, popularly attributed to the Catholics, a mem- 
 ber of the Portuguese Embassy was apprehended on a 
 charge of throwing fireballs into houses. On examina- 
 tion it was proved that he had simply picked up a 
 piece of bread and placed it on the ledge of a window ; 
 an act which he explained by stating that, according 
 to a feeling then prevalent among his countrymen, to 
 have left it on the pavement would have beenasin. To 
 return to the Chinese: it stands to reason that they 
 attach the highest value to the handwriting of their 
 rulers and worthies—in other words, to autographs. 
 Even facsimiles are held in high esteem, and the in- 
 teriors of temples are adorned with them, posted like 
 advertising bills against the walls. ‘The great pagoda 
 of Canton boasts no other decoration ; neither does the 
 sreat temple of Confucius at Pekin. By some fatality 
 no manuscript from the actual hand of this philosopher 
 has been preserved. All his autographs have dis- 
 appeared, although autographs are extant of the two 
 preceding centuries. 
 
 The use of red ink is reserved to the emperors, so 
 that it would be neither easy nor safe to counterfeit 
 their autographs, which are carefully deposited in the 
 
28 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 state archives when the immediate purpose has been 
 served. The signature of the Mongol emperors con- 
 sisted merely of the impress of the forefinger and 
 thumb. The first-class mandarins claimed the privi- 
 lege of authenticating documents in the same manner. 
 The Dalar-Lama made his mark with the entire palm. 
 Writing, however, was part of the imperial education. 
 Kang the Third, contemporary with Louis Quatorze, 
 rivalled the Grand Monarque in the importance which 
 he attached to his matutinal condition and preparations. 
 It was his wont, at his ever, to circulate among his 
 courtiers a bulletin written with his own hand, in his 
 own red ink, containing words to this effect: ‘I am 
 well’! One of these papers has been sold for forty 
 pounds in the autograph market of Pekin; and the 
 price sounds far from exorbitant. 
 
 In the competitive examinations of China—in which, 
 by the way, they were as much in advance of Euro- 
 peans as in the first rude mvention of printing and 
 eunpowder—the handwriting carries as many marks 
 as the composition ; and in the case of aspirants to the 
 academy of Pekin, it is the emperor in person who 
 examines the papers, counts the strokes of the letters, 
 and verifies their agreement and form. ‘ One is always 
 sure, therefore, concludes M. Feuillet de Conches, 
 ‘when one has to do with a Han-Lin, or academician, 
 to have to do with a scholar, a distinguished man of 
 letters, and one skilled in the caligraphy of his country.’ 
 
 With a reasonable distrust of their school of painting, 
 the Chinese have never formed a_picture-gallery, 
 although in the strictly imitative arts they never were 
 excelled, not even by the grapes of Zeuxis, the curtain 
 of Parrhasius, or the door at Greenwich Hospital. 
 Their grand stumbling-block is perspective, in which 
 their most formidable rivals are the Pre-Raphaelites. 
 ‘Their style,’ remarks M. Feuillet de Conches, ‘ talent 
 apart, is that of Cimabue and Giotto, abandoned by 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 29 
 
 Massaccio, resumed by Fra Angelico da Fiesole, and, 
 an age later, by Holbein himself in some of his por- 
 traits.’ 
 
 The third part of these Causerzes starts with the 
 aphorism that all collections are useful, although some 
 may be more useful than others. Just so, we have 
 heard it plausibly maintained that all wine is good, 
 although some is better than another, and all women 
 handsome, although some are handsomer than others. 
 Yet we are quite willing to concede the utility, pro- 
 vided the disproportioned trouble and expense in some 
 instances are conceded in return; as in forming col- 
 lections of postage-stamps, of advertisements, of black 
 letter ballads, of ropes with which celebrated criminals 
 have been hanged, or of bills of fare or menus of the 
 best tables, with which a friend of ours, well placed in 
 diplomacy, has filled an album of several volumes. A 
 startling variety are enumerated by M. Feuillet de 
 Conches, illustrated by anecdotes, and setting conse- 
 cutive description at defiance; but his pages are so rich 
 in materials that quoting from them at random is like 
 dipping into the kettle of Camacho: something tempting 
 and racy is almost certain to come up. Thus, apropos 
 of Frederic the Great's collection of snuff-boxes (con- 
 taining more than 1,500) he describes a snuff-box of 
 Talleyrand and its use. It was double, two snuff-boxes 
 joined together by acommon bottom. The one was 
 politely offered to his acquaintance: the other, never 
 to be profaned by the finger and thumb of a third 
 person, was reserved for himself. Here we recognise the 
 diplomate, so eternally on his guard, that when a lady 
 requested his autograph, he wrote his name on the 
 very top of the sheet of paper handed to him. 
 
 The collector of ropes is declared to be an English- 
 man and a member of the Humane Society, who died 
 about twenty years ago. To each rope was attached a 
 memoir of the subject or sufferer ; and in most instances 
 
30 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 the last dying speech and confession was annexed, 
 proving, it is added, the perfection to which, by dint 
 of practice, the eloquence of the drop has arrived in 
 the United Kingdom. ‘Can it be, as is asserted on the 
 authority of an English writer, whose name I forget, 
 that in England the masters were wont to practise 
 their pupils in this kind of composition, so that every 
 good Englishman on entering into the world had his 
 peroration ready en cas of the accident of the gallows ?’ 
 Is there anything that a Frenchman, lettered or unlet- 
 tered, will not believe of an Englishman,—not at all 
 out of ill-nature or ill will, but out of sheer ignorance? 
 In the month of January 1866, a French journal 
 described the English aristocracy as habitually risking 
 their centaine de guinées on the result of a cockfight ; 
 and M. Feuillet de Conches reproduces, without ques- 
 tioning, the statement of Diderot that, in a secluded 
 quarter of St. James’s Park, there was a pond in which 
 the female sex had the exclusive privilege of drowning 
 themselves. So well-informed a writer might surely 
 have learned that the English occupy only the third or 
 fourth rank in the statistics of suicide, and that the 
 Prussians stand first. 
 
 The collection of ropes begins with Sir Thomas 
 Blount, who was executed in the reign of Henry IV. 
 It contains instruments which, according to the notes 
 annexed, had served in executions when the culprit or 
 martyr was hung between two dogs or with a dog 
 tied to his feet. There, too, was the silken cord which 
 Lord Ferrers begged hard to substitute for the hempen 
 one; as great a curiosity as the sword which Balaam 
 wished for to punish his ass; and with it might have 
 been appropriately ticketed one of the willow twigs, 
 the received makeshifts in Ireland ; so received, in fact, 
 temp. Ulizabeth, that a rebel with a rope round his 
 neck claimed the privilege of the twig. Bowstrings, 
 which had done duty in the East, abounded ; and one 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 31 
 
 rope professed to be the very rope with which Lord 
 Bacon’s friend tried whether death by suffocation was 
 agreeable or not. The practical conclusion, contrary 
 to the theoretical one of some recent essayists on the 
 abolition of capital punishment, was in the negative. 
 An appropriate inscription to be placed over the door 
 of a collection of this kind might be taken from the 
 Tridelhexe’s speech in the Walpurgisnacht or from a 
 well-known passage in Tam o’ Shanter. 
 
 Light is thrown on manners by collections, common 
 in France, of billets de naissanee, de mariage, and de 
 mort, or denterrement. Those in use towards the 
 middle of the last century were adorned with emblems, 
 like valentines; and artistic skill of a high order was 
 frequently employed upon them. An account of the 
 billet @enterrement of the Duke de Lavauguyon, a 
 masterpiece of the kind, may be read in the Literary 
 Correspondence of Grimm. The same fashion partially 
 prevailed in England; and the card of invitation to the 
 funeral of Sir Joshua Reynolds, engraved by Bartolozzi, 
 would fetch a high price. A plentiful harvest was 
 offered to collectors of a gloomy and reflective turn by 
 the violation of the graves at St. Denis in 1793. One 
 of them, Ledon, physicien (conjuror) by profession, 
 contrived to abstract fragments of the tombs snfficient 
 to construct a sarcophagus for the rest of his acqui- 
 sitions, consisting of bones, crowns, sceptres, shrouds, 
 and other relics and emblems of defunct kings and 
 queens. ‘The bodies were mostly in different stages of 
 decomposition ; but a few were perfectly preserved, 
 and had a complete look of life. Henry IV. looked as if 
 he had just fallen asleep, and his fresh appearance led 
 to an incident, related by a bystander, which seems to 
 have escaped M. Feuillet de Conches :— 
 
 ‘A soldier who was present, moved by a martial enthusiasm 
 at the moment of the opening of the coffin, threw himself on 
 the body of the conqueror of the League, and after a long 
 
32 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 silence of admiration, he drew his sabre, cut off a lock 
 (méche) of his beard, which was still fresh, exclaiming at the 
 same time in energetic and truly military terms: “ And I 
 too am a French soldier. Henceforth I will have no 
 other moustache.” Placing this precious lock on his upper 
 lip: “ NowI am sure of conquering the enemies of France, 
 and I march to victory.” So saying he withdrew. ’! 
 
 The Grand Monarque was found in perfect preser- 
 vation, and his exact proportions were carefully 
 measured and calculated before he was broken up. 
 His height was under five feet eight; and this result 
 supplied Lord Macaulay with the text of one of his 
 most ornate and characteristic passages. Surenne, 
 who, as well as du Guesclin, had received the royal 
 honour of a burial at St. Denis, was also torn from his 
 tomb, and was on the poimt of being flung into a 
 newly-dug pit with the rest, when a savant, struck by 
 his high state of preservation, claimed the body for 
 the National Academy of Anatomy. It remained 
 there till September 1800, when the First Consul, 
 ashamed of the indignity to which the military glory of 
 France was thus exposed, caused it to be removed with 
 becoming solemnity and deposited in the Church of 
 the Invalides. 
 
 Stranger still, and yet better fitted to point a moral, 
 was the destiny of Richelieu, whose body was torn ~ 
 from the grave in the Church of the Sorbonne and 
 rudely trampled under foot, after the head had been 
 cut off and exhibited to the bystanders, amongst whom 
 was Lenoir. A grocer got possesion of it, and kept 
 it as a curiosity till he married, when, to calm his 
 wife’s fears, he sold it to M. Armez pere, who offered 
 
 5 Description historique et chronologique des Monumens de Sculpture 
 réunis au Musée des Monumensfrancais. Par Alexandre Lenoir, Fondateur 
 et Administrateur de ce Musée; augmentée d’une Dissertation sur la Barbe 
 et les Costumes de chaque Siécle, du procés-verbal des Exhumations de 
 Saint-Denis et d’un Traité de la Peinture sur Verre, par le méme 
 Auteur, Sixiéme édition, Paris, An X de la République (1802), 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 33 
 
 it to the Duc de Richelieu, Minister for Foreign Affairs 
 under the Restoration. The offer remained unacknow- 
 ledged, and the head devolved on M. Armez fils. Ata 
 sitting of the Historical Committee of Arts and Monu- 
 ments, on the 13th June, 1846, attention was called 
 to the circumstance, and the president, M. de Monta- 
 lembert, supported by the committee, attempted to 
 repair the profanation. Their exertions proved vain, 
 and were renewed with no better result in 1855. ‘We 
 accuse no one,’ observes M. Feuillet, ‘still the fact is 
 undeniable that this terrible head, the personification 
 of the absolute monarchy killing the aristocratic 
 monarchy, is wandering upon the earth like a spectre 
 that has straggled out of the domain of the dead.’ 
 During the same popular phrensy in 1793, the fine 
 marble statue of the Cardinal at the Chateau de Melle- 
 raye was decapitated, and—‘ to what base uses we may 
 return, Horatio’—the head was used as a balance 
 weight for a roasting-jack by a zealous republican of 
 the district. 
 
 Not content with emptying the tombs, the heroes and 
 heroines of the Reign of Terror danced among them : 
 rivalling or outdoing the patrons and patronesses of the 
 Bal des Victimes. Over the entrance to a cemetery 
 was a scroll: Bal du Zéphyr; and once on a time the 
 patroness stood at the door distributing copies of the 
 ‘Rights of Man,’ bound in human skin supplied to the 
 binder by the executioner. M. Villenave possessed one 
 of these copies. What would not an English collector 
 give for one? What would not the drum made out 
 of Ziska’s skin fetch at Christie’s, should it accidentally 
 turn up? Mathematicians will be glad to hear that 
 there is a joint of Galileo’s back-bone in the Museum 
 of Padua, surreptitiously abstracted by the physician 
 entrusted with the transfer of the relics to the Santa 
 Croce at Florence in 1737. 
 
 The worshippers of the Goddess of Reason were 
 
 VOL, I. D 
 
(3) 
 
 a4 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 anticipated in their taste for horrors by the fine ladies, — 
 the belles marquises, of the early part of the reign of 
 Louis XV. If we may trust the Marquis d’Argenson, 
 their favourite object of contemplation was a, death’s 
 head. They adorned it with ribbons, lighted it up 
 with coloured lamps, and remained in mute meditation 
 before it for half-an-hour before the promenade or the 
 play. The queen, Maria Leczinska, had one which she 
 called la belle mignonne, and pretended to be the 
 skull of Ninon de Lenclos. One may suppose, without 
 any lack of charity, that there was nothing very ele- 
 vating or purifying in the train of meditation which 
 the skull of Ninon de Lenclos would inspire. Yet 
 Queen Maria Leczinska passed for virtuous, and was 
 culty of nothing worse than folly, or a shade of 
 hypocrisy, in sanctioning such a fashion by her example. 
 
 A collector of walking-sticks, M. Henri de Meer, a 
 Dutchman, attracted attention to his collection by going 
 mad and dying with a walking-stick in each hand: 
 feeble imitator of Dr. Morrison, who breathed his last 
 grasping a box of his own pills and calling loudly for 
 more. But the collections which afford most aid to 
 history, and most scope to speculation, are those of 
 wigs, hats, caps, and head-dresses. The vacillating 
 and erratic tendency of national taste, the march of 
 mind, the progress of events, may be traced by them. 
 A war, a peace, a new play, a scientific invention, a 
 public disaster, an actor, a beauty, a hero, a charlatan, 
 anything or anybody that made a noise, originated a 
 head-dress and gave a name to it. There was the 
 perruque a& la Ramilies or a la Villeroy, by way of 
 set-off to the cravat a la Steinkirk, emblematic of the 
 battle in which the star of William paled before that of 
 Luxembourg. ‘ The jewellers, says Macaulay, ‘ devised 
 Steinkirk huckles: the perfumers sold Steinkirk pow- 
 der. But the name of the field of battle was peculiarly 
 given to a new species of collar. Lace neckcloths 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 33 
 
 were then worn by men of fashion; and it had been 
 usual to arrange them with great care. But at the 
 terrible moment when the brigade of Bourbonnais was 
 flying before the onset of the allies, there was no time 
 for foppery; and the finest gentlemen of the court 
 came spurring to the front of the line of battle with 
 their rich cravats in disorder. It therefore became 
 a fashion among the beauties of Paris to wear round 
 their necks kerchiefs of the finest lace studiously 
 disarranged, and these kerchiefs were called Stein- 
 kirks.’ 
 
 During the exultation caused by the naval combats 
 of the ‘Juno’ and the ‘ Belle Poule,’ the French ladies 
 went about with mimic frigates on their heads. There 
 are individual memories associated with this class of 
 article which have a painful yet irresistible attraction. 
 We cannot avert our eyes from the wig of Queen 
 Margaret, the faithless and fascinating wife of Henry 
 IV., of whom it is recorded that she had her pages 
 clipped to hide under their fair tresses the black locks 
 which nature had bestowed upon her. Still less can 
 we refuse the evidence of the ‘ True Report’ of the last 
 moments of Mary Queen of Scots, which sets forth that, 
 when the executioner lifted the head by the hair to 
 show it to the bystanders with the exclamation of 
 ‘God Save the Queen,’ it suddenly dropped from his 
 . hands. The hair was false; the head had been 
 shaved in front and at the back, leaving a few grey 
 hairs on the sides.’ 
 
 The author of ‘ Waverley ’ remarks that the vanity of 
 personal appearance may be found clinging to the 
 soldier who leads a forlorn hope, and the criminal 
 who ascends the scaffold. The minutest details of 
 
 1 The authority is Chateauneuf, the French Ambassador. See 
 ‘Lettres de Marie Stuart,’ &. &c. Par A. Teulet. Paris: 1859. In 
 the fourth volume of his ‘ Causeries,’ published in 1868, M. Feuillet de 
 Conches has devoted a chapter of fifty-four pages to the ‘ Portraits of 
 
 D 2 
 
36 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 Mary’s dress at her execution were carefully studied. 
 According to one account, ‘her kirtle was of figured 
 black satin, and her petticoat-skirts of crimson velvet, 
 her shoes of Spanish leather; a pair of green silk 
 garters; her nether stockings worsted, and coloured 
 watchet (pale blue) clouded with silver, and edged on 
 the tops with silver, and next her legs a pair of Jersey 
 hose. She wore also drawers of white fustian.’ — 
 
 This account is adopted by Miss Strickland on the 
 authority of Burleigh’s reporter. She adds that the 
 details coincide with those communicated by Chateau- 
 neuf, also from the notes of an eye-witness, which they 
 do with the exception of the stockings. These Cha- 
 teauneuf’s eye-witness declares to have been silk, and 
 the garters he describes as deux belles escharpes sans 
 ouvrage. The stockings and garters are preserved in 
 a collection that has been laid open to the Causeur, 
 and he reminds us, in reference to the large stock of 
 garters comprised in it, that this compromising ligature 
 was not formerly what it is now, a secret or concealed 
 article of dress). Women wore drawers, otherwise 
 called chausses, fastened to the bas de chausses which 
 for shortness we call bas or stockings. The garter, 
 fastened beneath the knee by a rich clasp or buckle, 
 was the connecting-band between the drawers and 
 stockings. There was, consequently, no reason for its 
 not being exposed to view. ‘'This, he continues, 
 ‘explains why in riding dress ladies wore stockings 
 
 Mary Stuart,’ which, as well as the medals, differ to an embarrassing 
 extent. The colour of her eyes is a lasting subject of dispute, although 
 Lord Byron took for granted that they were gray— 
 
 ‘ Napoleon’s, Mary’s (Queen of Scotland), should 
 Lend to that colour a transcendent ray ; 
 And Pallas also sanctions the same hue, 
 Too wise to look through optics black or blue.’ 
 
 It seems to have escaped M. Feuillet de Conches, in speaking of the 
 portraits of Elizabeth, that she repeatedly forbade by proclamation any 
 portrait of her to be taken or sold without her leave. 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. oT 
 
 richly worked and garters set with jewels; how a 
 Duchess of Orleans (whose garters were inventoried) 
 could venture during her widowhood to have tears and 
 thoughts (pensées) enamelled on them; how Edward 
 - III. could found his great order of the Garter without 
 degrading it by avowing its origin.’ But what was its 
 origin? Surely an antiquarian of M. Feuillet de 
 Conches’s attainments and calibre must know that the 
 old story of the Countess of Salisbury has been given 
 up on all sides, and that the utmost exertions of his 
 learned brethren to solve the mystery have proved 
 vain; although it by no means follows that the actual 
 garter dropped by the Countess may not be found duly 
 labelled in the collection of his friend.’ 
 
 We must return to the inexhaustible subject of wigs 
 and hair-dressing, if only to point out that the new 
 fashion (set by the Parisian demz-monde) of yellow or 
 golden hair with a tinge of red or auburn, is simply 
 the revival of one which began under more respectable 
 auspices towards the commencement of the reign of 
 Louis XIV. The two queens, Anne and Maria Theresa, 
 dowager and regnante, the Duchess de Longueville, 
 the seductive heroine of the Fronde, and the two first 
 favourites, Mesdames De la Valliere and De Fontanges, 
 were blondes; so, for all the aspiring beauties whom 
 nature had made brunes, there was no alternative but 
 to wear a wig or dye. The men fell into the custom, 
 as may be learnt from Moliere, who makes the Misan- 
 thrope exclaim to Celimene— 
 
 ‘ Vous étes-vous rendue, avec tout le beau monde, 
 Au mérite éclatant de sa perruque blonde.’ 
 
 The assumption of the perruque by Jean Baptiste, the 
 son of Racine, secretary of embassy in Holland, is 
 formally discussed between him and his mother-in-law: 
 
 1 Ante, vol. i. p. 35. Ladies present at the feasts of St. George wore 
 the garter round the arm, 
 
38 - VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 ‘Your father deeply regrets the necessity which you 
 say you are under of wearing a wig. He leaves the 
 decision to the ambassador. When your father is in 
 better health he will order M. Marguery to make you 
 such a one as you require. Madame la Comtesse de . 
 Gramont is very sorry for you that you should lose the 
 attraction which your hair gave you.’ 
 
 The entry in Pepys’s Diary for May 11, 1667, runs 
 thus :-— 
 
 ‘My wife being dressed this day in fair hair, did make me 
 so mad that I spoke not one word to her, though I was 
 ready to burst with anger. After that Creed and I into the 
 Park and walked, a most pleasant evening, and so took 
 coach, and took up my wife, and in my way home discovered 
 my trouble to my wife for her white locks, swearing several 
 times, which I pray God may forgive me for, and bee 
 my fist, that I would not endure it.’ 
 
 They renewed the discussion the next day, Sunday, 
 and came to an understanding that she should give up 
 her white locks, on his agreeing to give up keeping 
 company with one Mrs. Knipp, of whom there is fre- 
 quent and rather suspicious mention in the Diary. 
 
 There was no concealment or fear of detection on 
 the part of either sex. The false hair was put off and 
 on by the women like a bonnet or a cap; and a court 
 lady would have felt little abashed at an accident such 
 as recently happened to a fair equestrian, who had the 
 misfortune to drop the whole of her back hair or 
 chignon in Rotten Row.’ 
 
 The fashion of powdering the hair with gold dust, 
 which has recently found votaries both at London and 
 Paris, was commenced by Poppzea the wife of Nero, 
 and copied by Lucius Verus (the adopted son of 
 Aurelius),, who was extravagantly vain of his hair. 
 
 ' Since this was written, the chignon has come to be similarly con- 
 sidered an ordinary article of dress, 
 
; 
 
 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 39 
 
 Authorities are not wanting to prove that the golden 
 and auburn tints which we admire in the portraits of 
 Titian, Tintoret, and Paul Veronese, were produced by 
 a tincture in vogue at Venice in the sixteenth century.’ 
 The collections show that other shades of colour, espe- 
 cially brown and black, have had their day; and it is 
 a disputed question in connoisseurship whether the 
 highest degree of beauty has not been attained by the 
 brunettes. Red or carroty (which is the correcter trans- 
 lation of roux or rousse) has been at a discount in all 
 ages. It was thought ominous of evil by the ancients, 
 and typical of villany during many ages of the Chris- 
 tian era. ‘Judas-coloured hair’ is the spiteful re- 
 proach of Dryden. ‘ Aussi, dans tout notre musée de 
 coiffure, pas un cheveu roux ardent, couleur de carotte.’ 
 
 The reason why Racine put off ordering his son’s 
 wig is obvious enough, when we find that the price of 
 one of the fashionable colour was a thousand Trench 
 crowns. The gentleman whom Sydney Smith, in re- 
 ference to the length and redundancy of his curls, 
 accused of growing hair for sale, might have driven a 
 profitable trade at that time. Down to the period 
 immediately preceding the French Revolution, which 
 introduced crops @ la Brutus, the wigs commonly worn 
 by English gentlemen in the streets cost from thirty to 
 forty guineas ; and Rogers, appealing to Luttrell in our 
 hearing, thus described a mode of theft as practised in 
 London within their common memory. ‘The operator 
 was a small boy in a butcher’s tray on the shoulders 
 of a tall man; and when the wig was adroitly twitched 
 off, the bewildered owner looked round for it in vain; 
 an accomplice confused and impeded under the pre- 
 tence of assisting him, and the tray-bearer made off. 
 
 1 The whole process is described by M. Feuillet de Conches in a 
 volume got up with his usual taste and research, entitled ‘ Les Femmes 
 Blondes.’ The Venetian ladies commonly wetted their hair with vinegar 
 
 and water, and exposed it to the sun till it got dry. Others used 
 unguents of which the recipes have been preserved, 
 
40) VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 Fine hair was a frequent resource in want, and a far 
 higher class were occasionally tempted to recur to it 
 than the heroine of a repulsive episode of Les Misérables. 
 Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, the favour- 
 ite of George IT., is an example. In her earlier and do- 
 mestic days, when her husband was English Minister at 
 Hanover, they were in want of money to give an indis- 
 pensable dinner or entertainment of some sort, and to 
 supply the deficiency she magnanimously sacrificed her 
 hair. Large allowance should be made for the frailties 
 of a woman who thus understood and practised the 
 self-denying duties of a wife. 
 
 Of course there were not wanting censors and puri- 
 tans to denounce wigs and cosmetics, as vehemently as 
 Prynne denounced the unloveliness of love-bodks. An 
 Abbé de Vessets published a treatise against Le Luxe 
 de Coiffures, in 1694, containing a chapter headed, 
 Mariage: une fille coéjfce a la mode nest digne de rece- 
 vor ce sacrement. Another abbé is the author of a 
 book on L’ Abus des Nudités de la Gorge. The name of 
 the first member of the priesthood who adopted the 
 peruke to the scandal of the lay public, has been pre- 
 served. It was the Abbé de la Roviere, a courtier of 
 Gaston of Orleans, who afterwards became Bishop of 
 Langres. How modes of thinking, even on sacerdotal 
 subjects, vary with time and country! When the 
 cadet of a noble family (Pelham), who had been a 
 Captain of Dragoons, was made a bishop by George IIL, 
 he nearly went down on his knees to his Majesty to be 
 permitted to dispense with the wig; and the king re- 
 mained inexorable. The rise and fall of Kant’s wig 
 are thought to indicate not only the fitful changes of 
 the curiosity-market, but the rise and fall of his philo- 
 sophy. It (the wig) fetched thirty thousand florins at 
 his death. At one of the subsequent fairs at Leipzig 
 
 1 In the early part of the reign of Louis XIV. a lady was ordered out 
 of the chapel at Versailles for not being décolletée enough. 
 
 Var 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 4] 
 
 it was sold for twelve thousand dollars, a fall of from 
 fifteen to twenty per cent. ‘The system of Kant was 
 going down. Can the same be said of the philosophy 
 of J. J. Rousseau, whcse shoes (sabots), sold at the 
 same fair, were given for ten dollars ?’ 
 
 M. Feuillet de Conches has had in his hand a pair of 
 the spectacles brought from Venice in the seventeenth 
 century, which became so much the fashion that the éé- 
 gantes never took them off, not even in bed. The glasses 
 were double the size of those now inuse. He has, also, 
 examined a packet of the tooth-picks, imported into 
 France by Antonio Perez, which popularised the habit 
 rendered memorable by Coligny, who was never seen 
 without a toothpick between his teeth. After the 
 massacre of Saint Bartholomew, his body was exposed 
 with the eternal tooth-pick in his mouth; but we are 
 not aware that it has been preserved. 
 
 A collection of buttons was exhibited at the Uni- 
 versity of Ghent in 1845, for the benefit of the poor, 
 and proved a valuable contribution to the history of 
 manners and art. ‘They were not only of all shapes 
 and sizes, in polished steel, in silver and gold, and set 
 with the costliest jewels; but an entire series were 
 painted in miniature by the first artists of the period 
 -—the first years of Louis XVI. There were portraits 
 of celebrated beauties, with copies of ancient statues 
 and scenes taken from ancient mythology. Klingstet 
 made double buttons with a spring, containing two 
 surfaces, and each a che/-d’euvre in its way. Honoré 
 Fragonard, a decorator of note, painted for a gay mar- 
 quis a set of buttons a la Watteau, which have been 
 preserved. Another man of rank wore a set of small 
 watches, without, it is slily added, becoming more 
 famous for punctuality. Equal extravagance was in- 
 dulged about the same time in waistcoats, which, 
 although the material was more perishable, afforded 
 wider scope for luxury and design. An exquisite of 
 
42, VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 the first water was then an improving study for both 
 the sempstress or embroiderer and the scene-painter. 
 One might be seen with the amours of Mars and Venus 
 on his stomach, and another with a cavalry review. 
 ‘We are assured,’ says a writer in the Mémoires Secrets, 
 ‘that an enthusiast has ordered a dozen waistcoats 
 representing scenes from the popular plays, so that 
 his wardrobe may become a theatrical repertory and 
 some day serve for tapestry. After the assembly of 
 the Notables, there were gilets aux Notables, copied 
 from the print described by Bachaumont: ‘The king 
 is in the middle, on his throne: in the left hand he 
 holds a scroll on which are these words, L’dge dor ; 
 but by a very offensive oversight it is so placed that 
 he seems to be rummaging his pockets with his 
 right hand.’ A little later, the guillotine grew into 
 fashion for ornaments, especially for brooches and 
 pins.’ 
 
 The same vaunted collection, which reopens so many 
 curious chapters of social annals, is described as parti- 
 cularly rich in gloves. M. Feuillet de Conches boasts 
 of having himself contributed the identical pair of 
 gloves which Anne of Austria sent to Spain to the Duc 
 d’Arcos, with a letter of business ending with this P.s. : 
 ‘Monsieur Le Duc et Compere, I send herewith a pair 
 of gloves which will serve as a pattern for the dozen 
 which I request you tu have forwarded to me.’ These 
 gloves are of coarse leather ; and surprise is expressed 
 that they could be worn by a woman who, it was 
 feared at Madrid, was too delicate to be able to sleep 
 in Holland sheets. Alongside of them are placed the 
 gloves which Antonio Perez, Spanish ex-ambassador, 
 sent to Lady Knolles with a letter saying: ‘These 
 gloves, Madam, are made of the skin of a dog, the 
 animal most praised for his fidelity. Deign to allow 
 
 1 Gilets a la Robespierre were worn by the more advanced republicans 
 at Parisin 1848. 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 43 
 
 me this praise, with a place in. your good graces. And 
 if 1 can be of no other use, my skin at least might 
 serve to make gloves.’ He was so pleased with this 
 conceit, that in a letter to Lady Rich he repeats and 
 improves upon it :— 
 
 ‘IT have endured such affliction at not having ready at 
 hand the dogskin gloves desired by your ladyship that I 
 have resolved to sacrifice myself for your service, and to strip 
 off a little skin from the most delicate part of myself, if 
 indeed any delicate skin can be found on a thing so rustic 
 as my person.... The gloves are of dogskin, Madame; 
 and yet they are of mine, for I hold myself a dog, and 
 entreat your Ladyship to hold me for such, as well on 
 account of my faith as my passion. The skinned dog 
 (perro decollado) of your Ladyship, Anton. PERzz.’ 
 
 Themost curiouscollection of chaussures (boots, shoes, 
 and slippers) is stated (1862) to be in the possession of 
 an Englishman, Mr. Roach Smith. Besides specimens 
 of every successive age, beginning with the boots of a 
 bishop in 721 A.p., he has several to which an _ historic 
 or romantic interest is attached ; e.g. the shoes of most 
 of the beauties of Charles II.’s court, including the 
 Duchess of Cleveland, the Countess of Muskerry, and 
 la belle Hamilton (afterwards Comtesse de Grammont) 
 with those of Miss Jennings and Miss Stewart (the 
 original of the Britannia on the guinea), stolen, accord- 
 ing to the labels, by Rochester and Kilherew. 
 
 There is an entire compartment devoted to some of 
 the shoes crowned by the Soczété des Petits Pieds, over 
 which the member with the smallest foot presided till 
 she was displaced by a competitor; and a Cinderella- 
 like slipper was kept to test the qualifications of the 
 candidates. If Pauline Buonaparte (Princess Borghese) 
 had competed, she would have been hailed president 
 for life by acclamation. Her feet, besides their small- 
 ness and exquisite shape, were plump (potelés) and rosy 
 like those of a child: the use of crushed strawberries 
 
44 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 instead of soap was thought to preserve their rosiness ; 
 and she was by no means chary in exhibiting them. 
 On ceremonial occasions, a page entered with a cushion 
 of dark velvet, on which she placed her foot, whilst 
 he knelt and drew off the stocking. Her remark 
 on sitting for a nearly nude figure to Canova is well 
 known. 
 
 The Curteux relates a trait of enthusiasm on the 
 part of a milord which we suspect will prove new to 
 his countrymen. A Scotch Earl, Lord Fife, gave 
 Madame Vestris a thousand guineas to allow a cast to 
 be taken of her leg, which was superb. The Earl 
 died, and this cherished leg was sold for half a crown ! 
 The moral reflection is conveyed in a line from Lamar- 
 tine : 
 
 ‘J’ai pesé dans ma main la cendre des héros.’ 
 
 This leg should have been sent to the fair at Leipzig 
 along with Kant’s wig. The Germans are the people 
 for answering to a call on sensibility or sentiment. 
 When Sontag was in the height of her celebrity at 
 Berlin, a party of her military admirers bribed her 
 maid to give them one of her cast-off slippers, had it 
 set as a cup, and toasted her in it till it was worn 
 out. There is another story that a party of students 
 rushed into her hotel whilst her carriage was driving 
 off, and made prey of a wine-glass not quite empty, out 
 of which she had just been drinking. This was put 
 up to auction on the spot and fetched seventeen 
 dollars. 
 
 A pair of shoes has been preserved with the extra- 
 vagantly high heels painted by Watteau to represent a 
 flock or sheep-fold (bergerie) of Loves. The Duchess 
 de Berry had a shoe that once belonged to Louis XIV., 
 of dark velvet, embroidered with flewrs-de-is and 
 adorned with a battle-piece painted by Parrocel. 
 
 ‘ Puasque nous causons, let us pause a little to speak 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 45 
 
 of the history of flowers, of the flowers that Marie 
 Antoinette loved so well, that she so largely contributed 
 to multiply and embellish. We willingly pause to 
 record the plausible claim put in for the invention of 
 what is commonly called the English system of gar- 
 dening, by a Frenchman in the time of Louis Quatorze. 
 It was the poet Du Fresnoy, we are assured, who first 
 ventured on substituting the picturesque variety of the 
 landscape painter for the rectilinear style of the 
 architects, and was made comptroller of the royal gar- 
 dens in recognition of his merit. But nature and 
 simplicity were sadly out of keeping with the artificial 
 grandeur of Versailles. The genius of Du Fresnoy 
 was chilled or rebuked by his royal patron, and the 
 reform planned by him stopped short. ‘ His system 
 returned to us,’ says the Curzeux, ‘in the following age, 
 with the British stamp on it, as so many products of 
 French imagination return to us.’ Gurardin created 
 Ermenonville; M. Boutin, Tivoli; M. de la Borde, 
 Meréville ; the poet-painter Watelet, Moulin-Joli. The 
 Prince de Ligne did his best to correct the stiffness of 
 his paternal alleys and flower-beds. Then, in 1774, 
 came Marie Antoinette, who, under the direction of 
 Bernard de Jussieu and a clever gardener, converted 
 Trianon into a charming parterre, where the system of 
 the English painter, Wilham Kent, and his rival, Browne 
 (the inventor Du Fresnoy was altogether forgotten), was 
 more followed than the severe harmony of Le Nostre 
 and De la Quintenie. 
 
 Kent died in 1748 ; and Browne achieved his highest 
 distinction by layimg out the grounds of Blenheim, 
 where he committed a solecism which proved a com- 
 promising one for his illustrious employer, the great 
 Duke of Marlborough. A magnificent bridge over a 
 streamlet provoked the epigram : 
 
 ‘The lofty arch his high ambition shows; 
 The stream an emblem of his bounty flows,’ 
 
46 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 Our neighbours were in no hurry to reclaim their 
 property in the invention, if it can be so termed; and 
 we suspect that the resumption simply formed part of 
 the Anglomania that came over them about the time 
 when Marie Antoinette began amusing herself with the 
 creation of Le petit Trianon. Her fondness for flowers 
 led to one of those revolutions in head-dresses of which 
 specimens may be multiplied to weariness. When 
 flowers got common, the court ladies took first to fruit 
 and afterwards to vegetables. Chaplets of artificial 
 radishes and carrots were in vogue. Madame de 
 Matignon appeared one day, a@ la jardiniere, in a head- 
 dress of brown linen striped with blue, ornamented by 
 the artist hand of Leonard with a head oF brocoli and 
 an artichoke. 
 
 The bare list of collections visited by the Curreux 
 would fill many pages. But his master passion is for 
 autographs ; and he is constantly digressing to expatiate 
 on their value and their charm; on the best methods 
 of utilising and the sacred duty of preserving them. 
 Indeed, he is a veritable Chinese in his reverence for 
 written paper; and he would cordially assent to the 
 second branch of the rowé maxim, Write not, Burn not, 
 without regarding, probably without suspecting, the 
 consummate profligacy that lurked in it. Yet in his 
 highly interesting dissertation on the Cassette aux 
 Poulets of Fouquet, he incidentally demonstrates the 
 imprudence, to use no stronger term, of giving a per- 
 manent form to any shade of forbidden feeling or any 
 passing burst of irritability, disappointment or caprice. 
 
 1 Madame Ratazzi’s character of herself, addressed to and published 
 by M. d’Ideville, contains this passage :—‘ Mais j’oubliais deux choses: 
 1° que je ne veux pas me moquer de vous: 2° que j’oublie sans cesse la 
 recommandation que m’avait faite ma belle-mére, une femme d’esprit, le 
 jour de mon mariage: ‘Soyez sage, mon enfant, si vous pouvez,” me 
 dit-elle & voix basse, “ mais surtout, quoi qu’il arrive, mettez des verrous 
 & vos portes et n’écrivez jamais.” J’ai toujours fait tout le contraire.’— 
 Journal dun Diplomate. 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. AT 
 
 The one may make an enemy or unmake a friend; the 
 other may destroy a reputation. ‘Trifles light as air, 
 once cominitted to paper, have often led to complica- 
 tions in which peace, fortune, and happiness have been 
 wrecked. 
 
 Fouquet, the prince of financiers, was not less re- 
 nowned for gallantry than for liberality and wealth. 
 His downfall was owing to his indiscreet rivalry with 
 his royal master both in magnificence and love. The 
 first step after his arrest was the seizure of his papers, 
 including the casket in which he kept those notes and 
 letters of female friends and applicants which pass 
 under the denomination of poulets. The opening of 
 this casket was dreaded like that of another Pandora’s 
 box, without Hope at the bottom. What varied evils, 
 what scandalous disclosures, what revelations of broken 
 fortunes and fallen or falling virtue, might come forth! 
 The King himself opened the casket, and its contents 
 were read by only two persons besides himself, the 
 Queen and Tellier (the royal confessor). All sorts of 
 stories were afloat, and Madame de Motteville remarks 
 that few persons about the Court where exempt from 
 the charge of having sacrificed to the golden calf: 
 that the fable of Danie was fully borne out; and that, 
 since by extraordinary ill-luck Fouquet kept all the 
 letters addressed to him, things were read which did 
 great harm to very many persons. Rumour and 
 malice added, coloured, or invented. A pretended 
 letter from Madame Scarron (afterwards Madame de 
 Maintenon) was handed about, containing this pas- 
 sage :— 
 
 ‘J’ai toujours fuy le vice, et naturellement je hais le 
 péché ; mais je vous avoue que je hais encore davantage la 
 pauvreté. J’ai recu de vous dix mille écus; si vous voulez 
 
 encore en apporter dix mille dans deux jours, je verrai ce 
 que j’aurai a faire.’ 
 
 Another version of the letter commences differently 
 
48 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 and ends: ‘Je ne vous defends pas despérer. The 
 Curieuz indignantly denounces this letter as a fabrica- 
 tion, and justifies his incredulity by a passage in the 
 Souvenirs of Madame de Caylus: ‘I remember to 
 have heard that Madame Scarron, being one day 
 obliged to go to speak to M. Fouquet, she thought fit 
 to go so negligently dressed that her friends were 
 ashamed to take her there. Everybody knows what 
 M. Fouquet was, and his weakness for women, and how 
 the vainest and the best placed sought to please him.’ 
 
 The uncharitable might put an opposite interpreta- 
 tion on this neglected dress ; and the best defence for 
 Madame Scarron is the continued respect in which she 
 was held by the Court and her private marriage to the 
 King. There is no hatred. like religious hatred, and 
 this very marriage became a fresh topic for calumny in 
 the hands of those who had suffered from the persecu- 
 tions encouraged by her bigotry. ‘In 1835, at the 
 French Hospital in London,’ says the Curzeux, ‘1 found 
 in the possession of an old female inmate, an English 
 libel against Madame de Maintenon, entitled, The 
 French King’s Wedding, or the Royal Frolic; being a 
 pleasant account of the intrigues, comical courtship, 
 caterwauling, and surprising marriage ceremonies of 
 Louis XIV. with Madame de Maintenon, with a Comi- 
 cal Song, sung to His Majesty: 1708. The old Pro- 
 testant obstinately refused to cede me the book, which 
 she read and re-read with pleasure, although she found 
 difficulty in understanding it.’ 
 
 A second lady whom the Curiewx deems unjustly 
 calumniated was the Marquise du _ Plessis-Belliére, 
 accused of having assisted Touquet in his designs on 
 Madame de la Valliere on the strength of what is 
 termed a hideous apocryphal letter amongst the papers 
 of Conrart. The Marquise was a friend of Fouquet 
 and rendered him important political services, whether 
 she was paid for them or not. The reputation of 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. AY 
 
 another great lady, the Princess of Monaco (née de 
 Grammont), who was also compromised by the corre- 
 spondence, is abandoned as not worth defending ; and 
 in this instance at least a sound discretion has been 
 exercised. Leaving her husband to the solitary en- 
 joyment of his miniature sovereignty, she lived a gay 
 life at the French Court, where she was renowned for 
 the rapid succession of her lovers, every one of whom 
 was regularly hung in effigy by the Prince in the 
 avenue of his palace at Monaco, with a label round 
 the neck. The number became startling ; strangers 
 came from far and near to admire the spectacle; and 
 the circumstance at length came to the ears of the 
 Grand Monarque. He tried at first to interfere with a 
 high hand, but finding his threats vain, and the scandal 
 on the increase, he was fain to conciliate the Prince by 
 a promise that astrict guard should henceforth be kept 
 on the Princess; whereupon the effigies were removed. 
 
 Another letter to Fouquet, which no virtuous woman 
 could have written, endorsed Lettre dune Inconnue by 
 Conrart, was by turns attributed to Madame Scarron 
 and Madame de Sévigné in the Wémotres sur la Bastille, 
 and finally given to Madame de Sévigné by the rest of 
 the scandalous chronicles in circulation. Her known 
 and avowed letters go far to refute the calumny. 
 ‘With him’ (Fouquet), she writes to Bussy, ‘I have 
 always the same precautions and the same fears, which 
 notably retard the progress he would willingly make. 
 I believe he will be tired at last of always recom- 
 mencing uselessly the same thing.’ 
 
 The following passage is copied verbatim et literatim 
 from an autograph letter of hers to-Ménage in the 
 possession of the Curzeuc : 
 
 ‘Je vous remercie, mon cher monsieur, de toutes vos 
 nouuelles. Il y en a deux ou trois dans vostre lettre que ie 
 ne sauois point. Pour celles de M. Fouquet, ie nentends 
 parler dautre chose. Je pense que vous saues bien le de- 
 
 VOL, Il. E 
 
50 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 plesir que iay eti davoir esté trouuée dans le nombre de 
 celles qui luy ont escrit. Il est vray que ce nestait ny la 
 galanterie, ni linterest que mauoient obligée davoir vn com- 
 merce avec luy. Lon voit clairement que ce nestait que 
 pour les affaires de M. de la Trousse; mais cela nempesche 
 pas que ie naye esté fort touchée de voir quil les avoit mises 
 dans la cassette de ses poulets, et de me voir nommée parmy 
 celles qui nont pas eu des sentimens si purs que moy. Dans 
 cette occasion iay besoin que mes amis instruisent ceux qui 
 ne le sont pas. Je vous croy asses genereux pour vouloir 
 en dire ce que M®. de la Fayette vous en aprendra, et lay 
 receu tant dautres marques de vostre amitié que je ne fais 
 nulle facon de vous coniurer de me donner encore celle-cy.’ 
 
 Bussy-Rabutin who, like Fouquet, had failed to 
 touch his charming cousin’s heart, quarrelled with her, 
 and took an ungenerous revenge in his Histozre Amou- 
 reuse des Gaules. But he soon grew ashamed of his 
 conduct, and did his best to compensate for the wrong 
 by (to use his own language), ‘siding with her loudly 
 against the people who sought to confound her with 
 the mistresses of the minister.’ To be well-armed for 
 the campaign, he saw Tellier, and was assured by him 
 that ‘ the letters of Madame de Sévigné were the letters 
 of a friend who had a great deal of wit, and that they 
 had amused the King more than the insipid tenderness 
 of the other letters, but that the surintendant had mal 
 a& propos mixed love with friendship.’ Tellier, it is 
 justly added, was not the man to palliate evil if there was 
 any, for it was he of whom the Comte de Grammont 
 said, on seeing him go out from a private conference 
 with the King, ‘He looks like a polecat that has just 
 been killing chickens and is licking his blood-stained 
 muzzle.’ 
 
 Both Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Maintenon 
 are in high favour with the Curieux, having both con- 
 tributed largely to his collection of autographs ; and he 
 insists on throwing the entire responsibility of the re- 
 vocation of the Edict of Nantes, and other arbitrary 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. agi 
 
 measures suggested or sanctioned by Madame de Main- 
 tenon, on the King. The ingrained absolutism and 
 egotism of Louis XIV., he contends, were at their acme 
 from his earliest years. In the public library of &t. 
 Petersburg, under the glass covering of a collection of 
 autographs, may be seen one of the copybooks in which 
 his Majesty practised writing as a child. Instead of 
 ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners,’ or 
 ‘ Virtue is its own reward, the copy set for him was 
 this: ‘ Les rows font tout ce qwils veulent.’ 
 
 The best mode that could be hit upon for teaching 
 history to Louis XV. was that recommended by S8t. 
 Simon to Fleury, the royal preceptor, afterwards car- 
 dinal and minister. It was to hang a gallery with his- 
 torical portraits and sketches, to make this the place of 
 reception for the children of the nobility who came to 
 pay their respects to their young sovereign, to have 
 them tutored beforehand and accompanied by precep- 
 tors, who were to lead the conversation to prominent 
 events or characters, and so draw him on to make 
 inquiries and pick up information. 
 
 More than half (300 pages) of the third volume of 
 the Causeries is devoted to Montaigne, who is held in 
 high favour, despite of two peculiarities which might 
 have been expected to lower him in the opinion of a 
 collector of autographs. He was an infrequent and 
 careless correspondent, and he expressed a thorough 
 contempt for all who wrote letters with a view to 
 publication or literary fame. He excepts none, not 
 even Cicero and Pliny the Younger, of whom he 
 Says : 
 
 ‘This surpasses all meanness of heart in persons of their 
 rank to have wished to derive glory from egotism and prattle, 
 to the point of employing for this purpose their private 
 letters to their friends; so that, some having missed the 
 time for being sent, they have notwithstanding published 
 them with this worthy excuse that they were unwilling to 
 
 E2 
 
BW, VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 lose their pains... . Does it become two Roman consuls, 
 sovereign magistrates of the imperial State of the world, to 
 occupy their leisure in arranging and dressing up a fine 
 missive, to draw from it the reputation of understanding 
 well the language of their nurse? What could a school- 
 master, who gained his livelihood by it, do worse ?’ 
 
 What would Montaigne have said had he lived to 
 be told of the miserable subterfuge of Pope, who sur- 
 reptitiously caused his letters to be published, and then 
 denounced the publication asa theft; or of the anxious 
 care taken by Horace Walpole to transmit corrected 
 copies of epistolary gossip to posterity? Be their mo- 
 tives what they might, we are indebted to them for com- 
 positions which the world would not willingly let die. 
 
 Throwing over Pliny somewhat unceremoniously and 
 unnecessarily, M. Feuillet de Conches takes up the 
 cudgels for Cicero, who, he vows, did not write his 
 letters to his familiars—ad familiares—for any eyes 
 but theirs ; and the proof is that, when Atticus applied 
 to him for copies, with a view to a complete collection, 
 he had none. Montaigne, too, it is retorted, printed 
 some of his own letters; whilst his mode of speaking 
 of them and his method of epistolary composition is 
 strongly marked by self-complacency :— 
 
 ‘On this subject of letters, I wish to say this one word, 
 that if is a work in which my friends hold that I am 
 capable of something; and I should more willingly have 
 chosen this form of publishing my whims, had I had anyone 
 to speak to (sz feusse ew a qua parler). I needed, what I 
 have had at other times, a certain commerce that attracted, 
 sustained, and excited me. If all the paper was in existence 
 that I have ever blotted for the ladies, when my hand was 
 truly carried away by my passion, there would haply be 
 found some page worthy to be communicated to idle youth 
 misled by this madness.’ 
 
 After saying that he writes very fast, and very badly, 
 trusting to the indulgence of the great personages with 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 53 
 
 whom he corresponds to excuse blots and erasures, he 
 * continues :— 
 
 ‘ The letters which cost me most are those that are worth 
 least ; from the moment that I flag, it isa sign that I am 
 no longer in the vein. I readily begin without plan; the 
 first sometimes produces the second... . 
 
 ‘ As I had rather compose two letters than close and fold 
 one, I always resign this duty to another; so that, when 
 the substance is finished, I would willingly charge some one 
 with the duty of adjusting those long harangues, offers, and 
 prayers, that we place at the end, and wish that some new 
 custom would deliver us from them.’ 
 
 His wish has been granted, and our formal conclu- 
 sions are now speedily dispatched. His habit of be- 
 ginning without a plan recalls Rousseau’s beau idéal of 
 a love-letter, which should be begun without the writer 
 knowing what he is going to say and end without his 
 knowing what he has said. The letter of a celebrated 
 Frenchwoman to her husband is a model of concise- 
 ness. ‘Je commence, parce que je nat rien a faire: je 
 jinis parce que je nar rien a dire’ —T. A. V. 
 
 The increased facility of communication has en- 
 couraged brevity and haste ; we dash off a dozen letters 
 in an hour instead of devoting half a morning to the 
 production of one; and literary people are remarkable 
 for carelessness in this respect,—probably on the prin- 
 ciple avowed by Madame de Staél : ‘ Since I have aimed 
 openly at celebrity by my books, I have left off paying 
 any attention to my letters.’ 
 
 The literary public are indebted to M. Feuillet de 
 Conches for a valuable collection of letters in which 
 the place of honour is assigned to Montaigne ;* and 
 his familiarity with the style and hand-writing of this, 
 the quaintest and most original of essayists, led to his 
 being called in to decide an amusing and instructive 
 
 1 ‘Lettres inédites de Michel de Montaigne et de quelques autres 
 personnages pour seryir & l’histoire du seiziéme siécle.’ 
 
54 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 controversy. An autograph letter of Montaigne be- 
 longing to the Countess Boni de Castellain was put up 
 to auction in 1834, and the agent of M. de Pixerécourt, 
 having received an unlimited commission, gave 700 
 francs for it to the extreme disgust of his employer ; 
 who, on the chance of getting rid of his bargain, started 
 what at first sounded like a plausible objection to its 
 authenticity. The autograph was a report, dated 
 February 16, 1588, to Maréchal de Matignon of what 
 befell the writer and his party in an encounter with a 
 troop of Leaguers, and contains this sentence: ‘ Nous 
 n’osiens cependant passer outre pour l’incertitude de la 
 streté de nos persones, de quoi nous devions estre 
 esclercis sur nos passepors.’ 
 
 Thedoubt arose from the word passepors, which, it was 
 contended, was more modern. Thereply wasthat, besides 
 being aged 4 in another letter of Montaigne’s and 3 in one 
 from the Cardinal de Lorraine of anterior date, it actually 
 occurs eight times in the Ordonnance d’ Institution des 
 Postes framed under Louis XI. in 1464. An autograph, 
 however, like Ceesar’s wife, cannot endure suspicion : 
 to be once discredited is enough ; and the letter which 
 cost 700 francs was subsequently thought dear at thirty. 
 The word passport, it may be remembered, is intro- 
 duced by Shakspeare in Henry V.’s speech before the 
 battle of Agincourt: ‘Let him depart: his passport 
 shall be made.’ But it appears from ‘ The Sentimental 
 Journey, published in 1768, that passports were not 
 then in general use for travelling in time of peace: ‘I 
 had left London (says Yorick) with so much precipita- 
 tion that it never entered my mind that we were at 
 war with France; and had reached Dover, and looked 
 through the hills beyond Boulogne, before the idea 
 presented itself; and with this in its train, that there 
 was no getting there without a passport.’ + 
 
 1 The most astounding collection of forged autographs ever known 
 was that for which MM. Chasles and Elié de Beaumont stood god- 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY. AND ART. 5D 
 
 In the first chapter of his Fourth Book, entitled Voyage 
 ou il vous plaira, the Curteux analyses the nature of the 
 interest we take in the personal qualities of authors, 
 and strengthens his theory by the authority of Addison 
 in the ‘Spectator, who begins by drawing a portrait 
 of himself, which, although verging on caricature, has 
 preserved two or three of the genuine and strongly 
 marked features of the original. If not quite so taci- 
 turn as his literary double, Addison used to say of 
 himself that, with respect to intellectual wealth, he 
 could draw bills for a thousand pounds, though he had 
 not a guinea in his pocket. It was said of Corneille 
 quil avait tout son esprit en génie; and he pleads 
 guilty to the impeachment :— 
 
 ‘ J’ai la plume féconde et la bouche stérile, 
 Bon galant au théatre et fort mauvais en ville; 
 
 Et V’on peut rarement m’écouter sans ennui, 
 Que si je me produis par la bouche d’autrui.’ 
 
 According to an autograph note written by the 
 Abbé d’Olivet for Voltaire and verified by the Curieux, 
 there was another peculiarity in which the author of 
 the Cid resembled another English writer of genius. 
 Pope says in one of his letters that he had been three 
 weeks waiting for his imagination; and his habit was 
 to take instant advantage of it when it came; rising 
 frequently in the middle of the night to fix a thought, 
 an image, or a rhyme. The fitfulness of Corneille’s 
 inspirations is thus illustrated in the note. One day 
 whilst Moliere was dressing, two men of letters dropped 
 in and spoke with high praise of a tragedy by Corneille 
 
 fathers ; and the controversy they raised is one amongst many melancholy 
 proofs of the liability of learning and integrity to be the dupes of im- 
 pudent imposture. The number and variety, including Milton, Galileo, 
 Pascal, Newton, &c., &c., should have created distrust from the first ; 
 and how the internal evidence of the forgery escaped so many savans 
 and Academicians is quite unaccountable. It was left to M. Van de 
 Weyer to point out that a passage in a French letter (modern French) 
 attributed to Milton was copied almost literally from the ‘ Notice sur 
 Milton’ by M. Villemain. 
 
56 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 played the night before for the first time. Moliere 
 listened without uttermg a word. When he was 
 dressed, he began, ‘ Well, gentlemen, so you believe 
 that Corneille is the author of what you have heard ? 
 Learn that there is a little demon who has conceived a 
 friendship for him, and who has the wit of a demon. 
 When he sees Corneille seating himself at his desk to 
 bite his nails and try to make verses, he approaches 
 and dictates four, eight, ten, sometimes twenty verses 
 in succession, which are superior to anything that a 
 mere man can make. After which the little demon, 
 who is as mischievous as a demon, withdraws some 
 paces off, saying, ‘ Let us see how the rogue will get 
 on without help.” Corneille then makes the ten, 
 twenty, thirty following verses; amongst which there 
 are none but very ordinary, or even there are some 
 very bad. The next day the same game is recom- 
 menced between the demon and Corneille. The whole 
 piece is composed in this manner. Beware, gentlemen, 
 of confounding the two authors. The one is a man, 
 but the other is far more than a man.’ 
 
 This differs somewhat from the fine criticism of St. 
 Evremond where he says: ‘ That which is not excellent 
 in him (Corneille) seems bad, less from bemg bad than 
 from not having the perfection which he had managed 
 to reach in other things. He preferred Rodogune to all 
 his pieces; the public, Cinna.’ The note (St. Evremond’s) 
 concludes: ‘ This iswhat I have heard related by the late 
 Baron, our Roscius, who was present when Moliere said 
 it. I can also certify that M. de Maucroix, canon of 
 Ttheims, who died in 1708 at the age of ninety, told 
 me that the audience at the theatre rose when Corneille 
 entered, as for the Prince de Condé; and this he has 
 told me more than once.’ 
 
 The lively illustration of Moliére would apply to 
 many other men of genius—aliquando bonus dormitat 
 fomerus; and we have heard as coming from the 
 
 - 
 
VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 57 
 
 mouth of an English author fond of argument, the 
 remark given by the Curieuwx to Nicole of Port-Royal, 
 in reference to his friend Troisville: ‘ He has the best 
 of it in the room; but he is no sooner at the bottom 
 of the staircase than I have confuted him.’ Is this the 
 origin of the term Pesprit de Pescalier ? Rousseau fre- 
 quently complains of his own want of readiness and 
 lays claim to the same description of wit. 
 
 Cuddie Headrigg says of Lady Margaret Bellenden, 
 ‘My leddy dinna like to be contradicted; as I ken 
 naebody does if they can help themselves.’ The 
 Curieux does not like to be interrupted ; ‘not,’ he adds, 
 ‘out of pride, but because interruption staggers and 
 troubles his thoughts, and puts him out in his interro- 
 gations. He has been often heard to exclaim, like 
 M. de Fontenelle, ‘My children, if we were to speak 
 but four at once! what would you have? The Curreur 
 has his nerves; you have yours.’ This grievance would 
 be comparatively little felt in England, where conver- 
 sation is more elliptical, and the best talker is lable to 
 be voted a bore if he habitually transeresses Switt’s 
 rule (strongly recommended by Sydney Smith) of not 
 occupying more than half a minute without a break ; 
 it being free to all to get as many half minutes as they 
 can. The well-known incident of the Frenchman 
 watching his opportunity to strike in and murmuring 
 Sul tousse, il est nerdu, could hardly have recurred in 
 this country ; at least not since two of the most eminent 
 modern English historians have been taken from us. 
 
 If there is no precise reason why causeries of this 
 kind should stop anywhere, they must clearly stop some- 
 where, and M. Feuillet de Conches’s readers are not 
 like the audience in ‘ The Critic,’ who (according to Mr. 
 Sneer) were perfectly indifferent how the actors got off 
 the stage so long as they did get off. The Curieuwx, 
 therefore, despite of his dishke to interruption, intro- 
 duces a Deus ex machindé in the shape of his publisher, 
 
58 VARIETIES OF HISTORY AND ART. 
 
 ‘le fidele Henri Plon,’ exclaiming, ‘ Ah, Mon Dieu, est 
 al possible! So you are still rummaging among the 
 ashes of antiquity: you are still lingering among the 
 frosts of the North: you are still at Aulnay with Huet, 
 at Caen with M. de Malherbe, in Burgundy with 
 Rabutin. Are you not also going to run off to London, 
 to Florence, to Mantua, to Venice? And my third 
 volume? And then your photograph, which my sub- 
 scribers insist upon.’ 
 
 The bare mention of the photograph provokes 
 a diatribe against this new and popular substitute 
 for the miniature and the engraving. ‘ Photography,’ 
 replies the Curteux, ‘is my aversion; if it repro- 
 duces monuments and chalk or pencil drawings to 
 admiration, it has infirmities and intolerable falsehoods 
 for living nature. It can make nothing of distances, and 
 does not see true: It falsifies features. It falsifies colours. 
 In a word, it is the antipodes of art; it is the slave of 
 an instrument and has all the defects of one. When 
 Daniel du Moustier painted people, he made them 
 better-looking than they were, giving as ‘his reason : 
 ‘“* They are such fools that they believe themselves to 
 be what I make them, and pay more.” But there are 
 sitters more stingy than foolish, and if photography was 
 dear, no one would submit to it; for it makes uglier 
 than nature. It has been popularised by cheapness.’ 
 And so he runs on, till he has fairly run himself out 
 and is content to conclude in right earnest, leaving us 
 no alternative but to conclude with him. 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 (From THE EpinpurcH REVIEW, For JuLty 1864). 
 
 Life of Edward Livingston. By Cuartes Havens Hon. 
 With an Introduction by Groregr Bancrorr.. New 
 York: 1864. 
 
 WE have rarely been more struck or interested by any 
 biographical work than by this book. It re-animates 
 and elevates its theme by dint of truth and earnestness, 
 without exaggerating a merit or palliating a defect ; 
 and we speedily found ourselves following with anxious 
 admiration the career of a legislator and jurist, whose 
 rejected System of Penal Law has hitherto been 
 thought to constitute his sole title to European 
 attention or celebrity. This effect may be partly 
 owing to the hght thrown by his speeches and corre- 
 spondence on the causes and growth of the internecine 
 dissensions of the United States; but the grand 
 attraction may be traced to the fact that his chequered 
 life, quite independently of its manifold and momentous 
 relations to public measures and events, is fraught with 
 useful lessons in conduct and deeply coloured with 
 romance. We may simultaneously deduce from it, by 
 way of moral, that honesty and energy of purpose must 
 succeed in the long run and that the development of 
 the highest talents, or the prosecution of the loftiest 
 aims, may be fatally checked by pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments resulting from neglect. It is a welcome change 
 to turn from the sanguinary contentions, the sordid 
 passions, and the shattered condition of the American 
 people at the present time (1864), to the wisdom, the 
 
60 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 dignity, and the love of freedom which marked the 
 ereat citizens of the commonwealth in its earlier years. 
 Of these men Edward Livingston was one. 
 
 The master passion of a prosperous family in the 
 New World is to prove its descent from one of 
 traditional nobility or gentility in the Old. A member 
 of the transatlantic tribe of Warrens has printed a 
 comely quarto to prove that the last Earl de Warrenne 
 (who left no issue) was their lineal ancestor; and a 
 Bright of Boston has devoted a royal octavo of three 
 hundred and forty-five pages to ‘The Brights of 
 Suffolk ;* in which, strange to say, he lays no claim 
 to relationship with his distinguished namesake, the 
 Member for Birmingham. We may consequently con- 
 sider ourselves as let off cheaply by Mr. Hunt, when he 
 disposes of the Livingston pedigree in a single chapter 
 of moderate length, having had strong temptations to 
 overcome ; for that pedigree is remarkable alike for its 
 clearness and its respectability. | 
 
 Itmodestly commences with Sir Alexander Livingston, 
 of Calendar, who on the death of James I. of Scotland, in 
 1437, was appointed one of two joint Regents during the 
 minority of James IT., and wasmade Keeper of the King’s 
 person, his associate Crichton being Chancellor. The 
 murder of Harl Douglas in Edinburgh Castle by these 
 worthies, has done more to perpetuate their memories 
 than any good or wise action performed by either 
 of them; but, as was pointedly said by Gibbon, 
 ‘ treason, sacrilege, and proscription are often the best 
 titles of ancient nobility.” The Livingstons had their 
 fair share of this sort of illustration; having generally 
 managed to lose their peerages nearly as fast as they got 
 them by taking the losing side in 1715 and 1745. The 
 destinies of the founder of the American branch, 
 Robert, were swayed, in his own despite, by the in- 
 dependent and insubordinate spirit of his race. He 
 was born in Teviotdale, in 1654, the son of the 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 61 
 
 Reverend John Livingston, who played a prominent 
 part in Scottish ecclesiastical history, and passed the last 
 nine years of his life (from 1663 to 1672) at Rotterdam, 
 under sentence of banishment for Nonconformity. 
 Robert was bred up amongst Dutchmen, and as soon 
 as he came to man’s estate, he started for New York, 
 took up his residence in Albany, then a Dutch village, 
 and proceeded to amass landed property in a fashion 
 which will sound strange to the conveyancers. of 
 Lincoln’s Inn. The first purchase, we are told, was of 
 two thousand acres on Roelof Jansen’s Hill. The deed, 
 bearing date July 12, 1683, was executed by two 
 Indians and two squaws, with names defying pro- 
 nunciation and orthography. The consideration con- 
 sisted of 300 guilders and a strange medley of assorted 
 goods and articles to be paid or delivered in five days. 
 The other conveyances were of the same character, and 
 at the foot of one of them is this receipt : 
 
 ‘This day, the 18th July 1687, a certain Cripple Indian 
 Woman named Siakanochqui of Catskil acknowledges to 
 have received full satisfaction by a cloth garment and 
 cotton Shift for her share and claim to a certain Flatt of 
 Land Situate in the Manor of Livingston; Which Wit- 
 ness, &e.’ 
 
 In this way Robert Livingston became the proprietor 
 of a territory embracing upwards of one hundred and 
 sixty thousand acres, which was erected by patent from 
 the Crown into the Lordship; and he fondly looked 
 forward to its perpetuation, one and undivided, like an 
 ancestral manor in Great Britain, in a succession of 
 representatives. But the force of democratic institu- 
 tions was too strong; and the third possessor parcelled 
 it out amongst his children with as proud a contempt 
 for primogeniture and aristocracy as if he had been a 
 cotton lord or manufacturer—perhaps prouder. In. 
 allusion to the resulting loss of concentrated influence 
 and importance, Mr. Hunt exclaims : 
 
62 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 ‘ What a change has the intervening half century wrought, 
 not merely in the affairs of this house, but in those of all 
 like establishments in this country! The Livingstons are 
 now a multiplied host of for the most part energetic and 
 successful individuals, and their aggregate wealth and in- 
 fluence exceeds the probable dreams of their ambitious an- 
 cestor. Yet the strength which comes of combination is 
 gone from them. Our democracy divides every clan, minces 
 every estate, individualises everybody, disintegrates every- 
 thing. Each man is the head of his own family ; no man 
 can be the head of the family of his ancestors.’ 
 
 Down to this point the writer seems to favour the 
 inference that the change is for the best. But in the 
 very next paragraph we are shown the reverse of the 
 medal, and are warned to anticipate a consummation 
 which is already more than half completed : 
 
 ‘In the United States, we seem to be out-heroding this 
 tendency of the times. Our political leaders, representatives, 
 and even judges, are now too often individuals whom many 
 an obscure, well-bred person would not meet in the same 
 drawing-room for all the world. We are certainly making 
 some progress in bridging the gulf which once generally 
 separated low manners from high positions. Such progress 
 is one of the worst of our present evils; it threatens us with 
 the most palpable of our future dangers. How far the 
 effrontery of ill-bred ignorance and incapacity will carry it- 
 self towards monopolising places of dignity, power, and trust, 
 -is truly a question of moment. It is frightful to contem- 
 plate the possibility that the entire government in all its 
 branches of so great and prosperous a country may, some 
 day, be given permanently over to unlettered and unman- 
 nered statesmen. The whole world always did and always 
 will respect a man who becomes conspicuous by force of high 
 capacity and virtue, in spite of humble birth and imperfect 
 education; but surely it would be better if public opinion 
 should restrain politicians from aspiring to the Presidency 
 without a respectable knowledge of grammar and the pro- 
 prieties of life.’ 
 
 Unluckily it is this very public opinion which en- 
 
oN) 
 
 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 6 
 
 courages these unlettered and unmannered ‘ statesmen,’ 
 as they are called by courtesy, and it will be well if they 
 transeress no higher rules than those of grammar and 
 propriety. The democratic principle, however, was 
 only just beginning to operate when Edward Livingston 
 was approaching manhood: its foundations had hardly 
 been so much as laid when he came into the world ; and 
 he had all the advantages at starting which the wealth, 
 position, and connexions of progenitors and parents can 
 bestow. 3 
 
 His father was a judge of the Supreme Court of the 
 Colony of New York, and was so highly esteemed that 
 one of his most intimate friends, William Smith, the 
 historical writer, was accustomed to say, ‘If I were to 
 be placed in a desert island, with but one book and 
 one friend, that book should be the Bible, and that 
 friend Robert Livingston.’ is mother, Margaret 
 Beekman, ‘a woman of a large and heroic mould,’ is 
 described as a meet mate for such a man. 
 
 Ananecdote of Edward’s boyhood proves both his own 
 sweetness of temper and the maternal sagacity on which 
 the formation of character in children so materially de- 
 pends. One of his sisters came with a complaint to the 
 mother of having been roughly accosted or unkindly 
 treated by him. ‘Then go into the corner. I amsure 
 you have been very naughty, or Edward would not have 
 done so.’ His only battle at school was in vindication 
 of his veracity, when assailed, hke that of Bruce in the 
 centre of Africa, for the statement of a familiar fact. 
 ‘The occasion, says Mr. Hunt, ‘was the moral 
 necessity of backing up a statement which he casually 
 made among his fellows, to the effect that at Clermont 
 they had an ice-house in which ice was preserved for 
 family use through the summer,—a statement which 
 one of the boys, because he had never heard of such a 
 thing before, honestly but indiscreetly pronounced to 
 be—a lie.” He was not remarkable for diligence at 
 
64 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 school, but no degree of idleness could deprive a boy 
 of his stamp of the education of events and circum- 
 stances; and these were of the most impressive kind at 
 the precise time when his heart and imagination were 
 most prone to be moved and stirred by them. 
 
 Born on the 26th May, 1764, he was in his thirteenth 
 year on the day of the Declaration of Independence : 
 his first degree at College, Nassau Hall, Princeton, was 
 contemporary with the surrender of Lord Cornwallis in 
 1781; and his legal studies were completed about the 
 time when ‘a grave little gentleman in black (John 
 Adams) walked up St. James’s as first American ambas- 
 sador. Before attaining his majority, he had mingled 
 in the contest for the most sacred of rights: he had 
 played his part in popular demonstrations: he had 
 witnessed marches and countermarches, advances and 
 retreats: he had seen all that was dearest to him 
 repeatedly at stake: he had heard the angry clamour 
 of the market-place suddenly drowned by the rattle of 
 musketry ; and when his family were hastily decamp- 
 ing with their household goods from their cherished 
 home, with the hostile soldiery at hand, he had 
 caught courage from the hearty laugh of his mother at 
 the figure made by a favourite servant, a fat old negro 
 woman, perched in solemn sadness on the top of a 
 wageon. The training supplied by scenes of this kind 
 is at least as valuable as that which the university can 
 confer ; and Edward Livingston’s mind was fortunately 
 steeled by them for vicissitudes for which no ordinary 
 culture would have afforded an adequate prepara- 
 tion. 
 
 At the same time we are not prepared to accept his 
 own statement that he neglected the usual studies or 
 was deficient in the common round of attainments at 
 school or college. The extensive knowledge of science 
 and literature which he subsequently displayed, must 
 most of it have been acquired—at least the founda- 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 65 
 
 tions of it must have been laid—in his student days ; 
 and that he was not thought an idle boy by his friends 
 appears from (amongst other indications) a letter 
 written by John Jay, from Paris, to Chancellor 
 Livingston (his elder brother) in 1783: ‘I send you 
 a box of plaster copies of medals: if Mrs. Livingston 
 will permit you to keep so many mistresses, reserve 
 the ladies for yourself, and give the philosophers and 
 poets to Edward.’ It may certainly be doubted 
 whether Edward would have consented to this par- 
 tition to the extent of abandoning all claim to a share 
 of the ladies, for his finical attention to his dress had 
 earned him the title of Beau Ned; and at a still later 
 period he wrote on the fly-leaf of his Longinus : 
 
 Longinus, give thy lessons o’er ; 
 I do not need thy rules: 
 
 Let pedants on thy precepts pore, 
 Or give them to the schools. 
 
 The perfect beauty which you seek, 
 In Anna’s verse I find; 
 
 It glows on fair Eliza’s cheek, 
 And dwells in Mary’s mind. 
 
 The ladies in question were the daughters. of Mr. 
 McEvers, a merchant of New York; and the Mary, 
 whose perfect beauty dwelt in her mind, subsequently 
 became his wife. 
 
 The division of labour which is rigidly enforced 
 amongst English lawyers has never been held com- 
 pulsory on the profession in America, where the 
 callings of barrister and attorney are frequently com- 
 bined. We must not, therefore, be surprised at read- 
 ing that Livingston was admitted to practise as an 
 attorney in January 1785, and that he speedily became 
 a formidable rival to the advocates of highest reputa- 
 tion at the New York bar. A sketch of these is given 
 by Mr. Hunt; and amongst other names that have 
 acquired more than provincial celebrity, are those 
 
 VOL. II. F 
 
66 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. No par- 
 ticulars are given of our hero’s forensic career, of the 
 prosecutions which he conducted, the accused persons 
 whom he defended, or the causes that he led. We 
 are simply assured that in the course of nine years’ 
 practice he had distanced the great bulk of his compe- 
 titors, that he was the Romilly or Scarlett of New York, 
 and that his reputation as an eminently accomplished 
 orator led to his being elected a member of Congress 
 for that city in 1794. He was opposed by a Mr. 
 Watts, a gentleman whose speciality was that he had 
 never articulated anything but ‘aye’ and ‘no’ during 
 his congressional career; and he was contrasted for 
 this very reason (his friends thought favourably) with 
 one whose ready rhetoric was denounced as an un- 
 answerable proof of shallowness. 
 
 Livingston’s most remarkable effort in his first 
 session was the delivery of a speech, occupying nearly 
 a day, in support of the right of Congress to question 
 the policy of treaties with foreign countries, on which 
 it was contended to be the prerogative of the President 
 to decide with the consent and advice of the Senate. 
 He also brought forward a resolution for the pro- 
 tection of American seamen; and on each occasion 
 found himself measuring his strength with Madison, 
 Sedewick, and Fisher Ames. His re-election in 1796 
 was vehemently opposed by a man and in a manner 
 that bore ample testimony to the importance he had 
 obtained in the eyes of the antagonist party, the 
 Federalists; who, at the instigation of Alexander 
 Hamilton, made strenuous exertions to get a Mr. 
 Watson preferred to him, on the curious eround, 
 actually put forward ina handbill of Hamilton’s com- 
 position, that he kept a chariot ; rendered more curious 
 by the retorted fact that the Federalist kept a chariot 
 too. 
 
 There is a passage in M. Nisard’s Life of Armand 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 67 
 
 Carrel alluding to ‘ that cabriolet which had been made 
 such a topic of reproach to him, either by men who 
 would have sold the tombs of their fathers to have 
 one, or by those friends of equality who call for it in 
 fortunes to console them for the inequality of talents.’ 
 But this was at a time when it was truly and wittily 
 said of ‘ young France’ that each of them was striving 
 to be the equal of his superior and the superior of his 
 equal; and it is new to us that such an objection could 
 be raised with effect m the freshly emancipated colony 
 still clinging to the habits and modes of thought of the 
 parent country. From the intelligence that is almost 
 daily reaching us, also, of the present social condition 
 of New York, we should infer that the display of 
 wealth in equipages and dress is no longer typical of, 
 nor associated in the popular mind with, aristocracy. 
 
 On the occasion of his second candidature in 1796, 
 Livingston received a letter from his elder brother, 
 the chancellor, which may be read with advantage by 
 many a rising lawyer who is looking to a seat in 
 Parliament or many a would-be statesman who under- 
 estimates the conditions of success : 
 
 ‘ As I naturally feel myself much interested in your poli- 
 tical career, I cannot but entreat you to consider that you 
 are at this moment making immense sacrifices of fortune 
 and professional reputation by remaining in Congress. 
 Nothing can compensate for these losses but attaining the 
 highest political distinction. But, believe me, this will never 
 be attained without the most unwearied application, both in 
 and out of the House. Read everything that relates to the 
 state of your laws, commerce, and finances. Form and 
 perfect your plans, so as to bring them forward in the best 
 shape. Forgive, my dear brother, both my freedom and my 
 style. I write from my heart, not from my head. Be 
 persuaded that no extent of talent will avail, without a 
 considerable portion of industry, to make a distinguished 
 statesman.’ 
 
 The debates in which Livingston most distinguished 
 5 
 
 vad 
 
68 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 himself in the third session possess an historical interest, 
 and throw light on the contrasted progress of demo- 
 cratic and monarchical institutions. Two measures bear- 
 ing a suspicious resemblance to the English ‘ Gagging 
 Bill) and a still stronger to the French Law of Public 
 Safety, were introduced by the President (Adams) in 
 1798, popularly known as the Alien and Sedition 
 Laws. The one made it a high misdemeanour, pun- 
 ishable with: fine and imprisonment, to combine to 
 oppose any measures of the Government, or to traduce 
 or defame the Legislature or the President by declara- 
 tions tending to criminate the motives of either. The 
 other invested the President with power to imprison or 
 banish suspected aliens, or perpetually exclude them 
 from the rights of citizenship, or to grant them licenses 
 of residences revocable at pleasure. 
 
 ‘Both these odious measures,’ says Mr. Hunt, ‘ were 
 passed under the spur of party discipline. Both excited 
 at once the bitterest opposition of the Republican party, 
 and presently incurred the hearty abomination of the 
 country. Such experiments in legislation are not likely 
 to be repeated while our form of government lasts.’ 
 Never was there a more unfortunate prediction. It is 
 precisely ‘ our form of government’ which has proved 
 most fruitful of such measures. Arbitrary restrictions 
 of personal liberty are at this moment rifest in North 
 America, the pride of democracy, and under the 
 French Empire, the boasted creation of universal 
 suffrage; whilst the existing generation of Englishmen 
 practically know nothing of exceptionally repressive 
 or oppressive laws of any kind. The Alien and Sedition 
 Bills were opposed at every stage by Livingston ; and 
 his principal speech against the Alien Bill was printed 
 on satin and largely distributed throughout the States. 
 In one passage, which may be cited as a favourable 
 specimen of his style, he went the length of invoking 
 popular resistance to it if passed : 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 69 
 
 ‘ But if, regardless of our duties as citizens, and our solemn 
 obligations as representatives; regardless of the rights of 
 our constituents; regardless of every sanction, human and 
 divine, we are ready to violate the Constitution we have 
 sworn to defend,—will the people submit to our unauthor- 
 ised acts? will the States sanction our usurped power ? 
 Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the 
 chains which these measures are forging for them, if they 
 did not resist. . . . You have already been told of 
 plots and conspiracies ; and all the frightful images that are 
 necessary to keep up the present system of terror and alarm 
 have been presented to you ; but who are implicated in these 
 dark hints, these mysterious allusions? They are our own 
 citizens, Sir, not aliens. If there is any necessity for the 
 system now proposed, it is more necessary to be enforced 
 against our own citizens than against strangers; and I have 
 no doubt that, either in this or some other shape, this will 
 be attempted. 
 
 ‘I now ask, Sir, whether the people of America are pre- 
 pared for this?—whether they are willing to part with 
 all the means which the wisdom of their ancestors dis- 
 covered and their own caution so lately adopted, to secure 
 their own persons ?—whether they are willing to submit to 
 imprisonment, or exile, whenever suspicion, calumny, or ven- 
 geance shall mark them for ruin? Are they base enough to 
 be prepared for this? No, Sir, they will—I repeat it, they 
 will—resist this tyrannical system; the people will oppose, 
 the States will not submit to its operations; they ought not 
 to acquiesce, and I pray to God they never may.’ 
 
 In the concluding sentences, he was copying, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, Lord Chatham’s famous 
 burst: ‘I rejoice that America has resisted; three 
 millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty 
 as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been 
 fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest.’ As the 
 part Livingston took on this occasion raised him to 
 the height of popularity, it does not appear, nor does 
 his biographer explain, why he retired from Congress 
 in 1801; for the domestic affliction, the loss of his 
 first wife, which occurred subsequently in the same 
 
70 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 month, was not anticipated. He probably began to 
 see the importance of acting on his brother’s advice 
 by attending more to his professional prospects; for 
 his retirement was almost immediately followed by 
 his appointment to the office of Attorney for the 
 district of New York, as well as to the Mayoralty of 
 New York, then a post of dignity and importance. 
 The celebrated De Witt Clinton, we are reminded, 
 resioned, with a view to its acceptance, his seat in the 
 Senate. Besides presiding over the deliberations of 
 the Common Council, the Mayor was ex-officio the 
 chief judge of the highest court of this city, with 
 jurisdiction civil and criminal. The emoluments were 
 such that a few years’ incumbency carefully managed 
 was reckoned equivalent to a handsome competency. 
 Livingston was now thirty-seven: his worldly pros- 
 pects wore a smiling aspect, and his varied duties were 
 performed with spirit and efficiency. His decisions gave 
 satisfaction : his refined hospitality as chief magistrate to 
 distinguished strangers reflected credit on his fellow- 
 citizens, and he was unceasingly active in endeavouring 
 to reform abuses and mitigate distress. A favourite 
 scheme, in which he warmly urged the Mechanical 
 Society to co-operate, was to found an establishment 
 for insuring the employment of, first, strangers during 
 the first month of their arrival; secondly, citizens who 
 had been thrown out of work by sickness or casualties ; 
 thirdly, widows and orphans; fourthly, discharged or 
 pardoned convicts. The leading feature of the project 
 being the opening of public workshops, like the Ateliers 
 Nationaux of 1848, the sound political economist will 
 see at a glance that it could not have been carried out 
 without a mischievous disturbance of the labour market; 
 and the Mechanical Society, wisely, we think, declined 
 to concur in it. His practical philanthropy was of a 
 nature that did not admit of denial or dispute. In the 
 summer of 1803, the yellow fever broke out in New 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. ‘Ge 
 
 York, and spread rapidly in all classes. First among 
 the self-sacrificing portion of the community was the 
 Mayor, who not only saw to the execution of the need- 
 ful official reculations, but kept a list of the houses in 
 which there were sick, and visited them all in turn as 
 well as the hospitals. At length he caught the con- 
 tagion, and his life was in serious peril for a period. 
 ‘He was now, says Mr. Hunt, ‘the object of extra- 
 ordinary popular gratitude and regard. When his 
 physicians called for madeira to be administered to him, 
 not a bottle of that or any other kind of wine was to 
 be found in his cellar. He had himself prescribed 
 every drop for others. As soon as the fact was known, 
 the best wines were sent to his house from every direc- 
 tion. A crowd thronged the street near his door, to 
 obtain the latest news of his condition; and young 
 people vied with each other for the privilege of watching 
 by his bed.’ 
 
 Except in this absorbing crisis, he found time for 
 science and literature, as well as for legislation and 
 jurisprudence, and was always ready to promote parties 
 of amusement, or to add his joyous laugh to the 
 merriment of the gay and young. ‘I wish I could go 
 to the theatre every night, exclaimed a lively niece of 
 sixteen. ‘ Well, my dear,’ said the Mayor, ‘you shall, 
 you shall;’ and he actually took her night after night 
 until she was compelled to cry, enough. Lscorting 
 Theodosia Burr, yclept the celebrated, with a party to 
 see a frigate lying in the harbour, he told her, as they 
 neared the ship: ‘Now, Theodosia, you must bring 
 none of your sparks on board: they have a magazine, 
 and we shall all be blown up.’ He had a mania for 
 punning, but was obliged to own that the only tolerable 
 pun he had ever made was whilst he was asleep. He 
 had dreamed that he was present in a crowded church, 
 at the ceremony of the taking of the veil by a nun. 
 The novice’s name was announced as Mary Fish. The 
 
Ta EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 question was then put, who should be her patron saint. 
 ‘I woke myself,’ said Livingston, ‘by exclaiming, 
 “Why, St. Poly Carp, to be sure!”’ 
 
 The fifth volume of Lockhart’s ‘ Life of Scott’ con- 
 cludes with a laudatory quotation from Captain Hall, 
 and the remark ‘—with his flourish of trumpets I must 
 drop the curtain on a scene of unclouded prosperity 
 and splendour. ‘The muffled drum is in prospect.’ 
 The stage of Livingston’s life at which we have now 
 arrived might well justify a similar pause, and suggest 
 a similar train of reflection. He was in the enjoyment 
 of almost every blessing and not a cloud was visible 
 in the horizon of the future, when a crushing blow fell 
 upon him, shattering both fame and fortune and 
 dooming him to a series of severe trials for the best of 
 his remaining years. In the autumn of 1803, he became 
 a public defaulter for an amount beyond his immediate 
 or anticipated means to satisfy ; and the utmost that he 
 could hope in the emergency was that a charitable in- 
 terpretation of the circumstances would save him from 
 disgrace. It was one of his duties:and perquisites in 
 his official capacity to receive certain monies from 
 public creditors through the hands of agents, for 
 whom he was responsible. He never could be made 
 to attend to pecuniary transactions or accounts: 
 a weakness or peculiarity for which his multifarious 
 engagements. were partially an excuse, especially in 
 the fever year, when the chief deficit occurred. Five 
 years later, in the course of a controversy to which we 
 shall recur, he made a clean breast of the matter in 
 terms which we cannot do better than adopt: 
 
 _ It is time that I should speak. Silence now would be 
 cruelty to my children, injustice to my creditors, treachery 
 tomy fame. The consciousness of a serious imprudence, 
 which created the debt I owe the public, I confess it with 
 humility and regret, has rendered me perhaps too desirous 
 of avoiding public observation,—an imprudence which, if 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON, 73 
 
 nothing can excuse, may at least be accounted for by the 
 confidence I placed in an agent, who received and appro- 
 priated a very large proportion of the sum, and the moral 
 certainty I had of being able to answer any call for the -resi- 
 due whenever it should be made. Perhaps, too, it may be 
 atoned for in some degree by the mortification of exile, by 
 my constant and laborious exertions to satisfy the claims of 
 justice, by the keen disappointment attending this deadly 
 blow to the hopes I had encouraged of pouring into the pub- 
 lic treasury the fruits of my labour, and above all by the 
 humiliation of this public avowal.’ 
 
 The agent of whom he speaks was a confidential 
 clerk, a Frenchman by birth; and it will be fresh in 
 the memory of most readers that Thomas Moore was 
 subjected to a similar embarrassment by the failure of 
 his deputy in Bermuda, and that the ‘disorder in the 
 chest, which compelled Theodore Hook to quit his 
 treasurership at Mauritius, was also mainly owing to a 
 mulatto clerk. 
 
 In his Essay on Decision of Character, Foster relates 
 the true story of a prodigal, who, having sold the 
 whole of his paternal estate and spent the last sixpence 
 of the proceeds, seated himself on a rising ground 
 commanding a view of the property, made a solemn 
 vow to get it back, and by dint of industry and 
 parsimony succeeded in so doing. The dream of Warren 
 Hastings’ life was the recovery of his ancestral home 
 of Daylesford, which he did recover. Moore met his 
 unmerited misfortune with an equanimity that extorted 
 the half-comic praise of Rogers: ‘It is well you are 
 a poet; you could never bear it as you do if you 
 were a philosopher.’ Sir Walter Scott nobly put forth 
 his full strength at all hazards and against all remon- 
 strances, till, like the overtasked elephant, he broke 
 down and died. But no victim or. hero, genuine or 
 apocryphal, could have displayed a finer, more chival- 
 rous, or more self-denying spirit than Livingston. 
 
74 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 Having promptly satisfied himself of his lability, he at 
 once, without waiting for the formal adjustment, 
 confessed judgment for the largest estimated amount, 
 subsequently fixed at $43,666, assigned over all his 
 property in trust for the State, and resigned both 
 his offices. The citizens of New York were not want- 
 ing in generosity: he was strongly urged to retain the 
 Mayoralty ; and a highly laudatory address was 
 voted and presented to him by the Common Council. 
 But his mind was made up to quit the scene of the 
 honours and the prosperity thus fatally reversed, and to 
 quit it instantly for the field of exertion offermg the 
 best chance of the speedy redemption and restitution 
 for which he panted. 
 
 In the spring of that very year, 1803, Louisiana had — 
 been purchased by the United States of France. New 
 Orleans was the rising commercial city, the El Dorado 
 of the South, where talent and enterprise would have 
 freer scope than in any more settled community. To 
 New Orleans, therefore, he would go, and never return 
 to New York till he could return free and independent, 
 with his debts paid and his position no longer open to a 
 reproach. 
 
 ‘He now had need of all his philosophy. He was con- 
 siderably past the period of life when usually, if ever, a man 
 undertakes for the first time such an adventure, and to this 
 one all his habits and associations, his tastes and his affec- 
 tions, opposed themselves. It was to quit the scene of his 
 long prosperity and happiness, his family, his friends, and 
 the fresh graves of his wife and eldest son ; while the comfort 
 and safety of his two remaining children, now nine and five 
 years old, the objects of his tenderest feelings, would require 
 them to be left behind for years. Nevertheless, he resolved 
 upon the enterprise, and having made the resolution, did not 
 lag in its execution. He at once arranged his affairs, pro- 
 cured all practical means of extensive introduction to 
 Louisianians, and leaving his children, from whom he had 
 never yet been separated, in the care of his brother, John R. 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 75 
 
 Livingston, whose wife was Eliza McEvers, the sister of their 
 mother, he embarked, during the last week of December, 
 1803, within two months after retiring from the mayoralty, 
 as a passenger on board a vessel bound to New Orleans. All 
 the money and pecuniary resources which he had reserved 
 out of his property and now carried, consisted of about one 
 hundred dollars in gold, and a letter of credit for one 
 thousand dollars more.’ 
 
 He almost at once assumed the lead of the bar at 
 New Orleans, where his knowledge of languages stood 
 him in good stead; and soon after his arrival he was 
 requested to draw up a Code of Procedure, which 
 thenceforth regulated the practice of the courts. Fearne, 
 the profoundest and acutest of English real-property 
 lawyers, was deeply versed in chemistry and other 
 branches of science. With equal versatility, Livingston 
 was wont to amuse his leisure hours with mechanical 
 contrivances ; and a carpenter whom he employed to 
 make models, naively observed: ‘It is odd that a 
 lawyer should understand my trade so well as 
 Mr. Livingston does: I know nothing in the world of 
 his.” He was a zealous Freemason, and a passage from 
 one of his addresses as President of the Louisiana 
 Lodge, is introduced for the sake of the anecdote con- 
 nected with it: ? 
 
 ‘My brethren, have you searched your hearts? Do you 
 find there no lurking animosity against a brother? Have 
 you had the felicity never to have cherished, or are you so 
 happy as to have banished, all envy at his prosperity, all 
 malicious joy at his misfortunes? If you find this is the 
 result of your scrutiny, enter with confidence the sanctuary 
 of union. But if the examination discovers either rankling 
 jealousy or hatred long concealed, or even unkindness or 
 offensive pride, I entreat you, defile not the altar of Friend- 
 ship with your unhallowed offering: but, in the language of 
 Scripture, “ Go, be reconciled to thy brother, and then offer 
 thy gift.”’ 
 
 Here the speaker was interrupted by the sudden 
 
76 | EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 movement of two of the audience, who rushed into 
 each other’s arms. They were real brothers, who had | 
 quarrelled and not been on speaking terms for several 
 years. ‘No triumph at the bar or tribune,’ said 
 Livingston, ‘could be worth the satisfaction I felt at 
 that moment.’ 
 
 In 1805, he married his second wife, Louise Moreau 
 de Lassy, the young widow of a gentleman from 
 Jamaica and a native of St. Domingo. She is described 
 as exceedingly beautiful. ‘Slender, delicate, and 
 wonderfully graceful, she possessed a brilliant intellect 
 and an uncommon spirit. Two months after his 
 marriage, he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Tillotson :— 
 
 ‘I have now, indeed, again a home, and a wife who gives 
 it all the charms that talents, good temper, and affection can 
 afford: but that home is situated at a distance from my 
 family, and in a climate to which I cannot, without impru- 
 dence, bring my children.’ 
 
 For a time everything seemed succeeding to his 
 wishes. Besides receiving a large income from his 
 profession, he had made money by successful specula- 
 tions in land; and he was beginning to calculate the 
 time—three or four years at the utmost—before he- 
 could return with eredit and comfort to New York. 
 But twice before that consummation could be reached, 
 he was destined to be flung back and pressed down by 
 the heavy hand of power, arbitrarily and wrongfully 
 stretched forth beneath that young tree of liberty 
 which was to overshadow the world with its branches. 
 A private debt due from him when he left New York 
 had been assigned to Aaron Burr, who, in July 1806, 
 wrote to him by one Dr. Bollman respecting it, and 
 arrangements were forthwith made with Bollman for 
 its discharge. When Burr’s conspiracy broke out, 
 General James Wilkinson, Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Army of the United States and Governor of Upper 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. At 
 
 Louisiana, then at Orleans, ordered the military arrest 
 of Bollman and two others on a charge of misprision of 
 treason; and ona habeas corpus being granted, per- 
 sonally attended on the return-day of the writ, to 
 enforce its discharge. In the course of a speech which 
 he thought fit to address to the startled judges, he said 
 he had taken this step for the national safety then 
 menaced by a lawless band of traitors associated under 
 Aaron Burr, whose adherents were numerous in the 
 city, including two councillors of that court. He then 
 east his eyes slowly round the bar, enjoining the 
 suspense of the members, till he named Mr. Alexander, 
 and proceeded :—‘ As to Mr. Livingston, I have evidence 
 that Dr. Bollman brought a draft upon him for 
 $2,000 and upwards, which he paid.’ 
 
 ‘ He finished by asking the court that his oath might be 
 taken to the truth of the charges he had exhibited. He 
 raised his hand as if to have the oath administered, when the 
 court mildly suggested the propriety of reducing the state- 
 ment to writing. He then hesitated. One of the judges 
 offered him a seat at his side on the bench, and proposed 
 himself to take down the charges and testimony. This the 
 General declined; upon which the court suggested that one 
 of the judges would wait on “ His Excellency,” at any time 
 that might be convenient to him, to take his deposition. 
 This offer the conquering hero condescended to accept, and 
 retired from the bar, after receiving the thanks of the pre- 
 siding judge for his communication, and an apology for the 
 trouble the business had caused him. 
 
 ‘But just as Wilkinson was about to withdraw, Mr. 
 Livingston, who, till then, during this shocking scene of 
 judicial sycophancy, had sat in melancholy silence, arose to 
 demand and then to entreat of the court that his accuser 
 should not be allowed to leave the bar without substantiating 
 his charge upon oath, in order that, if 1t should appear that 
 he was guilty, he might be immediately committed to prison, 
 and if not, that he should not be compelled to go home 
 loaded with the suspicion of crime. The appeal was fruit- 
 
78 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 less, and the General went his way, promising, however, to 
 make good the charge on the following day.’ 
 
 Of course he never did make good the charge, the 
 utter groundlessness of which was thoroughly and 
 fearlessly exposed by Livingston without delay; but 
 the General went on his way exulting, with as little 
 dread of responsibility or regard to consequences as 
 might be supposed to influence Marshal von Wrangel, 
 General Butler, or any other military despot at this 
 hour. 
 
 ‘When he returned to his house after the scene in court, 
 in which the accusation of Wilkinson had fallen suddenly as 
 a thunderbolt upon him, his young wife, then the mother of 
 their only child, but a few months old, besought him ear- 
 nestly not to withhold from her any part of his confidence. 
 «We have not lived long together,” she said, “ and you may 
 not know the whole strength of my character or of my affec- 
 tion. Whatever may have been the scheme of Burr, if you 
 have had anything to do with it tell me, so that I may share 
 your thoughts as well as your destiny.” His response was a 
 laugh so hearty as to dispel in an instant from her mind any 
 shadow of fear that he was really implicated in the mysterious 
 enterprise.’ 
 
 It was hard to be forced into an unequal conflict in 
 this fashion with the Commander-in-Chief on a question 
 of liberty and reputation, but it was harder still to be 
 brought to the verge of ruin by a controversy with the 
 President, who, instead of leaving the matter in dispute 
 to the uncontrolled decision of the courts of justice, 
 exerted all his official and personal influence to bear 
 his adversary and intended victim to the ground. 
 Here, again, we shall have to mark a course of pro- 
 ceeding on the part of the Executive of the model 
 Republic, for which there has been no parallel under 
 the English monarchy since the worst days of the 
 Stuarts. 
 
 The Batture Controversy, to which a chapter of fifty 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 79 
 
 pages is devoted in this biography, may take rank 
 with the most striking of the logical or literary duels to 
 which we are wont to refer long after their local or tem- 
 porary interest has died away, as specimens of learning, 
 acuteness, raillery or wit. Livingston’s answers to 
 Jefferson are little inferior in their way to Bentley’s 
 reply to Boyle, Porson’s Letters to Travis, or the best 
 of Paul Louis Courier’s pamphlets ; and they moreover 
 involve principles of jurisprudence of universal applica- 
 tion. What in a double sense might be called the 
 battle-ground was a part of the delta of the Mississippi 
 at New Orleans, then in a transitional state between 
 land and shore, serving sometimes as an anchorage and 
 sometimes as a quay, according to the height of the 
 river. Although the adjacent proprietor had laid 
 early claim to it, no exclusive right was attempted to 
 be set up till he became a client of Livingston’s, who 
 saw its future value at a glance. ‘This rural bank 
 must soon give place to urban wharfs lke those of 
 New York. Ah, here was a mine to be worked, and 
 opportunity to escape from bankruptcy at a single 
 bound, instead of trudging only the tedious road of 
 careful industry.” He bought a portion of the pro- 
 perty and began inclosing it. Then awoke the popular 
 tumult, and then began the official oppression. Both 
 people and government persevered in treating him as aa 
 intruder, and a long course of harassing litigation, 
 comprising civil and criminal proceedings of many 
 kinds, was the result. At the end of a nine or ten years’ 
 contest, he succeeded in establishing his title and con- 
 founding his opponents, but the loss of time and the 
 waste of intellectual energy were irrecoverable. 
 
 The English invasion of Louisiana, and the assault 
 of New Orleans in 1815, brought out Livingston in an 
 entirely new and highly favourable light. He or- 
 ganised meetings to encourage the citizens to resistance : 
 hedrew up animating addresses: with the rank of colonel, 
 
SO EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 he acted as aide-de-camp to General Jackson ; and he 
 
 was deemed one of the most effective of the military 
 council and staff. When a medal was struck by order 
 of Congress in honour of the General, he called to 
 Livingston: ‘Come here and see what you have 
 helped me to gain.’ Mr. Hunt dwells with pardonable 
 complacency on the military services of his hero ; and if 
 we are compelled to pass them over, it 1s from no 
 patriotic wish to deprive him of any part of the glory 
 obtained in great measure through British mismanage-. 
 ment or mishap. 
 
 We now come to the culminating pomt of Living- 
 ston’s reputation, his system of Penal Law or Criminal 
 Codes.! In 1796, when he first took his seat in 
 Congress, his attention had been drawn to the subject, 
 and he procured first one Committee and then a second 
 (of ‘both which he was Chairman) to report on the 
 Penal Laws of the United States. No report was 
 made, and his labours in this walk did not recommence 
 in earnest till 1820, when he drew up and introduced 
 an Act authorising the preparation of a Criminal Code 
 for Louisiana. In February 1821 he was elected by 
 joint ballot of the General Assembly of that State to 
 revise its entire system of criminal law. The existing 
 system was a compound of French, Spanish, and 
 English laws or customs—confused, uncertain, and 
 occasionally revolting from severity or absurdity. 
 Thus, sentence of infamy was passed indiscriminately 
 upon whole classes, without the smallest reference to 
 
 1 The whole of his labours under this head are collected in an octavo 
 volume of 745 closely printed pages, entitled ‘A System of Penal Law 
 for the State of Louisiana: consisting of A Code of Crimes and Punish- 
 ments: A Code of Procedure: A Code of Evidence: A Code of Reform 
 and Prison discipline: A Book of Definitions. Prepared under the au- 
 thority of a law of the said State, by Edward Livingston. To which 
 are prefixed a Preliminary Report on the Plan of a Penal Code, and 
 Introductory Reports to the several Codes embraced in the System 
 #3 Penal Law. Published by James Kay, Jun. & Co., Philadelphia, 
 
 8353, 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 81 
 
 personal innocence or guilt, the bare fact of their 
 coming within the description being enough: children 
 of illegal marriages; suitors or advocates incurring 
 rebuke, just or unjust, from a judge; widows marry- 
 ing before the expiration of a year’s mourning, and 
 their new husbands; procurers, comedians, slanderers, 
 usurers, gamblers, and buffoons. It was also a crime, 
 punishable by banishment and confiscation of all 
 property, for an advocate to betray the secrets of his 
 client: for any person to say mass without ordination; to 
 change a name for one more honourable; or for a woman 
 to feign maternity and produce a counterfeit heir. 
 None of the popular objections to codification could 
 consequently arise in this instance; and Livingston’s 
 eventual failure to satisfy the pressing and practical 
 wants of his employers, was owing to the vastness of 
 his conceptions and the comprehensive philanthropy 
 of his views. He was far in advance of the most 
 advanced legislative or representative assembly then 
 existing in either hemisphere; and he assumed, as the 
 groundwork of his system, doctrines or principles which 
 are still disputed by the majority of enlightened jurists. 
 He insisted on the abolition of capital punishment as 
 imperatively required by reason, justice, and humanity ; 
 whilst the grand aim of his system of secondary punish- 
 ments was the reform and gradual restoration of the 
 offender to society. For this purpose, he proposed to 
 bring under one central direction, crime, vagrancy, 
 mendicity and all forms of pauperism: to combine in 
 single establishments the whole machinery of poor- 
 house, workhouse, bridewell, and penitentiary. Society, 
 he lays down, is formed of two divisions: those who 
 by their industry or property provide subsistence for 
 themselves and their families, and those who do not. 
 The latter may be subdivided into three classes: those 
 who can labour and are willing to labour, but cannot find 
 employment: those who can labour, but are idle from 
 VOL. Il. G 
 
82 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 inclination, not from want of employment: those who 
 are unable to support themselves by their labour from 
 infancy, old age, or inferiority of body or mind. He 
 then proceeds to justify his projected establishment. 
 
 ‘This establishment enters most essentially into the plan 
 I propose. Its different departments, under the name of 
 poorhouses, workhouses, and bridewells, are known not only 
 in England and the states which fderive their jurisprudence 
 from that country, but in different parts of Europe, but they 
 are there distinct institutions, and want that unity of plan 
 from which it is thought their principal utility will arise. 
 This requires elucidation. If the duty of supporting its 
 members be once acknowledged to be one incumbent on 
 society to the extent that has been assumed, and if the 
 classification I have made is correct, the necessity becomes 
 apparent of distinguishing in what degree the different 
 applicants are entitled to relief; but that system would be 
 obviously imperfect that was confined to making this dis- 
 tinction, and granting relief only to the one class without 
 making any disposition of the others. Every applicant, if 
 my premises be true, must belong to one or the other of 
 those classes ; and the same magistrate who hears his demand 
 of support, or before whom he is brought, on an accusation 
 of illegally obtaining it, is enabled at once to assign him 
 his place. Is he able and willing to work, but cannot obtain 
 it? Here is employment suited to his strength, to his age, 
 his capacity. Is he able to work, but idle, intemperate, or 
 vicious? His habits must be corrected by seclusion, sobriety, 
 instruction, and labour. Is he utterly unable to provide for 
 his support ? The great social duty of religion and humanity 
 must be performed. One investigation on this plan puts 
 an end tothe inquiry. Every one applying for alms, or 
 convicted of illegal idleness and vice, necessarily belongs to 
 one or the other class, and immediately finds his place; he 
 no longer remains a burthen on individuals, and society is 
 at once relieved from vagrancy and pauperism.’ 
 
 The primary object of this part of his system is to 
 prevent the idle or unemployed from becoming law- 
 breakers. He deals with actual criminals. by carefully 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 83 
 
 classifying them, and subjecting them to imprisonment 
 varying in time, place, and circumstance with their 
 respective degrees of guilt. Seclusion and labour 
 afford him the means of increasing punishment to the 
 utmost point of severity admitted by his Code. The 
 article relating to murderers runs thus: 
 
 ‘Art. 167. No murderers, in any degree, shall have any 
 communication with other persons out of the prison than 
 the inspectors and visitors ; they are considered dead to the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 ‘Art. 168. The cells of murderers (in any degree) shall 
 be painted black within and without, and on the outside 
 thereof shall be inscribed, in large letters, the following 
 sentence : 
 
 ‘“*Tn this cell is confined, to pass his life in solitude and 
 sorrow, A.B., convicted of the murder of C.D. | by assassina- 
 tion, parricide, &c., describing the offence, if of an aggra- 
 vated kind]; his food is bread of the coarsest kind; his 
 drink is water, mingled with his tears: he is dead to the 
 world ; his cell is his grave; his existence is prolonged that 
 he may remember his crime, and repent it, and that the 
 continuance of his punishment may deter others from the 
 indulgence of hatred, avarice, sensuality, and the passions 
 which lead to the crime he has committed. ‘When the 
 Almighty, in His duetime, shall exercise towards him that dis- 
 pensation which he himself arrogantly and wickedly usurped 
 towards another, his body is to be dissected, and his soul 
 will abide that judgment which Divine Justice shall decree.” 
 
 ‘Art. 169. The same inscription, changing only the words 
 *‘this cell” for the words “ solitary cell in this prison,” shall 
 be made on the outside of the prison wall, in large white 
 letters on a black ground. The inscriptions shall be removed 
 on the death of the convicts to which they relate.’ 
 
 Treating voluntary labour as a mitigation and a 
 resource, he denies it to the worst class of criminals ; 
 and one strong objection to his substitute for capital 
 punishment is that it frequently produces insanity. 
 His main reasons for sparing life, however, are not of 
 a sentimental character; nor does he shrink from the 
 
 G 2 
 
84 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 infliction of necessary pain. He dwells most emphati- 
 cally on the demoralising character of executions, and 
 on the danger of placing unjust judgments beyond 
 recall. The passages in which he enforces these 
 topics are as good specimens as could be produced 
 of the rich, varied, and sustained language of his 
 Reports : 
 
 ‘History presents to us the magic glass on which, by 
 looking at past, we may discern future events. It is folly 
 not to read: it is perversity not to follow its lessons. If 
 the hemlock had not been brewed for felons in Athens, 
 would the fatal cup have been drained by Socrates? If the 
 people had not been familiarised to scenes of judicial homi- 
 cide, would France or England have been disgraced by 
 the useless murder of Louis or of Charles? If the pun- 
 ishment of death had not been sanctioned by the ordinary 
 laws of those kingdoms, would the one have been deluged 
 with the blood of innocence, of worth, of patriotism, and 
 science, in her revolution? Would the best and noblest 
 lives of the other have been lost on the scaffold, in her civil 
 broils? Would her lovely and calumniated queen, the 
 virtuous Malesherbes, the learned Condorcet—would religion, 
 personified in the pious minister of the altar—courage and 
 honour, in the host of high-minded nobles—and science, in — 
 its worthy representative, Lavoisier—would the daily heca- 
 tomb of loyalty and worth—would all have been immolated 
 by the stroke of the guillotine; or Russell and Sidney, and 
 the long succession of victims of party and tyranny, by 
 the axe ? 
 
 ‘ The fires of Smithfield would not have blazed ; nor, after 
 the lapse of ages, should we yet shudder at the name of 
 St. Bartholomew, if the ordinary ecclesiastical law had not 
 usurped the attributes of Divine vengeance, and, by the 
 sacrilegious and absurd doctrine that offences against the 
 Deity were to be punished with death, given a pretext to 
 these atrocities. Nor in the awful and mysterious scene 
 on Mount Calvary, would that agony have been inflicted, if 
 by the daily sight of the cross, as an instrument of justice, 
 the Jews had not been prepared to make it one of their 
 sacrilegious rage. But there is no end of the examples 
 
~ EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 8) 
 
 which crowd upon the memory, to show the length to which 
 the exercise of this power, by the law, has carried the 
 dreadful abuse of it, under the semblance of justice. Every 
 nation has wept over the graves of patriots, heroes, and 
 martyrs, sacrificed by its own fury. Every age has had its 
 annals of blood.’ 
 
 The following is his picture of the innocent convict 
 about to suffer death : 
 
 ‘Slow in its approach, uncertain in its stroke, its victim 
 feels not only the sickness of the heart that arises from the 
 alternation of hope and fear, until his doom is pronounced, 
 but when that becomes inevitable, alone, the tenant of a 
 dungeon during every moment that the cruel lenity of the 
 law prolongs his life, he is made to feel all those anticipa- 
 tions, worse than a thousand deaths. The consciousness of 
 innocence, that which is our support under other miseries, 
 is here converted into a source of bitter anguish, when it is 
 found to be no protection from infamy and death; and when 
 the ties which connected him to his country, his friends, his 
 family, are torn asunder, no consoling reflection mitigates 
 the misery of that moment. He leaves unmerited infamy 
 to his children; a name stamped with dishonour to their 
 surviving parent, and bows down the grey heads of his 
 own with sorrow to the grave. As he walks from his 
 dungeon, he sees the thousands who have come to gaze on 
 his last agony; he mounts the fatal tree, and a life of 
 innocence is closed by a death of dishonour. 
 
 ‘This is no picture of the imagination. Would to God 
 it were! Would to God that, if death must be inflicted, 
 some sure means might be discovered of making it fall upon 
 the guilty. These things have happened. These legal 
 murders have been committed! and who were the primary 
 causes of the crime? Who authorised a punishment, which 
 once inflicted, could never be remitted to the innocent ? 
 Who tied the cord, or let fall the axe upon the guiltless 
 head? Not the executioner, the vile instrument who is 
 hired to do the work of death ; not the jury who convict, or 
 the judge who condemns: not the law which sanctions these 
 errors, but the legislators who made the law; those who, 
 having the power, did not repeal it. These are the persons, 
 
86 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 responsible to their country, their consciences, and their 
 God.’ | 
 
 His Code of Reform and Prison Discipline comprises 
 the minutest instructions for the treatment of every 
 class of prisoner; and its efficiency in practice would 
 obviously depend in a great degree on the zeal and 
 intelligence of the administrators. In fact, Livingston, 
 like many other eminent philanthropists, was prone to 
 consider society as a parent watching over a family of 
 children and accurately acquainted with the disposition 
 and tendencies of each. 
 
 His scheme, as might have been anticipated, was 
 respectfully declined, despite the almost impassioned 
 appeal to the legislature of Louisiana with which he 
 pressed its adoption in the Introductory Report—an 
 appeal which might be appropriately addressed to 
 almost any halting or hesitating body of legislators : 
 
 ‘Legislative functions are in the most ordinary times 
 attended with high responsibility. Yours, from the duty 
 which your predecessors have imposed upon you, are pecu- 
 larly so. From the performance of this duty there is no 
 escape. The defects of your penal laws are arrayed before — 
 your eyes. Former legislative acts have declared that they 
 exist, and they have established principles and laid down 
 rules by which laws are to be framed for their removal. 
 Those laws are now submitted for your consideration. You 
 cannot avoid acting. It is impossible to say that the evils 
 are imaginary. You must then either declare that the prin- 
 ciples for correcting them, heretofore unanimously established 
 by the representatives of the people, are erroneous, or that 
 the plan prepared is not drawn in conformity with them. In 
 either alternative the duty of correcting the principles or re- 
 forming the work is one that must be performed. For, dis- 
 guise it as we may, it is a truth which must be toldand 
 ought to be felt: that, cireumstanced as you are, should you 
 shrink from the performance of these duties, to ‘you will be 
 attributed the future depredations of every offender who 
 escapes punishment from the ambiguity of your laws: the 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 87 
 
 vexations of all who suffer by their uncertainty : the general 
 alarm caused by the existence of your unknown and unre- 
 pealed statutes: the depravity of those who are corrupted 
 by the associations into which they are forced by your prison 
 discipline : the unnecessary and violent death of the guilty ; 
 and, worse than all this, legislators! the judicial murder of 
 the innocent who may perish under the operation of your 
 sanguinary laws. All this, and more, will be laid to your 
 charge, if you do not embrace the opportunity that is afforded 
 to reform them ; for the continuance of every bad law, which 
 we have the power to repeal, is equivalent to its enact- 
 ment. 
 
 Whatever opinion may be formed of the practica- 
 bility of Livingston’s system taken as a whole or esti- 
 mated by its distinctive qualities, no doubt can exist 
 of the vast amount of thought, knowledge, intellectual 
 grasp, originality of conception, and power of expression 
 displayed in its development. The volume already 
 mentioned is a perfect treasure-house of juridical and 
 legislative schemes and suggestions, doctrines and con- 
 trivances; and its indirect influence has been immense. 
 That a collection of codes and reports so large, so 
 comprehensive, so systematically shaped and so logically 
 connected, should have been produced in less than five 
 years, would sound incredible, did we not remember 
 that he drew upon stores that had been accumulating 
 for thirty ; and, wonderful to relate, it would have been 
 produced in three years, but for an accident under 
 which a mind of less energy must have been crushed. 
 The misfortune was thus announced to M. du Ponceau, 
 from whom he had borrowed a volume of Bacon :— 
 
 ‘The night before last, I wrote you an apologetic letter, 
 accounting for not having before that time thanked you for 
 your letter and your book. My excuse lay before me, in four 
 Codes: of Crimes and Punishments, of Criminal Procedure, 
 of Prison Discipline, and of Evidence. This was about one 
 o'clock; I retired to rest, and in about three hours was 
 waked by the cry of fire. It had broken out in my writing- 
 
88 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 room, and, before it was discovered, not a vestige of my 
 work remained, except about fifty or sixty pages which were 
 at the printer’s, and a few very imperfect notes in another 
 place. You may imagine, for you are an author, my dismay 
 on perceiving the evidence of this calamity; for circum- 
 stanced as I am, it isa real one. My habits for some years 
 past, however, have fortunately inured me to labour, as my 
 whole life has to disappointment and distress. I therefore 
 bear it with more fortitude than I otherwise should, and, 
 instead of repining, work all night and correct the proofs all 
 day, to repair the loss and get the work ready by the time I 
 had promised it to the legislature.’ 
 
 A few days later he wrote : 
 
 ‘I thank you most sincerely for your kind participation 
 in my calamity, for although I put the best face upon it, I 
 cannot help feeling it as such. I have always found occupa- 
 tion the best remedy for distress of every kind. The great 
 difficulty I have found on those occasions was to rally the 
 energies of the mind, so as to bring them to undertake it. 
 Here, exertion was necessary not only to enable me to bear 
 the misfortune, but to repair it; and I therefore did not lose 
 an hour. The very night after the accident I sat up until 
 three o’clock, with a determination to keep pace with my 
 printer ; hitherto I have succeeded, and he has, with what is 
 already printed, copy for a hundred pages of the penal code. 
 
 ‘The part I shall find most difficult to replace is the pre- 
 liminary discourse, of which I have not a single note, and 
 with which (I may confide it to your friendly ear) I was 
 satisfied. A composition of that kind depends so much upon 
 the feeling of the moment in which it is written, the dispo- 
 sition that suggests not only the idea but the precise word 
 that is proper to express it is so evanescent, (mine at least 
 are,) that it will, I fear, be utterly impossible for me to 
 regain it.’ 
 
 When Porson’s manuscript copy of the Codex 
 Galeanus, a masterpiece of caligraphy, was accidentally 
 destroyed by fire, he set about and completed a fresh 
 one. But this was a merely mechanical task: there 
 were no thoughts to reclothe in chosen language; no 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON 89 
 
 studied trains of reasonings, no spontaneous bursts of 
 eloquence to reproduce in their original freshness. 
 ‘Oh, Diamond, Diamond, you little know what mis- 
 chief you have done ’—is the temperate expression of 
 regret which the popular legend has placed in the 
 mouth of Newton, when his little dog upset the candle 
 amongst his papers. But Sir David Brewster rejects 
 the legend, and equally discredits that version of the 
 incident which represents the brain of the philosopher 
 as temporarily impaired by the shock. According to 
 him, rumour or malice has exaggerated both the loss 
 and its consequences. Livingston’s misfortune, there- 
 fore, may be regarded as the most trying of the kind 
 recorded in the annals of intellectual labour; and the 
 manner in which he bore up under it does the highest 
 honour to his energy, patience, capacity, fertility, readi- 
 ness, and self-conmand. 
 
 He had his reward in the praises and congratulations 
 of the most distinguished of his contemporaries, as well 
 as in the certainty of durable fame. Jeremy Bentham 
 proposed that the English Parliament should cause the 
 entire work to be printed for the use of the nation. 
 M. Villemain declared the ‘System’ to be a work 
 without example from the hand of any one hand. 
 Victor Hugo wrote: ‘You will be numbered among 
 the men of this age who have deserved most and_ best 
 of mankind.’ He received autograph letters on the 
 subject from the Emperor (Nicholas) of Russia and the 
 King of Sweden ; a gold medal with a laudatory inscrip- 
 ‘tion was presented to him by the King of the Nether- 
 lands ; and he was elected a Foreign Associate to the 
 Institute of France.* 
 
 1 To this honour he is indebted for the glowing tribute paid to his 
 labour and his memory by one of the most eminent of living Frenchmen, 
 M. Miguet, in a biographical notice read at a public sitting of the 
 Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, June 30, 1838. The import- 
 ance attached to Livingston’s legislative and juridical works may be in- 
 ferred from their translation into French, and pending republication in 
 
90 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 The lapse of time has deepened and strengthened the 
 foundations of his fame. No longer ago than 1856 
 Dr. Maine, formerly Professor of Civil Law in the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge and now a member of Council 
 at Calcutta, spoke ‘of Livingston as ‘the first legal 
 genius of modern times.’ But the recognition of 
 his success of which he had most reason to be proud 
 was a letter from his old adversary (we might almost 
 say, enemy) Jefferson, who concludes: ‘ Wishing 
 anxiously that your great work may obtain complete 
 success, and become an example for the imitation and 
 improvement of other States, I pray you to be assured 
 of my unabated friendship and respect.’ Another letter 
 from Jefferson, in 1822, contains this striking passage, 
 referring to a question of government : 
 
 ‘But age has weaned me from questions of this kind. My 
 delight is now in the passive occupation of reading ; and it 
 is with great reluctance I permit my mind ever to encounter 
 subjects of difficult investigation. You have many years yet 
 to come of vigorous activity, and I confidently trust they 
 will be employed in cherishing every measure which may 
 foster our brotherly union, and perpetuate a constitution of 
 government destined to be the primitive and precious model 
 of what is to change the condition of man over the globe.’ 
 
 At the same time he is not blind to the danger : 
 
 ‘They [the judges] are practising on the Constitution by 
 inferences, analogies, and sophisms, as they would on an 
 ordinary law; they do not seem aware that it is not even a 
 Constitution formed by a single authority, and subject to a 
 single superintendence and control, but that it is a compact 
 of many independent powers, every single one of which claims 
 an equal right to understand it, and to require its obsery- 
 ance. However strong the cord of compact may be, there is 
 a. point of tension at which rt will break.’ 
 
 France. See Exposé d’un Systeme de Législation criminalle pour ? Etat de 
 la Louisiane et pour les Etats-unis d Amérique. Par Edward Livingston, 
 etc. Précédé dune Préface par M. Charles Lucas, Membre de ? Institut, 
 etc., et d'une Notice historique par M. Miguet, Paris, 1872. ‘Two volumes 
 have already appeared, 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 91 
 
 In July 1822, whilst Livingston was still employed on 
 his Codes, he was re-elected member of Congress, in 
 which he continued to sit till 1830. In the year 1826 
 he discharged his long-standing debt to the Government ; 
 and thenceforth there was only one more disappoint- 
 ment, and that not a very severe or irremediable one, 
 in store for him. He lost his election for New Orleans 
 in 1830, very much as Lord Macaulay lost his seat for 
 Edinburgh in 1847 ; the opposition being principally 
 caused by his alleged disregard of the local interests of 
 his constituents and his neglect of the personal atten- 
 tions they deemed their due. The legislature of 
 Louisiana immediately elected him a senator of the 
 United States; a position which fully satisfied his 
 political ambition, although he was not long permitted 
 to rest in it. It was in the Senate, in March 1830, that 
 he delivered a very remarkable speech; _ especially 
 memorable on account of the applicability of the 
 principles laid down in it to the existing state of things 
 in North America. The subject was the policy of the 
 Government with respect to the public lands, but 
 amongst the mass of relevant or irrelevant topics intro- 
 duced was the nature of the Federal compact and of the 
 reserved rights of the several States. The opinion of 
 Livingston, the first constitutional lawyer of his time 
 and country, was that the States had respectively sur- 
 rendered a part, and only a part, of their sovereignty 
 to the Union, and that each would be justified in 
 resorting to any measure of resistance for the assertion 
 and preservation of the rest. After specifying the steps 
 that might be constitutionally taken in the first instance, 
 he proceeds : 
 
 ‘ And, finally, if the act be intolerably oppressive, and they 
 find the General Government persevere in enforcing it, by a 
 resort to the natural right which every people have to resist 
 extreme oppression. 
 
 ‘Secondly, if the act be one of those few which in their 
 
92 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 operation cannot be submitted to the Supreme Court, and 
 be one that will, in the opinion of the State, justify the risk 
 of a withdrawal from the Union, that this last extreme 
 remedy may at once be resorted to. 
 
 ‘ That the right of resistance to the operation of an act of 
 Congress, in the extreme cases above alluded to, is not a 
 right derived from the Constitution, but can be justified 
 only on the supposition that the Constitution has been 
 broken, and the State absolved from its obligation ; and that, 
 whenever resorted to, it must be at the risk of all the penal- 
 ties attached to an unsuccessful resistance to established 
 authority.’ 
 
 In other words, the resisting State would stand precisely 
 in the same relation to the Union in which the colonies 
 conceived themselves to stand to Great Britain at the 
 commencement of the War of Independence. The 
 apprehended (rapidly becoming actual) evils of the 
 opposite theory are thus stated : 
 
 ‘That the theory of the Federal Government being the 
 result of the general will of the People of the United States 
 in their aggregate capacity, and founded, in no degree, on 
 compact between the States, would tend to the most disas- 
 trous practical results: that it would place three-fourths of 
 the States at the mercy of one-fourth, and lead inevitably to 
 a consolidated Government, and finally to monarchy, if the 
 doctrine were generally admitted, and if partially so, and 
 opposed, to civil dissension.’ 
 
 Chatham drew one of his finest figures of speech 
 from the tapestry of the House of Lords. Livingston 
 converted the marble columns of the hall in which he 
 spoke into illustrations : 
 
 ‘What were they originally ? Worthless heaps of uncon- 
 nected sand and pebbles, washed apart by every wave, blown 
 asunder by every wind. What are they now? Bound 
 together by an indissoluble cement of nature, fashioned by 
 the hand of skill, they are changed into lofty columns, the 
 component parts and the support of a noble edifice, symbols 
 of the union and strength on which alone our government 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON 93 
 
 can rest, solid within, polished without; standing firm only 
 by the rectitude of their position, they are emblems of what 
 senators of the United States should be, and teach us that 
 the slightest obliquity of position would prostrate the struc- 
 ture, and draw with their own fall that of all they support 
 and protect, in one mighty ruin.’ 
 
 The friendship which Livingston had formed for 
 General Jackson at the siege of New Orleans had been 
 eradually cemented by what is almost indispensable to 
 strong mutual regard between active men of mark 
 under free institutions—the zdem sentire de republica ; 
 and in May 1831, he consented, at the earnest solicita- 
 tion of the General (then President), to accept the 
 Secretaryship of State, vacated by Van Buren. He was 
 so much in the habit of consulting his wife about 
 everything he wrote or did, including his Codes, that 
 she playfully compared herself to the old woman of 
 Moliere. On the subject of his appointment, he writes 
 to her: 
 
 ‘Here I am in the second place in the United States,— 
 some say the first; in the place filled by Jefferson and 
 Madison and Monroe, and by him who filled it before any of 
 them,—my brother; in the place gained by Clay at so 
 ereat a sacrifice; in the very easy chair of Adams; in 
 the office which every politician looks to as the last step but 
 one in the ladder of his ambition; in the very cell where 
 the great magician, they say, brewed his spells. Here 
 I am without an effort, uncontrolled by any engagements, 
 unfettered by any promise to party or to man; here I am, 
 and here I have been fora month. I know now what it is; 
 am I happier than I was? The question is not easily 
 answered.’ 
 
 He was the chief supporter of the Government whilst 
 he formed part of it; but his services could only be 
 appreciated by those who are versed in the domestic 
 politics of the United States. One of the most pleasing 
 results of Livingston’s tenure of office, was the assistance 
 he was enabled to afford to Alexis de Tocqueville in the 
 
94 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 composition of his great work, ‘De la Démocratie en 
 Amérique.’ A graceful note of acknowledgment in 
 the Introduction concludes: ‘Mr. Livingston is one 
 of those rare men whom we love in reading their 
 writings, whom we admire and honour even before 
 becoming acquainted with them, and to whom we are 
 happy to owe a debt of gratitude.’ 
 
 On the 29th May 1833, he resigned the office of 
 Secretary of State, and the same day was appointed 
 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to 
 France. It appears from his correspondence with La- 
 fayette, one of his earliest and most attached friends, 
 that the French Embassy had been proposed or sug- 
 gested to him before his acceptance of office in 1831. 
 The special object of his mission was to come to some 
 arrangement with the French Government for the pay- 
 ment of the indemnity agreed to be paid to subjects of 
 the United States for illegal seizures under the Berlin 
 and Milan decrees. The amount had been fixed at 
 twenty-five millions of francs, by a treaty of July 1831, 
 signed by Louis Philippe; but the sanction of the 
 Chamber of Deputies was required, and this, on a 
 division, was refused by a majority of eight. A 
 Ministerial crisis ensued: a breach between France and 
 the United States became imminent: the arbitration of 
 Great Britain was accepted, and the matter was at 
 length satisfactorily arranged. But the intervening 
 proceedings were of a nature to tax the temper and 
 judgment of Livingston to the utmost, and he was 
 generally allowed to have hit the happy medium 
 between firmness and conciliation by his diplomacy.! 
 During his visit to Europe, he lost no opportunity of 
 obtaiming materials or hints for Law reforms. In a 
 
 1 A brief account of the incident of the American Indemnity, and the 
 ministerial complications to which it gave rise, is given by M. Guizot in 
 his Memoirs (vol. iii, pp. 283-237). He maintains the justice of the 
 demand and substantially confirms Mr, Hunt. 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 95 
 
 letter dated Paris, February 1834, to the writer of 
 these pages, he says : 
 
 ‘Perceiving that some parts of the System of Penal Law 
 which I had prepared for the State of Louisiana have fallen 
 under your notice, it has occurred to me that this whole work 
 might not prove unacceptable, and I therefore have sent’ a 
 copy to Mr. Vail to be offered to you. 
 
 ‘Should any improvement in your penal or civil jurispru- 
 dence be adopted or even proposed, I will be greatly obliged 
 by a notice of it.’ 
 
 He was naturally anxious to visit England, but the 
 sudden and peculiar close of his mission compelled him 
 to return direct, and he arrived at New York on the 
 23rd of June, in the ‘Constitution’ frigate. His 
 reception by all parties was highly flattering, and 
 he attended some public dinners given to welcome him 
 and do him honour. The most interesting of his last 
 public displays, however, was his appearance in the 
 Supreme Court at Washington, as counsel in the case of 
 the Municipal Authorities of the City of New Orleans, 
 Appellants, versus the United States, Respondents: 
 Daniel Webster acting as his junior. An allusion 
 having been made to the Batture Controversy, he said 
 that he had been spared the lasting regret of reflecting 
 that Jefferson had descended to the grave with a 
 feeling of ill-will towards him. ‘ The offended party 
 forgot the injury, and the other performed the more 
 difficult task (if the maxim of a celebrated French 
 author be true) of forgiving the man upon whom he 
 had inflicted it.’ 
 
 This was in January 1836. He was taken ill in the fol- 
 lowing month, and on the 23rd May, 1836, within five 
 days of the completion of his seventy-second year, he 
 expired, ‘ easily, serenely, and cheerfully, surrounded by 
 his family and many of his friends.’ His death at this 
 ripe age was regarded by those who knew him as 
 premature, for none of them had come to regard him 
 
96 EDWARD LIVINGSTON. 
 
 as an old man; and it was remarked that his black 
 hair resting on the pillow of his coffin, presented a 
 striking contrast to the record of his years inscribed on 
 the lid. : 
 
 This book ends with an estimate of Livingston’s 
 qualities by his biographer, and begins (by way of 
 introduction) with a summary of his services by Mr. 
 Bancroft, the historian. ‘The biographer says: 
 
 ‘ As for his intellect, it was one of general acuteness and 
 uniform power, without any dull side or any dazzling gift; 
 just as his writings and speeches present few salient, distinct, 
 and quotable beauties, but rather a steady felicity, a con- 
 stant power, and a pervading eloquence. 
 
 ‘But this grand capacity was not perfectly rounded. One 
 faculty it signally lacked. At no period of his life was he 
 competent, practically, to manage financial affairs. In this 
 one regard he was not much more than a child. It was as if 
 a guardian genius had purchased for him gifts sufficing for 
 all other emergencies, by debarring him from one important 
 endowment which even the stupid often possess. If the 
 dull favourites of Mammon ever envied his shining parts, 
 they perhaps found comfort in the substance of the maxim 
 from Chaucer,— 
 
 The gretest clerkes ben not the wisest men.’ 
 
 The greatest statesmen are not less open to the 
 imputed weakness than ‘the gretest clerkes, and 
 genius has been so often associated with irregularity 
 that poor human nature must be content to bear a full 
 share of the reproach. Bacon, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, 
 Mackintosh, Scott, Lamartine, are a few amongst in- 
 numerable examples of the loss of comfort and in- 
 dependence, possibly of self-respect, and (in the case of 
 the ‘ brightest, meanest’) of fair fame, through im- 
 providence. 
 
 Mr. Bancroft recapitulates Livingston’s public and 
 private virtues, and dwells exultingly on the fact that 
 the adviser of Jackson in a crisis of the Constitution 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON. Q7 
 
 was ‘one who to the clearest perceptions and the 
 firmest purpose added a calm conciliating benignity, 
 and the venerableness of age, enhanced by a world- 
 wide fame.’ He then proceeds: 
 
 ‘That fame was due to the fact, that Edward Livingston, 
 more than any other man, was the representative of the 
 system of penal and legal reform which flows by necessity 
 from the nature of our institutions. The Code which he 
 prepared at the instance of the State of Louisiana is in its 
 simplicity, completeness, and humanity at once an invper- 
 sonation of the man, and an exposition of the American 
 constitutions. If it has never yet been adopted as a whole, 
 it has proved an unfailing fountain of reforms, suggested 
 by its principles. In this work, more than in any other, 
 may be seen the character and life-long faith of the author. 
 The great doctrines which it developes will, as time ad- 
 vances, be more and more nearly reduced to practice, for 
 they are but the expression of true philanthropy, and, as even 
 the heathen said, * Man loves his fellow-man, whether he 
 will or no.”’ 
 
 The first half of this paragraph is fortunately 
 qualified and expanded by the last. It sounds almost 
 like a contradiction in terms to say that Livingston’s 
 Code was at once an impersonation of the man 
 and an exposition of the American constitutions—those 
 constitutions which are crackling and crumbling as we 
 write. There was nothing local, limited, provincial, 
 conventional, nor even national, in or about the system 
 or the man: he never gave up to party what was 
 meant for mankind: he and his work were 
 essentially cosmopolitan: if asked for his country, he 
 might have pointed, like the Grecian sage, to heaven ; 
 and it is as acitizen of the world, not as a citizen of an 
 American Republic, that he will be consulted, cited, 
 interpreted, practically applied and hailed as an 
 honoured guide, by the generations of converts yet 
 unborn that are promised him. 
 
 VOL. II. bs 
 
98 
 
 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 (From THE EpinpurGH Review, Apri 1862.) 
 
 Memoirs of Richard the Third and some of his Con- 
 temporaries. With an Historical Drama on the Battle of 
 Bosworth. By Joun Henzace Jesse. London: 1861. 
 
 It was the shrewd remark of Johnson, that, when the 
 world think long about a matter, they generally think 
 right; and this may be one reason why attempts to 
 whitewash the received villains or tyrants of history 
 have been commonly attended with indifferent success. 
 The ugly features of Robespierre’s character look posi- 
 tively more repulsive through the varnish of sophistry 
 which M. Louis Blanc has spread over them. The 
 new light thrown by Mr. Carlyle on the domestic and 
 political career of Frederic William of Prussia, the 
 collector of giants, simply exhibits him as the closest 
 approximation to a downright brute and madman that 
 was ever tolerated as the ruler of a civilised com- 
 munity. Despite of Mr. Froude’s indefatigable re- 
 search, skilful arrangement of materials, and attractive 
 style, Henry the Eighth is still the royal Bluebeard, 
 who spared neither man in his anger nor woman in his 
 lust; and hardly any perceptible change has been 
 effected in the popular impression of Richard the 
 Third, although since 1621 (the date of Buck’s His- 
 tory), it has continued an open question whether he 
 was really guilty of more than a small fraction of the 
 crimes imputed to him. 
 
 Walpole’s ‘ Historic Doubts’ is amongst the best of 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 99 
 
 his writings. If he was advocating a paradox, he be- 
 lieved it to be a truth ; and in the subsequent encounter 
 with Hume, he has the advantage which thorough ac- 
 quaintance with the subject must almost always give 
 over the ablest antagonist whose original views were 
 based upon superficial knowledge. Yet no part of this 
 remarkable essay is freshly remembered, except an in- 
 cidental reference (on which the ingenious author laid 
 little stress) to the apocryphal testimony of the Countess 
 of Desmond, who had danced with Richard in her youth 
 and declared him to be the handsomest man at court 
 except his brother Edward, confessedly the handsomest 
 man of his day. Mr. Sharon Turner’s learned and con- 
 scientious recapitulation of the good measures, enlight- 
 ened views, and kindly actions of Richard has proved 
 equally inoperative to stem the current of obloquy. 
 Why is this? Why do we thus cling to a judgment 
 which, we are assured, has been ill-considered? Is it 
 because the numerical majority of the English public 
 are in the same predicament as the great Duke of 
 Marlborough, who boldly avowed Shakespeare to be 
 the only History of England he ever read? because the 
 ground once occupied by creative genius is thenceforth 
 unapproachable by realities and unassailable by proofs ? 
 The image of the dramatic Richard, as represented by 
 a succession of great actors, is vividly called up when- 
 ever the name is mentioned— 
 
 ‘And when he would have said King Richard died, 
 And called a horse, a horse, he Burbage cried ;’ 
 
 and this is unluckily one of the rare instances in which, 
 if it be not profanation to say so, the truth and modesty 
 of nature have been overstepped by our immortal bard 
 to produce a character of calculated and unmitigated 
 
 1 See the ‘History of England during the Middle Ages,’ vol. iv. 
 book vy. chap, 1, 
 
 HQ 
 
100 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 atrocity. In the very first scene, the hero, after ex- 
 patiating on his deformities, concludes— 
 ‘ And therefore,—since I cannot prove a lover 
 
 To entertain these fair, well-spoken days, 
 I am determinéd to prove a villain.’ 
 
 -Moralists have laid down that dwarfs and misshapen 
 persons are commonly out of humour with the world, 
 but it may be doubted whether any one of them in 
 actual life ever indulged in this sort of self-communing 
 at the outset of a career. The far truer picture of a 
 man hurried from crime to crime by ambition is Mac- 
 beth; and the most virulent assailants of Richard’s 
 memory are agreed in allowing him the kind of merit 
 which Fielding gives to Jonathan Wild, who did a 
 good action upon finding, after due deliberation, that he 
 could gain nothing by not doing it. By presupposing 
 the worst, such a commencement checks artistic deve- 
 lopment whilst it violates the truth of history; and not 
 the least interesting or instructive result anticipated 
 from an impartial examination of the authorities, will 
 be the insight we shall attam by means of them into 
 the heaven-born poet’s mode of selecting and working 
 up the materials of his play. 
 
 Mr. Jesse frankly owns that his work has been com- 
 posed without any definite object, moral, critical, anti- 
 quarian, or philosophical. It ‘ emanated indirectly in 
 the drama,’ entitled ‘The Last War of the Roses,’ 
 which occupies more than a fourth cf the volume and 
 strikes us to be an attempt, more ambitious than 
 successful, to rival the greatest of dramatists on his 
 own ground. ‘To the merit of novelty,’ says the 
 author in his preface, ‘ whether of facts or arguments, 
 he can prefer but a very trifling claim. To compress 
 scattered and curious information, and, if possible, to 
 amuse, have been the primary objects of the author.’ 
 The result is an agreeable addition to popular lite- 
 rature, containing a good deal that will be new as 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 101 
 
 well as interesting to the class of readers for whose 
 amusement he is in the habit of catering. But if the 
 life of Richard was to be re-written at all, the task 
 should have been undertaken in a more serious and 
 meditative mood, with a full sense of its responsibilities, 
 and a keener insight into the complex causes of the 
 strange notions of right and wrong, legality and ille- 
 gality, which marked the period in dispute. 
 
 During the whole of the Plantagenet dynasty, the 
 succession to the crown was involved in the most 
 mischievous uncertainty. Except in the case of an 
 adult eldest son, inheriting from the father, there was no 
 rule of descent universally recognised. Whether more 
 remote lineals should be preferred to collaterals, or 
 whether claims by or through females were admissible 
 at all, were questions frequently and most furiously 
 agitated; nor was any title deemed absolutely unim- 
 peachable until ratified by the popular voice or, what 
 was equally or more potent, by the landed aristocracy. 
 It is not going too far to say that any member of the 
 royal family, or even any peer related to it by blood, 
 had a chance of the throne: hence the plentiful crop 
 of conspiracies constantly sprmging up: hence, also, 
 the eagerness of the sovereign, de facto, to get rid, by 
 any means, foul or fair, of every possible competitor. 
 To bear no brother near the throne was not, in the 
 fifteenth century, peculiar to the Turk; and servile 
 parliaments were never wanting to pronounce or ratify 
 the cruel sentences of fear, expediency, or hate. The 
 wholesale beheading, hanging and quartering that 
 took place after each alternation of fortune during the 
 Yerkist and Lancastrian battles, were only exceeded in 
 atrocity by the vindictive and insulting butcheries of 
 prisoners perpetrated on the field. It has been com- 
 puted that not fewer than eighty princes of the blood 
 died deaths of violence during these wars; and the 
 ancient nobility would have been well-nigh extin- 
 
102 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 guished altogether, had the struggle been prolonged. 
 Edward IV.’s first parliament included in one Act of 
 Attainder, Henry VI., Queen Margaret, their son Ed- 
 ward, the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, the Earls of 
 Northumberland, Devon, Wiltshire, and Pembroke, 
 Viscount Beaumont, Lords Ross, Neville, Rougemont, 
 Dacre, and Hungerfield, with one-hundred and thirty- 
 eight knights, priests, and esquires, who were one and 
 _ all adjudged to suffer all the penalties of treason. The 
 prevalent doctrine of these times as to religious and 
 moral obligations is comprised in these lines : 
 
 ‘York. I took an oath he should quietly reign. 
 
 Edw. But for a kingdom any oath may be broken. 
 
 I'd break a thousand oaths to reign one year. 
 Rich. An oath is of no moment, being not took 
 Before a true and lawful magistrate 
 
 That hath authority over him that swears. 
 Henry had none, but did usurp the place.’ 
 
 Subjects had no more respect for oaths than princes ; 
 and what we now understand by loyalty was almost 
 unknown. We are indebted to Lord Macaulay’s pene- 
 tration and sagacity for the discovery that the 
 Scottish clans, which so long upheld the cause of the 
 Stuarts, were animated far more by local sympathies 
 and antipathies, especially by hatred of the Campbells, 
 than by chivalrous devotion to a fallen dynasty. The 
 Yorkists and Lancastrians were influenced by an 
 analogous class of motives, or by purely selfish views. 
 Most of the greater barons chose their side from hopes 
 of personal aggrandisement or from private pique. 
 The most notorious example was Warwick, the King- 
 maker, who feasted daily thirty thousand persons in 
 his castle-halls, who could rally thirty thousand men 
 under his banner, and carry them, like a troop of 
 household servants, from camp to camp, as passion, 
 interest, or caprice dictated. It is a remarkable fact 
 that, in 1469, both the rival kings were under 
 durance at once,_-Edward IV. at Middleham, and 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 103 
 
 Henry VI. in the Tower, whilst the Nevilles were 
 wavering between the two.t It has been taken for 
 granted that the people, as contradistinguished from 
 the barons, were Yorkists, who were undoubtedly 
 popular in the City of London, where Edward IV. won 
 all hearts by his courtesy and hospitality. Neither in 
 city or country, however, do we find any national or 
 public-spirited preference for either dynasty. When 
 the commoners rose, they rose from a sense of per- 
 sonal oppression, or, like the followers of Robin of 
 Redesdale, in order to redress some local grievance. 
 
 There is not a more striking illustration of the 
 gross ignorance and superstition of the age than the 
 general belief that the mists which disordered the 
 tactics of Warwick’s army at Barnet were raised for 
 the purpose by Friar Bungay. It was, in fact, the age 
 of all others in which unscrupulous ambition might 
 hope to thrive: in which everything was possible for 
 courage, military skill, statecraft, and dogged deter- 
 mination, backed by birth and fortune. If Richard 
 has attained a bad pre-eminence for treachery and 
 bloodthirstiness, it must be owned that he succumbed 
 to temptations from which few of his family or 
 generation would have turned away. 
 
 Although Shakespeare assigns him a prominent part 
 in the battle of Wakefield, where his father, the Duke of 
 York, was taken and put to death after exclaiming— 
 
 ‘Three times did Richard make a lane to me, 
 
 And thrice cried, Courage, father, fight it out;’ 
 Richard (born Oct. 2, 1452) was only in his ninth 
 year when that battle was fought, and he narrowly 
 escaped the fate of Rutland. The Duchess of York 
 took refuge with her younger children in the Low 
 Countries, and remained there till the triumphant 
 entry of Edward the Fourth into London and the 
 
 1 Lingard, vol. iv. p. 168. 
 
104 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 decisive victory of Towton restored them to their 
 country and to more than the full immunities of their 
 rank. The title of Duke of Gloucester, with an ample 
 appanage in the shape of lordships and manors, was at 
 once conferred on Richard, who, at an unusually early 
 age, was also appointed to three or four offices of the 
 highest trust and dignity. He amply justified the con- 
 fidence reposed in him. He had the same motive 
 as the weak wavering Clarence for joining Warwick, 
 when the King-maker broke with Edward and sent the 
 haughty message :— 
 
 ‘Tell him from me that he has done me wrong, 
 
 And for it Pll uncrown him ere ’t be long.’ 
 What the precise wrong was, is still a mystery. The 
 repudiation by Edward of the contract with the Lady 
 Bona, sister of Louis of France, is doubted by Hume, 
 and rejected by Lingard, as the cause of quarrel ; 
 whilst the author of ‘The Last of the Barons’ gives 
 plausible reasons for the conjecture on which the plot 
 of that romance mainly turns—that Warwick took just 
 offence at an insult offered by the amorous monarch 
 to one of his daughters. The hand of the eldest, the 
 Lady Isabella, was the bait with which the King- 
 maker lured Clarence; and Richard had been from 
 early youth attached to the youngest (whom Shake- 
 speare calls the eldest) Lady Anne; a circumstance 
 which may partly account for his rapid success in the 
 famous courtship scene; the forced and overcharged 
 character of which is so glossed over and concealed by 
 the consummate art of the execution, that we are 
 puzzled in what sense to receive the exulting excla- 
 mation— 
 
 ‘Was ever woman in such humour woo'd ; 
 Was ever woman in such humour won?’ 
 
 Shakespeare makes Richard remain true to Edward 
 from calculation; his chances of the crown being 
 materially increased by the defection of Clarence. 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 105 
 
 But a man may not be the less honest, because 
 honesty is his best policy; and it is enough that in 
 every emergency he gave Edward the wisest and 
 apparently most disinterested counsel, as well as the 
 support of his tried courage and military skill. He 
 commanded the right wing of the Yorkist army at 
 Barnet, and was directly opposed to Warwick, the 
 most renowned warrior of the period. Personal 
 prowess was then essential in a leader, and Gloucester 
 and Warwick are reported to have fought hand-to- 
 hand in the mélée. According to the tradition, the 
 King-maker evaded the conflict as long as he could, 
 and then felled Richard unwounded to the ground. 
 
 At Tewkesbury Richard commanded the van, and was 
 confronted with the Duke of Somerset, who had taken 
 up so formidable a position, fenced by dykes and hedges, 
 that to carry it seemed hopeless. After a feigned 
 attack and a short conflict, Gloucester drew back as if 
 for a retreat. Somerset, rash and impetuous, was 
 deceived by this manceuvre, and left his vantage 
 eround, when Gloucester faced about and fell upon the 
 Lancastrians so furiously and unexpectedly that they 
 were driven back in confusion to their intrenchments, 
 which the pursuing force entered along with them. 
 Lord Wenlock, who, by coming to their assistance 
 with his division, might have beaten back Gloucester, 
 never stirred; and Somerset no sooner regained his 
 camp than, riding up to his recreant friend, he de- 
 nounced him as a traitor and coward, and stopped 
 recrimination and remonstrance by dashing out his 
 brains with a battle-axe. 
 
 The chief glory of this well-fought field belonged to 
 Richard ; but unluckily it was the scene of a tragedy 
 in which the part of first villa has been popularly 
 assigned to him. We are required to believe that, 
 directly after leading his troops to victory, his in- 
 stinctive bloodthirstiness induced him to take the lead 
 
106 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 in a cowardly assassination in which others were only 
 too anxious to anticipate him. The common story 
 runs that, after the battle of Tewkesbury, Margaret and 
 her son, aged eighteen, were brought before Edward, 
 who asked the prince in an insulting manner how he 
 dared to invade his dominions and, irritated by a 
 spirited reply, struck him on the face with his 
 gauntlet; whereupon the Dukes of Clarence and 
 Gloucester, Lord Hastings, and Sir Thomas Grey, 
 taking the blow as a signal, hurried the prince into the 
 next room and there dispatched him with their 
 daggers. A contemporary historian, Fabyan, says that 
 the King ‘strake him with the gauntlet upon the face, 
 after which stroke, so by him received, he was by the 
 kynges servants incontinently slaine.’ The Chronicle 
 of Croyland, of nearly the same date, says, ‘that he 
 was slain by the avenging hands of several (ultricibus 
 quorundam manibus).’ ‘The names of the alleged per- 
 petrators were first given by Hall and afterwards 
 copied from him by Holingshed. Stowe adopts 
 Fabyan’s version, which is much the most probable ; 
 and the King’s brutality is not utterly destitute of 
 palliation, when it is remembered how his brother, the 
 Karl of Rutland, had been put to death after the battle 
 of Wakefield. Mr. Sharon Turner, relying on what he 
 deems an authentic MS. in the Harleian Collection, 
 says that ‘the Prince was taken as flying towards the 
 town, and was slain in the field.’ Bernard Andreas, 
 writing in 1509, says ‘ belligerens ceciderat.’ 
 
 That Richard stabbed Henry VI. with his own hand 
 in the Tower, will appear still more improbable; espe- 
 cially when we consider that during the whole of 
 Edward IV.’s reign he was playing for popularity, and 
 trying to base it on a character for sanctity and self- 
 denial. According to Shakespeare, directly after stab- 
 bing the young prince, he hurries off to a fresh 
 murder : 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 107 
 
 ‘ Glo, Clarence, excuse me to the king my brother. 
 T'll hence to London on a serious matter: 
 Ere ye come there, be sure to hear some news 
 Clar. What? what? 
 Glo, The Tower! the Tower!’ 
 Towards the conclusion of the scene, his absence and 
 presumed errand are thus glanced at: 
 ‘ King Edw. Where’s Richard gone ? 
 Clar. To London, all in post; and as I guess 
 To make a bloody supper in the Tower. 
 King Edw. He’s sudden if a thing comes in his head. 
 Now march we hence.’ 
 
 This is taking the matter coolly enough in all con- 
 science ; and, to add to the absurdity, the Tower was 
 not, at that time, familiarly associated with images of 
 murder and misery, nor would it have been apostro- 
 phised as— 
 
 ‘Ye towers of Julius, London’s lasting shame, 
 With many a foul and midnight murder fed.’ 
 
 It was a royal palace, in which the queen of Edward IV. 
 was residing at the time, whilst Henry VI., who had 
 been placed in the front of the Yorkist army at Tewkes- 
 bury to give him a chance of being shot by a friendly 
 arrow, was certainly not in the Tower on the eve of 
 the battle. He is supposed to have died seventeen 
 days afterwards, on the night of the 21st May, 1471, 
 the day of King Edward’s return to London. His 
 death was attributed to grief, and the body was carried 
 in solemn procession to St. Paul’s, where it was exposed 
 to public gaze, ‘ the face open so that every man might 
 see him.’ The face might have been so composed as to 
 tell no tales; and the exposure of the body was the 
 almost invariable practice in cases of alleged or sus- 
 pected death by violence. The bodies of Edward IL, 
 Richard II., Thomas of Woodstock, and Humphrey, 
 Duke of Gloucester, were similarly exposed. Few 
 doubted that Henry was put to death: it bemg quite 
 in accordance with custom and the spirit of the times 
 
108 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 for the king de facto to deal summarily with his rival. 
 The shortness of the interval between the imprison- 
 ment and the death of princes is proverbial. The 
 strange if not absolutely incredible incident of so com- 
 mon a catastrophe, was that a prince of the blood should 
 be named to do the deed or volunteer to do it as a 
 labour of love. No circumstance that can heighten the 
 atrocity is omitted in the scene where Gloucester, 
 having already killed Henry, stabs him again, exclaim- 
 ing : 
 
 ‘If any spark of life be yet remaining, 
 
 Down, down, to hell; and say I sent thee there.’ 
 
 The motive which seems wanting in the preceding 
 instances was undeniably strong enough to raise a pre- 
 sumption that Richard contrived or hastened the death 
 of Clarence, who had once stood in the way of his love 
 and still stood in the way of his interest and his ambi- 
 tion. When all other means failed to keep Richard 
 from the Lady Anne, Clarence, who had married the 
 eldest daughter of the King-maker and wished to 
 appropriate the entire inheritance, caused his sister-in- 
 law to be concealed; and she was eventually found by 
 Richard in an obscure corner of London in the garb of 
 a kitchen-maid. Whether this disguise was voluntarily 
 assumed to escape from an unwelcome suitor, must be 
 left to conjecture. She accepted his protection without 
 scruple, and was placed by him in the sanctuary of St. 
 Martin’s-le-Grand, from whence she was transferred to 
 the guardianship of her uncle, the Archbishop of York. 
 That she was wooed and won during her attendance on 
 the corpse of her father-in-law, is a poetic fiction: an 
 alibi might easily be made out for both parties; and 
 it is further remarkable that no objection was made to 
 their union on the ground of Richard’s alleged partici- 
 pation in the murder of her first husband, nor was she 
 ever, during her lifetime, accused of insensibility or 
 indelicacy on that account. The date of the marriage 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 109- 
 
 is unknown ; but as she bore him a child in 1473, it is 
 inferred that it took place as soon as her year of mourn- 
 ing had expired. 
 
 Clarence vowed that if his brother would have a 
 bride, she should be a portionless one. ‘He may well 
 have my lady sister-in-law, but we will part no in- 
 heritance,’ are the words attributed to him in the Paston 
 Letters; and Sir John Paston writes: ‘As for other 
 tidings, I trust to God that the two Dukes of Clarence 
 and Gloucester shall be set at one by the award of the 
 King.’ It was arranged that each should plead his own 
 cause in person before the King in council; and (ac- 
 cording to a contemporary) they both exhibited so much 
 acuteness, and found arguments in such abundance, 
 that the whole audience, including the lawyers, were 
 lost in admiration and surprise. The decision, carried 
 out by an Act of Parliament, was, that the property 
 should be equally divided between the two sisters, the 
 husbands retaining life interests in their wives’ estates 
 respectively. This settlement, equitable and impartial 
 as it looks, was based on a gross injustice, for it over- 
 looked the prior claim of the King-maker’s widow, who, 
 as heiress of the Beauchamps, Earls of Warwick, had 
 brought him the largest of his estates and by this award 
 was left dependent, if not penniless. 
 
 Richard was not the man to forgive or forget 
 Clarence’s unbrotherly conduct, although his ambition 
 soared too high to be coupled with cupidity. His 
 superiority to all sordid considerations was strikingly 
 displayed during the invasion of France in 1475, when 
 Edward, at the head of one of the finest armies that 
 ever left the English coast, was cajoled and out- 
 manceuvred by Louis XI. into doing worse than nothing. 
 The expedition ended in a disgraceful treaty, by which 
 Edward was to receive certain sums of money, which 
 he wanted for his personal pleasures. Bribes were — 
 plentifully distributed amongst the nobles and courtiers 
 
110 RICHARD TIIE THIRD. 
 
 who were thought able to facilitate this result. Lord 
 Howard received 20,000 crowns, in money and plate, 
 besides a pension. The Lord Chancellor and the 
 Master of the Rolls pocketed large sums. What is 
 most extraordinary, they gave written acknowlede- 
 ments, which were regularly docketed by their royal 
 paymaster. The apologists for Bacon, who maintain 
 that the custom of receiving presents by judges and 
 privy-councillors endured to his day, may point to 
 these receipts in support of their theory: others may 
 point to them as proofs of all-pervading corruption or 
 unblushing audacity. The less charitable supposition 
 is favoured by what Commines has recorded of Hast- 
 ings, who, more prudent than his colleagues, declined 
 the transaction in the proposed shape, saying: ‘If 
 you wish me to take the money, you must put it into 
 my sleeve.’ 
 
 Richard alone refused to barter English honour for 
 French gold. ‘ Only the Duke of Gloucester, who stood 
 aloof on the other side for honour, frowned at this 
 accord, and expressed much sorrow, as compassionating 
 the glory of his nation blemished in it.’ Habington, 
 from whom we quote, suggests that the Duke had a 
 further and more dangerous aim, ‘as who, by the dis- 
 honour of his brothers, thought his credit received in- 
 crease ; and by how much the King sunk in opinion, he 
 should rise.’ Bacon adopts the same method of depre- 
 ciation: ‘And that out of this deep root of ambition, it 
 sprang that, as well at the treaty of peace as upon all 
 other occasions, Richard, then Duke of Gloucester, stood 
 ever on the side of honour, raising his own reputation 
 to the disadvantage of the King,his brother, and drawing 
 the eyes of all (especially of the nobles and soldiers) 
 upon himself.’ According to this mode of reasoning, 
 brotherly love and loyalty required him to be as cor- 
 rupt and self-seeking as the rest. Yet surely, if he was 
 content to rise by patriotism and integrity, 1t is enough. 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 111 
 
 Tf he assumed virtues that he had not, this, at all events, 
 refutes the notion that he wantonly and gratuitously per- 
 petrated acts which must have exposed him to general 
 execration and distrust; and we have here, from his 
 worst calumniators, the admitted fact that down to 
 1475 his means were noble, be his end and motives 
 what they might. 
 
 With regard to his alleged participation in the death 
 of Clarence, the charge rests exclusively on a vague 
 presumption of his having hardened the heart of Edward, 
 already sufficiently incensed against Clarence and ready 
 at all times to trample down all ties of relationship and all 
 feelings of mercy when his throne was in danger or his 
 vindictiveness aroused. Clarence had joined Warwick 
 in impeaching Edward’s title and denying his legitimacy. 
 Untaught by experience, he had recently indulged in 
 intemperate language against his sovereign, who actually 
 appeared in person as the principal accuser at the trial, 
 which was of the most solemn description known to the 
 law. The Duke was found guilty by his peers, and 
 both Houses of Parliament petitioned for his execution 
 and afterwards passed a bill of attainder. He was also 
 peculiarly obnoxious to the Queen and her friends, 
 Rivers, Hastings, and the Greys. 
 
 ‘The only favour,’ says Hume, ‘which the King 
 sranted his brother after his condemnation, was to 
 leave him the choice of his death ; and he was privately 
 drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower ; a whim- 
 sical choice, which implies that he had an extraordinary 
 passion for that liquor.’ Mr. Bayley (‘ History of the 
 Tower ’) suggests that his well-known fondness for this 
 wine was the foundation of the story, although, so far 
 as evidence goes, the fondness for the wine is mere 
 matter of conjecture; and we rather agree with 
 Walpole, that ‘ whoever can believe that a butt of wine 
 was the engine of his death, may believe that Richard 
 helped him into it, and kept him down till he was 
 
112 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 suffocated.’ Yet this is precisely what some do believe, 
 or maintain. ‘ After Clarence,’ writes Sandford, ‘ had 
 offered his mass-penny in the Tower of London, he 
 was drowned in a butt of malmsey; his brother, the 
 Duke of Gloucester, assisting thereat with his own 
 proper hands.’ The most plausible solution of the 
 enigma is suggested by Shakespeare, when he makes 
 the First Murderer tell the Second: ‘Take him over 
 the costard with the hilts of thy sword, and then throw 
 him into the malmsey butt in the next room.’ The 
 dialogue on Clarence’s awakening is,— 
 
 ‘ Clar. Where art thou, keeper? Give me a cup of wine. 
 Ist Murd. You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon.’ 
 
 After a brief parley, the First Murderer stabs him, 
 exclaiming : 
 ‘Take that, and that; if all this will not do, 
 Tl drown you in the malmsey butt within.’ 
 He carries out the body, and returns to tell his 
 relenting comrade, : 
 
 ‘Well, Pll go hide the body in some hole, 
 Till that the duke give order for his burial.’ 
 
 Clarence’s groans may have been stifled in a full butt 
 conveniently nigh, or the body may have been tempo- - 
 rarily hidden in an empty one. 
 
 Richard was for several years Lord Warden, or 
 Keeper, of the Northern Marches, and while residing 
 in a kind of vice-regal capacity at York, he so ingrati- 
 ated himself with the people of the city and neighbour- 
 hood, that they stood by him to the last. In 1482, he 
 commanded the army which invaded Scotland, entered 
 Edinburgh in triumph, and speedily brought the Scottish 
 king to terms. On the death of his brother he was in 
 the fullness of his fame as a soldier and statesman. He 
 was also the first prince of the blood; and he must 
 have been endowed with an amount of stoical indiffer- 
 ence and self-denial seldom found in high places at 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. Wks: 
 
 any time, if no ambitious hopes dawned upon him. 
 Edward IV. died on the 9th April, 1483, leaving two 
 sons, Edward V., twelve years and five months old, and 
 Richard Duke of York, between ten and eleven, besides 
 several daughters. The court and country were divided 
 between two parties, that of the Queen and her kins- 
 men, and that of the ancient nobility, who had taken 
 offence at the honours lavished on her upstart con- 
 nexions. The malcontents, headed by the Duke of 
 Buckingham and favoured by Lord Hastings, naturally 
 dreaded the agegrandisement of their adversaries, and 
 were prepared to go any lengths to prevent them from 
 getting exclusive possession of the King’s person, and 
 governing in hisname. The Queen and her brothers, 
 on the other hand, resolved to make the best of the 
 situation, and took immediate measures for overawing 
 the threatened resistance to their schemes. 
 
 The young King was at Ludlow Castle, under the 
 guardianship of his maternal uncle, Anthony Wood- 
 ville, Earl of Rivers, renowned for his gallantry and 
 accomplishments. He had a large military force under 
 his command, and it was proposed that he should 
 escort the King to London, at the head of all the 
 men he could muster. This was vehemently opposed 
 by Hastings, a member of the council at which the 
 plan was broached, and his opposition so far prevailed 
 that the escort was nominally reduced to 2,000 men. 
 About the same time Buckingham put himself into 
 communication with Richard, who was quietly watch- 
 ing the progress of events at York, and abiding the 
 moment when his interposition would become, or be 
 thought, indispensable for the salvation of the realm. 
 A divided nobility, a minority, and a female regency 
 afforded ample materials, in those unsettled times, 
 for the aspirant to supreme power to work upon, 
 without openly or prematurely assuming the part of 
 the ungrateful brother and unnatural uncle. Ac- 
 
 VOL, II. I 
 
114 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 cording to Sir Thomas More, he sent letters to Lord 
 Rivers, with full assurances of duty and subjection to 
 his nephew, and love and friendship to himself; ‘so 
 that he, seeing all things calm and peaceable, came up 
 with no greater number of followers than was neces- 
 sary to show the King’s honour and greatness.’ At 
 Northampton, the regal party were met by the Dukes 
 of Gloucester and Buckingham, by whose advice the 
 King was sent on to Stony Stratford, for the sake of 
 more convenient lodging, while Rivers was feasted by 
 the two Dukes ‘with all demonstrations of joy and 
 sions of friendship.’ 
 
 As soon as he was gone, they entered into consulta- 
 tion with a select number of their friends, and spent 
 the greater part of the night in conference. The result 
 became known in the morning, when, after putting 
 Rivers under arrest and laying an embargo on his suite, 
 they hurried on to Stratford, and arrested Lord Richard 
 Grey (the Queen’s son by her first husband), Sir Thomas 
 Vaughan, and Sir Richard Howse, on a charge of con- 
 spiracy, in the very presence of the King. Despite his 
 tears and entreaties, they also removed from about his 
 person all on whom they could not confidently reckon 
 to act as their creatures. They then escorted him to 
 London, and were met at Hornsey ‘by the Mayor and 
 Sheriffs, with all their brethren, the Aldermen in 
 scarlet, and 500 commoners on horseback, in purple- 
 coloured gowns.’ ‘In this solemn cavalcade,’ continues 
 Sir Thomas More, ‘the behaviour of the Duke of 
 Gloucester to the King was very remarkable; for he 
 rode bareheaded before him, and often, with a loud 
 voice, said to the people, Behold your prince and 
 sovereign; giving them on all occasions such an ex- 
 ample of reverence and duty as might teach them how 
 to honour and respect their prince; by which action 
 he so won on all the spectators that they looked on 
 the late misrepresentations of him as the effect of his 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. Jigs. 
 
 enemies’ malice, and he was on all hands accounted 
 the best, as he was the first subject in the kingdom.’ 
 The Protectorship was easily attained. It was con- 
 ferred on him ‘ by a great council of the nobility, who 
 met to settle the government and choose a Protector, 
 according to the usual custom in the minority of their 
 kings.’! The next step was attended with difficulty. 
 On hearing of the arrest of her brothers, the Queen, 
 with her youngest son and daughters, had hurried into 
 the sanctuary of Westminster; and her refusal to quit 
 it, or trust her son out of her protection, was an im- 
 pediment to the Protector’s designs, as well as an 
 injurious expression of distrust. He would have 
 resorted to force, had not the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 represented that it would be a thing not only un- 
 grateful to the whole nation, but highly displeasing to 
 Almighty God, to have the privilege of sanctuary 
 broken in that church, which was first consecrated by 
 St. Peter, ‘ who came down, above five hundred years 
 ago, in person, accompanied with many angels, by 
 night, to do it;’ in proof whereof the prelate affirmed 
 that St. Peter’s cope, worn on the occasion, was still to 
 be seen in the abbey. What could be done by per- 
 suasion, the Archbishop readily engaged to try; and 
 accompanied by several lords of the council, he forth- 
 with proceeded to the sanctuary to argue the matter 
 out with the Queen, who, influenced more by fear than 
 argument, at length gave up the point. She led her 
 son to the Archbishop and lords of council, and after 
 solemnly confiding him to their care, she kissed hin, 
 and said, ‘Farewell, mine own sweet son. The Almighty 
 be thy protector! Let me kiss thee once more before 
 we part, for God knows when we shall kiss again.’ The 
 child was first carried to the Bishop of London’s palace, 
 
 1 Sir Thomas More. Lingard states that the House of Lords then 
 always took upon itself to settle the government in cases of doubt or 
 difficulty, and his authorities bear out the statement. 
 
 tee 
 
116. RICHARD TIIE THIRD. 
 
 where his brother was lodged, and, after a few days, 
 they were both removed to the Tower, the ostensible 
 reason being that they might be ready for the ceremony 
 of the coronation. 
 
 Buckingham had probably entered fully into Richard's 
 ulterior designs upon the crown from their formation. 
 Hastings was not so comphant. He had been the 
 intimate, attached, and trusted friend of the late king, 
 and his loyalty was proof against temptation. After 
 he had been sounded through Catesby, his rum and 
 death were resolved upon; and gross as are the means 
 described by Shakespeare in the council scene, where 
 Richard exhibits his withered arm, they are little more 
 than a metrical version of the text of More, who 
 reports the Protector’s words to have been: ‘Do you 
 answer me with z/s and ands, as if I charged them 
 falsely? I tell you, they have done it, and thou hast 
 joined with them in this villany.’ He struck the table 
 hard with his fist; upon which armed men rushed in, 
 and seized the Archbishop of York, Lord Stanley, and 
 several other Lords, besides Hastings, who was ‘ ordered 
 forthwith to prepare himself for his death, for the 
 Protector had sworn by St. Paul that he would not 
 dine till his head was off. It was in vain to complain 
 of severity or demand justice—the Protector’s oath 
 must not be broken; so he was fore’d to take the next 
 priest that came, and make a short confession, for the 
 common form was too long for the Protector’s stomach 
 to wait on; and being immediately hurried to the 
 green, by the chappell within the Tower, his head was 
 laid on a timber-loge, which was provided for repairing 
 the chappell, and there stricken off.’ 
 
 Walpole objects that the collateral circumstances 
 introduced by More do but weaken his account, and 
 take from its probability. He urges that, cruel or not, 
 Richard was no fool, and was not likely to lay the 
 withering of his arm (if it ever was withered) on 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 117 
 
 witchcraft, or to couple the Queen and Jane Shore 
 together as accomplices, the Queen’s aversion for her 
 late husband’s concubine being notorious. The sudden 
 arrest and death of Hastings, however, are undeniable ; 
 and on the very same day, Harl Rivers, Lord Richard 
 Grey, Vaughan and Howse, were beheaded at Ponte- 
 fract. The executions were consonant to the manners 
 and violence of the times; of which Lingard furnishes 
 a striking illustration by quoting the commission of 
 the Lord High Constable, who is empowered to execute 
 speedy justice, and distinctly enjoined to dispense with 
 regular proofs and forms. 
 
 So inured were people to scenes of blood and the 
 high-handed exertion of authority, that the citizens of 
 London, by whom Hastings had been much esteemed, 
 were easily persuaded that the public weal required 
 him to be summarily dealt upon: 
 
 ‘ Buck. Look you, my lord mayor : 
 Would you imagine, or almost believe, 
 Wer’t not that by great preservation 
 We live to tell it you:—the subtle traitor 
 This day had plotted in the council-house 
 To murder me, and my good lord of Gloster. 
 May. Now fair befall you! he deserv’d his death, 
 And your good graces both have well proceeded 
 To warn false traitors from the like attempts. 
 
 I never look’d for better at his hands 
 After he once fell in with Mistress Shore.’ 
 
 The received accounts of Richard’s mode of ascending 
 the throne are contradictory, and it is difficult to believe 
 that he laid much stress on the voices of the rabble in 
 Guildhall, although here again Shakespeare is supported 
 by More. Under a regular government, with a stand- 
 ing army and a centralised system of administration, a 
 usurper who has force on his side may dispense with 
 national support. Not so in times when authority was 
 divided, when the whole population was more or less 
 military, when the possession of the capital with the com- 
 mand of the public offices left the rest of the kingdom 
 
118 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 uncontrolled. Richard must have been sure of a powerful 
 party, or he never would have ventured to present him- 
 self as king before the very parliament which he had 
 summoned in the name of the nephew he deposed. This 
 important fact is made clear by Mr. Gairdner, who, 
 admitting that this parliament was not formally called 
 together, asserts that it did meet, and that the petition 
 to Richard to assume the crown was presented by a 
 deputation of the Lords and Commons of England, 
 accompanied by another from the city of London, on 
 the very day that had been originally appointed for its 
 meeting.* 
 
 If after so many changes of dynasty, such frequent 
 assertions and denials of title, any respect for here- 
 ditary right yet lingered in the public mind, it must 
 have been rudely shaken by the imputated illegitimacy 
 not only of the late king himself but of his children by 
 his second wife. Stilington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 
 volunteered a deposition that Edward, at the time of 
 his marriage with Lady Grey, had a wife living, 
 Heanor, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury; the 
 bishop himself having married them, at the pressing 
 request. of Edward, without witnesses. ‘This is one of 
 the stories which people accept or repudiate according 
 to interest or inclination. It suited the notables, who 
 were overpersuaded by Richard or dreaded the evils of 
 a prolonged minority, to believe or affect to believe 
 
 1 “Letters and papers illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III. and 
 Henry VII., edited by James Gairdner,’ published by the authority of 
 the Lords-Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury, under the direction | 
 of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longman and Co. 1861. Vol. i. 
 preface, p. xvill. Mr. Gairdner suggests in a note that there is reason to 
 believe Sir T. More’s ‘ History of Richard III.’ to be a translation of a 
 work of Cardinal Morton. This may account for its Lancastrian bias. 
 Walpole says: ‘I take the truth to be that Sir Thomas wrote his “ Reign 
 of Edward the Fifth,” as he wrote his “‘ Utopia,” to amuse his leisure 
 and exercise his fancy.’ The only strictly contemporary historians, or 
 chroniclers, are Fabyan, a citizen of London, and the author of the 
 ‘Chronicle of Croyland, a monk. Neither saw or heard more than the 
 surface of events or the current rumours of the time. 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 119 
 
 the bishop, and an Act was subsequently passed on the 
 assumption of his truth. 
 
 From this mock election in June, says More, he com- 
 menced his reign, and was crowned in July with the 
 same provision that was made for the coronation of his 
 nephew. ‘The day before the ceremony he and his 
 Queen rode from the tower through the city to West- 
 minster, with a train comprising three dukes, nine earls, 
 and twenty-two barons. There was a larger attendance 
 than usual of peers, lay and spiritual, and great digni- 
 tarles at the ensuing ceremony in Westminster Hall; 
 and More records as most observable that the Countess 
 of Richmond, mother to King Henry VII., bore up the 
 Queen’s train in the procession. Richard soon after- 
 wards left London on a royal progress towards York, 
 where he was crowned a second time; and it was in 
 this progress that he is reported to have planned the 
 crime which has done more to blacken his memory 
 than all his other misdeeds put together, being indeed 
 the main cause why men’s minds were thenceforth pre- 
 disposed to give credence to any barely plausible 
 accusation that might be brought against him. Feeling 
 this, Walpole has exerted his utmost powers of research 
 and ingenuity to prove that Richard did not cause his 
 nephews to be murdered in the Tower, and he has 
 pointed out many material improbabilities and dis- 
 crepancies in the popular narrative. He lays great 
 stress on the admissions of More and Bacon, that 
 it was long doubted whether the princes were 
 murdered or had died during Richard’s reign at 
 all. He insinuates that, if one or both of them had 
 been found in the Tower on the accession of Henry VIL, 
 that politic monarch would have got rid of them with 
 no more scruple than he showed in getting rid of 
 Clarence’s eldest son and heir, the Earl of Warwick, 
 whom Richard spared; and he contends that Perkin 
 Warbeck was no impostor, but the genuine Duke of 
 
120 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 York, who had been saved by Tyrrell and his accom- 
 plices when they smothered his elder brother. 
 
 This would be no defence for Richard if it were true ; 
 and the charge in question differs from the rest in the 
 most essential point. Far from being a posthumous 
 production of Lancastrian writers, it was pointedly 
 and repeatedly bruited about at a time when the 
 readiest modes of refutation, if it was groundless, were 
 in Richard’s power, and when he had the most power- 
 ful of all imaginable motives for resorting to them. 
 When he found foreign princes, including even Louis 
 X1., giving open expression to their abhorrence, and 
 thorough-going adherents like Buckingham falling off, 
 why did he not at once produce his nephews in the 
 open face of day? Even the conventional farce of ex- 
 posing the bodies was not hazarded, from a conviction 
 probably that two at once would be too much for the 
 most ignorant or slavish credulity. 
 
 Rulers with doubtful titles are commonly anxious to 
 rule well ; and Richard laid himself out from the com- 
 mencement of his reign to found a reputation for 
 moderation, equity, and forgiveness of private injuries. 
 ‘The day after his acceptance of the crown,’ says More, 
 ‘he went to Westminster, sat himself down in the 
 Court of King’s Bench, made a very gracious speech to 
 the assembly there present, and promised them 
 halcyon days. He ordered one Hog, whom he hated, 
 and who was fled to sanctuary for fear of him, to be 
 brought before him, took him by the hand, and spoke 
 favourably to him, which the multitude thought was a 
 token of his clemency, and the wise men of his vanity.’ 
 
 He formally enjoined the great barons to see to the 
 equal administration of justice in their provinces; and 
 a contemporary sketch of his progresses speaks of ‘ his 
 lords and judges in every place, sitting determining the 
 complaints of poor folks, with due punition of offenders 
 against the laws.’ In a circular letter to the bishops 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. Les) 
 
 he aca his fervent desire for the suppression of 
 vice ; ‘and this perfectly followed and put in execution 
 by persons of high estate, pre-eminence, and dignity, 
 induces persons of lower degree to take thereof 
 example, and to insure the same.’ His legislative 
 measures are admitted to have been valuable additions 
 to the Statute Book. 
 
 Edward IV. was always in want of money, and was 
 in the habit of personally appealing to his wealthiest 
 subjects for contributions. ‘And here,’ says the 
 chronicler, ‘ I will not let passe a prettie conceipt that 
 happened in this gathering, in which you shall not only 
 note the humilitie of a king, but more the fantasie of a 
 woman. King Edward had called before him a 
 widow much abounding in substance, and no lesse 
 growne in years, of whom he merily demanded, what 
 she gladly would give him towards his great charges. 
 By my trothe, quoth she, for thy lovely countenance 
 thou shalt have even twentie pounds. The king looking 
 scarce for the half of that sum, thanked her, and 
 lovinglie kissed her. Whether the flavor of his 
 breath did so comfort her stomach, or she esteemed 
 the kiss of a king so precious a jewele, she swore 
 incontinentlie that he should have twentie pounds 
 more, which she with the same will paied that she 
 offered it.’ Richard went on an opposite tack. 
 When the citizens and others offered him a benevo- 
 lence, he refused it, saying, ‘I would rather have your 
 hearts than your money.’ 
 
 He disforested a large tract of country at Witchwood 
 which his brother Aaa cleared for deer, and showed at 
 the same time his wish to promote all manly and 
 popular amusements by liberal grants and allowances 
 to the masters of his hounds and hawks. There 1s, 
 moreover, extant a mandate to all mayors and sheriffs 
 
 1 Holingshed, vol. iii. p, 33. 
 
122 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 not to vex or molest John Brown ‘ ovr master-guider 
 and ruler of all our bears and apes to us appertaining.’ 
 He is commended by contemporaries for his encourage- 
 ment of architecture; and the commendation is 
 justified by a list of the structures which he completed 
 or improved. His love of music is inferred from the 
 extreme measures he adopted for its gratification. 
 Turner quotes a warrant ‘empowering one of the 
 gentlemen of his chapel to take and seize fer the king’s 
 use, all such singing men and children, expert in the 
 science of music, as he could find and think able to do 
 the king service, in all places in the kingdom, whether 
 cathedrals, colleges, chapels, monasteries, or any other 
 franchised places except Windsor.’ He was visited by 
 minstrels from foreign countries, and he Bug annuities 
 to several Pipe Ors of the gentle science ; ‘ and also,’ 
 adds Turner, ‘perhaps from his fondness for their 
 sonorous state music, to several trumpeters. His 
 example, therefore, indirectly refutes the famous 
 Shakespearian theory—‘ The man that has no music in 
 his soul ’—which Steevens contends is fit only to supply 
 the vacant fiddler with something to say in praise of 
 his idle calling. If Richard was an innate villain, he 
 is at all events a proof that one who is ‘ moved with 
 concord of sweet sounds’ may be as ‘fit for treasons, 
 stratagems, and spoils’ as one who cannot distinguish 
 ‘Rule Britannia’ from ‘ Nancy Dawson.’ Mr. Jesse will 
 have it that Richard’s nature was originally a com- 
 passionate one; and he appeals to the pensions con- 
 siderately bestowed by him on the widows of his 
 enemies, Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, Lady Oxford, 
 and the Duchess of Buckingham. 
 
 A few months after the death of the young princes, 
 the clergy in convocation assembled drew up and 
 presented a petition to him, complaining that church- 
 men were cruelly, grievously and daily troubled, vexed, 
 indicted, and arrested ; and prayed for relief, ‘Seeing 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. io 
 
 your most noble and blessed disposition in all other 
 things.’ Probably this is a precedent for the revival of 
 Convocation in all its glory on which the Bishop of 
 Oxford and the other right reverend upholders of that 
 venerated institution will not be anxious to rely. 
 
 sir Thomas More states that Richard, in the height 
 of his prosperity, could never silence the whispers of 
 his conscience, and could not lie quiet in his bed for 
 dreams and visions. So Anne is made to complain: 
 
 ‘ For never yet one hour in his bed 
 
 Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep; 
 But with his tim’rous dreams was still awakened.’ 
 
 We suspect that the instability of his position had 
 more to do with his uneasy nights than the sense of 
 guilt: for men of his temper, habituated to deeds of 
 blood and projects of aggrandisement from boyhood, 
 are little subject to remorse. He knew that the 
 majority of the great nobles were plotting round him, 
 and that it was beyond his power to satisfy the rapacity 
 of all who had helped him to the throne. The Percys 
 turned against Henry IV. on the plea of his ingratitude. 
 Warwick changed sides because he was personally 
 sighted, or disappointed; and Buckingham, in a 
 nearly analogous position, was pretty sure to try 
 whether he could not pull down what he had so 
 largely contributed to set up. His motives have given 
 rise to much ingenious speculation, and were probably 
 mixed. He may (as Shakespeare takes for granted) 
 have been refused the promised earldom and domains — 
 of Hereford, although a formal grant of them has been 
 discovered amongst some old records ; or, being of the 
 blood royal, he might have hoped to get the crown for 
 himself He told Morton that he could no longer 
 abide the sight of Richard after the death of ‘ the two 
 young innocents.’ He accordingly transferred his 
 allegiance to the Earl of Richmond; who, when the 
 arrangements for a simultaneous rising in several parts 
 
124 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 of England were complete, set sail from St. Malo with 
 -a force computed at 5,000 soldiers. His friends keeping 
 faith, the insurrection assumed formidable proportions 
 in Devonshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Kent. Buck- 
 ingham had collected a large force in Wales. But it 
 was impossible to elude Richard’s watchfulness; and 
 fortune had not yet deserted him. Richmond’s fleet 
 was driven back by a tempest, and Buckingham was 
 stopped by an inundation of the Severn and the neigh- 
 bouring rivers, so terrible that, for a century after- 
 wards, it was spoken of as Buckingham’s Great Water. 
 The result is succinctly told by Shakespeare : 
 
 ‘ Mess. My lord, the army of great Buckingham— 
 K. Rich. Out on ye, owls! nothing but songs of death. 
 [ He strikes him. 
 
 Mess. The news I have to tell your majesty 
 Is — that by sudden floods and fall of waters 
 Buckingham’s army is dispers’d and scatter’d ; 
 And he himself wandered away alone, 
 No man knows whither.’ 
 
 After another messenger has delivered an equally 
 cheering report, 
 
 ‘ Enter CATESBY. 
 My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken. 
 That’s the best news.—That the Karl of Richmond 
 Is with a mighty power landed at Milford, 
 Ts colder tidings, yet it must be told. 
 King. Away towards Salisbury; while we reason here 
 A royal battle might be won and lost. 
 Some one take order Buckingham be brought 
 To Salisbury: the rest march on with me.’ 
 
 Many readers will be as much puzzled by this 
 passage as was the Drury Lane audience on the night 
 when John Philip Kemble, feeling ill, left out the line? 
 which provoked a nightly conflict with the pit. The 
 point or claptrap which they missed was interpolated 
 
 1 “For this be sure to-night thou shalt have aches.’ The story is told 
 by Scott, ‘Prose Works,’ vol. xx. p. 188. 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 125 
 
 by Cibber in what, with a few subsequent changes, is 
 still the acting edition of the play: 
 
 ‘ Enter CATESBY. 
 My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken. 
 Rich, Of with his head: so much for Buckingham.’ 
 
 This is the popular reading, and a story is current in 
 theatrical circles of the ludicrous confusion of a cele- 
 brated actor who piqued himself on the delivery of the 
 line given to Richard, when the Catesby of the evening 
 thus varied his part : 
 
 ‘My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken, 
 And, without orders, they’ve cut off his head.’ 
 
 Cibber’s Richard is printed amongst his works under 
 the title of ‘The Tragical History of Richard IIT. as 
 it is now acted at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. 
 Altered from Shakespeare, by Mr. Cibber. London. 
 Printed in the year 1721.’ Indignation is naturally 
 excited by the bare notion of Shakespeare corrected 
 by Cibber, and we are prepared to hear of ‘ gilding 
 refined gold, painting the lily,’ &c. Yet the best critics 
 are agreed that the success of the drama as an acting 
 play is mainly owing to him. Their concurrent estimate 
 is thus expressed by Steevens : ‘ The hero, the lover, the 
 statesman, the buffoon, the hypocrite, the hardened and 
 repenting sinner, &c., are to be found within its compass. 
 No wonder, therefore, that the discriminating powers of 
 a Burbage, a Garrick, and a Henderson, [a Kean and 
 a Macready,] should at different periods have given 
 it a popularity beyond other dramas of the same author. 
 Yet the favour with which this tragedy 1s now received, 
 must also in some measure be imputed to Mr. Cibber’s 
 reformation of it, which, generally considered, is 
 judicious. No modern audience, we agree with him, 
 would patiently listen to the narrative of Clarence’s 
 dream, his expostulation with the murderers, the prattle 
 of his children, the soliloquy of the scrivener, the tedious 
 
126 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 dialogue of the citizens, the ravings of Margaret, the 
 vehement interchange of curses and invectives with 
 which whole scenes are stuffed, or the repeated pro- 
 gresses to execution. In fact, Shakespeare’s ordinary 
 fertility of resource is frequently belied by this play ; 
 for Clarence’s dream (in which the betrayed Warwick, 
 and the murdered of Tewkesbury appear to him) fore- 
 shadows Richard’s; and the scene in which he extorts 
 the reluctant consent of Elizabeth— 
 
 ‘Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman—’ 
 
 too closely resembles that in which he woos and wins 
 Anne. His new marriage project is thus broached to 
 his convenient tool, Catesby :— 
 ‘I say again, give out 
 
 That Anne, my queen, is sick and like to die. 
 
 About it, for it stands me much upon 
 
 To stop all hopes, whose growth may damage me. 
 
 [ Exit CATESBY. 
 
 I must be married to my brother’s daughter, 
 
 Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass. 
 
 Murder her brothers, and then marry her! 
 
 Uncertain way of gain!’ 
 
 It is one of the strangest stories of these strange times 
 that the young and lovely Princess Elizabeth was in 
 love with the wicked crook-backed uncle who had 
 murdered her brothers; and that, in declared rivalry 
 with her aunt, she: appeared at the Christmas festivals 
 of 1484 in royal robes exactly similar to those of the 
 Queen, who died the March following of a languishing 
 distemper. His tongue must have surpassed that of 
 the original tempter, or the great ladies of those days 
 must have had an uncommon share of their sex’s weak- 
 ness, if one after the other consented to overlook 
 notorious crime and suppress natural horror in this 
 fashion ; for it would seem that the princess’s inclina- 
 tions were sanctioned by her mother, the widow of 
 Edward IV., who, if possible, had still stronger grounds 
 of abhorrence. Another curious sign of the times is 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. Tt 
 
 the oath by which he induced his nieces to leave the 
 sanctuary and trust themselves in his power. This 
 document, dated March 1, 1484, begins thus : 
 
 ‘I, Richard, by the grace of God king, &c., in the presence 
 of you, my lords spiritual and temporal, and you, mayor and 
 aldermen of my city of London, promise and swear, verbo 
 vegio, upon these Holy Evangelists of God, by me personally 
 touched, that if the daughters of Dame Elizabeth Grey, late 
 calling herself Queen of England; that is to wit, Elizabeth, 
 Cecily, Anne, Katherine, and Bridget, will come unto me 
 out of the sanctuary at Westminster, and be guided, ruled, 
 and demeaned after me, then I shall see that they shall be 
 in surety of their lives, and also not suffer any manner of 
 hurt by any manner of person or persons, to them or any of 
 them, on their bodies and persons, to be done by way of 
 ravishment or defouling, contrary to their will.’ 
 
 He further swears to marry them to gentlemen by 
 birth, to endow each of them to the amount of 200 
 marks per annum, and to discredit any reports to their 
 disadvantage, till they shall have had opportunity for 
 lawful defence and answer. 
 
 There is good reason to believe that Richard con- 
 tinued warmly attached to his early love and wedded 
 wife, Anne; who never recovered the death of their son, 
 and languished, says Buck, ‘ in weakness and extremity 
 of sorrow, until she seemed rather to overtake death, than 
 death her. Richard might easily have procured a dis- 
 pensation to marry his niece, had he been so minded; but 
 the project was never carried further than was required 
 to break off or delay her marriage with her future 
 husband, Richmond ; and when this purpose had been 
 answered, he publicly assured the citizens of London ~ 
 that he never so much as contemplated the union. 
 
 The shortness of his reign favours the notion that 
 the nation, exasperated beyond endurance by his vil- 
 lanies, rose and threw him off like an incubus. But 
 nothing of the kind occurred. The people at large 
 
128 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 were too much inured to scenes of blood and acts of 
 cruelty, to be shocked by them. They cared little or 
 nothing whether a few princes or lords, more or less, 
 were put to death, so long as they were not fleeced by 
 the tax-gatherer or oppressed by a local tyrant; and 
 Richard, like Cromwell at a later period, took good care 
 that there should be no usurped or abused authority 
 besides his own. He was not weighed in the balance 
 and found wanting, till two discontented nobles, the 
 Stanleys, threw their whole weight into the opposing 
 scale. The numerical inferiority of Richmond’s army 
 is a conclusive proof that his cause was not a pre- 
 eminently popular one. After landing at Milford Haven 
 (Aug. 6, 1485), he proceeded by a circuitous route 
 through Wales, in the hope, which was not disappointed, 
 of profiting by his Welsh blood and connexions. 
 On arriving at Shrewsbury, the gates, after a short 
 parley, were opened to him by Mitton, the sheriff, who 
 had sworn fidelity to Richard, but fortunately discovered 
 a mode-of breaking his oath without hurt to his con- 
 science. He had sworn that Richmond should go over 
 his belly before entering the tower, meaning of course 
 _that he would die in its defence, ‘soe when they en- 
 tered, the sayd Mitton lay alonge the grounde wyth 
 his belly uppwards, and soe the said Harle stepped over 
 hym and saved his othe.’ 
 
 On Tuesday, August 16th, Richard quitted Notting- 
 ham at the head of all the forces he could collect, and 
 entered Leicester the same evening a little after sun- 
 set. He took up his quarters in a large half-timber 
 house, standing within living memory; and slept ina 
 bed, the remains of which were recently in existence.? 
 Tt had a false bottom, in which a large sum of money 
 could be concealed, and did duty as a military chest. 
 
 1 The ‘ Battle of Bosworth Field,’ &c. &c., by W. Hutton, F.A.8.8S., 
 the second edition by J. Nicholls, F'.S.A., p. 87- Engrayings of the house 
 and bedstead are given in this book, 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 129° 
 
 He passed the night of the 17th at Elmsthorp, eleven 
 miles from Leicester; and on the 18th pitched his 
 camp at a place called the Bradshaws, a mile and a 
 half from Bosworth Field. Richmond advanced by 
 Lichfield and Tamworth to Atherstone, close to the 
 field; where he arrived on the 20th, after having held 
 a private council with the Stanleys on the way. Judg- 
 ing from the result, their plan is concluded to have 
 been that, whilst Richmond marched directly to the 
 field, Lord Stanley should take up a position on the right, 
 and Sir William on the left, so that, when the four 
 armies were marshalled, they would form a hollow 
 square ; the two brothers to remain neuter unless their 
 aid should prove indispensable. ‘There were good rea- 
 sons for this saving clause; for Lord Strange, Lord 
 Stanley’s eldest son, was a hostage in the hands of 
 Richard ; and though the usurper might be defeated, it 
 did not follow that he would be killed, or lose all future 
 chance of taking full vengeance on false friends. <Ac- 
 cording to Hutton’s estimate, Richard brought into the 
 field twelve thousand men, Richmond more than seven, 
 Lord Stanley five, and Sir William Stanley three. 
 The same impartial and well-informed writer succinctly 
 sums up the respective merits and pretensions of the 
 rivals: ‘Were I allowed to treat royalty with plain- 
 ness, Richard was an accomplished rascal, and Henry 
 not one jot better. Which had the greatest right to 
 the crown, is no part of the argument ; neither of them 
 had any. Perhaps their chief difference of character 
 consisted in Richard’s murdering two men for Henry’s 
 one; but as a small counter-balance, Richard had some 
 excellences, to which the other was a stranger.’ 
 
 The powers of upper air may therefore be supposed 
 to have remained neuter, and each of the combatants 
 passed probably an equally agitated night. We learn 
 from an anecdote that Richard had lost nothing of his 
 vigilance or unrelenting sternness. Going the rounds 
 
 YOu, IT, K 
 
130 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 he found a sentinel asleep, and stabbed him, with the 
 remark, ‘I found him asleep, and have left him as I 
 found him.’ For summary administration of martial 
 law, this beats Frederick the Great’s famous postscript 
 to the subaltern’s letter to his wife. 
 
 The influence of omens on the English of all classes 
 is mentioned by Philip de Commines, and Richard is 
 reported to have been peculiarly subject to it. 
 ‘During his abode at Exeter,’ says Holingshed, ‘he 
 went about the citie, and viewed the seat of the same, 
 and at length he came to the castle; and when he 
 understood that it was called Rugemont, suddenlie he 
 fell into a dumpe, and (as one astonied) said, “* Well I 
 see my daies be not long.” He spake this of a prophecy 
 told him that when he eame once to Richmond, he should 
 not long live after.” He had more rational cause for 
 alarm when Jockey of Norfolk produced the dogerel 
 warning found in his tent, for it clearly indicated the 
 desertion and treachery that were about to prove fatal 
 to him. 
 
 Shakespeare’s representation of the battle is unac- 
 countably tame, for he has made little or no use of the 
 many stirring episodes and incidents supplied by the 
 chroniclers. Early in the morning, Sir Robert Braken- 
 bury delivered this message to Lord Stanley: ‘My 
 lord, the King salutes you, and commands your imme- 
 diate attendance with your bands, or, by God, your 
 son shall instantly die.” About the same time, Sir 
 Reginald Gray came with a pressing message from 
 Richmond. Stanley replied to Brakenbury; ‘If the 
 King stains his honour with the blood of my son, I 
 have more; but why should he suffer? I have not 
 lifted a hand against him. I will come at a convenient 
 time.’ When this answer was brought to Richard, he 
 exclaimed: ‘ This is a false pretence. He is a traitor, 
 and young Strange shall die. Catesby, see to it.’ 
 Strange was brought forth, and the executioner was 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 131 
 
 getting ready the axe and the block, when Lord Ferrers 
 of Chartley warmly remonstrated, and extorted a 
 reprieve, mainly by urging that Lord Stanley might 
 be still undecided. This is rather weakly rendered 
 by— 
 ‘Send out a pursuivant at arms 
 To Stanley’s regiment; bid him bring his power 
 Before sun rising, lest his son George fall 
 Into the blind care of eternal night. 
 What says Lord Stanley? Will he bring his power? 
 Mess, My lord, he doth deny to come. 
 Rich, Off instantly with his son George’s head. 
 Nor. My lord, the enemy has passed the march ; 
 After the battle let George Stanley die.’ 
 
 The vanguard of Richard’s army was commanded 
 by the Duke of Norfolk; the centre and main body 
 by the King himself, who rode at their head, mounted 
 on his celebrated milk-white steed,— 
 
 ‘Saddle White Surrey for the field to-morrow,’-— 
 
 and arrayed in the splendid suit of armour which he 
 had worn at Tewkesbury. Like Henry V. at Agincourt, 
 he wore a golden crown, not (as Hutton takes care to 
 tell us) as a man would wear a hat or cap, but by 
 way of crest over his helmet, instead of the grinning 
 boar’s head in which Lord Lytton portrays him 
 scattering dismay at Barnet. Richmond, too, bore 
 himself gallantly, and rode through the ranks, mar- 
 shalling and encouraging his men, arrayed in complete 
 armour, but unhelmeted. His vanguard, commanded 
 by the Earl of Oxford, began the battle by crossing 
 the low ground towards the elevated position where 
 Richard prudently waited the attack. ‘The trumpets 
 blew, and the soldiers shouted, and the King’s archers 
 courag2ously let fly their arrows. ‘The earl’s bowmen 
 stood not still, but paid them home again; and, the 
 terrible shot once passed, the armies joined, and came 
 K 2 
 
132 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 to hand strokes.’! The leaders of those days deemed 
 it a point of honour to fight hand to hand, if possible, 
 and Oxford and Norfolk managed to engage in a 
 personal encounter, which would form a fitting subject 
 for an Ariosto or a Scott. After shivering their spears 
 on each other’s shields or breastplates, they fell to 
 with their swords. Oxford, wounded in the arm by a 
 blow which glanced from his crest, returned it by one 
 which hewed off the vizor of Norfolk’s helmet, leaving 
 the face bare; and then, disdaining to follow up the 
 advantage, drew back, when an arrow from’an unknown 
 hand pierced the duke’s brain. Surrey, hurrying up 
 to assist or avenge his father, was surrounded and over- 
 powered by Sir Gilbert Talbot and Sir John Savage, 
 who commanded on the right and left for Richmond— 
 
 ‘Young Howard single with an army fights; 
 When moved with pity, two renownéd knights, 
 Strong Clarendon and valiant Conyers, try 
 To rescue him, in which attempt they die. 
 
 Now Surrey, fainting, scarce his sword can hold, 
 Which made a common soldier grow so bold 
 
 To lay rude hands upon that noble flower, 
 Which he disdaining,—anger gives him power,— 
 Erects his weapon with a nimble round, 
 
 And sends the peasant’s arm to kiss the ground.’ ? 
 
 If we may credit tradition or the chroniclers, all 
 this was literally true. When completely exhausted, 
 Surrey presented the hilt of his sword to Talbot, whom 
 he requested to take his life and save him from dying 
 by an ignoble hand. He lived to be the Surrey of 
 Flodden Field, and the worthy transmitter of ‘all the 
 blood of all the Howards.’ 
 
 Hutton contends that, although Norfolk had fallen 
 and Lord Stanley had closed up whilst the vanguard 
 
 1 Grafton, vol. ii. p. 154. Balls of about a pound and a half weight 
 have been dug up on the field, but none of the chroniclers speak of artil- 
 lery as used by either side. 
 
 ? Bosworth Field, by Sir John Beaumont, Bart. ., quoted by Mr. Jesse 
 from Weeyer’s Funeral Monuments, p. 554, 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. LoS 
 
 were engaged, no decisive advantage had been gained, 
 when Richard made that renowned charge, which 
 historians describe as the last effort of despair. He was 
 bringing up his main body when intelligence reached 
 him that Richmond was posted behind the hill with a 
 slender attendance. His plan was formed on the 
 instant: nor, although fiery courage or burning hate 
 might have suggested it, was it ill-judged or reckless. 
 Three-fourths of the combatants, if we include the 
 Stanleys, were ready to side with the strongest. Rich- 
 mond’s army, without Richmond, was a rope of sand. 
 His fall would be the signal for a general scat- 
 tering or a feigned renewal of hollow allegiance to the 
 conqueror. Neither did the execution of the pro- 
 posed cowp de main betoken a sudden impulse incon- 
 siderately acted upon. Richard rode out at the right 
 flank of his army, and ascended a rising ground to get 
 a view of his enemy, with whose person he was not 
 acquainted. He summoned to his side a chosen body 
 of knights, all of whom, with the exception of Lord 
 Lovell, perished with him, and he paused to drink at a 
 spring which still goes by his name. It must have 
 been here, if anywhere, that Catesby, a civilian, called 
 his attention to Sir Wilham Stanley’s suspicious move- 
 ments, and urged him to fly, offering a fresh horse ; 
 but there is no authority for making Catesby exclaim 
 to Norfolk, slain an hour ago: 
 
 ‘Rescue, my lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue! 
 The king enacts more wonders than a man, 
 Daring an opposite to every danger. 
 
 His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, 
 Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death.’ 
 
 For aught that is known, it was White Surrey that, 
 like Hotspur’s roan, was to bear him like a thunderbolt 
 against the bosom of his foe; and it was spear in rest 
 that he dashed amongst Richmond’s surprised and 
 fluttered body-guard. ‘ Richard was better versed 
 
134 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 in arms, Henry was better served. Richard was brave, 
 Henry a coward. Richard was about five feet four, 
 rather runted, but only made crooked by his enemies ; 
 and wanted six weeks of thirty-three. Henry was 
 twenty-seven, slender, and near five feet nine, with a 
 saturnine countenance, yellow hair, and grey eyes.’ 
 Such is Hutton’s estimate of the personal prowess of 
 the pair who were now contending for a kingdom. What 
 follows sounds fabulous, unless we bear in mind the 
 reflection with which Scott accompanies his sketch 
 of Claverhouse unhorsing Balfour of Burleigh. ‘A 
 wonderful thing it was afterwards thought that one so 
 powerful as Balfour should have sunk under the blow 
 of a man to appearance so slightly made as Claverhouse, 
 and the vulgar of course set down to supernatural aid 
 the effect of that energy which a determined spirit can 
 give to a feebler arm.’ We all recollect the Countess 
 of Auvergne’s wonder at the sight of Talbot, whom she 
 calls a ‘weak and writhled shrimp; and the hero of 
 one of the most spirited feats of arms recorded by 
 Froissart, is a humpbacked little knight, whose head and 
 shoulders only just appeared over his raised saddle- 
 bow. According to Grafton, Richard, so soon as he 
 descried Richmond, ‘put spurs to his horse, and like 
 a hungry lion ran with spear in rest towards him.’ He 
 unhorsed Sir John Cheney, a strong and brave knight,? 
 and rushing on Sir William Brandon, Henry’s standard- 
 bearer, cleft his skull, tore the standard from his grasp, 
 and flung it on the ground. ‘ He was now,’ says Hume, 
 
 1 ¢Sir John Cheney of Sherland, personally encountering King 
 Richard, was felled to the ground by the monarch, had his crest struck off 
 and his head laid bare; for some time, it is said, he remained stunned ; 
 but recovering after awhile, he cut the skull and horns off the hide of an 
 ox which chanced to be near, and fixed them upon his head to supply the 
 loss of the upper part of his helmet: he then returned to the field of 
 battle, and did such signal service that Henry, on being proclaimed king, 
 assigned Cheney for crest the bull’s scalp, which his descendants still 
 bear” (Ser Bernard Burke, Vicissitudes of Families, p. 350.) 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. 135 
 
 ‘within reach of Richmond himself, who declined not 
 the combat.’ Others say Richmond drew back, as a 
 braver man might have done in his place— 
 
 ‘No craven he, and yet he shuns the blow, 
 So much confusion magnifies the foe.’ 
 
 Fortunately for him Sir William Stanley came up at the 
 very nick of time ‘ with three thousand tall men,’ and 
 overpowered Richard, who died, fighting furiously and 
 murmuring with his last breath, treason! treason! 
 treason! So nicely timed was Stanley's aid, that 
 Henry afterwards justified the ungrateful return he 
 made for it by saying: ‘He came time enough to save 
 my life, but he stayed long enough to endanger it.’ 
 Richard received wounds enough to let out a hundred 
 lives: his crown had been struck off at the beginning 
 of the onset; and his armour was so broken, and _ his 
 features were so defaced, that he was hardly to be 
 recognised when dragged from beneath a heap of 
 
 slain— 
 ‘His hand still strained the broken brand, 
 His arms were smeared with blood and sand ; 
 Drage’d from among the horses’ feet, 
 With dinted shield and helmet beat, 
 The falcon crest and plumage gone,— 
 Can that be haughty Marmion ?’ 
 
 And can that stripped and mutilated corpse be the 
 crowned monarch who at morning’s rise led a gallant 
 army to an assured victory, who had recently been 
 described by a distinguished foreigner as holding the 
 proudest position held by any king of Eneland for a 
 hundred years?’ Nothing places in a stronger light 
 the depth of moral degradation and insensibility, fast 
 verging towards barbarism, to which men’s minds 
 had been sunk by the multiplied butcheries of these 
 terrible conflicts, than the indignities heaped upon the 
 lead king, with the sanction, if not by the express 
 
 1 Philip de Commines, 
 
136 RICHARD THE THIRD. 
 
 orders, of his successor. The body, perfectly naked, 
 with a rope round the neck, was flung across a horse, 
 like the carcass of a calf, behind a pursuivant at arms 
 bearing a silver boar upon his coat, and was thus car- 
 ried in triumph to Leicester. It was exposed two days 
 in the Townhall, and then buried without ceremony 
 in the Gray Friars Church. At the destruction of the 
 religious houses the remains were thrown out, and the 
 coflin, which was of stone, was converted into a water- 
 ing-trough at the White Horse Inn. The best intelli- 
 gence that Mr. Hutton, who made a journey on purpose 
 in 1758, could collect concerning it was, that it was 
 broken up about the latter end of the reign of George 
 the First, and that some of the pieces had been placed 
 as steps in the cellar of the inn. ‘To what base uses we 
 may return, Horatio!’ The sign of the White Boar at 
 Leicester, at which Richard slept, was forthwith con- 
 verted into the Blue Boar; and the name of the street, 
 called after it, has been corrupted into Blubber Lane. 
 As to the person of Richard, we agree with Buck 
 and Walpole. ‘The truth (says Walpole) I take to 
 have been this: Richard, who was slender and not 
 tall, had one shoulder a little higher than the other, a 
 defect by the magnifying glasses of party, by distance 
 of time, and by the amplification of tradition, easily 
 swelled to shocking deformity.’ The impression left by 
 a marked personal peculiarity may be unconsciously 
 heightened and transmitted till it becomes inex- 
 tricably woven into the web of history. Thus 
 Lord Macaulay, a warm admirer of both Luxembourg 
 and William, winds up a brilliant paragraph by the 
 remark that amongst the 100,000 men engaged 
 at Landen, ‘ perhaps the two feeblest in body were the 
 humpbacked dwarf who urged on the fiery onset. of 
 France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the 
 slow retreat of England.’ The strongest argument in 
 favour of Richard’s personal appearance is that drawn 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD. bik: 
 
 from Dr. Shaw’s address to the citizens of London pre- 
 paratory to the usurpation. After contending that the 
 illegitimacy of Edward IV. and Clarence was obvious 
 from their likeness to persons with whom their mother 
 had intrigued, he went on: ‘ But my Lord Protector, 
 that very noble Prince, the pattern of all heroic deeds, 
 represents the very face and mind of the great Duke 
 his father. His features are the same, and the very 
 express likeness of that noble Duke.’ At these words 
 the Protector was to enter as if by chance; and 
 although the point was missed by his non-appearance 
 till a few minutes later, such a coup de thédtre would 
 hardly have been hazarded if Richard either presented 
 no resemblance or a miniature and caricature one of his 
 father. A Scotch prelate, one of the commissioners for 
 concluding the marriage between Prince James of Scot- 
 land and “the Lady Anne de la Pole, thus alludes to 
 Richard's stature in his address : 
 
 ‘He (the King of Scotland) bebolds in your face a princely 
 majesty and authority royal, sparkling with the illustrious 
 beams of all moral and heroical virtue. To you may not 
 unfitly be applied what was said by the poet of a most re- 
 nowned prince of the Thebans: 
 
 ‘“ Nunquam tantum animum natura minori 
 Corpore, nec tantas visa est includere vires. 
 Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus.” ’ 1 
 
 He had a habit of gnawing his under lip and a trick 
 of playing with his dagger, which, although miscon- 
 strued into signs of an evil disposition, were probably 
 mere outward manifestations of restlessness. Polydore 
 Virgil speaks of his ‘horrible vigilance and celerity.’ 
 It was the old story of the sword wearing out the 
 scabbard ; and the chances are that he would not long 
 have survived Bosworth Field had he come off un- 
 scathed and the conqueror. 
 
 1 Buck, in Kennet, p. 573. The address was in Latin, and is rather 
 freely rendered by Buck. Facies may mean form or air as well as face. 
 The prelate’s quotation from Statius, too, is somewhat garbled. See the 
 Thebad, L, 1. vy. 416, and L, 6. vy. 845, 
 
138 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 (From THE EDINBURGH Review For JuLty 1859.) 
 
 Vie de Marie Antoinette. Par Epnovarp et JULES DE 
 Goncourt. Deuxiéme Edition. Revue et augmentée 
 de Documents inédits et de Piéces tirées des Archives de 
 VEmpire. Paris, 1859. 
 
 In Sir Walter Scott’s younger days, as he states in one 
 of his prefaces, the guilt or innocence of Mary Queen 
 of Scots was a constant subject of angry controversy, 
 and a reflection on her character in the hearing of one 
 of her avowed partisans was held to justify a challenge. 
 A similar though less durable conflict of opinion has 
 existed in France touching the reputation of Marie 
 Antoinette ; and we remember the time when it would 
 have been exceedingly dangerous to question her 
 conjugal fidelity within the precincts of the Faubourg 
 St. Germain. Both of these illustrious ladies were 
 cradled in royalty: both were beauties and coquettes : 
 both were unequally mated: both were suspected and 
 ealumniated ; and both perished on the scaffold. But 
 the parallel ceases at the most important point. The 
 verdict of history has proved decidedly unfavourable 
 to Mary Stuart, whilst the name and memory of Marie 
 Antoinette come out brighter and brighter from the 
 ordeal of every fresh inquiry. 
 
 Partial as Madame Campan may have been to her 
 beloved mistress, there is an air of sincerity in her 
 statements which could not fail to make way with 
 posterity. The most material have been confirmed by 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 139 
 
 the unimpeachable testimony of the Count de la Marck}; 
 whilst the indications discoverable in the memoirs and 
 correspondence of her most respectable contemporaries 
 almost all point in the same direction. The case for the 
 defence has been completed by MM. de Goncourt ; who 
 profess to have resorted to every accessible source of 
 information, and now boldly lay claim for their heroine 
 to take rank as the most high-principled, self-sacrificing, 
 and best-conducted, as well as most unfortunate, of 
 queens. The first edition of their book was speedily 
 exhausted; and such is the inherent attraction of the 
 subject, that we are tempted to recapitulate and re- 
 examine the principal events of a life which has all the 
 interest of a novel, although it influenced the destinies 
 of Europe and (no solitary example) was embittered 
 by a throne. 
 
 We shall confine ourselves almost exclusively to her 
 personal history, on which we hope to throw fresh light 
 from sources which have escaped the search, or not 
 fallen under the observation, of MM. de Goncourt. 
 But, judging from the success of recent contributions to 
 retrospective literature of a more familiar kind, we 
 should not despair of a favourable reception were we 
 to do no more than bring together the scattered and 
 highly interesting traits which are already known to the 
 curious in French memoirs. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Francis the First, 
 Emperor of Germany, and the famous Maria-Theresa, 
 was born November 2nd, 1755: ‘the day,’ says 
 Madame Campan, ‘ of the earthquake of Lisbon; and 
 this catastrophe, which seemed to mark with a fatal 
 stamp the epoch of her nativity, without being a 
 motive for superstitious fear, had nevertheless made an 
 impression on the mind of the princess.’ This is strange, 
 for the earthquake took place the day before, namely, 
 
 1 Correspondance entre le Comte de Mirabeau et le Comte de la 
 Marck. Paris, 1851. 
 
140 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 November 1st. The Empress, anxious for a son, had 
 made abet of two ducats with the Duc de Tarozka that 
 she should have a daughter. After the announcement of 
 the event, the loser was discovered ina brown study by 
 Metastasio, who inquired the cause. ‘ Imagine my em- 
 barrassment,’ exclaimed the Duke: ‘I have a wager of 
 two ducats with the Empress that she would be brought 
 to bed of a prince, and lo, it isa princess.’ ‘ Well, then, 
 replied Metastasio, ‘you have lost and must pay- 
 ‘Pay! but how pay two ducats to an empress?’ ‘ Oh, 
 if that is all, your troubles will soon be over.’ The 
 poet took out his pencil, and wrote these lines: 
 ‘Ho perduto: I’ augusta figlia 
 A pagar m’ ha condannato ; 
 Mas’ é ver che a voi somiglia, 
 Tutto il mondo ha guadagnato.’ 
 
 This epigram may be paraphrased thus : 
 
 ‘A daughter instead of a son! 
 My wager is lost, but I smother 
 Regret—the whole world will have won, 
 If the daughter resembles the mother,’ 
 ‘There, he continued, ‘wrap up your two ducats in 
 this paper, and your debt will be paid without offence.’? 
 This disappointment did not deprive the infant arch- 
 duchess of her fair share of maternal affection, and her 
 father, the Emperor, took a peculiar interest in her. 
 In her sixth year, he had already quitted the palace to 
 start for Inspruck, when he ordered an attendant to go 
 for her, and bring her to the carriage. When she came, 
 he held out his arms to receive her, and exclaimed, 
 after pressing her to his heart, ‘I had an irresistible 
 longing to kiss this child.” He died suddenly during 
 the journey, and never saw her again. 
 In M. de Lamartine’s ‘ History of the Girondins ’ it is 
 related that ‘she (Marie Antoinette) began life amidst 
 the storms of the Austrian monarchy. She was one of 
 
 1 This story is told rather differently by MM. de Goncourt on the 
 authority of Madame Campan. We have adopted Weber's version. 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 141 
 
 the children that the Empress led by the hand when she 
 appeared as a suppliant to her faithful Hungarians, and 
 these troops exclaimed, “ Moriamur pro rege nostro, 
 Maria Theresa.”’ According to more careful annalists, 
 Maria Theresa presented herself to the assembled mag- 
 nates with her son, afterwards Joseph the Second, in 
 her arms, four years before the birth of Marie Antoinette. 
 
 MM. de Goncourt state that Maria Theresa personally 
 superintended the education of her daughter, instead 
 of abandoning her to her courtly governesses ; and they 
 quote the Empress’s own testimony, in the shape of 
 an autograph letter, for the fact. But we learn from 
 other sources, especially from Madame Campan, that 
 the direct contrary was the truth: that the cares of the 
 cabinet left the Empress little time for the nursery or 
 the schoolroom: that, although daily reports were 
 brought to her of the health of her children by her 
 physician, she often suffered several days to elapse 
 without seeing them; and that the attractive pictures 
 of domestic tenderness, described by distinguished 
 travellers invited to a family party at the imperial 
 palace, were tableaux vivants got up for their edification. 
 The archduchesses were drilled to listen with apparent 
 intelligence to Latin harangues of which they did not 
 understand a syllable ; and sketches were exhibited in 
 proof of their proficiency in drawing which they had 
 never so much as touched. In after life Marie 
 Antoinette avowed and lamented what she called the 
 charlatanerie of her education, and its deficiencies were 
 too palpable to leave room for doubt as to her good 
 faith. She had a natural taste and extreme fondness 
 for music, yet on her arrival in France she put off 
 receiving her ex-officio singing-master on one pretence 
 or another for three months, whilst she was practis- 
 ing in private with a confidential attendant. ‘The 
 Dauphine,’ she remarked, ‘ must take care of the repu- 
 tation of the Archduchess.’ She was taught Italian by 
 
142 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 Metastasio, and both spoke and wrote it with facility ; 
 and such care was taken to perfect her in French that 
 she ended by losing her native German altogether. 
 
 The series of reverses sustained by France during 
 Lord Chatham’s first administration, and the humili- 
 ating terms dictated by England at the peace of Paris in 
 1763, had induced the French Minister, the Duc de 
 Choiseul, to reverse the policy, which he had inherited 
 from a long line of predecessors, of considering the 
 House of Hapsburg as the most formidable enemy or 
 rival of that of Bourbon. His new plan was to form 
 what he termed an alliance of the South—that is, 
 of France, Spain, and Austria—against Great Britain, 
 and the most obvious mode of consolidating it was 
 by marriage. ‘The Empress-Queen eagerly concurred. 
 During Madame Geoffrin’s visit to Vienna, in 1766, she 
 was speaking warmly in the court circle of the beauty 
 and grace of the little archduchess, and saying that 
 she should like to carry her to Paris. ‘ Hmportez! 
 emportez !’ exclaimed Maria Theresa. 
 
 The choice of teachers to fit a young princess for so 
 exalted a destiny was curious enough. An actor, 
 named Aufresne, was appointed to teach her pro- 
 nunciation and declamation ; and another, named Sain- 
 ville, for what Madame Campan calls the gout du chant 
 frangais.’ Sainville had been in the army, and was 
 considered a scapegrace. The French court disapproved 
 of this selection: the French ambassador was in- 
 structed to remonstrate : the two actors were dismissed, 
 and an ecclesiastic, the Abbé Vermond, was named in 
 their place. This man has been accused of exercising 
 a mischievous influence on the manners, modes of think- 
 ing, disposition and conduct of Marie Antoinette at the 
 most trying epoch of her life; and his own character 
 has consequently been subjected to the most searching 
 scrutiny. But we have been unable to arrive at any 
 safe and definite conclusion regarding him. Madame 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 143 
 
 Campan, whose suspicions may have been sharpened 
 by jealousy, describes him as a cold, insolent, indiscreet, 
 and mocking sceptic, who, both by precept and example, 
 inculcated a contempt for forms and conventional dis- 
 tinctions. The son of a village surgeon, the Abbé (she 
 says) was wont, in the height of his favour, to receive 
 bishops and ministers in his bath, remarking at the 
 same time that the Abbé Dubois, whose position he 
 affected, was a fool; because a man like him should 
 make cardinals and refuse to be one. His mode of 
 gaining admission to the private circle of the im- 
 perial family does credit to his tact. Soon after his 
 arrival the Empress, meeting him at her daughter’s, 
 inquired if he had formed any acquaintance at Vienna. 
 ‘Not one, Madame,’ was the reply. ‘The apartment 
 of the archduchess and the hotel of the French ambas- 
 sador are the only places in which a man honoured 
 with the care of the princess’s education should be seen.’ 
 A month later he gave the same answer to the same 
 question, and the day following he received a command 
 to attend the family circle every evening. 
 
 Unless this description be entirely false, the Abbé 
 Vermond was extremely ill qualified for his post. But 
 the Count de la Marck, who subsequently saw a good 
 deal of him at the hotel of the Count de Mercy (the 
 Austrian ambassador at Paris), speaks of him as a honest 
 well-intentioned man of moderate abilities, devotedly 
 attached to the Queen ; and says that, although she em- 
 ployed him to copy her letters, she had a low opinion 
 of his capacity. His importance, according to this high 
 authority, was mainly derived from his being the prin- 
 cipal medium of unofficial communication between the 
 Queen and her connexions at Vienna; and his fidelity 
 was unquestionable. 
 
 Karly in 1769 the proposed union had become a con- 
 stant topic of diplomatic correspondence, and a painter, 
 Ducreux, was sent from Paris to paint the portrait of 
 
144 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 the future queen of France for Louis Quinze. It seems 
 to have been deemed satisfactory by this practised judge 
 of female charms, for the preliminary contract was 
 signed on the 16th July, and the final ratifications were 
 exchanged on the 17th January, 1770, The customary 
 fétes, ceremonies, and preparations for the departure of 
 the bride, occupied some months. On the 17th of 
 April, she signed a formal renunciation of her hereditary 
 rights, paternal and maternal, in a full council of minis- 
 ters, and confirmed it by an oath administered at the 
 altar. After attending the Belvedere fétes, which lasted 
 nine days, she started on the 26th for France, carrying 
 with her a copy of the ominous injunction addressed by 
 Maria Theresa to her children : 
 
 ‘T recommend you, my dear children, to set apart two days 
 of every year to prepare for death, as if you were sure that 
 those two days were the last of you life.’ 
 
 On the 7th of May she reached an island on the 
 Rhine, near Strasburg, where she was received in a 
 richly furnished pavilion constructed for the purpose, 
 and divided into two compartments, one for the Aus- 
 trians and the other for the French. Before quitting 
 the Austrian side she was stripped to the skin and at- 
 tired from top to toein French habiliments, ‘in order,’ 
 so ran the regulation, ‘that she might retain nothing 
 of a country which was hers no longer.’ She was 
 accordingly undressed and dressed, and then cere- 
 moniously handed over to the ladies and gentlemen of 
 the new court which had been formed for her, be- 
 ginning with Madame la Comtesse de Noailles, her 
 chief lady in waiting. 
 
 At this pomt MM. de Goncourt pause to describe the 
 face and figure of their heroine, who had not yet com- 
 pleted her fifteenth year, and gave little more than the 
 promise of her matured beauty. But her expressive 
 features, her exquisite complexion, her clear blue eyes, 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 145 
 
 the rich tresses of her light brown hair, the animation 
 of her whole person, and her winning grace of manner, 
 won all hearts, and ‘qu'elle est jolie, notre Dauphine, was 
 the exulting cry of the peasantry whenever they got a 
 glimpse of her on the route. 
 
 The degree and character of her beauty have been. 
 much disputed. Lord Holland (‘ Foreign Reminis- 
 cences’), who saw her the year before her death, says 
 that it consisted exclusively in a fair skin, a straight 
 person, and a stately air. MM. de Goncourt are too 
 _ enthusiastic to inspire confidence on this pomt. One of 
 their ablest critics, M. F. Barrére, quotes the following 
 as the most accurate description of her on her arrival 
 in France : 
 
 ‘Her figure was low ( petite) but perfectly proportioned ; 
 her arms were well formed and of dazzling whiteness; her 
 hands potelées, her fingers tapering, her nails transparent 
 and rose-coloured, her feet charming.’ ‘As she grew and 
 filled out,’ adds M. Barrére, ‘ her feet and hands remained 
 equally irreproachable, but her figure lost somewhat of its 
 symmetry and her bust became too prominent. Her face 
 was an oval a little elongated; her eyes were blue, soft, and 
 animated ; her neck possibly a little too long but admirably 
 set; the forehead too round (bombé) and not sufficiently 
 shaded by the hair. The mode of dressing the hair which 
 the French ladies adopted under the Empire, would have 
 become her to admiration, and the hair banded on the brow 
 would have made her a regular beauty.’ 
 
 The portraits, which are very numerous, and were 
 ‘ taken at various and long distant periods, from the 
 briliant rising to the gloomy setting of her sun, 
 naturally differ widely ; but they leave no doubt of her. 
 having been endowed with personal charms more than 
 sufficient to pass for beauty on a throne. 
 
 Her first meeting with the royal family of France, 
 including her intended husband, was at the bridge of 
 Berne, some leagues from Compicgne. She there 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
146 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 alights from her carriage; and, followed by her ladies, 
 is led by her ‘chevalier @Vhonneur’ and the first 
 equerry to the King, at whose feet she throws herself. 
 He raises her, kisses her, and presents her to the 
 Dauphin, who does likewise. They then proceed to the 
 chateau of Compieene, where she is obliged to undergo 
 another set of presentations. The night preceding 
 the nuptial benediction was passed at the Chateau de 
 la Muette; and here at supper the King was guilty of 
 the inconceivable weakness and indecency of suffering 
 Madame du Barry to seat herself at Marie Antoinette’s 
 table. Nothing can more forcibly illustrate the depth 
 of sensuality and self-indulgence which this monarch 
 must have reached, or the debasing thraldom in which 
 this abandoned woman held him, or the state of morals 
 which could render such an outrage possible, even in a 
 despotic monarchy, where public opinion still found 
 vent in pasquinades. When Burke enthusiastically ex- 
 claimed, ‘I thought ten thousand swords must have 
 leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look 
 that threatened her with insult,’ he forgot that the first 
 insult had been perpetrated, and the ground laid for the 
 most galling of the rest, without a solitary protest 
 amongst this ‘nation of gallant men.’ But ‘the age of 
 chivalry’ was over, and that of ‘ sophists, economists, 
 calculators,’ had not arrived. 
 
 When one of her ladies in waiting asked her what 
 she thought of the favourite, she replied by one well- 
 chosen word ‘ charmante.’ It is also related that she 
 naively asked Madame de Noailles what was Madame 
 du Barry’s peculiar function at the court? ‘She 
 amuses the King.’ ‘Then I declare myself her rival.’ 
 
 The marriage was solemnised in the chapel of 
 Versailles, on the forenoon of the 16th of May. As 
 soon as it was over, the bride hurried to her own 
 apartment, and without waiting to lay aside her robes, 
 wrote to her mother, ‘ Hnjin me voila Dauphine de 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 147 
 
 France. The ceremony was hardly ended when 
 the sky was darkened by clouds, the rain fell in 
 torrents, and the crowd which filled the gardens were 
 driven home. The bad weather continuing, the fire- 
 works were not let off, the illuminations failed, and 
 the people, deprived of their anticipated féte, began to 
 talk of omens and give vent to presentiments. The f{étes 
 at Paris concluded still more inauspiciously. Through 
 the mismanagement of the municipal authorities, who 
 insisted on superseding the regular police for the 
 occasion, the crowd got jammed in the Place Louis 
 Quinze (now Place de la Concorde), and a furious con- 
 flict had already commenced between those who wished 
 to come in and those who were struggling to get out, 
 when the scaffolding round the statue, on which the 
 ornamented lamps were hung, caught fire. The alarm 
 spread: the efforts to escape grew phrenzied: the 
 strong trampled down the weak: the firemen dashed 
 to the spot with their engines over every obstacle ; and 
 when the confusion ceased, the outlets and much of the 
 open space were found heaped with the dying and the 
 dead. The number of the sufferers was reduced as low 
 as possible in the official reports, but according to the 
 ‘Gazette de France,’ 132 dead bodies were collected 
 and buried in the cemetery of the Madeleine. 
 
 Among the startling incidents of the scene, which 
 deeply touched the Dauphiness, was one recorded of a 
 young couple who were to be married the day follow- 
 ing. Feeling her strength fail, and on the point of 
 sinking to the ground, the girl entreated her lover to 
 leave her to her fate and save himself: ‘Never,’ he 
 exclaimed, ‘and there is hope yet; get upon my 
 shoulders, and I can carry you through the press.’ He 
 stooped, turning his back towards her. <A light form 
 took the offered place, and a woman’s arm was round 
 his neck. He was tall, strong, and resolute. He made 
 his way to a safe spot, and his fair burden glided to his 
 
 L2 
 
148 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 feet.” It was an entire stranger, who had overheard 
 the suggestion, pushed his betrothed bride aside, and 
 taken her place. 7 
 
 The royal couple who had been the innocent cause 
 of these disasters, contributed the whole of their year’s 
 income to the relief fund, and Marie Antoinette was 
 constantly recurring to the catastrophe and devising 
 means to mitigate the resulting miseries. One of her 
 attendants, by way of consolation, told her that a 
 number of pickpockets, their pockets crammed with 
 watches and snuff-boxes, were found amongst the 
 dead, and observed that they at least had met with 
 their deserts. ‘Oh, no, no,’ was the reply; ‘they 
 have met their death by the side of honest people.’ 
 
 There existed grounds of apprehension and causes of 
 anxiety of a more tangible and appreciable sort than 
 omens. ‘To discover them, it was simply necessary to . 
 look a little below the surface of the courtly circle into 
 which she was received with such a flattering exhibi- 
 tion of enthusiasm. As already stated, the Austrian 
 alliance, of which she was the pledge, was the favourite 
 project of the Duke de Choiseul, whose power was 
 rapidly declining ; and the bare fact of its having been 
 brought about by him, made it and her distasteful to 
 the rival party, with which the royal mistress and the 
 Kino’s four daughters were closely allied. Madame du 
 Barry had tact enough to see that, if His Majesty once 
 became fond of the Dauphiness and accustomed to her 
 society, the fresh, pure, and refined would speedily 
 supersede the old and coarser tie. Notwithstanding 
 his epicurean habits, he had once or twice shown 
 symptoms of a reviving taste for better things, as when 
 he resorted for a period to Madame Adelaide’s apart- 
 ment; and his first feeling towards Marie Antoinette 
 was one of admiring affection. He insisted on doing the 
 honours of Versailles in his own proper person, and an 
 incident which occurred as he was playing cicerone in 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 149 
 
 the gardens, affords a striking proof of his inactivity 
 and confirmed indolence, mental and bodily. To his 
 surprise he found the walks broken up or encumbered 
 with ruins. As he assisted her over a heap of stones, 
 he remarked: ‘I beg your pardon a thousand times, 
 my daughter; but, in my time, there was a fine set of 
 marble steps here: I do not know what they have 
 done with them.’ 
 
 All the arts of misrepresentation were set on foot by 
 the unscrupulous mistress to undermine the growing 
 favour of ‘la petite rousse ;’ and she at length succeeded 
 by insinuating that Marie Antoinette had complained 
 to her mother of the indecorous addition to the royal 
 supper party at La Muette, and by persuading the 
 King that his attentions were thrown away on an un- 
 srateful or insensible object. His manner gradually 
 srew colder and colder, and at length the triumph of 
 vice over virtue was announced by his exclaiming, in 
 a tone of mingled bitterness and regret : ‘Je sais bien 
 Madame la Dauphine ne maime pas.’ 
 
 Her aunts-in-law, four in number shared, among 
 them most of the qualities which are popularly, if un- 
 justly, attributed to old maids. Although they did their 
 best to appear amiable to their new relative at first, 
 they were obviously repelled instead of attracted by 
 youth, beauty, and high spirits. She made lght of 
 the pleasures of the table, and they were famous for 
 their cook. It was Madame Victoire who, to quiet 
 a conscientious scruple, requested a bishop to decide 
 whether a particular description of water-fowl could be 
 properly eaten during Lent. He gravely informed her 
 that, in all such cases, the bird should be carved upon 
 a-cold dish, and that unless the gravy congealed within 
 a quarter of an hour, it might be eaten at all seasons 
 without sin. It was Madame Louise again, who growing 
 delirious on her death bed, cried out: Aw Paradis! 
 vite, vite, au grand galop!’ The ruling spirit of the 
 
150 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 four was unlucky Madame Adelaide, who had a double 
 motive for disliking her niece, both as a rival for the 
 King’s confidential intimacy for which she had fought 
 a hard fight with the mistress, and as the outward and 
 visible sign of the abandonment of the old national 
 anti-Austrian policy, of which she was the warm 
 partisan. When M. Campan went to receive her 
 commands before starting to meet the Dauphiness on 
 the frontier, Madame Adelaide told him haughtily that 
 she had no commands to give about sending to look 
 after an Austrian princess. 
 
 The Dauphin’s brothers were too young as yet to 
 play an important part, but they soon began to exercise 
 a marked and evil influence on her destiny; the one 
 designedly and from ill-nature, the other unconsciously 
 and from the unguarded display of his admiration. The 
 Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIIL, though of 
 a cold disposition and studious habits, had a turn of 
 gallantry, and affected for a period to be the adorer 
 and poet of his sister-in-law. But on his marriage 
 with a princess of Savoy, originally destined for the 
 Dauphin and for that reason detesting the innocent 
 cause of her disappointment, he adopted the prejudices of 
 his wife, and some of the most mischievous interpreta- 
 tions put uponthelanguageand conduct of the Dauphiness 
 were traced to their salon. What made him the more 
 dangerous, he had a turn for satire, was a sayer of 
 good things, and wrote tolerable verses, especially in the 
 epigrammatic style That.M esdames du Terrage and 
 de Balbi were nominally his mistresses, proves nothing 
 more than his compliance with fashion or his vanity. 
 When a candid friend tried to excite the Comtesse’s 
 
 1 He sent her, in his own name, the following verses (borrowed, we 
 believe, from Lemierre) with a fan :— 
 ‘Au milieu des chaleurs extrémes, 
 Heureux d’amuser vos loisirs, 
 J’aurai soin de vous amener les zéphyrs, 
 Les amours viendront d’eux-mémes.’ 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 151 
 
 jealousy by alluding to them, she replied, ‘O, mon 
 Dieu, don’t let us reproach him with these ladies. 
 They are the only superfluities he allows himself.’ 
 
 The younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, afterwards 
 Charles X., was the precise opposite of his senior. He 
 was frank, gay, careless, full of life and vivacity, fond 
 of pleasure, and chivalrously devoted to women. His 
 gallantry, indeed, was of the most discursive sort, and 
 was so far from being interrupted by his marriage 
 with a daughter of Savoy (sister of the Comtesse de 
 Provence), that his frequent visits to an actress, 
 Mademoiselle Duthé, gave rise to the punning remark 
 that ‘ayant eu une indigestion de gateau de Savoye & 
 Versailles, il était allé prendre du thé & Paris.’ He 
 found ample time, however, to be at all Marie 
 Antoinette’s parties of amusement, and his open 
 adoration was subsequently converted into a weapon 
 of defamation by her calumniators. 
 
 The greatest of her disadvantages was the un- 
 congenial character of her husband. His piety, his 
 passive courage, his domestic virtues, and his heartfelt 
 wish to promote the true happiness of his people, are 
 now matter of history; but it required time and mis- 
 fortune to elicit them, and he confessedly had none of 
 the qualities which make a French prince popular or 
 fix the ‘affection of a bride of fifteen. At the same 
 time, we think MM. de Goncourt are hardly just when 
 they cite him as ‘one of those poor hearts, those 
 sluggish temperaments, sometimes occurring towards 
 the end of royal races, in which Nature seems to make 
 a parade of her lassitude.’ Still less can we answer in 
 the aflirmative when they ask whether ‘this coldness, 
 this silence of the passions of youth, of sex, this con- 
 tracted imagination, these tremblings and sinkings of a 
 Bourbon of eighteen, this husband, this man, were not 
 in reality the work, the crime, of a governor chosen by 
 the blind piety of the father of Louis XVI.?’ It is 
 
152 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 perfectly true that this governor, the Duc de Vauguyon, 
 acted on a totally different principle from most 
 governors and tutors at that period, and made no 
 effort to control his pupil’s humour when shrinking 
 timidly from female society. It may be also true that, 
 subsequently to the marriage, he endeavoured to keep 
 the young couple apart as much as possible by inter- 
 fermg with the arrangement of their apartments at 
 Fontainebleau, and that the Dauphiness was at last 
 provoked by his intrusiveness into saying, ‘ Monsieur 
 le duc, Monsieur le Dauphin is old enough to dispense 
 with a governor, and I have no need of a spy. I 
 request that you will not appear before me again.’ 
 
 The melancholy end of Louis XVI. has thrown over 
 his memory something of the radiance of martyrdom ; 
 but it is not the less true that his manners were 
 coarse, his voice~ harsh, his speech rude, and _ his 
 whole demeanour alike deficient in elegance and in 
 consideration for others. These unamiable qualities 
 were keenly felt by the younger branches of the royal 
 family, and they probably contributed to that aliena- 
 tion of some of the princes from the king which 
 produced most fatal consequences in the Revolution. 
 Nor were they unfelt by her who was doomed at last 
 to follow him to the scaffold. 
 
 The Dauphin had other defects which must have 
 helped to destroy the illusions of a bride. His appetite 
 rivalled that of his ancestor, le Grand Monarque, and 
 he indulged it without regard to appearances, whilst 
 she was singularly sparing in her diet; her principal 
 meal seldom extending beyond the wing of a chicken 
 and a glass of water.1 He was economical and fond 
 of accounts, which he kept with the most scrupulous 
 exactitude. His favourite occupation was practical 
 mechanics; he would shut himself up morning after 
 
 * When the royal couple were lodged at the Feuillants, just after 
 the dreadful 20th of June, the King indulged his appetite in so undig- 
 nified a manner that the royalist deputies thought right to notice it to 
 the Queen, 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 153 
 
 morning with a locksmith, who treated him like an 
 ordinary apprentice. When he rejoined her with his 
 hands and clothes smeared with oil and steel filings, 
 she was wont to hail him with ‘Oh, here comes my 
 God Vulcan,’—a classical allusion which seldom failed 
 to raise a malicious smile amongst such of the courtiers 
 as had a smattering of heathen mythology or had 
 studied Ovid’s ‘Art of Love.’ His only manly and 
 gentlemanlike amusement was the chase; but this, as 
 followed by the later generations of French kings, was 
 a very different thing from an English stag or fox 
 hunt ; ‘ the field’ being composed of courtiers of both 
 sexes, who looked on from gilded coaches or cantered 
 along smooth glades on trained palfreys. 
 
 This dissimilarity of tastes and character did not 
 prevent the young couple from presenting an attractive 
 picture of conjugal affection before the public, and 
 wherever they appeared they were hailed with en- 
 thusiasm. Their first formal visit to Paris was delayed 
 for three years. It took place in June, 1773, and it 
 was on this occasion that the old Marshal de Brissac, 
 requesting the Dauphin not to be jealous, led her to the 
 front of the gallery overlooking the gardens of, the 
 Tuileries, and pointing to the sea of upturned faces 
 beneath, told her: ‘ Madame, you have there, before 
 your eyes, two hundred thousand lovers.’ 
 
 Towards the beginning of May, 1774, Louis XV. fell 
 ill of the small-pox, of which he died on the 10th. His 
 remains were in such a state of putrefaction that it was 
 considered certain death to meddle with them. As soon 
 as the breath was out of his body, the Duc de Ville- 
 quier, first gentleman of the chamber, desired M. 
 Andouille, first surgeon to his defunct Majesty, to open 
 and embalm it. ‘Iam ready,’ replied Andouille, ‘ but 
 you will hold the head during the operation: it is a 
 part of your duty.’ The Duc walked away without 
 another word, and the body was neither opened nor 
 embalmed. It was hastily buried by some poor work- 
 
154 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 people, and spirits of wine were poured into the coffin 
 to check infection. The late king’s aunts were sedu- 
 lous in their attendance on his sick-bed, and exhibited 
 the most heroic courage in confronting a danger from 
 which the courtiers of every class fled. More than fifty 
 persons caught the malady from merely passing through 
 the great gallery. The Dauphin and Dauphiness waited 
 in her apartment; it being settled that they were to 
 leave for Choisy so soon as all was over. ‘That no 
 time might be lost in giving orders, it was agreed 
 between the attendants who had charge of the carriages 
 and those who were waiting near the sick-chamber, 
 that a lighted candle placed at a window should be 
 extinguished when the dying monarch was no more. 
 The light disappeared, and within a few minutes all was 
 ready for a start. The first intimation of what had 
 taken place was conveyed to the new King and Queen 
 by the crowd of courtiers hurrying to salute the rising 
 sun. ‘Their rush into the ante-chamber is described 
 by Madame Campan as producing a terrible noise 
 resembling thunder. On hearing it, the objects of this 
 tumultuous homage knew that their reign had com- 
 menced, and by a spontaneous movement both fell 
 upon their knees, exclaiming, ‘Good Lord, guide us, 
 protect us; we reign too soon.’ 
 
 The cry of Le rovest mort! Vive le roi! is admirably 
 suited to an impressible and lighthearted people, whose 
 natural tendency is rather to live in the future than in the 
 past. Far more gaiety than grief was certainly elicited 
 among them by this devolution of the Crown, and even 
 in the royal carriage which was conveying the six 
 chief mourners (the King and Queen, Monsieur and 
 Madame, and Le Comte and Comtesse d’Artois) on 
 their road to Choisy, the prevalent sentiment would 
 have justified Byron’s well-known lines on gondolas : 
 
 ‘ And sometimes they contain a deal of fun,’ 
 Like mourning coaches when the funeral’s done.’ 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 155 
 
 They kept up a decent show of sorrow during the 
 first half of the journey, when a word ludicrously mis- 
 pronounced by the Comtesse d’Artois raised a general 
 laugh, and they then by common consent wiped their 
 eyes and left off weeping. 
 
 The Queen used all her influence to procure the re- 
 call of the Due de Choiseul, to whom she conceived 
 herself indebted for her throne. But on this point 
 Louis XVI. was inexorable. The secret memoirs left 
 by his father under the care of his governor, contained 
 a solemn proscription of this minister, who was also 
 vehemently opposed by Madame Adelaide. Although 
 the Queen failed in this instance, however, she was 
 obviously winning her way to that place in his affections 
 which she ultimately obtained and kept. ‘They were 
 seen so often walking arm-in-arm in the gardens of 
 Choisy as to set the fashion ; and ‘ we had the gratifica- 
 tion, observes an eye-witness, ‘ of seeing several couples 
 who had been separated and not without reason, for 
 many years, walking arm-in-arm on the terrace for hours 
 together, and enduring, from courtly complaisance, the 
 intolerable tediousness of a prolonged ¢éte-a-téte.’ The 
 hearts, or heads, of the mass of the people were 
 so full of the charms and virtues of their Queen on her 
 accession, that a jeweller made a large fortune by 
 selling mourning snuff-boxes in her honour. They were 
 composed of chagrin, with the motto ‘ La Consolation 
 dans le Chagrin.’ The conceit was hardly so poetical as 
 that of the artist who on her arrival in France painted 
 her in the heart or centre of an opening rose. 
 
 When she wrote exultingly to her mother ‘ Hnjin 
 me voila Dauphine de France, she must have been 
 thinking of the mere rank and title; for some years 
 were to elapse before the complete consummation of 
 her hopes. Referring to 1775, Madame de Campan 
 says that the king went to bed every night at eleven ; 
 that he was very methodical, and allowed nothing 
 
156 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 to derange his habits. Up to this time he had 
 never once omitted to share the nuptial couch, but the 
 noise involuntarily made by the Queen when she 
 returned very late from the sowrées of the Princess de 
 Guémenée, or the Duc de Duras, ended by annoy- 
 ing the King; and, without any display of temper, 
 it was amicably arranged that the Queen should in- 
 form him beforehand when she intended to stay up, 
 and then the King began to sleep in his own room, 
 which had never occurred since the epoch of their 
 marriage. 
 
 Referring to a subsequent period, this lady says 
 that the Comtesse d’Artois had already two children : 
 that the Queen had not yet so much as a hope of 
 giving heirs to the throne; and that the supposed 
 obstacle had been a frequent topic of courtly gossip 
 under the rose. 
 
 ‘ At last, towards the end of 1777, the Queen being alone 
 in her apartments, sent for my father-in-law and me, and 
 giving us her hand to kiss, told us that, regarding us both 
 as persons interested in her happiness, she wished to receive 
 our compliments: that at length she was Queen of France, 
 and hoped soon to have children: that she had hitherto 
 managed to conceal her troubles, but that she had shed many 
 tears in secret. We have calculated that she was brought 
 to bed of Madame, the King’s daughter, exactly a year after 
 the confidence she had deigned to repose in us. The report 
 of this union so long delayed did not get abroad.’ 
 
 About the same time that this auspicious change 
 took place in their domestic intercourse, the outward 
 aspect of things was smiling and the general pros- 
 pect fair. But the anti-Austrian faction was im- 
 placable: family jealousies were as mfe as ever, 
 and a host of wounded vanities were accumulating, 
 comparing and exaggerating their wrongs, real or 
 fancied, with a view to retaliation or revenge. A 
 trifling incident was sufficient to show the amount of 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. LSE 
 
 malignity of which she was about to become the 
 mark and the victim. She held a drawing-room 
 at La Muette to receive all the ladies of the court, 
 young and old; many of whom, from the stiffness of 
 their demeanour and the antiquated fashion of their 
 habiliments, looked ridiculous enough. But she kept 
 her countenance irreproachably till one of her ladies- 
 in-waiting, the Marquise de Clermont-Tonnerre, feeling 
 or feigning exhaustion, sate down on the floor behind 
 her, and, under shelter of the hoops of her neighbours, 
 began to make faces and play off other childish tricks. 
 These attracted the notice of the Queen, who was once 
 or twice obliged to conceal a tendency to laughter be- 
 hind her fan, when some elderly dowagers were curtsey- 
 ing to her. The next day, a report was spread that she 
 had purposely cast ridicule on all the elderly and most 
 respectable ladies present, and that no one of them 
 would appear in the court circle a second time. A song 
 was circulated with this refrain : 
 ‘ Petite reine de vingt ans, 
 Vous qui traitez si mal les gens,’ 
 
 Vous repasserez la barriére, 
 o % 5 : : 5 
 Laire, laire, laire lanlaire, laire lanla. 
 
 ‘More than fifteen years after this event,’ adds 
 Madame Campan, ‘I heard old ladies, in the depths of 
 Auverene, relate all the details of this day, when, 
 according to them, the Queen had indecorously laughed 
 in the faces of the sexagenarian duchesses and princesses 
 who had deemed it their duty to attend.’ 
 
 Very little form was observed by the imperial family 
 at Vienna, except on state occasions: the House of 
 Lorraine prided itself on its simplicity; and Marie 
 Antoinette was probably more influenced by the 
 traditions of her race, the example of her mother, the 
 recollections of her girlhood, and her own gaiety of 
 disposition, than by the shallow philosophy of the Abbé 
 VYermond. Certain it is, however, that her disregard 
 
158 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 of etiquette was a fatal error, and laid the foundation 
 of much future misery. There is a well-known story 
 of her slipping off a donkey in a fit of laughter, and, 
 instead of rising immediately, requesting some one to 
 call Madame de Noailles, and ascertain the prescribed 
 mode of behaviour for a Queen of France who could not 
 keep her seat upon a donkey. According to another 
 version, the donkey fell with her, and she refused 
 to get up till Madame de Noailles had decided 
 whether she or the donkey was to get up first. 
 She had given Madame de Noailles the nickname of 
 Madame I|’Etiquette, and divided the ladies of the court 
 into three classes, calling the no-longer young, les siécles ; 
 the prudes who affected devotion, les collets monteés ; 
 and the retailers of scandals, les paquets. They avenged 
 themselves by putting disadvantageous interpretations 
 on all her words and actions. Madame de Marsan, the 
 governess of the King’s sisters and the dear friend of 
 Madame de Noailles, was a conspicuous member of the 
 band : 
 
 ‘In her eyes,’ says MM. de Goncourt, ‘that light and 
 buoyant step was the step of a courtesan; that fashion of 
 transparent lawn was a theatrical costume intended to sti- 
 mulate desire. If the royal beauty raised her eyes, her 
 enemies saw in them the practised look ofa coquette; if she 
 wore her hair a little loose and waving, “the hair of a 
 Bacchante,” was the cry; if she spoke with her natural viva- 
 city, it was the rage for talking without saying anything or 
 having anything to say; if in conversation she assumed a 
 look of sympathy and intelligence, it was an insupportable 
 air of understanding everything; if she laughed with her 
 girlish gaiety, it was an affected gaiety, bursts of forced laugh- 
 ter. This old woman, in short, suspected and perverted 
 everything, as if youth and grace were incompatible with 
 purity.’ 
 
 When we investigate the usages of the French court 
 at this period, we cease to wonder at the repugnance 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 159 
 
 which they inspired in any one who had not been bred 
 up to consider them as the beginning and end of all 
 things, the foundation of social order, and the strength 
 as well as ornament of the throne. A Queen of France 
 was not allowed a moment of privacy, walking or 
 sitting, in-doors or out of doors, eating or drinking, 
 sleeping or waking, dressing or undressing. Some 
 court functionary or another, male or female, might 
 claim to be near her or about her from morning to night 
 and from night to morning; and as many of these offi- 
 cial attendants had bought or inherited their places, 
 she had not even the power of excluding known spies 
 and ill-wishers from her privacy. 
 
 Such being her habitual life, we can easily under- 
 stand both why the Queen should seize every opportu- 
 nity of escaping from it, and why her transgressions 
 against etiquette should be denounced by its votaries 
 as tantamount to so many breaches of the Decalogue. 
 Thus, she had a fancy to see a sunrise; and the 
 King consented to her going for this purpose to the 
 heights of Marly at three in the morning, but instead of 
 sitting up to accompany her, went to bed. The 
 Queen was attended by a numerous suite, including her 
 ladies-in-waiting. A few days afterwards a libellous 
 copy of verses entitled, ‘ Le Lever de l’Aurore,’ was 
 circulated at Paris, and a belief was current that this 
 night expedition was planned expressly for the in- 
 dulgence of a passion for the famous, or infamous, 
 Egalité, whom, it is clear, she never liked, although, 
 like two or three others rebuffed for presumption, he 
 subsequently tried to injure her reputation. 
 
 If the precautions taken in this instance to preclude 
 calumny were unavailing, it was a matter of course 
 that she should be condemned when direct evidence 
 of her entire innocence was wanting and she required 
 to be judged charitably. She was fond of going to the 
 masked balls of the opera attended by a single lady. 
 
160 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 One evening when she had come from Versailles for 
 this purpose, in the company of the Duchesse de Luynes, 
 their carriage broke down just within the gates of 
 Paris. They were obliged to alight and remain in a 
 shop whilst a footman went for a fiacre. They were 
 masked, and the adventure might have been kept secret, 
 but it was so odd a one for a Queen of France, and 
 she was so unconscious of wrong, that she could not 
 help exclaiming to the first acquaintance she met 
 at the ball, ‘C'est mot en fiacre; mest-ce pas bien 
 plaisant ?’ 
 
 The story got wind, and was repeated in the most 
 exaggerated and compromising form. It was said that 
 she had given a meeting at a private house to a 
 nobleman, and the Duke de Coigny was openly named 
 as the happy man. According to one of the scan- 
 dalous chronicles of the period, she went to the 
 theatre in a grey domino, having ordered several of 
 her ladies to go similarly attired, and was alone with 
 the Duc for some minutes in a box on the second tier. 
 ‘She was seen,’ it is added, ‘coming out in so agitated 
 a state as to be near fainting on the staircase.’ A lady 
 made a memorandum of the hour in her pocket-book : 
 it was handed round, and almost all the ladies of the 
 court had it copied into theirs, ‘ znseribed in letters of 
 gold.’ 'The most offensive inferences were drawn from 
 these gossiping stories of a profligate and malignant 
 court. Ifthe ‘School for Scandal’ is a true picture of 
 human nature in its most unamiable moods, minute- 
 ness of detail is no guarantee for accuracy; and such 
 charges are refuted by their particularity and their 
 erossness. ‘The inscription in letters of gold is an 
 impudent fiction on the face of it, and the assumed 
 notoriety of the Queen’s habitual profligacy is irrecon- 
 cilable with the recorded testimony of a host of impartial 
 and unimpeachable witnesses, at the head of which 
 stand the Prince de Ligne, the Count de la Marck, 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 161 
 
 and the Marquis de la Fayette. ‘The pretended 
 gallantry of the Queen,’ says the Prince de Ligne, in his 
 Meélanges, ‘was never anything more than a profound 
 feeling of friendship for one or two persons, and a 
 coquettish wish, as woman, as queen, to please every- 
 body.’ The Count de la Marck contemptuously dis- 
 poses of the popular stories against her as ‘ mensonges 
 et méchancetes.’ 
 
 Lady Morgan has preserved Lafayette’s impres- 
 sions : 
 
 ‘Ts it true, general,” I asked, “that you once went to a 
 bal masqué at the opera with the Queen of France, Marie 
 Antoinette, the’ King knowing nothing of the matter till 
 after her return?” ‘Iam afraid so,” said he; “ she was so 
 indiscreet, and I can conscientiously add, so innocent. How- 
 ever, the Comte d’Artois was of the party, and we were all 
 young, enterprising, and pleasure-loving. But what is most 
 absurd in the adventure was, when I pointed out Madame du 
 Barry to her, whose figure and favourite domino I knew, the 
 Queen expressed the most anxious desire to hear her speak, 
 and bade me intriguer her. She answered me flippantly, 
 and I am sure if I had offered her my other arm, the Queen 
 would not have objected to it. Such was the esprit daven- 
 twre at that time in the court of Versailles, and in the head 
 of the haughty daughter of Austria.” TI said, “ O general, 
 you were their Grandison Cromwell.” Pas encore,” replied 
 he smiling, “that sobriquet was given me long after by 
 Mirabeau.” “TI believe,” said I, “the Queen was quite taken 
 with the American cause.” “She thought so, but under- 
 stood nothing about it,” replied he. “The world said at 
 least,” I added with some hesitation, “* that she favoured its 
 young champion le héros des deux mondes.” “Cancan de 
 salon,” he replied, and the subject was dropped.’! 
 
 Though evidence to character may outweigh com- 
 mon rumour, it cannot supersede specific proof, and 
 three specific accusations have been brought against 
 Marie Antoinette upon authority that must not be 
 
 * ¢ Passages from my Autobiography’; by Sydney, Lady Morgan, p, 95. 
 VOL. II. M 
 
162 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 lightly set aside. The accusers are the Duc de 
 Lauzun, the Baron de Besenval, and Talleyrand; the 
 first and second misled by vanity, whilst the third, who 
 by the way could not help taking the uncharitable side 
 in any question of the sort, has been demonstrably 
 misquoted or mistaken. 
 
 The Duc de Lauzun one day appeared at the 
 Princess de Guemenée’s with a magnificent heron 
 plume in his hat. On the Queen’s admiring it he took 
 it out, and requested her acceptance of it. She wore it 
 once, and called his attention to the circumstance, on 
 the strength of which he endeavours, in his Secret 
 Memoirs, to establish that she meant to encourage him 
 to make love to her. In his version, she asks for the 
 plume, and tells him, ‘ with an infinity of graces,’ that 
 she was never attired so much to her satisfaction 
 before. 
 
 ‘It would assuredly,’ he continues, ‘have been better for 
 her not to have spoken of it, for the Duc de Coigny remarked 
 both the feather and the phrase. He inquired where it came 
 from. The Queen said, with embarrassment enough, that I 
 had brought it from my travels for Madame de Guemenée, 
 and that sug had given it her. The Duc de Coigny spoke 
 of it in the evening to Madame de Guemenée with much ill- 
 temper: told her that nothing was more ridiculous and more 
 unbecoming than my manner with the Queen; that it was 
 unheard of to play the adorer thus publicly, and incredible 
 that she should appear to approve it. He was received 
 badly enough, and considered how I was to be kept at a 
 distance.’ 
 
 Madame Campan relates that, soon after the present 
 of the feather, he solicited an audience of the Queen, 
 which was granted, as it would have been granted to 
 any other courtier of the same rank— 
 
 ‘J was in the adjoining room. A few moments after his 
 arrival the Qugen opened the door, and exclaimed in a raised 
 and angry voice, “Sortez, Monsieur!” M. de Lauzun made 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 163 
 
 a low bow and disappeared. The Queen was greatly agi- 
 tated. She said to me, *“ Never will I receive that man 
 again.”’ 
 
 ‘On the death of the Maréchal de Biron, the Duc de Lau- 
 zun inherited his name, and applied for the colonelcy of the 
 regiment of guards. The Queen caused it to be given to the 
 Due de Chatelet. The Duc de Biron (Lauzun) joined the 
 party of the Duc d’Orléans, and became one of the bitterest 
 enemies of Marie Antoinette.’ 
 
 The Duc’s Memoirs were not published till after 
 Madame Campan’s, and the passage on which she 
 comments is suppressed. It is printed, as copied 
 from his original manuscript, in the appendix to her 
 first volume. 
 
 The Baron de Besenval was guilty of a similar 
 impertinence, was similarly rebuffed, and has revenged 
 himself in much the same manner. His presumption 
 was the more remarkable, since he was past fifty when, 
 finding himself alone with the Queen, he threw him- 
 self at her feet and made a formal declaration of love. 
 As she told Madame Campan, she ordered him to rise, 
 and promised that the King should know nothing of an 
 offence that would disgrace him for ever; he turned 
 pale and muttered an excuse; she left her cabinet 
 without adding a word, and hardly ever spoke to him 
 again. His ‘Memoirs, which sufficiently prove the 
 laxity of his morals and his outrageous personal vanity, 
 are silent as to this scene; but he blends a malignant 
 insinuation with his account of the interview in which 
 she communicated with him, by the King’s wish, re- 
 specting the duel between the Comte d’Artois and the 
 Prince de Bourbon. 
 
 ‘I went first to the King’s levée. I was hardly in his 
 cabinet when I perceived Campan, secretary of the Queen’s 
 cabinet, who made me a sign. I went to him. He said, 
 not appearing to speak to me, “Follow me, but at a dis- 
 tance, so as not to be observed.” He led me through several 
 
 M 2 
 
164 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 doors and staircases which were entirely unknown to me; 
 and when we ran no risk of being heard or seen, he said, 
 “ You must allow that this promises well; but it is nothing 
 of the kind, for the husband is in the secret.” “ My dear 
 Campan,” I replied, “it is not when one has grey hairs and 
 wrinkles that one expects to be fetched to a handsome queen 
 of twenty, by such out of the way passages, for anything but 
 business.” ‘She expects you,” he added, impatiently. “TI 
 have sent twice to your house already, and I have looked for 
 you wherever you were most likely to be found.” He had 
 hardly ceased speaking when we found ourselves in the highest 
 storey, in a very dirty corridor, opposite a mean-looking little 
 door. He tried the lock; but having pushed several times 
 in vain, he exclaimed, ‘“‘ Ah! the door is bolted inside, and I 
 must go round.” He returned very shortly, and told me 
 that the Queen was very sorry she could not see me imme- 
 diately, because the hour of mass was at hand, but that she 
 begged me to return to the same place at three. I came 
 back accordingly, and Campan introduced me by a side pas- 
 sage into a room where there was a billiard table, which I 
 recognised from having often played on it with the Queen : 
 then into another which I did not know, simply but com- 
 fortably furnished. I was astonished, not that the Queen 
 had desired such facilities, but that she had ventured to pro- 
 vide herself with them.’ 
 
 That he, a known gossip and man of intrigue, was 
 admitted to this mysterious apartment, and with the 
 King’s knowledge, might have helped to avert sus- 
 picion, but Madame Campan states that it was the 
 one commonly used by the lady in waiting during any 
 temporary indisposition of the Queen. 
 
 In a note to the late Lord Holland’s ‘ Foreign Re- 
 miniscences, published in 1850, we find this passage :— 
 
 ‘Madame Campan’s delicacy and discretion are not only 
 pardonable, but praiseworthy; but they are disingenuous, 
 and her “ Memoirs” conceal truths well known to her, though 
 such as would have been unbecoming a lady to reveal. She 
 was, in fact, the confidante of Marie Antoinette’s amours, 
 These amours were not numerous, scandalous, or degrading, 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 165 
 
 but they were amours. Madame Campan, who lived beyond 
 the Restoration, was not so mysterious in conversation on 
 these subjects as she wasin her writings. She acknowledged 
 to persons, who have acknowledged it to me, that she was 
 privy to the intercourse between the Queen and the Duc de 
 Coigny. That French nobleman, from timidity of character 
 and coldness of constitution, was not sorry to withdraw 
 himself early from so dangerous an intrigue. Madame 
 Campan confessed a curious fact, namely, that Fersen was in 
 the Queen’s boudoir or bedchamber, téte-da-téte with Her 
 Majesty, on the famous night of the 6th of October. He 
 escaped observation with considerable difficulty, in a disguise 
 which she (Madame Campan herself) procured for him. 
 This, M. de Talleyrand, though generally somewhat averse 
 to retailing anecdotes disparaging of the royal family of 
 France, has twice recounted to me, and assured me that he 
 had it from Madame Campan herself.’ 
 
 Madame Campan lived till 1822, and although, like 
 her royal mistress, the subject of much calumny, was 
 highly respected by her friends. One who knew her 
 well, and often heard her speak on the topic in 
 question, has assured us that the uniform tenor of her 
 conversation was confirmatory of her book, in which 
 she treats the alleged intrigue of the Queen with the 
 Duc de Coigny as a calumny, belied by the Duc’s 
 character and peculiar position m the court. As to 
 the night of the 6th of October, she says in her 
 Memoirs :— 
 
 ‘At this epoch I was not in attendance on the Queen. 
 M. Campan remained with her till two in the morning. Ashe 
 was going away, she deigned with infinite goodness to re- 
 assure me as to the dangers of the moment, and to repeat to 
 me the very words of M. de la Fayette, who had just invited 
 the royal family to retire to rest, rendering himself respon- 
 sible for his army. : 
 
 ‘It was particularly entice the Queen that the insur- 
 rection was directed. I shudder still when I recall how the 
 fishwomen, who wore white aprons, cried out that these were 
 intended to receive the bowels of Marie Antoinette. The 
 
166 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 Queen went to bed at two in the morning, and fell asleep, 
 worn out by so trying a day. She had ordered her two 
 ladies to go to bed, thinking that there was nothing to fear, 
 at least for this night: but the unfortunate princess owed 
 her life to the feeling of attachment which prevented them 
 from obeying. My sister, who was one of them, told me the 
 next day what I am about to narrate. 
 
 ‘On leaving the Queen’s chamber, these ladies summoned. 
 their waiting maids, and all four kept together at the door 
 of the Queen’s bedchamber. Towards half-past four in the 
 morning they heard horrible cries and some musket shots. 
 One of them entered the Queen’s room to wake her, and get 
 her out of bed. My sister flew to the place where the tumult 
 seemed to be. She opened the door of the ante-chamber 
 adjoining the guard-room, and saw a garde-du-corps holding 
 his musket across the door, attacked by numbers, and his. 
 face already covered with blood. He turned and called to 
 her, ‘ Madame, save the Queen, they are coming to assassi- 
 nate her!” She suddenly shut the door upon this unhappy 
 victim of his duty, bolted it, took the same precaution on 
 leaving the next room, and on reaching the Queen’s room 
 she cried out, “ Rise, Madame! do not stay to dress, save 
 yourself in the King’s room.” The Queen, starting up in 
 alarm, springs from her bed, they help her to put on a petti- 
 coat without fastening 1t, and her two ladies conduct her 
 towards the wil-de-beuf 
 
 It is utterly incredible that, on a meght like this, 
 with every one on the alert and every avenue watched 
 or guarded, the Queen should have had an assignation 
 with a lover, or that he could have been introduced or 
 escaped unobserved. Nor is it likely that the writer of 
 the foregoing narrative, who states expressly that she 
 was not present, and was known not to have been, 
 should have told Talleyrand that she herself procured 
 the disguise. What she was wont to say of the Comte: 
 de Fersen was, that the Queen was much attached to 
 him, and sent him a token from her prison shortly 
 before her death, but that the strictest bounds of pro- 
 priety were never transgressed on either side. It was. 
 
-QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 167 
 
 Fersen who, amongst other proofs of devotion to the 
 royal family, drove them through Paris in the disguise 
 of a coachman at the commencement of the unfortunate 
 expedition to Varennes.’ 
 
 Ceesar’s wife should not even be suspected, and ‘he 
 comes too near, who comes to be denied.’ Ifa woman 
 in private life, much more a princess or a queen, 1s fre- 
 quently found in situations affording opportunity and 
 facility for crime, her fair fame will infallibly suffer, 
 although she may remain quite guiltless in reality. 
 We are far, therefore, from holding Marie Antoinette 
 blameless. . She must have been inexcusably coquettish 
 and indiscreet. But her very thoughtlessness and im- 
 prudence afford a strong presumption of her personal 
 purity. Although she must have been perfectly aware 
 of the interpretations put upon her conduct, she made 
 no change in it, and persevered in amusing herself in 
 the way most likely to provoke and give plausibility to 
 fresh calumnies. Yet according to the Prince de 
 Ligne, a fatality hung over all her efforts of enjoyment, 
 as over those of Seged Emperor of Ethiopia, for he 
 says: ‘I never saw her pass a perfectly happy day.’ 
 
 It was in 1774 that the King, in an unwonted fit of 
 callantry, addressed her with, ‘ You are fond of flowers. 
 Well, I have a bouquet to offer you: it is the Little 
 Trianon.’ He could not have made her a more accept- 
 
 1 ¢\M. Iyppolite Castille says, in one of his recent publications, that a 
 friend of the highest respectability had an opportunity of seeing in 
 Sweden, at the Chateau of Count de Fersen, a portfolio which had been 
 given him by Marie Antoinette at the period of their loves. In this 
 portfolio was a secret compartment containing unmentionable things.’ 
 (Louis Seize et sa Cour, par Amédée Renée, p. 245, note.) § Without con- 
 testing the alleged fact,’ continues M. Renée, ‘I can here certify that 
 the nephew of M. de Fersen, the Count de Lowelhelm, who was long 
 Swedish minister at Paris, has several times assured me that there 
 existed in his family no proofs of these pretended Matsons of his uncle with 
 Marie Antoinette, and that the Count de Fersen never uttered a word 
 calculated to accredit this report.’ The story of M. Castille’s respectable 
 friend is incredible on the face of it. 
 
168 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 able nor, as it turned out, a more fatal present; for 
 the Little Trianon became the imputed cause of ruinous 
 extravagance and the fancied scene of improper indul- 
 gences. In point of fact, the extraordinary outlay was 
 moderate, and although ceremony was laid aside, there 
 is no ground for assuming any serious infringement of 
 propriety. Madame Elizabeth, the King’s sister, inva- 
 riably accompanied the Queen during her residence 
 there, and the favourite entertainment was private 
 theatricals, at which the King regularly attended. The 
 part she generally chose was that of the soubrette. The 
 fancy cottages which writers like the Abbé Soulavié 
 have converted into places of assignation, were occupied 
 by the labourers employed about the place. 
 
 The game called escampativos was much in vogue. 
 It consisted in the coupling of the whole party by a 
 president, male or female, named for the purpose, who, 
 when this duty was performed, exclaimed escampativos : 
 by way of signal for each pair to separate from the rest 
 for a named period, during which each was to produce 
 an allotted number of rhymes, solve a riddle, or execute 
 some assigned task: any pair that failed, or mterrupted 
 another pair, paid forfeit. This game was reported to 
 have been introduced at the Little Trianon, and played 
 under the Queen’s auspices, for the purpose of procuring 
 a tte-a-téte ; but the only place where we read of her 
 sanctioning it was in the Duchess de Duras’ apartment. 
 
 Marie Antoinette made it a rule to receive no woman 
 separated from her husband, and broke with the Prince 
 de Condé by refusing to depart fiom it in favour of 
 his mistress, the Princesse de Monaco. Lightly as the 
 marriage tie weighed on either sex at this epoch, it was 
 not untfrequently found too heavy to be even formally 
 endured, and a formidable array of frail beauties, bear- 
 ing some of the noblest names in France, were alienated 
 and exasperated by this decree. 
 
 It was Marie Antoinette’s delight to water her plants 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 169 
 
 and tie up her flowers in the Little Trianon, dressed 
 like a country girl, with a straw hat and apron. Except 
 on state occasions, she discarded silk and velvet in 
 favour of muslin and gauze, and so constantly appeared 
 in white gowns of inexpensive materials, that she was 
 accused of seeking to discourage French manufactures." 
 The weavers of Lyons memorialised the King on the 
 subject, and their complaint was backed by her sisters- 
 in-law, the Comtesses de Provence and d’Artois. She 
 was not more fortunate in escaping censure when her 
 taste or caprice In costume tended to extravagance and 
 (in the Protectionist sense) promoted trade by increas- 
 ing the demand for a particular kind of labour. In 
 consequence of various new fashions of dressing the 
 hair patronised by her, an addition of six hundred 
 coifeurs de femme was made to the company of master 
 hairdressers of Paris in one year, 1777. 
 
 The fashion which took the lead consisted in wearing 
 feathers as high as they could be raised. The Queen 
 sat for her picture in this headgear, and sent it to her 
 mother, who returned it by the same courier, with an 
 intimation that she should gladly have accepted the 
 portrait of the Queen of France, but took it for granted 
 that the portrait of some actress had been sent by mis- 
 take. On a hint from the King, Carlin, the French 
 Grimaldi, turned this fashion into ridicule on the stage. 
 When he appeared as harlequin he wore in his hat, 
 instead of the usual rabbit’s tail, a peacock’s feather of 
 enormous length, which he managed to entangle in the 
 scenery and flourish in people’s faces. Discarding 
 feathers, the hairdressers’ skill was next taxed to con- 
 vert the female head, by dint of lace and ribbons, into 
 the semblance of some chosen object of nature or art, 
 
 * Marshal Saxe, in a letter to the King of Poland in 1747, says that, 
 being in the boudoir of the Dauphiness, he was requested by the Dauphin 
 to lift up her petticoat, which, according to his estimate, weighed sixty 
 pounds, 
 
176 ' QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 a tree, a meadow, a ship, a naval combat, a porcu- 
 pine, a helmet, or a horn of abundance. The world 
 was all before them where to choose, and imagination 
 was racked for novelties. This fashion was at its 
 height when the Emperor Joseph paid his visit, and it 
 was the constant subject of his sarcasms. The quantity 
 of rouge worn by his sister was also very disagreeable 
 to him. One day, when she was dressed to accompany 
 him to the opera and wore a good deal, he ironically 
 advised her to put on more. ‘ Come,’ said he, pointing 
 to one of her attendants, ‘another touch or two under 
 the eyes; on with it, en furie, like this lady.’* On her 
 sending to say that she had changed her mind, and 
 was expecting him at one theatre instead of another 
 as agreed, he remarked aloud to the actor Clairval: 
 ‘Your young queen is wild enough in all conscience, 
 ‘but, fortunately, you French don’t dislike it.’ 
 
 Amongst other alleged proofs of her wildness, or 
 worse, have been cited the Saturnales or Nocturnales 
 of Versailles. In the July and August of 1778, the 
 Queen, then enceinte, suffered much from the heat, 
 and could not sleep without being some time in the 
 open air in the evening. She was in the habit of walk- 
 ing on the Terrace with the rest of the royal family: a 
 band was ordered to play for their amusement, and of 
 course these promenades soon became the fashion. 
 livery night, from ten or eleven till two or three in 
 the morning, the Terrace and walks were the resort of 
 all the gay company of the neighbourhood. The Queen 
 and her two sisters-in-law (who, Madame Campan 
 asserts, never left her) were sometimes hardly distin- 
 cuishable amongst the crowd, and on two occasions 
 they were impertinently addressed. On another, they 
 found themselves seated on the same bench with 
 Madame du Barry. The scandalmongers made the 
 
 ' In her ‘Episodes of French History’ (vol. i. p. 591) Miss Pardoe 
 transfers this story, told by Madame Campan, to Napoleon and Josephine. 
 
QUEEN - MARIE ANTOINETTE. VEL 
 
 most of these incidents, and the King was advised to 
 stop the promenades. He consulted M. de Maurepas, 
 who, it 1s believed, advised his royal master to let Her 
 Majesty amuse herself in her own manner, lest she should 
 take it into her head to occupy herself with affairs of state. 
 
 It is no easy matter to ascertain either the extent of 
 her influence on public affairs, or the period when she 
 began to exercise it. The Prince de Montbarry, who 
 was strongly prejudiced against her, states in his 
 Memoirs that, on a lieutenant-colonelcy becoming 
 vacant, she urged the claims of her candidate with such 
 unseemly vehemence that he was at length driven to 
 say that he must repeat all that had passed to the King. 
 ‘You are at liberty so to do, sir,’ said the Queen. ‘I 
 am well aware of that, he replied, ‘and I shall go to 
 His Majesty at once.’ He adds that he did not lose an 
 instant, that the King listened with grave attention, 
 appearing to sympathise with his minister from his own 
 experience of the Queen’s vivacity, and concluded the 
 conference with these words: ‘No one understands 
 what has taken place better than myself.’ This scene 
 is laid in 1777. 
 
 The same authority relates that the King had an in- 
 stinctive feeling of nullity in her presence, and one day 
 said to Maurepas, to excuse an unworthy concession, 
 ‘Her spirit has such an ascendency over mine, that I 
 was unable to resist.’ Maurepas died in 1781, and was 
 succeeded by Calonne, who convinced Lord Holland 
 that Louis XVI. was self-sufficient in his disposition, 
 coarse and brutal in his manners, and especially vain 
 of his superiority to female domination or court in- 
 trigue. ‘To establish this theory, Calonne stated that 
 on his pointing out the mischief that might ensue 
 from the Queen’s declared disapproval of his project: 
 
 ‘Louis at first scouted the notion of the Queen (wne 
 Femme, as he called her) forming or hazarding any opinion 
 
Li QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 about it. But when M. de Calonne assured him that she 
 spoke of the project in terms of disparagement and displea- 
 sure, the King rang the bell, sent for Her Majesty to the 
 apartment, and after sternly and coarsely rebuking her for 
 meddling with matters “ auaquelles les femmes vont rien a 
 faire,” he to the dismay of Calonne, took her by the 
 shoulders and fairly turned her out of the room like a 
 naughty child. ‘ Me voila perdu,” said Calonne to him- 
 self ; and he was accordingly dismissed, and his scheme aban- 
 doned in the course of a few days.” ' 
 
 The conclusion rebuts the intended inference, and 
 the failure of Calonne’s policy sufficiently accounts for 
 his fall. Madame Campan speaks of the rude hits 
 (coups de boutoir) which the King distributed without 
 respect to persons; and the pleasantry by which he 
 checked the Comtesse Diane de Polignac’s enthusiasm 
 for Dr. Franklin was indefensibly coarse. The utmost 
 the Queen could obtain for the Duc de Choiseul was 
 one interview, in which, after she had said: ‘ M. de 
 Choiseul, I am delighted to see you. You have made 
 my happiness: it is no more than just that you should 
 witness it, —the King merely added, ‘M. de Choiseul, 
 you have grown very fat—you have lost your hair— 
 you are getting bald.’ Her efforts in favour of other 
 candidates for high offices were almost uniformly un- 
 successful. An instance is given by Madame de Staél: 
 —‘T waited on the Queen according to custom on St. 
 Louis’ day; the niece of the archbishop, dismissed that 
 very day, was paying her court as well as myself; the 
 Queen manifested clearly by her mode of receiving us, 
 that she much preferred the displaced minister to his 
 successor.’ ” 
 
 The Count de la Marck says: 
 
 ‘T can without hesitation deny the pretended influence 
 which the Queen is said to have exercised on the choice of 
 
 1 Lord Holland’s Foreign Reminiscences. 
 * Considerations on the French Revolution, chap. xii. 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 173 
 
 - the King’s ministers, with the single exception of the nomi- 
 nation of the Marquis de Ségur. I can even add that the 
 Queen, far from having the desire and the taste to meddle 
 with the affairs of the kingdom, had rather a genuine repug- 
 nance for these affairs, owing perhaps to a little lightness of 
 mind common enough amongst women.’ 
 
 She frequently complained to Madame Campan, as 
 of one of the hard necessities of her position, when she 
 was over-persuaded by her friends to support their 
 applications, or was compelled by circumstances to fix 
 and strengthen the wavering decision of the King. 
 
 Her affection for the Princesse de Lamballe, although 
 the object of much malignant misrepresentation as ‘ 22 
 caprice de grande dame, was honourable to both; and 
 the unsullied reputation of this lady is the best answer 
 to the charges of criminal levity levelled against her 
 beloved mistress. Their friendship remained unbroken, 
 as is shown by the touching letters addressed by Marie 
 Antoinette at the most trying periods to the Princess ; 
 but there were long intervals of partial estrangement, 
 which were filled by female intimacies less judiciously 
 chosen. Of these the Queen’s attachment to the Com- 
 tesse Jules de Polignac endured the longest, was worst 
 requited, and proved most mischievous in its conse- 
 quences. The Countess was poor: she had her own 
 and her husband’s fortune to make; and she brought 
 in her train a number of relatives, friends, or admirers, 
 who each and all expected to benefit by her interest. 
 Sovereigns will always strive in vain to make themselves 
 the centre of an intimate, unembarrassed, and disin- 
 terested circle; for the main attractions to it, where 
 the charm of equality is wanting, must be the gratifi- 
 cation of vanity and the hope of advancement. The 
 members of the envied coterze which met at the Little 
 Trianon were constantly on the look-out for honours, 
 offices, or pensions; and it was at their instigation that 
 the Queen too frequently interfered in the distribution 
 
174 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 of patronage. Her favouritism may have been less 
 expensive and less degrading to the monarchy than 
 that which had been prescriptively indulged upon the 
 French throne, especially in the preceding reign; but 
 the people had begun to count the cost of royal amuse- 
 ments, and the gratified avidity of the Polignac set 
 added greatly to her increasing unpopularity. She felt 
 this deeply. ‘Amongst the persons admitted to her 
 society, says the Count de la Marck, ‘were a great 
 many foreigners, such as the Counts Esterhazy, and de 
 Fersen, the Baron de Stedingh, &c. It was evidently 
 their society that pleased her most. I took the liberty 
 one day to observe to her that this marked preference 
 for foreigners might do her harm with the French. 
 ** You are right,” she replied sorrowfully, “ but it is 
 only they who never ask me for anything.” ’ 
 
 . When her dear friend, or the friends of her dear 
 friend, had got all they wanted, or were disappointed 
 in some unreasonable demand, they were at no pains 
 to curb their ill-temper or conceal their discontent, 
 nor, importunate as they were in their request, did 
 they think it incumbent on them to consult her 
 wishes, or consider her position as affected by their 
 conduct in their turn. Thus, when the King and. the 
 Queen had expressed the strongest disapproval of the 
 ‘ Mariage de Figaro,’ which they had read in manuscript, 
 it was M. de Vaudreuil, the principal adorer of the 
 Comtesse Jules, who set the example of disobedience 
 by having it acted at his country-house. The Countess 
 herself, till spoiled by flattery and indulgence, was 
 remarkable for sweetness of disposition, feminine 
 grace, and natural gaiety. In the first year of their 
 intimacy, she and the Queen would romp together like 
 schoolgirls, pelt each other with bonbons, and engage 
 in little trials of strength or agility. Just so, Queen 
 Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough corresponded 
 as Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman, and kept up an 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 175 
 
 unremitting interchange of endearing expressions, till 
 the light and rosy fetter had become a heavy and 
 galling chain. Although the French Countess never 
 reached the same height of insolence as the English 
 Duchess, in gratitude they were pretty nearly on a par. 
 
 ‘M. and Madame de Polignac,’ says the Count de la 
 Marck, ‘never showed much anxiety to bring together the 
 persons it would have best suited the Queen to meet. The 
 Queen once went the length of expressing to Madame de 
 Polignac her dislike to many whom she met in their society, 
 and that lady, submissive to those who ruled her, and de- 
 spite her habitual gentleness, was not ashamed to reply, “I 
 think that its being your Majesty’s pleasure to come to my 
 salon, is not a reason for your claiming to exclude my 
 friends.” This was told me in 1790 by the Queen herself, 
 who added: “JI am not angry with Madame de Polignac on 
 that account. She is good at heart and loves me, but those 
 about her had her completely under their command.” ’ 
 
 In consequence of this change in Madame de 
 Polignac, the Queen abandoned her salon for that of 
 the Comtesse d’Ossun, her mistress of the robes, where 
 little dinners of four or five persons were made for her, 
 and she could sing and dance without restraint. Loud 
 was the outcry, and deep the mortification, of the 
 deserted coterze, who did not hesitate to take revenge 
 by calumny. 
 
 ‘They related with malignity,’ says the Count de la 
 Marck, ‘how the Queen was fond of dancing reels (écossaises) 
 with a young Lord Strathaven (the late Marquis of Huntley) 
 at these little dances. <A frequenter of the Polignac salon, 
 and one from whom more than all were due the deepest gra- 
 titude and the utmost respect towards the Queen, composed 
 an ill-natured couplet against her, and this couplet, founded 
 on an infamous falsehood, circulated through Paris.’ 
 
 The Count de Ja Marck completely vindicates the 
 Queen against the charge of using her influence in 
 favour of Austria, and states that her brother Joseph 
 
- 
 
 176 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 complained bitterly of her on that account, saying that 
 the conduct of France was far removed from what he 
 had a right to expect from an allied court. In one of 
 her letters to him in 1784, she distinctly refuses to 
 carry out his wishes, and uses these remarkable words: 
 ‘In a word, my dear brother, I am now French before 
 being Austrian.’ The belief, however, was indelibly 
 fixed in the popular mind that she was constantly 
 sacrificing her adopted to her native country, and 
 Autrichienne continued to her dying day the epithet by 
 which the greatest amount of popular prejudice was 
 concentrated against her. 
 
 The well-known affair of the necklace gave full scope 
 to malignity, and the acquittal of the Cardinal de Rohan 
 by a narrow majority (twenty-six against twenty-three) 
 in the Parliament of Paris (May 1786), was hailed with 
 acclamation as a virtual condemnation of the Queen, of 
 whose entire innocence there cannot now be the shadow 
 of adoubt. In 1787, only two years before the Revolu- 
 tion, her unpopularity was such that her portrait, by 
 Madame Le Brun, was left out of the exhibition at the 
 Louvre, for fear of its provoking fresh insults. If, 
 wearied and saddened by what she encountered at 
 every step in Paris or Versailles, she looked abroad for 
 encouragement or sympathy, she found herself equally 
 misunderstood, misrepresented, and repelled. In 
 England, where genius was soon to throw a halo of 
 never-dying lustre round her name, the worst libels 
 were printed and circulated ; and, rightly or wrongly, - 
 conceiving the English minister to be bent on reveng- 
 ing at her expense the policy of which her marriage 
 was the pledge, she avowed that she never heard the 
 name of Pitt without a cold shudder running down her 
 back : ‘sans que la petite mort ne me passe sur le dos.’ 
 By a strange concurrence of circumstances, almost all 
 the royal houses of Europe were against her, and she 
 was even made responsible for the misconduct of her 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 177 
 
 sister, the Queen of Naples. The impression was so 
 widespread that it actually reached Constantinople ; and 
 when the coming republic was announced, the Grand 
 Vizier exclaimed, ‘Good! this republic will not marry 
 archduchesses.’ ! 
 
 By a strange fatality, what under other circum- 
 stances would have been her pride and happiness, 
 would have conciliated esteem and repelled calumny, 
 ~ was turned against her. The growing uxoriousness of 
 the King excited against her the same hostile feelings 
 which the mistresses of former monarchs had pro- 
 voked, and she was held responsible for the disorders 
 of the finances, for the sufferings of the people, for bad 
 crops as well as bad ministers; in short, for every- 
 thing that went wrong in any quarter. One of the 
 parliamentary protests addressed to the King contained 
 these words: ‘Such measures, Sire, are not in your 
 heart ; such examples are not in the principles of your 
 Majesty ; they come from another source’—~a weak para- 
 phrase of Lord Chatham’s famous denunciation of ‘an 
 influence behind the throne greater than the throne itself.’ 
 Yet, at this epoch, laying aside every feminine weakness 
 and caprice, she was exclusively occupied in private 
 with her husband and her children, whilst all her care 
 in public was the salvation of the State. The weak- 
 ness and indecision of the King had become truly 
 pitiable. She was obliged to be constantly at his side 
 when any matters of importance were discussed, or he 
 could form no resolution at all. If he consented to 
 adopt a prudent measure or follow a wise counsel, it 
 was invariably piecemeal or too late. He was con- 
 stantly halting between opposite courses. He resisted 
 just enough to take away the grace of concession, and 
 conceded more than enough to make resistance un- 
 availing. 
 
 1 This mot is given to the Turk by Soulavié, but we suspect it to be of 
 Parisian manufacture. 
 
 VOL. II. N 
 
178 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 It has been said that a King who could mount on 
 horseback and head his troops, might three times over 
 have saved monarchy in France. In 1789, 1830, and 
 1848, its best chances were certainly forfeited by want 
 of spirit and vigour in its representatives. At the first 
 of these epochs great changes had become inevitable ; 
 but they might have been effected without the revolt- 
 ing orgies that ensued, if not without disturbing the 
 peace of Europe for twenty years, and unsettling its 
 social organisation to this hour. The essential point 
 was to enforce order, and to prevent or put down any 
 open or direct resort to violence. ‘The moment a 
 mob had been permitted to set law at defiance, to 
 storm the palace, to outrage the sovereign, and murder 
 his guards, the Revolution had been consummated in 
 its worst form. 
 
 The die was cast on the night’ of the 6th of October, 
 and the manner in which the catastrophe was provoked 
 without being anticipated, strikingly shows how the 
 King’s irresolution accelerated his fall. A popular 
 movement against Versailles, with the view of bringing 
 the royal family to Paris, had been planned at the 
 beginning of September, when the Court had ample 
 warning ; and the obvious policy of removal to a safe 
 distance was vehemently though vainly recommended 
 by the Queen. The precaution was, however, taken 
 of ordering another regiment to Versailles; and at a 
 banquet given by the garrison to the new comers, 
 the loyalty of the assembled guests was excited to 
 enthusiasm by the unexpected entrance of the King, 
 Queen, and Dauphin. That the popular exasperation 
 was stimulated to phrenzy by an exaggerated report 
 of the scene, is notorious; but if the fixed intention 
 was to repel force by force, they did right to show 
 themselves, and it may be presumed that it was in one 
 of His Majesty’s transient flashes of heroism that he 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 179 
 
 consented to appear.! But his courage had oozed out 
 - before the time for action had arrived, and the swords 
 which had flashed in idle bravado over the festive 
 table, were glued to the scabbard by royal imbecility 
 when the very guard-room of the palace was filled with 
 infuriated rebels clamouring for the Queen’s blood. 
 
 The eagerness of the royalist nobility, including the 
 princes of the blood, to provide for their own safety 
 by emigration, may be accounted for, if not altogether 
 justified, by the mistaken humanity or irresolution of 
 the King; who rejected proposal after proposal to 
 rally round him, and left them no alternative but to fly 
 or to stand with their arms folded whilst their throats 
 were cut. 
 
 In the transaction with Mirabeau, again, after all 
 the risk and odium had been incurred, the expected 
 fruits were lost by procrastination. This curious 
 episode in the history of the Revolution has been fully 
 explained and placed in its proper light by the ‘ Cor- 
 respondance’ between Mirabeau and the Count de la 
 Marck, to which we have frequently referred. The 
 tendency of this valuable publication is certainly to 
 clear Mirabeau’s memory from the charge of gross and 
 indiscriminate venality. His conduct was at all events 
 not more censurable than that of Algernon Sidney and 
 the English patriots of whom Lord Macaulay says that 
 ‘they meant to serve their country, but it is impossible 
 to deny that they were mean and indelicate enough to 
 let a foreign prince pay them for serving her.’ 
 
 There is no doubt that Mirabeau’s principles were 
 monarchical: that the utmost he ever aimed at was to 
 supersede a despotic form of government by a consti- 
 tutional one after the English model; and that he was 
 
 * Whilst reading Gibbon, Louis XVI. came upon the sentence, ‘ What 
 matters it that a Bourbon slumbers on a throne in the south?’ He 
 started up and exclaimed with vivacity, ‘I will show these English that 
 Iam not asleep.’ (Weber, vol. i. p. 178.) 
 
 w 2: 
 
189 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 earnestly acting upon his own convictions when, im 
 return for being freed from pecuniary embarrassments, 
 he agreed to co-operate with the Court. M. Thiers speaks 
 of him as ‘Cet homme enfin qui fit son devoir par 
 raison, par génie, et non pour quelque peu dor jeté a 
 ses passions.’ Once in the tribune, he was unable to 
 resist any sudden impulse or to withstand the temp- 
 tation of an oratorical triumph, and on two or three 
 occasions, as in alluding to the Versailles banquet, he 
 had been hurried into a vehement diatribe against the 
 Queen, which made her averse from having recourse to 
 him till he was thought indispensable. 
 
 They soon began to understand each other. When 
 Dumont, as he relates in his ‘ Souvenirs,’ objected that 
 any fresh plan must fail, like all the others, from want 
 of firmness in the King, ‘ You do not know the Queen,’ 
 exclaimed Mirabeau. ‘She has a prodigious strength 
 of mind: she is a man for courage. This was before 
 their interview, which took place in the garden of St. 
 Cloud, July 3rd, 1790. She told Madame Campan 
 that she opened the interview with these words, ‘In 
 the case of an ordinary enemy, of a man who had 
 sworn the destruction of the monarchy without appre- 
 clating its usefulness for a great people, I should be 
 taking at this moment a misplaced step ; but when one 
 speaks to a Mirabeau, &c.’ As he never had sworn the 
 destruction of the monarchy, this form of words was 
 not very happily chosen, but the impression was highly 
 favourable, and on quitting the Queen he said, 
 ‘Madame, the monarchy is saved.’ After describing 
 what had passed to the Count de la Marck, he declared 
 that nothing should stop him, that he would perish 
 rather than fail in the redemption of his pledges. He 
 devoted all his energies to the task, and fearlessly 
 advocated the right of the sovereign to make war or 
 peace. When twitted by Barnave in the debate with 
 a pamphlet hawked about the streets entitled ‘The 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 181 
 
 Treason of Mirabeau,’ and warned that the populace 
 were improvising a gallows to hang him, he sprang to the 
 tribune and uttered the memorable phrase of defiance: 
 ‘I have not now to learn for the first time that there 
 is but one step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock.’ 
 
 M. de Lamartine treats Mirabeau’s reactionary pro- 
 jects as absurd and impracticable. M. Thiers thinks 
 that, although the revolutionary tide would not have 
 subsided or turned back at his bidding, he might have 
 guided and moderated its course. But whether he 
 could construct as well as destroy, and retreat as well 
 as advance, must remain matter of speculation, for he 
 died April 2nd, 1791, ‘carrying with him to the tomb,’ 
 ' says MM. de Goncourt, ‘ more than his promises, more 
 than the hopes of Marie Antoinette; he carried away 
 the royalist popularity of the Queen.’ The Comte 
 d’Artois and his party never forgave her for con- 
 descending to parley with rebels, and in their angry 
 remonstrances with her for not adopting a more 
 spirited policy, made no allowance for the weakness of 
 the instrument by and through which she was to act. 
 ‘You know,’ she writes to the Count de Mercy, in 
 August 1791, ‘the person (the King) with whom I 
 have to deal: at the very moment when we believe 
 him persuaded, an argument, a word, makes him 
 change his mind without his being aware of it; it is 
 for this reason, also, that a thousand things are not to 
 be undertaken.’ 
 
 The King had made a careful study of the last days 
 and trial of Charles the First, and was strongly 1m- 
 pressed with the notion that the royal martyr’s fate 
 was owing to his having sanctioned civil war, and shed, 
 or caused to be shed, the blood of his subjects. From 
 personal fear, therefore, as well as from mildness of 
 disposition, Louis could never be induced to resort to 
 force even to repel force; and his constant aim was to 
 disarm his enemies by good intentions and good faith. 
 
182 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 It may be collected from the Queen’s voluminous 
 correspondence that, finding nothing else possible, she 
 encouraged and cheered him along the only path he 
 was able or willing to tread with any semblance of 
 dignity. Accordingly she counselled him to accept 
 and abide by the Constitution, and writes thus to justify 
 herself: ‘ Looking at our position, it is impossible for 
 the King to refuse; believe me that this must be true, 
 since I say it. You know my character enough to 
 believe that it would lead me by preference to something 
 noble and full of courage.’ When she was driven to 
 extremity, when authority was no longer upheld in any 
 quarter and a state of anarchy was at hand, she 
 hazarded the suggestion that an appeal from the 
 sovereigns of Europe, backed by an army on the 
 frontier, might have the effect of bringing the nation 
 to its senses; but the general tendency of her letters 
 is to deprecate foreign interference, and an emigrant 
 invasion is her unceasing object of alarm, as sure to 
 ageravate the dangers and difficulties of her situation. 
 The chief feature in Mirabeau’s plans was the 
 removal of the Court to a safe distance from Paris. 
 This was sound advice, and, like most other sound 
 advice, was not acted upon till too late. We suspect, 
 however, that the King’s consent to the unlucky 
 expedition which terminated at Varennes, was extorted 
 by the daily insults and mortifications to which he was 
 exposed at Paris, rather than prompted by any spirited 
 and enlightened consideration of policy. These had 
 been such as fully to acquit him of the popular 
 imputation of bad faith. The royal party, as is well 
 known, were recognised and stopped at Varennes by 
 the populace until they were overtaken by the deputies 
 of the Assembly; but they might easily have forced 
 their way through the town, and the Queen threw the 
 chief blame of the failure on M. Goguelot, who, instead 
 of charging at once with his hussars, waited for orders 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 183 
 
 from the King, who was sure to yield without a blow. 
 During the return to Paris, the deputies, Barnave and 
 Pétion, occupied places in the royal carriage, and 
 Barnave was so fascinated by the combined dignity and 
 sweetness of the Queen’s manner as to become thence- 
 forward one of the warmest of her partisans. As they 
 were passing through a village the curate, who had 
 approached the carriage with the intention of addressing 
 the King, was assailed and thrown to the ground by 
 the bystanders, when Barnave exelaimed, ‘ Tigers, have 
 you ceased to be Frenchmen? Nation of brave men, 
 have you become a people of assassins?’ This incident 
 conciliated the royal party. When the Queen inquired 
 to what means he would advise her to have recourse, 
 he replied, ‘ Popularity, Madame.’ ‘And how could I 
 have it?’ she rejoined, ‘it has been taken from me.’ 
 ‘Ah! Madame, it would be much easier for you to 
 regain it than it was for me to gain it.’ 
 
 Barnave now took the place of Mirabeau as secret 
 adviser of the Court, and induced his friends, Duport 
 and the Lameths, to co-operate with him in strengthen- 
 ing the executive. These, the chiefs of the Feuillants, 
 are thus described by M. Thiers: ‘Duport thought, 
 Barnave spoke, the Lameths executed.’ They expected 
 great things from the acceptance of the Constitution, 
 pure and simple, which they strongly advocated; but 
 the Queen had an intuitive conviction that all was over, 
 and exclaimed, ‘These people do not wish. for 
 sovereigns. They are demolishing the monarchy 
 stone by stone.’ During the fétes in celebration of the 
 acceptance, the King and Queen went to each of the 
 three principal theatres, the ‘ Frangais,’ the ‘ Opéra,’ 
 and the ‘ Italiens.’ Mademoiselle Contat, the popular 
 actress, was much admired in ‘ La Coquette Corrigée,’ 
 and this play had been selected for performance at 
 the ‘ Frangais,’ with exclusive reference to her. The 
 probable application was obvious, and Madame Campan: 
 
184 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 summoned up courage to mention it to the Queen, who 
 ordered ‘La Gouvernante’ instead. A good deal of 
 care having been taken to pack the audience, she 
 was warmly applauded ; but at the ‘ Italiens,’ a fierce 
 contest ensued between the boxes and part of the pit. 
 The piece was ‘Les Evénements Imprévus,’ by Grétry, 
 and Madame Dugazon, on coming to the words, ‘AA, 
 comme jaime ma maitresse, turned towards the Queen. 
 Immediately a shout was raised from the pit of ‘ Pas 
 de maitresse, plus de maitre! liberté!’ whilst the boxes 
 and balcony replied with ‘ Vive la Reine! Vive le Row! 
 vivent a jamais le Row et la Reine!’ The pit being 
 divided between the factions, a battle ensued, in which 
 the Jacobins had the worst of it. The guard was 
 called in, and the Faubourg St. Antoine, risimg in 
 tumult, threatened to take part in the fray. This was 
 the last time the Queen ever entered a theatre.! 
 Barnave’s plans and counsels were no better followed 
 than Mirabeau’s ; and finding that he was compromising 
 himself uselessly, he communicated to the Queen his 
 determination to quit Paris, and requested a parting 
 ‘interview, which was granted. After dwelling on the 
 services he had vainly laboured to render her, he stated 
 that his known devotion to her interests would cost 
 him his life if he did not seek safety in flight, and as 
 his sole recompense he entreated to be allowed to kiss 
 her hand. She gave it to him with her eyes bathed in 
 tears, and he left Paris; but in the course of the same 
 year, 1792, he was arrested at Grenoble. His dealings 
 with the Court having been clearly proved, he was 
 guillotined on the 22nd October, 1793, his last words 
 being, ‘ Behold then the price of all I have done for 
 liberty.’ His new-born zeal for monarchy was popularly 
 
 1It was on this occasion that a royalist lady, struck by an apple, 
 picked it up and sent it to La Fayette, with a note, saying that, as it was 
 the only frat of the Revolution she had yet seen or felt, she thought 
 him entitled to it, 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 185 
 
 attributed to a romantic passion conceived during the 
 return from Varennes. Nor was this the only instance 
 of sudden conversion or heroic self-sacrifice for which 
 meaner motives were thought insufficient to account. 
 ‘No sooner,’ says Madame Campan,‘ had the most furious 
 Jacobins occasion to be near the Queen, to speak to her, 
 to hear her voice, than they became her most zealous 
 partisans, and even in the prison of the Temple, several 
 of those who had helped to drag her there, died for 
 having tried to liberate her.’ Like the ill-fated Queen 
 of Scots gazing on the dying Douglas, she might have 
 exclaimed more than once, ‘ Look there, and tell me if 
 she who ruins all who love her, ought to fly a foot 
 further to save her wretched life.’ 
 
 On the evening of the terrible June 20, when the 
 Queen was calling on the deputies of the Assembly 
 to mark the signs of popular outrage in the Tuileries, 
 the sole remaining asylum of royalty, Merlin de Thion- 
 ville was melted to tears. ‘You weep, M. Merlin,’ 
 she continued, ‘ to see the King and his family so cruelly 
 treated by a people whom he had always wished to 
 make happy.’ ‘It is true, Madame,’ replied Merlin,‘ that 
 I weep over the misfortunes of a woman, beautiful, 
 tender-hearted, and the mother of a family ; but do not 
 deceive yourself, not one of my tears is shed for the 
 King or the Queen. I hate kings and queens. It is the 
 only sentiment they inspire in me; it is my religion.’ 
 Possibly Sir Walter Scott had this very passage in 
 his mind when (in ‘The Abbot’) he described Lindsay 
 as moved by a similar impulse, and saying as he knelt 
 to Mary Stuart, ‘ Lady, thou art a noble creature, even 
 though thou hast abused God’s choicest gifts. I pay 
 that devotion to thy manliness of spirit which I would 
 not have paid to the power thou hast long undeservedly 
 wielded. I kneel to Mary Stuart, not to the queen.’ 
 
 Even with ber own sex, the fascination of Marie 
 Antoinette’s manner was irresistible. On the morning 
 
186 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 of the same day, a part of the invading mob consisted 
 of the lowest class of women, one of whom carried a 
 gibbet, to which was suspended a figure labelled Marve 
 Antoinette ad la lanterne’—another, a bullock’s heart, 
 labelled, ‘ Coeur de Louis Seize’—a third, the horns 
 of the same animal with an obscene inscription. One 
 of the most savage of them paused to vent impreca- 
 tions on the Queen, who asked if she had ever done 
 her any personal injury. ‘No: but it is you who cause 
 the misery of the nation.’ ‘ You have been told so,’ 
 replied the Queen; ‘ you have been deceived. Wife of 
 a king of France, mother of the Dauphin, I shall never 
 see my native country more. I can only be happy or 
 miserable in France. I was happy when you loved me.’ 
 The termagant burst into tears, begged pardon, and 
 exclaimed, ‘It is all because I did not know you. I 
 see that you are good.’ 
 
 During the enforced and harassing journey from 
 Versailles to Paris on the 6th of October, the women 
 who approached the carriage to insult her, ended by 
 shouting ‘Vive la Reine !’— 
 
 ‘f{ rose with purpose dread 
 To speak my curse upon thy head ; 
 
 O’ermastered yet by high behest, 
 I bless thee, and thou shalt be blest.’ 
 
 The details of Marie Antoinette’s prison life are too 
 well known to require recapitulation. It fills the 
 darkest page of French history. The manner in which 
 her feelings as a mother and her delicacy as a woman 
 were systematically outraged, reflects indelible disgrace 
 on the people that could tolerate it in their most excited 
 moods; and human nature had reached its lowest 
 point of degradation when they assembled in crowds 
 to hoot and insult her on her way to the scaffold. 
 Lord Holland states, in his ‘Foreign Reminiscences,’ 
 that she was insensible. This is one of the groundless 
 statements circulated to diminish our admiration of her 
 
QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 187 
 
 heroism and our horror of her persecutors. Her firm- 
 ness of mind on the morning of the fatal day (Oct. 
 16, 1793) is sufficiently attested by her letter (dated 
 454M.) to Madame Elizabeth, which, though obviously 
 brought to an abrupt termination, breathes the genuine 
 spirit of faith, hope, and charity, in unison with 
 maternal and sisterly love. After confiding it to the 
 turnkey (who delivered it to Fouquier), she called for 
 food, lest faintness should be mistaken for fear. After 
 eating the wing of a chicken, she changed her linen, 
 threw herself dressed upon a bed, wrapped her feet in 
 a blanket (procured with difficulty), and fell asleep. 
 She was awakened by a priest named Girard, of whose 
 ministry, from a suspicion of his quality, she declined 
 to avail herself. On his asking if she wished him to 
 accompany her, she quietly replied, ‘Comme vous 
 voudrez.’ 
 
 Sanson, the executioner, arrived at seven. ‘You 
 are early, Sir,’ remarked the Queen; ‘could you not 
 have come later?’ ‘No, Madame, I was ordered to 
 come. The Queen had already cut her hair, and no 
 preparations were needed. She breakfasted on a cup 
 of chocolate brought from a neighbouring café, and a 
 very small roll. She was then taken to the registry, 
 where her hands were tied. She was helped into the 
 cart by Sanson, and the priest took his place by her 
 side. The progress through the streets was retarded 
 that she might taste long of death—‘ boire longtemps la 
 mort. More than once she indicated by a gesture to 
 the priest that the cords gave her pain. Opposite the 
 Palais Egalité, the inscription over the gate caught her 
 attention. Before Saint Roch there was a halt, and a 
 torrent of abusive epithets burst from the spectators on 
 the steps. At the passage of the Jacobins she leant 
 towards Girard, and questioned him as to the inscrip- 
 tion, ‘ Atelier @armes républicaines pour foudroyer les 
 tyrans. By way of reply he held up a little ivory 
 
188 QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 Christ. At the same instant the player Grammont, 
 who had kept close to the cart on horseback, stood up 
 in his stirrups, waved his sword, and turning towards 
 the Queen, shouted to the mob, ‘La voila linfame 
 Antoinette! Elle est , mes amis.’ It was mid- 
 day when the cart reached its destination. On leaving 
 it, she turned her eyes with evident emotion in the 
 direction of the Tuileries, then mounted the scaffold, 
 and met her fate with calmness. Her head was ex- 
 hibited to the public gaze by Sanson, whilst under the 
 guillotine the gendarme Mingoult was dipping his 
 handkerchief in her blood. ‘That same evening,’ add 
 MM. de Goncourt, ‘a man whose day’s work was done, 
 made out this bill of charges, which history cannot 
 touch without a shudder : 
 
 ‘Account of money paid and interments executed by Joly, 
 gravedigger of the Madeleine de la Ville l’Evéque, for the 
 persons put to death by the judgment of the aforesaid 
 
 tribunal: 
 Livres. 
 
 The Widow Capet.—For the bier : ; 6 
 For the grave and the gravediggers . Ton 
 
 We can suggest no moral, emotion, or reflection that 
 will not arise spontaneously in the heart and mind of 
 every reader endowed with thought and feeling, on 
 the bare perusal of this document. 
 
189 
 
 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 (From tHE EpinsureH Review, Jury 1861.) 
 
 De Grafin von Albany. Von ALFRED von REeumont. Two 
 Volumes. Berlin: 1860. 
 
 Some forty years since, the sister of an Irish peeress 
 astonished a party of English at Florence by announc- 
 ing that she had been to see the house in which Ariosto 
 lived with the Countess of Albany, widow of Charles 
 the First. She meant the house in which Alfieri lived 
 with the Countess of Albany after the death of her 
 husband, Charles Edward, popularly known as the 
 Pretender!' It is to be feared that the name of the 
 Countess of Albany, although it may not again mislead to 
 this extent, will recall few clear or definite impressions 
 to the mass of the reading public. Yet that name is 
 imperishably blended with the royalty of race and the 
 prouder royalty of genius,—with the expiring glories 
 of an illustrious house, and with the rising glories of an 
 author, who, thanks to Ristori, has at length obtained, 
 in European estimation, the place which the most dis- 
 criminating of his countrymen were prepared from the 
 first to claim for him. 
 
 In allusion to the monument in Santa Croce and the 
 many spots in Florence associated with their history, 
 M. de Reumont exclaims, ‘ Thus in the capital of Tus- 
 cany are united the names and memories of a descen- 
 
 1 This story is rather diffusely told in ‘The Idler in Italy’ (vol. 
 ii. p. 146), by the Countess of Blessington, who, in the very act of 
 triumphing over her countrywoman, falls into the not less palpable mis- 
 take of calling the Countess the widow of James Stuart, the Chevalier 
 St. George. 
 
 * 
 
190 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 dant of the most unfortunate kingly line of modern 
 times, of a German princess, and an Italian poet.’ It 
 will not be this accomplished writer’s fault if their 
 union ever again fails to attract attention. The object 
 of his book is to make the German princess not 
 only the connecting link between the exiled prince 
 and the poet, but the central figure of a group, 
 or rather of successive groups, of learned and accom- 
 plished persons more or less known to fame. These 
 in turn serve as an apology for introducing sketches of 
 Italian society at different epochs, interspersed with 
 remarks on manners and criticisms on art. 
 
 M. de Reumont was many years Prussian Minister at 
 Florence: he is the author of a valuable work, in six 
 volumes, entitled ‘ Contributions to Italian History :’ he 
 is full to overflowing of antiquarian, artistic, and archi- 
 tectural lore; and he pours out his stores, whenever 
 he can find or make an opportunity, without mercy or 
 restraint. This is one of the most exhaustive and also 
 the most conscientiously written books we ever remem- 
 ber to have read. Indeed, its excessive conscientiousness 
 is its fault. There is no denying that, if we wish to 
 convey a complete image and perfectly just estimate of 
 a man and woman, everything that contributes directly 
 or indirectly to the formation of their characters falls 
 strictly within the province of the biographer. Buta 
 line of demarcation must be drawn somewhere. In the 
 speech assigned to David Hartley in ‘ Anticipation,’ he 
 is made to argue that the right of Great Britain to tax 
 a colony depends upon the constitution of colonies in 
 general: that colonies cannot be considered without 
 reference to mother countries, nor mother countries 
 without reference to the partition and population of 
 the world. By an analogous train of reasoning, M. de 
 Reumont insists on tracing the influence perceptibly or 
 imperceptibly exercised: on Charles Edward by his pa- 
 ternal and maternal connections in the ascending line 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 191 
 
 to the third or fourth degree, as well as by his father, 
 mother, brother, and mistress, singly or conjointly ; 
 and the result is that we are not introduced to the 
 lady whose name exclusively occupies the title-page, 
 till we arrive at the third chapter and 133rd page of 
 the book. 
 
 Foreign readers, however, who are less conversant with 
 the errors and misfortunes of the Stuarts, may not be 
 sorry to learn more of the last of them; and it must 
 be admitted that the illustrative traits and incidents 
 brought together by the author. are CIE well 
 chosen and well adapted to his purpose.’ But we 
 could not find room for many of them without exclud- 
 ing more attractive matter; and we pass at once to 
 the marriage of the Chevalier St. George in 1718 with 
 Marie Clementine Sobieski, the granddaughter of the 
 heroic king of Poland. Amongst the valuables which 
 formed part of her dowry, were the rubies of the 
 Polish crown, now in the treasury of St. Peter’s: the 
 golden shield, presented by the Emperor Leopold to 
 the deliverer of Vienna ; and the cover, of gold brocade 
 adorned with verses of the Koran in torquoise, in 
 which the standard of the Prophet was kept during the 
 slege. 
 
 The theory that men of mark are commonly more 
 indebted to their mothers than their fathers, has been 
 illustrated by long lists of instances; and it is a fair 
 subject of speculation whether the transient dashes of 
 heroism exhibited by Charles are to be set down to the 
 eredit of the Sobieski blood, or were any way owing 
 
 1 The most interesting and curious of the anecdotes relating to the 
 Stuarts in Italy are taken from ‘The Decline of the Last Stuarts. 
 Extracts from the Despatches of British Envoys to the Secretary of 
 State. Printed for the Roxburghe Club by Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), 
 London: 1848.’ M. de Reumont’s work is appropriately dedicated to 
 ‘Anna Cecilia, Countess of Bernstroff, the German woman who in the 
 society of England represents her native country with grace, tact, and 
 
 kindliness; who, in a similar position in Italy, has left a willingly 
 cherished remembrance.’ 
 
192 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 to maternal training or encouragement. Pollnitz, in- 
 deed, says that Marie Clementine was a princess who 
 deserved to be a queen. ‘Without possessing the 
 lustre of a great beauty, she unites endless attractions 
 in her person. She is obliging, compassionate, benefi- 
 cent; her piety is deep-seated, and she leads in truth 
 the life of a saint.’ This was more than could be said 
 for her husband, whose undisguised attentions to the 
 Duchess of Inverness at length produced an open rup- 
 ture, which was made up with difficulty through the 
 intervention of Alberoni, after causing great scandal. 
 Charles Edward was born at Rome on December 
 31, 1720.. Seven cardinals were present at his 
 birth, and the Pope, Clement XI., caused a Te Deum 
 to be sung. As he grew up, he gave decided signs of 
 future eminence. From early childhood he was im- 
 bued with the loftiest and most aspiring notions, and 
 his training was adapted to his assumed prospects. 
 Very little is popularly known of him, either before or 
 after his exploits and adventures in 1745; and M. de 
 Reumont has been at considerable pains to bring toge- 
 ther the leading indications of his character at each 
 of the comparatively unknown or obscure periods. 
 Tis personal advantages in youth were undeniable. 
 He was fair, like his mother, and unlike his father, who 
 was dark. He was fond of active exercise, and devoted 
 to field sports. He was a good rider and a good shot. 
 But his body was not improved and strengthened at 
 the expense of his mind, for he spoke Latin, Italian, 
 French, and English, and was well versed in ancient 
 and modern history. He -was the observed of all ob- 
 servers at more than one splendid entertainment given 
 at Rome in honour of his family ; and, when he entered 
 a ball-room, the same fluttering anxiety to secure a 
 royal partner was visible amongst the Roman beauties 
 as was betrayed by the American damsels during the 
 -Prince of Wales’s progress through the United States. 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 195 
 
 ‘But he was in no danger of degenerating into a mere 
 earpet-knight. When he was only fourteen years old 
 he served in the short and dashing campaign which 
 ended (1735) in placing a Spanish Bourbon on the 
 throne of Naples.. He was on board one of the Spanish 
 vessels employed against Gaeta, when his hat blew off 
 into the sea. As his attendants were hurrying to 
 recover it, he stopped them, exclaiming: ‘ Let it go, let 
 it go; give yourselves no trouble. One day or an- 
 other I will follow the same course as this hat.’ The 
 Lord Marshal Keith checked one meditated display of 
 his military ardour which would not have added to 
 his popularity in Great Britain. When the expedition 
 to Scotland, projected in concert with France in 1744, 
 was postponed, he was with difficulty prevented from 
 placing himself under the command of Marshal Saxe, 
 who was to have made an attempt on the English coast 
 about the same time. 
 
 Romance has combined with history to familiarise 
 all classes of readers in all civilized countries with the 
 leading events of 1745. After fourteen months of 
 chivalrous adventure he returned to France, where his 
 reception by the people as well as by the Court was 
 enthusiastic. His undertaking, although abortive, 
 says M. de Reumont, ‘had surrounded his head as 
 with a halo. But when he began to talk of assistance 
 for another, the tone changed apace. During a nego- 
 tiation with this view, Cardinal Tencin threw out a 
 hint that the effective help of France might be bought 
 by the surrender of Ireland. “ No, Monsieur le Cardinal. 
 All or nothing; no halving (Non, Monsieur le Cardinal. 
 Tout ou rien; point de partage).”’ This recalls one of 
 the few redeeming traits recorded of his grandfather, 
 James II., who, when he witnessed from the shore at 
 La Hogue the reckless intrepidity of the seamen under 
 Rooke, cried out: ‘My brave English !—My brave 
 
 VOL. II. 0 
 
194 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 English!’ in entire forgetfulness that. they were com- 
 pleting the ruin of his cause. 
 
 Scheme after scheme was formed and thrown aside; 
 and the sickening pang of hope deferred had been en- 
 dured in all its bitterness by the exile, when a crushing 
 blow fell upon him. It was made a condition in the 
 Treaty of Peace signed at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, 
 that Charles Edward should be expelled from the 
 French territory. An intimation was accordingly con- 
 veyed to him, through the Duc de Gevres and M. de 
 Maurepas, that a fitting retreat had been prepared for 
 him at Freiburg. He positively refused to quit France. 
 ‘Above all, he said, ‘I grieve for Louis; I can only 
 lose life, but Louis loses honour.’ ‘Like Charles XII. 
 of Sweden at Bender, he armed his servants, barricaded 
 his house, and determined to repel force by force. The 
 Dauphin and many of the principal nobility sympathised 
 with him, and used all their influence to avoid coming 
 to extremities; but the Government had gone too far 
 to recede, and the result is thus concisely and indig- 
 nantly summed up by Chateaubriand: ‘The Peace of 
 Aix-la-Chapelle drove Charles Edward from France. 
 Seized in the Opera-house on the 11th December, 
 1748, shamefully bound, he was brought to Vincennes. 
 He was carried to the frontiers ; Louis Quatorze was 
 no longer on the throne. Charles Edward learnt the 
 hard lesson which the great are wont to learn in adver- 
 sity. He was abandoned. He had his good right 
 on his side; but legitimacy is no protection. It was 
 decreed that the time should come when the descen- 
 dants of Louis XV. would be wandering about Europe 
 like the Pretender,—would read on the corners of streets 
 in Germany: All beggars, vagabonds, and emigrants are 
 forbidden to tarry longer than twenty-four hours here.’ 
 
 Contemporary opinion was little less severe. The Duc 
 de Biron, who commanded the French guards employed 
 in the seizure, was very generally regarded as a dis- 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 195 
 
 honoured man, and the popular sentiment was well 
 expressed by Desforges in some verses ending— 
 ‘Peuple jadis si fier, aujourd’hui si servile, 
 Des princes malheureux vous n’étes plus d’asile.’ 
 
 Severe blows were yet to come, which should have 
 been felt the more from being provoked or invited by 
 folly, weakness, vicious indulgence, or misconduct of 
 some sort. The catastrophe in ‘ Redgauntlet’ is made 
 to turn on his connection with Miss Walkingshaw, and 
 his refusal to give her up, although she was more than 
 suspected of conveying intelligence of all his movements 
 to the British Court through her sister, who was lady- 
 in-waiting to the Princess of Wales. Sir Walter Scott 
 lays the scene in Cumberland in 1760. It took place 
 at an earlier date, and the best authenticated account of 
 the Pretender’s secret visit to London represents him as 
 being therein 1750. Jl chassoit de race. Mary of 
 Modena said of his grandfather, James IL: ‘The 
 King was ready to sacrifice his throne to his belief; 
 but he had not force of mind to give up a mistress.’ 
 
 ‘The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Are made the whips to scourge us ’— 
 
 Never was there a more marked exemplification of this 
 aphorism than Charles Edward’s irregular connection 
 with Miss Walkingshaw. After ruining him with his 
 friends, she abandoned him under an allegation of ill- 
 treatment, which he denied, and fled to Paris, where 
 she contrived to enlist the Archbishop of Paris on her 
 side as well as the old Chevalier St. George, who, glad, 
 no doubt, to separate her from his son, made her in- 
 dependent of him by allowing her a pension. Fora 
 time the unhappy prince bore up manfully against. his 
 destiny. But when all hope seemed over, when every 
 field of active exertion was closed against him, when 
 his ambition and his affection were alike blighted, his 
 spirit and character sank with his fortunes, and in the 
 02 
 
196 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 spring of 1761, we find the British Ambassador, Stanley, 
 writing from Paris that the son of the Pretender was 
 given to drinking to such excess, as to be often drunk 
 in the morning, and to be carried senseless to bed 
 every evening by his attendants. 
 
 He became titular King of England by the death 
 of his father in 1766; and Wraxall relates, on what 
 he describes as the highest authority, that in 1770, 
 when the affair of the Falkland Islands threatened 
 war between Great Britain and Spain, the Due de 
 Choiseul, then Prime Minister of France, thought the 
 time favourable for a fresh effort in favour of the 
 Stuarts. A messenger was despatched to Rome, re- 
 questing the immediate presence of the Pretender at 
 | Paris. He obeyed the summons, and an interview 
 was arranged for the very day of his arrival. He 
 was to come discuised in a hackney-coach, at mid- 
 night, to the Hotel de Choiseul, where the Duc and 
 the Marshal de Broglie were in attendance to receive 
 him. After waiting an hour, they were on the point of 
 separating, under an impression that some unforeseen 
 accident had occurred, when the carriage drove up, and 
 out of it got, or rather was helped with difficulty, the 
 titular King of England, in a state of drunkenness which 
 rendered the most ordinary communication with him an 
 impossibility. The next day he received a peremptory, 
 order to quit France. 
 
 When things had come to this pass, it might have 
 been expected that the degraded representative of a 
 fallen dynasty, unfit for action, and useless even as a 
 tool, would soon have dropped into insignificance ; but 
 in an age of intrigue, and under the corrupt political 
 system which then prevailed in every continental 
 Court, no means of weakening or distracting a rival 
 Power were to be despised. The House of Hanover 
 might be disquieted, and the approaching period of its 
 uncontested stability might be postponed, if it could 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 197 
 
 not be overthrown ; and for this purpose, the competing 
 race must be kept up as long as possible. Charles 
 Edward was childless: his brother was a priest. He 
 must therefore be married, on the chance of his having 
 an heir to his claims, to his disappointments, and not 
 improbably to his shame. In August 1771, he was 
 suddenly summoned again to Paris, and informed by 
 the Duke of Fitzjames, on behalf of the French Court, 
 that if he would take to himself a wife of their choosing, 
 a pension of 240,000 livres would be settled on him. 
 
 The chosen subject of this strange proposal was 
 Louise, Princess of Stolberg, daughter of Gustavus 
 Adolphus, Prince of Stolberg-Gedern, the scion of an 
 ancient and distinguished family raised to princely 
 rank in the person of his father. Her mother was a 
 daughter of the illustrious house of Horn, and she 
 was maternally allied to the Bruces in Scotland, the 
 Montmorencys and Créquis in France, the De Croys 
 and De Lignes in the Low Countries, the Colonnas 
 and Orsinis in Italy, the Gonzagas and Medinas in 
 Spain. The circumstances of the family were not on 
 a par with their descent. Her father, a heutenant- 
 general in the Austrian service, was killed in the 
 bloody battle of December 5th, 1757, fought and gained 
 by Frederick the Great against Marshal Daun; and 
 her mother was left a widow at the age of twenty-four, 
 with four daughters : Louise, the eldest, born September 
 20th, 1752, being then in her sixth year. The Empress 
 Maria Theresa gave the mother a pension, and under- 
 took to provide for the daughters. At that period 
 there existed in the Austrian Netherlands several well- 
 endowed chapters, exclusively reserved for such of the 
 female nobility as could prove the required number of 
 quarterings. ‘That of Mons was the most distinguished ; 
 and the first stall that fell vacant in it was placed at the 
 disposal of the Princess, who nominated Louise. 
 
 The patent was executed in December 1761, when 
 
198 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 she was in her tenth year. Her education was com- 
 pleted in a convent, and she first entered upon her full 
 rights as canoness in her seventeenth year, when she 
 also made her début in society; for there was little 
 or nothing of an ecclesiastical character about these 
 chapters beyond the name. The Abbess of Ste. Wandru, 
 as her principal was designated, was Charlotte, Prin- 
 cess of Lothringen, sister of Francis I, a lady famed for 
 mundane tastes and accomplishments; and altogether 
 we cannot well conceive a more agreeable life for an 
 orphan and dowerless girl of quality than lay within 
 the reach of the damsel in question, when she consented, 
 nothing loth, to receive Charles Edward as her bride- 
 sroom, she being not yet twenty, and he fifty-two. 
 
 The difference in age might have been overlooked, 
 and many marriages- might be cited where equal or. 
 sreater disparity has proved no bar to happiness; 
 but Charles Edward was thoroughly ‘used up.’ All 
 contemporary accounts describe him as mentally and 
 bodily a wreck. Eighteen years before, when his father 
 pressed him to marry, he replied that the unworthy 
 conduct of certain ministers and the troubles of 
 December 1748 (the date of the deportation from Paris) 
 had rendered it impossible for him to settle down any- 
 where without risk to his honour. ‘Were it even 
 possible to find a place of refuge, I think our family has 
 had misfortune enough. I will not marry so long as I 
 am in misery, for such a step would only multiply this 
 misery. If a son chanced to resemble the father in 
 character, he too would be bound hand and foot, if he 
 refused to obey a vile minion of authority.’ He did 
 not adhere to this resolution, which was uttered in a 
 moment of pique, and he once meditated an alliance 
 with the Czar in the hope of Russian aid. He fell in 
 with the French project from pecuniary motives. 
 
 ‘For the young canoness of Mons,’ says M. de Reu- 
 mont, ‘this marriage might have attractions. It was 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERIT. 199 
 
 a crown that was offered her,—a crown without true 
 significance, but wreathed by the splendour which is 
 lent by centuries of legitimacy and great events,—a 
 crown which had once belonged to the glorious race 
 of Robert Bruce, whose blood flowed in her veins,—a 
 crown set in rich pearls by the truth sof a people, by 
 the sanctity of misfortune, by ready courage in danger, 
 by cheerfulness in self-sacrifice.  Diew et mon droit, 
 and the Scottish Nemo me impune lacessit, found an 
 echo in the device of the Stolbergs’ Spes nescia fall,— 
 in the Fuimus of the Bruces.’ The mother, probably, 
 was influenced by more solid considerations. She 
 must have exaggerated the chances of a restoration, 
 and have looked forward to a period when her daughter 
 would be a queen in right earnest ; or she would hardly 
 have hurried on the marriage with the view of con- 
 cealing it from her kind benefactress, the Empress, who 
 was deeply offended when she heard of it. 
 
 M. de Reumont desires us to observe that both the 
 year and the day were ominous. It was the year (1772) 
 that witnessed the first partition of Poland, the restora- 
 tion of despotic government in Sweden, the startling 
 drama of Caroline Matilda and Struensee in Denmark, 
 and some minor symptoms of general disturbance in the 
 South. The formal and concluding ceremony of the 
 marriage took place at Macerata, in the private chapel 
 of Cardinal Marefoschi’s palace, on the 17th of April, - 
 which fell on a Good Friday. In later years, the 
 Countess of Albany frequently declared that her 
 marriage had ‘turned out precisely as a marriage 
 solemnised on the lamentation-day of Christendom 
 might have been expected to turn out.’ 
 
 ‘Tile dies primus leti primusque malorum 
 Causa fuit.’ 
 
 The honeymoon passed off pleasantly enough. After 
 spending a couple of days at Macerata, the new-married 
 pair left for Terni, and slept at the house of Count 
 
200 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 Spada, whose brother had been long attached to the 
 mimic Court of the Stuarts. The grace and animation 
 of the bride made the most agreeable impression on the 
 ladies of the house, who, however, were struck by the 
 circumstance that she, despite her youth and freshness, 
 wore rouge, which she also strongly recommended to the 
 Countess Spada, although her cheeks also showed not 
 the smallest want of such an addition. They reached 
 Rome on the 22nd April, when they made their entry 
 with a semblance of royal pomp. Four couriers pre- 
 ceded them: then came the travelling carriage of the 
 Prince, then that of the Princess, in which were 
 the bride and bridegroom, both drawn by six horses : 
 two other carriages with their attendants: two others 
 with the attendants of Cardinal York. Immediately: 
 on their arrival, the Cardinal paid the Princess a long 
 visit, and presented her with a rich snuff-box set in 
 diamonds, containing a draft for forty thousand Roman 
 crowns. Charles Edward notified to the Secretary of 
 State, Cardinal Pallavicini, the arrival of ‘the King and 
 Queen of England ;’ but the recognition was politely 
 evaded, and they were obliged to content themselves 
 with the varying amount of reverence that compassion- 
 ate courtesy, chivalrous loyalty, or interested flattery 
 might produce. Bonstetten, the accomplished patrician 
 of Berne, as M. de Reumont calls him, best known as 
 the friend of Madame de Staél and Sismondi, gives an 
 animated description of their appearance and establish- 
 ment in the winter of 1773-1774, when they occupied 
 the Palace Muti: 
 
 ‘The Queen of Hearts, as the Queen of England was 
 called, was of the middie height, blonde, with deep blue 
 eyes, a nose slightly turned up, the complexion dazzlingly 
 fair, like that of an Englishwoman. Her expression was 
 maliciously gay, but naturally not without a dash of raillery; 
 her nature more French than German. She seemed made 
 to turn everybody’s head. The Pretender was large, lean, of 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 201 
 
 a kindly disposition, talkative. He delighted to speak 
 English, and spoke much and willingly of his adventures, 
 interesting enough for a stranger, whilst those about him 
 might possibly have been obliged to listen to them a hundred 
 times. His young wife laughed heartily at the history of 
 his having been disguised in woman’s clothes, considering 
 his mien and stature.’ 
 
 At this point, as at several others, M. de Reumont 
 digresses, agreeably and instructively, to portray the 
 society of the period and the place. Although the 
 daily life of the Italian nobles was simple and frugal, 
 the princes of the Church occasionally gave entertain- 
 ments on a scale of grandeur rarely equalled in France; 
 but the equivocal position of the titular King and 
 Queen made public appearances of all sorts disagree- 
 able to them, and after residing a year in Rome they 
 went to Leghorn and soon afterwards to Sienna: the 
 allesed scene of a mysterious adventure, revived in 
 1847 by two gentlemen named Stuart as the foundation 
 of a claim to the lineal representation of the extinct 
 lime. The substance of the story, which was unspa- 
 ringly exposed by the late Mr. Lockhart, was that, in 
 1775, the royal couple had a son, whose birth was kept 
 secret : that the child was carried on board an English 
 frigate, the commander of which, Admiral O'Halloran, 
 brought it up as his own: that this scion of royalty 
 afterwards appeared on board of a man-of-war among 
 the Western Islands of Scotland, was married to an 
 English lady, and was alive in 1831.1 
 
 Towards the end of October 1774, the royal pair 
 took up their abode in Florence. The Grand Duke 
 Peter Leopold followed the example of the Pope, or 
 rather improved upon it, by avoiding any official 
 notice whatever of their arrival; which did not pre- 
 
 1 See ‘Tales of the Century, or Sketches of the Romance of His- 
 tory between the Years 1746 and 1846, by John Sobieski and Charles 
 
 Edward Stuart, Edinburgh, 1847;’ and ‘The Quarterly Review,’ vol. 
 Ixxxi. p. 57, 
 
202 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 vent the nobility or courtiers from partaking of the 
 Pretender’s hospitality. The ladies held more aloof in 
 consequence of the Countess’s refusal to place herself 
 on a footing of equality with them by returning their 
 visits. The evening was commonly passed by the 
 illustrious pair at the theatre, and on one occasion, 
 Charles Edward, happening to engage in an altercation 
 with a French officer, was reminded that he forget who 
 his adversary was: ‘I know that you area Frenchman,’ 
 was the retort, ‘and that is enough.’ He was half 
 intoxicated at the time, and so inveterate grew the 
 craving for stimulants that at a somewhat later period 
 he is described as having always a bottle of Cyprus 
 wine in his box. Soon after his arrival in Florence, 
 his health gave way, his appetite failed, he showed 
 symptoms of dropsy, and he became so helpless that he 
 was obliged to be carried from his carriage to a sofa, 
 on which he lay during the performance. The Coun- 
 tess was in constant attendance: whether from jea- 
 lousy or affection, he never suffered her to be out of 
 his sight in public ; and it may be presumed that her 
 attachment to such a helpmate was not heightened by 
 this constant and compelled companionship. 
 
 Such was the state of thimegs when (in the autumn of 
 1777,) Alfieri arrived in Florence. We shall give the 
 commencement and rapid progress df his passion in his 
 own expressive words; but fully to appreciate the po- 
 sition, his peculiar genius, temperament, and prior life 
 should be freshly remembered, and these fortunately 
 may all be gathered from his autobiography.? 
 
 Vittorio Alfieri was born at Asti, in Piedmont, on 
 the 17th January, 1749, of a noble and honourable 
 family of independent fortune,—a circumstance on which 
 he lays considerable stress. His education was that com- 
 
 ' €Vita di Vittorio Alfieri da Asti. Scritta da Esso (two volumes). 
 Firenze, 1822,’ 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 205 
 
 monly given to young men of his country and station 
 at the time. It was bad, no doubt, but when he 
 complains that, on the completion of his academical 
 studies at Turin, he was lamentably deficient in 
 literature and useful knowledge, he says no more than 
 might have been said by most English lads of the same 
 age on quitting a public school. ‘The fits and starts by 
 which he endeavoured to correct the omissions of his 
 tutors, may be inferred from the curious fact, that a 
 window is still shown in the Collobiano Palace at 
 Turin, near which he made his servant tie him to 
 his chair, to save him, Ulysses-like, from the sirens of 
 dissipation. 
 
 At different times, by dint of volition and as a set 
 task, he read, re-read, collated, analysed, and medi- 
 tated on Ariosto, Montesquieu, Helvetius, and Ma- 
 chiavelli. Multum legere non multa (to read much, 
 not many things), is the wise advice of Bacon; and 
 Alfieri, consciously or unconsciously, acted on it. He 
 also applied his whole heart and soul to gain a fitting 
 instrument of expression for his glowing and thronging 
 thoughts and images, by acquiring the pure Tuscan 
 dialect. When, in his seventeenth year, he started 
 on his travels, he spoke no language but his native 
 semi-barbarous dialect, and some very equivocal 
 French. His mind, however, was one of those that 
 are enriched by the mere act of passing among scenes 
 and objects deemed barren by the multitude; and 
 the future tragedian was formed by adventures which 
 the scientific or dilettante travelier would avoid and 
 the strict moralist must condemn. In Holland he 
 fell so desperately in love with a young married 
 woman, that when she left him at the by no means 
 hasty or unreasonable call of conjugal duty, he be- 
 came speechless, and when brought to his senses by 
 the lancet, was with difficulty prevented from tearing 
 off the bandages and wilfully bleeding to death. 
 
204 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 This, though headed Primo Intoppo Amoroso (First 
 Love Adventure), was preceded by a slighter attack of 
 the same malady in Italy, and followed by a still graver 
 one in England, which he narrates with all the details, 
 merely suppressing the name. The heroine of this 
 romance was the wife of a peer who had a commission 
 in the Guards. After the usual amount of preliminary 
 flirtation, Alfieri became her accepted lover, and was 
 clandestinely admitted to her house. ‘The intrigue was 
 betrayed to the husband, who challenged the poet. 
 They fought in the Green Park with swords, and 
 Alfieri, utterly ignorant of the use of the weapon, 
 escaped with a wound in the arm. His generous 
 adversary, disdaining to take advantage of superior 
 skill, declared himself satisfied, and intimated at the 
 same time that he no longer claimed any right to con- 
 trol the movements of the lady, as it was his intention 
 to divorce her without delay. 
 
 Alfieri was eager to offer her the sole reparation in 
 his power, and she vehemently expatiated on the 
 happiness she anticipated in becoming his wife, al- 
 though she kept on qualifying her ardent hopes with 
 doubts and fears lest he should eventually draw back. 
 Her tone and manner puzzled him till the third day 
 after the duel, when the mystery was cleared up. 
 She then frankly told him that, prior to the com- 
 mencement of their acquaintance, she had bestowed 
 her favours on a groom, who was still in the house: 
 that this man, under the influence of jealousy, had 
 revealed both intrigues to her husband: that she was 
 completely in his power and was irretrievably lost in 
 every sense. Alfieri told her that she judged rightly 
 in supposing that he could not marry her: that it 
 was well she had made a clean breast of it when she 
 did, for, had their marriage preceded the confession or 
 discovery, he would have put her to death with his 
 own hands; but her candour was a redeeming feature, 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 205 
 
 and he was still ready to accompany her to any part of 
 Europe or America, as her friend. 
 
 This was on a Friday. The state of mind in which 
 he passed the rest of the day and the next night may 
 be guessed. On Saturday morning, as he casually 
 elanced over a newspaper, his own name caught his 
 eye. ‘I snatch it up, read a tolerably long article, in 
 which the whole of my misadventure is narrated, de- 
 tailed minutely and accurately, and I learn from it, 
 moreover, the melancholy and laughable individuality 
 of my rival the groom, including his name, age, figure, 
 and the full confession made by him to his master. I 
 was on the point of fallmg dead as I read on; and when 
 at last my lucidity of mind returned, I became aware 
 that the perfidious dame had spontaneously confessed 
 all, after the newspaper of Friday morning had already 
 revealed all to the public.’ We should have thought 
 that no extent of illusion could hold out against this 
 exposure; yet such was his infatuation that he still 
 lingered round his paramour, and actually travelled 
 with her for a period : 
 
 ‘Task not, I know not, if guilt’s in that heart, 
 I but know that I love thee whatever thou art.’ 
 
 He was made the defendant in the subsequent pro- 
 ceedings, and pays a just tribute to the generosity of 
 the injured husband, who, having already spared his 
 life, now spared his pocket by not demanding damages.1 
 
 1 The case obtained so much publicity that, especially at this distance 
 of time, there can be no indiscretion in mentioning the names. The lady 
 was Penelope, daughter of George Lord Rivers, and wife of Edward 
 Lord Ligonier. A house at which, when absent from London, she was 
 clandestinely visited by Alfieri, was standing in the park at Strathfieldsaye 
 within living memory, and a tree used to be pointed out, on the bough of 
 which Altieri hung the bridle of his horse. The house was pulled down 
 by the late Duke of Wellington. We cannot help wishing that his Grace 
 had followed the example of the successive Earls of Chesterfield, who 
 have carefully preserved within the domain of Bretby Park the cottage 
 or outbuilding so amusingly associated with Grammont’s night adventure, 
 narrated in the ninth chapter of his Memoirs. 
 
206 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 Adventures of this kind formed no bad apprentice- 
 ship for the embryo dramatist. Goethe remarked of 
 Balzac that each of his best novels was dug out of a 
 suffering woman’s heart. More than one of Alfieri’s 
 best tragedies was dug out of his own. The fifth 
 chapter of the second volume of the ‘ Life * 1s headed : 
 Degno amore mi allaccia finalmente per sempre (worthy 
 love binds me finally for ever). It contains the story 
 of his introduction to the woman who, with all her 
 faults and weaknesses, was destined to be to him what 
 Beatrice was to Dante, Laura to Petrarch, Vittoria 
 Colonna to Michael Angelo,—his polestar, his beacon, 
 his inspiration, and his guide. To concentrate the 
 energies and steady the impulsive flights of this irregu- 
 lar genius, two things were essential: a settled object 
 of ambition, an equally settled object of affection ; and 
 with her he acquired both. 
 
 In the autumn of 1777 he arrived at Florence, un- 
 certain whether he should winter there or not: 
 
 ‘At the end of the preceding summer, which I passed at 
 Florence, I had often, without seeking her, met a charming 
 and beautiful lady, who, from her being also a foreigner and 
 of distinction, it was impossible not to see and observe; and 
 still more impossible that, seen and observed, she should not 
 please every one in the highest degree. With all this, 
 although a great part of the gentry of Florence and all the 
 foreigners of birth visited her, I, plunged in. study and 
 melancholy, retiring and savage by disposition, and always 
 intent on most avoiding those of the fair sex who appeared 
 to me most beautiful and attractive,—I, however, in that 
 preceding summer, did not get introduced at all at her house, 
 but it chanced to me to see her very often in the theatres 
 and promenades. The most pleasing impression of her had 
 remained in my mind. A soft flame in the darkest of eyes, 
 coupled (which rarely happens) with the whitest of skins 
 and light hair, gave her beauty an attraction from which 
 it was no easy matter to escape unwounded or unsubdued. 
 ‘Twenty-five years of age, much tendency to the fine arts and 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI, PAW: 
 
 literature, a disposition all gold,' and, notwithstanding her 
 position, painful, disagreeable domestic circumstances that 
 seldom left her happy and contented as she should have 
 been. These were too many charms to be rashly encoun- 
 tered. 
 
 ‘In this autumn, then, an acquaintance having often 
 proposed to take me to her house, thinking myself strong 
 enough, I summoned up courage to wait upon her; nor had 
 I gone many times before I found myself, as it were, uncon- 
 sciously caught. But the approach of this, my fourth and 
 last fever of the heart, was fortunately manifested by symp- 
 toms different enough from the three first. In those I never 
 found myself agitated by a passion of the mind, which, 
 counter-balancing and mingling with that of the heart, 
 formed (to speak with the poet) an unknown, indistinct com- 
 bination, the more profound and lasting in proportion as it 
 was less impetuous and fervent. Such was the flame which 
 little by little got the upper hand of my every thought and 
 feeling, and will never be extinguished in me but with life. 
 Becoming aware in two months that my true lady was this 
 one, since, instead of finding in her, as in all ordinary 
 women, an obstacle to literary glory, a. disturbance to useful 
 occupation, and a lowering of thought, I found in her a 
 spur, a comfort, and an example towards every good work, 
 and recognising and appreciating so rare a treasure, I gave 
 myself up to her beyond recall.’ 
 
 No Piedmontese could then travel without a license 
 from the Government, which was grudgingly given; 
 and the Piedmontese laws of the Press applied indis- 
 criminately to the writings of any subject of Piedmont 
 without reference to the place of publication. Alfieri 
 wished to live entirely abroad, and was meditating 
 works overflowing with denunciations of tyranny, which 
 were sure to give offence. He therefore resolved to 
 expatriate himself completely and permanently, which 
 he practically effected by making over his property to 
 a married sister, upon trust to pay him 1400 sequins 
 
 * “Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold.’—Milton’s translation of 
 the Ode to Pyrrha. Alfieri’s expression is indole d’ oro, 
 
208 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. ° 
 
 (about half the actual value) per annum. He was now 
 legally free to devote himself exclusively to literature 
 and the lady. But, as regards the lady, a moral and 
 social difficulty remained. Her husband had so much 
 of the Englishman about him as to object to her unre- 
 strained exercise of a privilege which the wedded dames 
 of Italy then claimed and enjoyed as a right. The 
 attendance of a cavalier servente or cicisbeo was denied 
 to her, or allowed with so many drawbacks as to cause 
 more pain than pleasure to the parties who are usually 
 expected to benefit by the institution. After mention- 
 ing other works planned and partially executed up to 
 the summer of 1778, Alfieri continues : . 
 
 ‘In the August of this same year, at the suggestion and 
 for the satisfaction of my beloved, I imaged forth “ Maria 
 Stuarda.” In and from September I versified ‘ Oreste,” 
 with which ended the excessively occupied year. My days 
 passed in a kind of perfect calm; and it would have been 
 unbroken if I had not frequently been pained to see my 
 adored one teased by continual domestic annoyances brought 
 about by her querulous, unreasonable, and constantly intoxi- 
 cated old husband. Her sorrows were mine; and I have 
 successively suffered the pangs of death from them. I could 
 only see her in the evening and sometimes at dinner at her 
 house; but with the spouse always present, or at best in the 
 next room. Not, indeed, that he took umbrage at me more 
 than at others, but such was his system; and in nine years 
 and more that this pair lived together, never, oh! never has 
 he gone out without her, nor she without him: a cohesion 
 which would end by becoming wearisome to two people who 
 were ever so much in love with each other. 
 
 ‘The whole day, then, I remained at home studying, after 
 riding on a hired horse for a couple of hours for mere health. 
 In the evening I had the solace of seeing her, but too much 
 embittered by finding her almost always afflicted and op- 
 pressed. If I had not most tenaciously adhered to study, I 
 should have been unable to submit to see her so little and 
 in such a manner. But, on the other hand, if I had not had 
 that solitary solace of her most charming aspect for counter- 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 209 
 
 poison to the bitterness of my solitude, I should never have 
 been able to bear up against a study so continuous and so (I 
 might say) phrenzied.’ 
 
 In the course of the year 1780, he made rapid 
 progress in some of his favourite works, versifying the 
 ‘Maria Stuarda, the ‘Rosmunda,’ and great part of 
 ‘Ottavia,’ reversifying the whole of the ‘Filippo’ for 
 the third time, and developing ‘ Ottavia’ and ‘’'Timo- 
 leone ;’ the one inspired by a recent perusal of Plutarch, 
 and the other by Tacitus, which he says he read and 
 re-read with transport. A curious insight is given by 
 these confessions into his mode of writing, which must 
 have been painful and laborious in the extreme. It 
 would seem that, with him, the process of versification, 
 as well as that of first clothing his thoughts in words, 
 was entirely distinct from that of conception, and that, 
 stranger still, he had commonly five or six works on 
 the stocks at once. Besides his dramas, he was in the 
 habit of composing sonnets, commonly addressed to the 
 Countess, more remarkable for depth of feeling and 
 energy of expression than for fancy or grace. 
 
 In December 1780, his course of life was rudely 
 interrupted by a sudden outburst of brutality on the 
 part of Charles Edward, who in a fit of drunkenness 
 behaved so grossly to the Countess as to justify her, in 
 the opinion of the Florentine Court and even of his 
 own brother the Cardinal, in throwing him off for ever. 
 The transaction was fully reported to the British Go- 
 vernment in a dispatch dated December 12th, 1780, 
 by Sir Horace Mann, who says: 
 
 ‘Of late the intemperance of his (the Pretender’s) beha- 
 viour, especially when he was heated with wine and stronger 
 liquors, has been vented against his wife, whom he has for a 
 long time treated in the most indecent and cruel manner. 
 On St. Andrew’s Day, which he always celebrated by indulg- 
 ing himself in drinking more than usual, he ill-treated her 
 in the most outrageous manner by the most abusive lan- 
 
 VOL. II. Pp 
 
210 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 ouage, and beating her at night and in bed, and attempting 
 to choke her. Fresh instances of his cruelty inclining her 
 to think herself in danger of her life, she meditated on the 
 means of putting her resolution into effect; for which pur- 
 pose she made her case privately known to the Grand Duke, 
 and invited a lady of her acquaintance to breakfast with her 
 husband, as she had often done before; after which he pro- 
 posed to the ladies to take the air in his coach as usual, and 
 they, under the pretence of visiting a sort of convent, not 
 a strict cloister, which is immediately under the Grand 
 Duchess’s protection, induced him to go thither, having pre- 
 viously engaged a gentleman of her acquaintance to be there 
 to hand her out of the coach, and to prevent any acts of vio- 
 lence, as the Pretender always carried pistols in his pocket. 
 
 ‘The ladies getting first into the convent, the door was 
 immediately shut and barred to prevent the Pretender’s 
 getting in. He flew into a violent passion, demanding his 
 wife. A lady of the court who has the direction of that 
 place in the name of the Grand Duchess, came to the grate 
 and told him that the Countess Albanie had put herself 
 under the protection of the Grand Duke, and that, being in 
 danger of her life, had resolutely determined never to cohabit 
 with him any more. Upon which he returned home, where 
 he committed the greatest extravagances, and has since 
 declared that he will give a thousand zechins to anybody 
 who will kill the gentleman who assisted his wife on that 
 occasion.’ 
 
 The gentleman was Alfieri, who, after a_ brief 
 summary of the affair, states that he will not conde- 
 scend to vindicate himself against the stupid imputa- 
 tions levelled at him for rescuing an innocent victim. 
 ‘Suffice it to say that I saved my lady from the 
 tyranny of an irrational and constantly drunken master 
 without her honour being in any way whatever com- 
 promised nor the proprieties in the least transgressed.’ 
 Considering the total want of opportunity, it requires 
 no great stretch of charity to believe him, although, as 
 in the affair of Bothwell and Queen Mary, their subse- 
 quent conduct has thrown a shade of doubt on the 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. iy 
 
 purity of their intercourse from the commencement. 
 We also learn from Sir Horace Mann that in 1783, 
 when the Pretender supposed himself to be dying, he 
 “convinced his brother the Cardinal of many circum- 
 stances relating to his wife’s conduct and her elopement 
 from him, of which the Cardinal was not informed, and 
 in which all those who took the part of the Countess 
 had lkewise been deceived, that the whole was a plot 
 formed by Count Alfieri. What is more, the Earl 
 Stanhope, whose information is excellent and whose 
 judgment always leans to mercy’s side, compresses 
 the story into one pithy and double-edged sentence : 
 “The Count and Countess of Albany (such was the 
 title they bore) lived together during several years at 
 Florence, a harsh husband and a faithless wife; until 
 at length, in 1780, weary of constraint, she eloped with 
 her lover Alfieri.’ 
 
 If the estrangement of the affections, unaccompanied 
 by what is commonly understood by matrimonial infi- 
 delity, amounts to faithlessness, the Countess certainly 
 was faithless ; but surely her mode of leaving her hus- 
 band’s roof and taking refuge in a convent under the 
 sanction of the Grand Duchess, cannot be fairly de- 
 scribed as an elopement with her lover; and when she 
 quitted it, the arrangements for her departure, her 
 journey and her reception at her next abode, were made 
 by her brother-in-law the Cardinal and the Papal 
 Nuncio, who received especial directions from His 
 Holiness to facilitate them. On the 13th December, 
 the Cardinal writes to her: ‘I have long foreseen what 
 has happened, and your proceedings taken in concert 
 with the Court are a guarantee for the rectitude of 
 your motives.’ 
 
 The Pope wrote her an autograph letter of the same 
 date fully approving what she had done, and confirming 
 
 * History of England from the Peace of Utrecht, &. By Lord 
 Mahon (Karl Stanhope), vol. iii. p. 528, 
 P 2 
 
pay. THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 in every particular the promises of protection and 
 countenance already conveyed through the Cardinal. 
 On the 30th December, 1780, Sir Horace Mann 
 reports that the Countess of Albany had just set out 
 for Rome with all possible secrecy: ‘ Besides her own 
 servants she was attended by one of the Nuncio’s, and 
 other steps were taken by order of the Grand Duke for 
 her greater security against any molestation, in case the 
 Pretender should have got notice of her departure, 
 which even as yet does not appear.’ M. de Reumont 
 states that, besides a mounted escort, Alfieri and a Mr. 
 Gahagan, disguised and well armed, occupied the box 
 of the carriage till it had got a considerable distance 
 from Florence. This incident is suppressed by Alfieri. 
 On January 25, 1781, Sir Horace Mann reports that: 
 ‘The Countess is treated at Rome with the greatest 
 respect. She has obtained leave to go abroad without 
 the least restraint. She had a long audience of the 
 Pope in the sacristy of the church. Cardinal York 
 treats her with the greatest civility, and has made her 
 the most generous offers, and she goes frequently to 
 dine with him at Frascati, where he commonly resides.’ 
 
 Alfieri’s conduct at this trymg epoch corresponded in 
 all outward seeming with his professions of elevated 
 and disinterested attachment. Respect for appearances 
 prevented him from following her to Rome, and 
 Florence had grown intolerable. After a month of 
 utter prostration, he resolved on going to Naples: 
 ‘choosing it expressly, as every one may see, because 
 the way lies through Rome.’ In one of Crabbe’s 
 poems (‘ The Lover’s Journey’), a young lover, full of 
 hope, is on his way to the home of his beloved; and 
 the road, through a barren and fenny district, seems a 
 succession of sunlit landscapes or smiling valleys. He 
 is out of humour at not finding her, and although his 
 way now lies through a beautiful country, all seems ugly, 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. PAB 
 
 gloomy, and desolate. Alfieri was affected much in the 
 same manner. 
 
 ‘As I travelled towards Rome, the approximation to her 
 made my heart beat. So different from all others is the 
 lover’s eye, that a barren noisome region, which three years 
 before appeared to me what it was, presented itself as the 
 most delicious place of sojourn in the world. I arrived; I 
 saw her—(oh, God! the thought of it still cleaves my heart 
 in twain)—TI saw her prisoner behind a grating, less vexed, 
 however, than I had seen her in Florence; but, for other 
 reasons, I did not find her less unhappy. We were com- 
 pletely separated; and who could say for how long we were 80 ?” 
 
 He goes on to say that he remained only a few days 
 in Rome, and during that time love, he owns, made 
 him resort to an infinity of humiliating expedients, to 
 which he would not have resorted to obtain the empire 
 of the universe: ‘expedients to which I furiously 
 refused to resort afterwards, when, presenting myself 
 at the threshold of the Temple of Glory, still very 
 doubtful whether I should ever obtain admission, I 
 would neither humour nor flatter those who were, 
 or deemed themselves, its guardians... .. . I did 
 everything, I resorted to everything, and I remained 
 in Rome, tolerated by those charlatans and even aided 
 by those petty priests, who had or assumed any 
 influence in the affairs of my lady.’ 
 
 When he had thus fairly or unfairly earned a tem- 
 porary domicile in the Eternal City, he managed to 
 regulate his life as nearly as possible after the plan 
 which (barring sundry drawbacks) had succeeded so 
 well at Florence. His place of residence was the Villa 
 Strozzi, near the Baths of Dioclesian; ‘a dwelling,’ he 
 says, ‘in entire harmony with my temperament, my 
 character, my occupations. So long as I live, I shall 
 think of it with regretful longing.’ His literary pur- 
 suits and his usual two hours’ ride filled the morning 
 and forenoon, and part of every evening was passed 
 
214 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 with the Countess, from whom he professed to draw 
 inspiration for the resumption of his labours on the 
 morrow. It would seem that the Countess sometimes 
 accompanied him in his rides, for speaking subsequently 
 (1784) of his horses, fourteen of which he had bought 
 in England, he says: ‘The fifteenth was my beautiful 
 roan, Fido, the same that in Rome had often carried 
 the pleasing burthen of my lady, and for that reason 
 was dearer to me than all the rest of my stud.’ -He 
 ranks his fondness for horses as third, for intensity, 
 amongst his passions: the Countess bemg No. 1 and 
 the Tragic Muse No. 2. There are passages in his 
 ‘Life’ which anticipate the sentiment of a graceful 
 French poet : 
 ‘A ses moindres discours suspendre tout son étre, 
 Emu d’un doux espoir, 
 
 Et mourir tout le jour, hélas! & se promettre 
 Un sourire le soir.’ 
 
 But although Alfieri may have succeeded in deceiving 
 himself, he will not deceive others. He was rather 
 an example of the Byronic theory: ‘Man’s love is of 
 man’s life a thing apart.’ When the excitement of posi- 
 tive prohibition or interference was over, he subsided 
 into a reeular punctual, habitual lover of the ow pas- 
 seraije mes sotrées ? school, and versified his tragedies 
 with the steadiness of taskwork. He had resolved to 
 complete a certain number, enough to commence an 
 epoch in Italian dramatic literature, before publishing 
 any. His original plan was not to exceed twelve ; but, 
 prior to the end of 1782, he had well-nigh put the 
 finishing hand to fourteen ; the sudden temptation to 
 write ‘ Merope’ and ‘Saul’ having proved irresistible. 
 ‘Saul’ was his favourite work, and (what rarely happens 
 in the case of favourite works) it has been generally 
 esteemed his best. In the course of a private inter- 
 view, during which the Pope had highly complimented 
 him on his ‘ Antigone,’ he proposed to dedicate ‘Saul’ 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. ZED 
 
 to His Holiness, who adroitly declined the honour, on 
 the plea that he could not accept the dedication of 
 any theatrical compositions, be they what they might. 
 Alfieri was deeply mortified, first, at having invited 
 what he considered an affront: secondly, at having had 
 ‘the meanness, the weakness, the duplicity to wish to 
 pay the tribute, in token of respect and esteem, of one 
 of my works, to aman whom I deemed inferior enough 
 to myself in true merit.’ Knowing what we do of the 
 estimate he had of himself as a poet and the intensity 
 of his self-consciousness, we suspect that what he goes 
 on to name as his primary motive was at least a se- 
 condary one: 
 
 ‘This reason then was, that I, having for some time be- 
 come aware of rumours proceeding from the house of the 
 relative of my lady, through which I learnt his discontent, 
 and that of all his circle, at my being too much at her 
 house ; and this discontent being constantly on the increase, 
 I sought, by flattering the Sovereign of Rome, to create in 
 him a support against all persecutions, of which I already 
 seemed to have a presentiment in my heart, and which in 
 fact about a month afterwards were let loose against me.’ 
 
 His presentiments did not deceive him ; for the Pre- 
 tender’s assurances, when he thought himself dying, 
 impressed the Cardinal strongly, or, more correctly 
 speaking, opened his eyes to what was already palpable 
 to the commonest observer. It hardly required the 
 solemnity of a death-bed to give weight to the convic- 
 tions of the deserted husband, the soundness of which 
 may be contested without questioning their good faith ; 
 and the permitted intimacy of the suspected lover with 
 the fugitive wife was utterly indefensible in any point 
 of view or on any construction of the facts: Alfieri 
 fairly admits as much : 
 
 ‘And here I certainly shall not make the apology of the 
 usual life of Rome and all Italy as regards almost all married 
 women. I will say, however, that the conduct of this lady 
 
216 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 in Rome towards me was much more on the safe side than 
 on the other, of the customs most tolerated in this city. 
 But I will end all this, for the love of truth and right, by 
 saying that the husband, and the brother, and their respec- 
 tive priests, had every reason not to approve my great inti- 
 macy, although it did not exceed the bounds of honour. I 
 regret at the same time that, as to the priests (who were the 
 sole movers of the whole machine), their zeal in the matter 
 was neither evangelical nor pure from secondary ends ; 
 since not a few of them, by their sad examples, pronounced 
 at once the eulogy of my conduct and the satire on their 
 own. The affair was the daughter, not of true religion and 
 virtue, but of revenge and intrigue.’ 
 
 Sir Horace Mann states that the Cardinal, on his re- 
 turn from hearing his brother’s statement, laid the whole 
 before the Pope, and obtained an order to Alfieri to 
 leave Rome within fifteen days. This he denies, and 
 says that, on hearing of the plot brewing against him, 
 he intimated to the Sardinian Minister his readiness to 
 save the lady’s honour and peace of mind by a volun- 
 tary departure; a course which he preferred to the 
 utterly unendurable one of remaining in the same place 
 without seeing her. Accordingly, on the 4th March, 
 1783, he started for Sienna; ‘like one stupid and 
 deprived of sense, leaving my only love, books, town, 
 peace, my very self, in Rome.’ Of his four or five 
 separations, this was the saddest, because the future 
 was more uncertain, and he declares that he as good as 
 lost two years by reason of it, so great were the 
 disturbance of his mind and the interruption of his 
 pursuits. The effect must have been terrible indeed 
 if, as he states, it made him utterly insensible to the 
 harshest criticism levelled at the style of his published 
 writings, sprinkled over with durissimo, oscurissimo, 
 stravagantissimo. He managed to get through a good 
 deal of work notwithstanding, listened zncognito with 
 some complacency to a reading of his ‘ Virginia’ in 
 Turin, and undertook an expedition to England to buy 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 217 
 
 horses. The praises lavished on them by connoisseurs 
 pleased him, he admits, little if at all less than those 
 accorded to his verses. ney 
 During the whole period of separation he kept up 
 a voluminous correspondence with the Countess, who 
 repaid him in kind; and it would seem ‘that the electric 
 chain of inspiration was not broken by the chilling 
 medium of the post. In one of her letters she spoke 
 of having been highly gratified by the ‘ Brutus’ of 
 Voltaire. On reading this he exclaims: ‘I who had 
 heard it recited ten years before, and had no recol- 
 lection whatever of it,—being instantaneously filled 
 with a wild and disdainful emulation of both mind 
 and heart,—said to myself: What Brutuses? What 
 Brutuses? I will make Brutuses: I will make them 
 in duplicate: time shall show then if such subjects for 
 tragedy were better addressed to me, or toa Frenchman 
 born a plebeian, and subscribing himself for seventy 
 years and more Voltaire, Gentilhomme Ordinaire du 
 for. No sooner said than done. Under the feverish 
 excitement of jealous rivalry, he dashed off the plan of 
 ‘Il Bruto Primo’ and ‘Il Bruto Secondo.’ But we 
 are anticipating. This occurred in 1786, during 
 another compelled absence; and the prolonged 
 separation beginning with his banishment from Rome, 
 terminated in the summer of 1784, when the Countess, 
 through the mediation of the King of Sweden, came 
 to an arrangement with her ‘husband. <A formal in- 
 strument was signed by her, Charles Edward, and 
 the Cardinal, and duly ratified by the Pope, by which, 
 in return for the sacrifice of her pin-money, she 
 obtained an amicable divorce a menséd et thoro, with 
 liberty to reside where she pleased. At least such 
 was the contract as stated by Sir Horace Mann; 
 but it would seem from subsequent occurrences that 
 the Pope retained the power of regulating her 
 movements or directing her place of residence. 
 
218 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 The first use the Countess made of her partially 
 recovered freedom was to give Alfieri a meeting at 
 Colmar, where they spent two months together. 
 The bond under which she lay to pass part of her 
 time in the papal territory, obliged them to separate 
 again at the approach of winter, which she passed 
 at Bologna. His place of residence till the following 
 summer was Pisa. They then met again at Colmar, 
 which she soon afterwards quitted for Paris; whither, 
 she having returned to Colmar after a few months’ 
 stay, he accompanied her in the autumn of 1786. 
 The papal restriction being apparently taken off or 
 relaxed by this time, she thought of taking up her 
 permanent abode there, and he, much as he disliked 
 both the country and the people, had the strongest 
 inducements to do the same; as, besides wishing to 
 be near her, he was carefully revismg a French 
 impression of his works. 
 
 Whilst they had been thus occupied, Charles Edward 
 had taken a step which is supposed to have excited in 
 the heart and mind of the Countess a feeling of 
 compunction or remorse which she had never 
 experienced from his accusations or reproaches. In 
 July 1784, he formally acknowledged his natural 
 daughter by Miss Walkingshaw, and sent for her from 
 the convent, where she was residing with her mother, 
 to live with him as mistress of his family. Not content 
 with calling her Lady Charlotte Stuart, he insisted on 
 her bearing the title of Duchesse d’Albany, and on 
 St. Andrew’s Day, as if determined to celebrate it by 
 some new extravagance, he performed the ceremony of 
 investing her with the Order of St. Andrew, the badge 
 of which she had already assumed. 
 
 Wraxall says: ‘In 1779, Charles Edward exhibited 
 to the world a very humiliating spectacle.’ On the 
 margin of her copy, Mrs. Piozzi wrote : 
 
 ‘Still more so at Florence in 1786. Count Alfieri had 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 219 
 
 taken away his consort, and he was under the dominion and 
 eare of a natural daughter, who wore the Garter, and was 
 called Duchess of Albany. She checked him when he drank 
 too much or when he talked too much. Poor soul! Though 
 one evening he called Mr. Greathead up to him, and said in 
 good English, and in a loud though cracked voice: “TI will 
 speak to my own subjects in my own way, Sare. Ay, and I 
 will soon speak to you, Sir, in Westminster Hall.” The 
 Duchess shrugged her shoulders.’ 
 
 A still more curious anecdote is recorded of a conver- 
 sation with Mr. Greathead, who, being left alone with 
 Charles Edward, gradually led him to talk of 1745. 
 At first he shrank from the topic ; the reminiscence was 
 evidently sad. But,as the visitor persevered, he seemed 
 as it were to cast off a load; his eye lighted up, his 
 demeanour became animated, and be began the narra- 
 tive of his campaign with youthlike energy, spoke of 
 his marches, his battles, his victories, his escape, and 
 the dangers that surrounded him, of the self-sacrificing 
 fidelity of his Scotch companions, of the dreadful fate 
 that had befallen so many amongst them. The im- 
 pression that, after forty years, the recollection of their 
 sufferings made upon him was so strong that his 
 streneth gave way, his voice failed, and he sank sense- 
 less on the ground. On hearing the bustle his daugh- 
 ter hurried in. ‘ What means this, Sir?’ she exclaimed. 
 ‘You have certainly been talking of Scotland and the 
 Highlanders to my father. No one should touch on 
 these things in his presence.’ He has been known to 
 burst into tears on hearing the tune of ‘ Lochaber no 
 more, which the condemned Jacobites were reported 
 to have sung in prison. 
 
 Another striking illustration of Hise native spirit and 
 sensibility has been preserved. The Comte de Vau- 
 dreuil, son of the officer who arrested Charles Edward 
 at Paris in 1748 and a speaking likeness of his father, 
 came to Rome in 1787 with the Duchesse de Polignac, 
 
22.0) THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 and thoughtlessly requested to be presented to Charles 
 Edward, who was merely informed that a foreigner of 
 distinction desired to pay his respects. The name was 
 not announced by the servant, the Duchess herself 
 having undertaken the introduction; but the moment 
 Vaudreuil entered the room, the degrading scene with 
 which his features were indelibly associated came back 
 upon the unhappy exile like a flash. He dropped 
 down ina fainting fit, and Vaudreuil was hurried from 
 the room. 
 
 On August 8th, 1786, Sir Horace Mann reports that 
 ‘he (the Pretender) has lately assumed the folly prac- 
 tised by his father and grandfather, to touch people 
 who are afflicted with scrofulous disorders: many old 
 women and children have been presented to him for 
 that purpose, to whom, after some ceremony, he gives 
 afsmall silver medal, which they wear about their 
 necks.’ This was Sir Horace Mann’s last letter on the 
 subject. He died in November 1786, having been 
 British Minister at Florence since 1740, ‘ perhaps (re- 
 marks Lord Stanhope) the longest diplomatic service of 
 the same post that is anywhere recorded.’* He was 
 succeeded by Lord Hervey, who on the 29th January, 
 1788, {informs the Secretary of State that some days 
 before the Pretender had been seized with a paralytic 
 stroke, which deprived him of the use of one half of his 
 body. Two days later (January 31st) Lord Hervey 
 writes: ‘This morning, between the hours of nine and 
 ten, the Pretender departed this life.’ Cardinal Caccia- 
 Piatti informed Earl Stanhope, on the authority of some 
 members of Count Albany’s household, that he had in 
 truth expired on the evening of the 30th January, but 
 that the date was altered in the public announcement, 
 on account of the evil omen which, notwithstanding the 
 difference of the Old and New Style, was supposed to 
 attend the anniversary of King Charles’s execution. 
 
 * Mann and Walpole had not met for forty-two years, 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. VE 
 
 Surely a century of home truths might have enabled 
 this fated family to dispense with omens. After lying 
 in state, his remains were buried at Frascati, and the 
 Cardinal assumed the title of Henry the Ninth. He 
 seems to. have been an honest and well-intentioned 
 man, although his bigotry and asceticism rendered him 
 unpopular with the lower classes, whose amusements 
 he curtailed, whilst his dulness wearied his accomplished 
 and pleasure-loving colleagues of the Conclave. At 
 the end of a long conference with him, Pius VI. 
 laughingly remarked that he no longer wondered at 
 the eagerness of the English to get rid of so tiresome a 
 race. 
 
 The Duchess of Albany did not long survive her 
 father. She died at Bologna in 1789, of the effects of 
 an operation which she was compelled to undergo. An 
 original miniature (formerly belonging to the Cardinal, 
 and now in the possession of the Countess of Seafield) 
 gives a highly favourable impression of her. The 
 features are good and the expression animated. Mann 
 says ‘she is allowed to be a good figure, tall and well 
 made, but the features of her face resemble too much 
 those of her father to be handsome.’ 
 
 The news of the Pretender’s death reached the 
 Countess in Paris in February 1788, and she was much 
 affected by it. ‘ Her grief,’ says Alfieri, ‘was neither 
 factitious nor forced, for every untruth was alien to this 
 upright, incomparable soul; and notwithstanding the 
 ereat disparity of years, her husband would have found 
 in her an excellent companion and a friend, if not a 
 loving wife, had he not thrust her from him by his con- 
 stantly ‘ unfriendly, rough, unaccountable behaviour. I 
 owe pure truth this testimony.’ M. Saint René Tail- 
 landier says that her grief was rendered intensely 
 poignant by the reflection that the duty from which she 
 had shrunk and fled had been readily undertaken and 
 effectively performed by another : 
 
pA, THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 ‘The Duchess Charlotte entering the house of Charles 
 Edward, the deserted child coming to the rescue of the 
 deserted spouse, the natural child replacing the lawful wife 
 and exercising her pious and salutary influence over the old 
 man, these were contrasts which could not but painfully 
 affect the proud Countess. We are making no idle conjec- 
 tures ; Madame D’Albany had too elevated a soul not to feel 
 the painfulness of the situation. It was still worse when 
 the Duchess Charlotte, after having rekindled a spark in the 
 extinct heart of the hero, so gently closed his eyes and fol- 
 lowed him to the tomb.’! 
 
 It is difficult to believe that she viewed her successor 
 in this hght. The natural daughter, taken from a convent 
 to preside at a so-called royal table and receive homage 
 as a quasi princess, underwent no sacrifice and was sub- 
 jected to none of the restraints or insults which revolted 
 the wife. The relation in which the two ladies respec- 
 tively stood to Charles Edward were entirely different ; 
 and as to the intense grief of the Countess, nothing is 
 more common than to feel deeply the death of those with 
 whose lives our own have once been closely and cordially 
 blended, however rudely and widely rent asunder at a 
 subsequent period. ‘The softened fancy recalls past 
 hours of tenderness and refuses to dwell on past causes 
 of complaint : we forgive the wrongs we have suffered 
 and weep bitter tears to think that we can no longer 
 ask pardon or atone for the wrongs we may have done. 
 
 The relations of Alfieri and the Countess were not 
 changed by this event. It is now a recognised fact 
 that the tie which bound them to each other was 
 never consecrated by matrimony. Whether they 
 were married or not has been vehemently debated, and 
 the presumptive evidence on the affirmative side was 
 strong. The ceremony was alleged to have taken 
 place at Paris, after the removal of difficulties raised 
 by the Cardinal. In March 1792 Alfieri’s mother 
 
 ? ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’ for Feb. 15, 1861, being the last of three 
 excellent papers principally based on M. de Reumont’s work, 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 223 
 
 wrote to him: ‘Ido not believe that the lady whom 
 you announce as coming with you can feel any liking 
 for me, since I have not the happiness to be acquainted 
 with her. But if this is so, I would fain flatter myself 
 that it is the effect of a tie which I hope may be of 
 a nature to forward your earthly happiness as well as 
 the salvation of your soul. This would be my greatest 
 comfort, as it is my only longing desire.’ He calls her 
 in his ‘Life’ la mia donna and la dolce meta di me 
 stesso: she speaks of him as cet amt incomparable. 
 During the latter part of their stay at Paris they 
 occupied the same house: they travelled together : 
 they were together in 1791, and subsequently whilst 
 living with the connections of the Countess. Wherever 
 they went—whether in France, England, or Italy— 
 they were received in the best society, as if there 
 was nothing conventionally wrong in their connexion. 
 The belief in a private marriage may have had some- 
 thing to do with this indulgence; and theirs was by no 
 means an exceptional case at a period when morals and 
 manners, as well as dynasties and forms of government, 
 were more or less shaken by revolutionary notions. 
 Why they did not marry, is still a problem. M. 
 Saint René Taillandier says that she could not make 
 up her mind to abdicate her royalty; whilst Alfieri, 
 independently of a-poetic dislike to a prosaic termina- 
 tion of his romance, preferred remaining the lover of a 
 queen. The tenacity with which she clung to her 
 assumed state, struck all who had an opportunity of 
 observing it. Wraxhall, who visited her at Paris, says 
 that in one of the rooms there was a throne emblazoned 
 with the royal arms of Great Britain : that all the plate, 
 including the spoons, was engraved with the same 
 arms ; that her servants always addressed her as ‘ Your 
 Majesty ;’ and that royal honours were paid to her by the 
 nuns of the. conwents which she was wont to visit on Sun- 
 days and feast-days. The friends who wished to gratify 
 her made no scruple of humouring her in this particular. 
 
294 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 Thus we find Madame de Staél constantly writing to her 
 as Chere Souveraine, and in letters of introduction re- 
 questing permission to add to the number of her sub- 
 jects. The Duchess of Devonshire adopts the same 
 tone; and the flattery which the writers probably 
 regarded as polite badinage was accepted as rightful 
 homage by the Countess. 
 
 Like Byron and many other liberal or democratic 
 poets, Alfieri was a genuine aristocrat at heart, and 
 neither he nor the Countess could so regulate their 
 society in Paris as to avoid hearing language which 
 disgusted them. It was at their own table, on the day 
 after the forced and terrible procession of the King and 
 Queen from Versailles to Paris, that the painter David 
 broke out: ‘It is a great misfortune that this Megera 
 (Marie Antoinette) was not torn to pieces or had not 
 her throat cut by the women, for there will be no 
 peace during her hfe.’ 
 
 In the autumn of 1790, they quitted Paris for Nor- 
 mandy, and in the following spring they visited England. 
 They remained there some months, partly in London 
 and partly in the country. The Countess kept a 
 journal of her impressions, especially of those made on 
 her by the picture galleries and objects of art which 
 fell under her observation during the tour. Those 
 relating to society were far from favourable : 
 
 ‘Although I knew that the English were melancholy 
 (tristes), I could not imagine that their capital was so, to 
 the point at which I found it. No kind of society, plenty of 
 crowds. . . . - The only good which England enjoys, and 
 which is inappreciable, is political liberty. . . . . If Eng- 
 land had an oppressive government, this country, together 
 with its people, would be the last in the universe; bad 
 climate, bad soil, and consequently tasteless productions. It 
 is only the excellence of its government that makes it habit- 
 able. The English are fond of women, but know not the 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 225 
 
 necessity of living in society with them. They are severe 
 and exacting husbands, and the women are generally better 
 behaved than in other countries, because they have more to 
 risk. The arrangement of the houses prevents them from 
 receiving at home without the privity of the husband and 
 the servants. They are in general good mothers and good 
 wives: but they are fond of play, and the great ladies are 
 very fond of dissipation. Intimate society, and the charm 
 of this society, are unknown in London. One lives with 
 one’s family, that is, with one’s husband and one’s children, 
 for one makes no account of one’s father or mother, at least 
 in the class I visited. The English are incapable of feeling 
 any of the fine arts, and still less of executing them; they 
 buy a great many pictures and know nothing about them.’ 
 
 The strangest of her adventures in London is narrated 
 by Horace Walpole, in a letter.to Miss Berry of May 
 19th, 1791: 
 
 ‘The Countess of Albany is not only in England, in Lon- 
 don, but at this very moment, I believe, in the palace of St. 
 James ; not restored by as rapid a revolution as the French, 
 but, as was observed at supper at Lady Mount Edgecumbe’s, 
 by that topsy-turvihood that characterises the present age. 
 Within these two days the Pope has been burnt at Paris; 
 Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis Quinze, has dined with 
 the Lord Mayor of London (Boydell); and the Pretender’s 
 widow is presented to the Queen of Great Britain. She is 
 to be introduced by her great-grandfather’s niece, the young 
 Countess of Aylesbury. That curiosity should bring her 
 here, I don’t quite wonder, still less that she abhorred her 
 husband ; but methinks it is not very well-bred to his family 
 nor very sensible, but a new way of passing eldest.’ 
 
 Yn a postscript dated the night of the 19th May, he 
 adds : 
 
 ‘Well! I have had an exact account of the interview of 
 the two Queens from one who stood close to them. The 
 Dowager was announced as Princess of Stolberg. She was 
 well-dressed, and not at all embarrassed. The King talked 
 to her a good deal, but about her passage, the sea, and gene- 
 ral topics; the Queen in the same way, but less. Then she 
 
 VOL. II. Q 
 
22.6 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 stood between the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and 
 had a good deal of conversation with the former, who per- 
 haps may have met her in Italy. Not a word between her 
 and the Princesses; nor did I hear of the Prince, but he was 
 there and probably spoke to her. The Queen looked at her 
 earnestly. To add to the singularity of the day, it is the 
 Queen’s birthday. Another odd accident: at the opera at 
 the Pantheon, Madame d’Albany was carried into the King’s 
 box and sat there. It is not of a piece with her going to 
 Court that she seals with the royal arms.’ 
 
 Another incident of the journey, mentioned by 
 Walpole, is thus described by Hannah More, in her 
 
 ‘Memoirs’: 
 
 ‘The Bishop of London carried me to hear the King make 
 his speech in the House of Lords. As it was quite new to 
 me, I was very well entertained; but the thing that was 
 most amusing was to see, among the ladies, the Princess of 
 Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife to the Pretender, sitting 
 just at the foot of that throne which she might once have 
 expected to have mounted; and what diverted the party 
 when I put them in mind of it, was, that it happened to be 
 the tenth of June, the Pretender’s birthday. I have the 
 honour to be very much like her; and this opinion was 
 confirmed yesterday when we met again.’ 
 
 We collect from a letter from Lord Camelford; of 
 Dec. 14th, 1792, to Mr. Pitt, that one of her objects in 
 visiting England was more fatal to her dignity than 
 being seen at Court, namely, to procure pecuniary 
 relief from the House of Hanover. ‘It does not appear,’ 
 remarks Lord Stanhope, ‘that any present aid was 
 afforded to her. But when, in 1806, Cardinal York, 
 in consequence of the French invasion, had found it 
 requisite to leave Rome, and to forego his ecclesiastical 
 revenues, the King, on the recommendation of Mr. 
 Pitt, granted a yearly pension of 4,000/. to the last of 
 the Stuarts. The Cardinal died in 1807. Then Lord 
 Hawkesbury wrote, announcing that a part of this 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. ye | 
 
 pension, 1,600/. a year, would be continued by His 
 Majesty to the Countess of Albany !’+ 
 
 Alfieri is silent as to this episode, and both M. de 
 Reumont and M. Saint René Taillandier revert to it 
 with an expression of regret, as wanting in self-respect 
 and derogatory to the widow of the rival claimant of 
 the crown. It appears from her journal, that the pair 
 meditated an expedition to Scotland, where she wished 
 to see the spots consecrated by the heroism or 
 misfortunes of the Stuarts and their adherents, and 
 that the intention was abandoned in consequence of 
 the bad weather. Alfieri attributes the abridgment of 
 their tour to pecuniary difficulties. ‘Two-thirds of their 
 revenue was derived from French investments, paid in 
 assignats, the current value of which was rapidly 
 dropping down to zero. ‘In August, therefore, before 
 quitting England, we made a tour to Bath, Bristol, and 
 Oxford, and returning to London a few days after- 
 wards, we re-embarked at Dover.’ Wherever they 
 went the Countess made a point of seeing the picture 
 calleries, statues, monuments, and remarkable objects 
 of all sorts; and her recorded impressions of these show 
 that she was endowed with a genuine love of art and a 
 highly cultivated taste. 
 
 This was Alfieri’s fourth visit to England. During 
 the third he made diligent inquiries for the heroine of 
 the second, but could learn nothing of her. As he was 
 on the point of quitting the country for the last time, 
 accident brought about what he had long desired and 
 sought in vain. The first object that met his eye on 
 the strand at Dover was this very woman, ‘still most 
 beautiful.” On arriving at Calais, he wrote to her to 
 express the sentiments of regard he still entertained, 
 and his regret to hear that her way of life was not in 
 accordance with her birth and connexions, deepened by 
 
 1 ‘Life of Pitt, vol. ii. p. 182. 
 Q 2 
 
228 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 the fear that he had been in some respect the cause. 
 Her answer reached him in Brussels, and he prints it to 
 give an idea of her ‘ original, and obstinate, evilly- 
 inclined character, rare enough in that class, especially 
 in the fair sex. But everything contributes to the 
 erand study of the bizarre species of mankind.’ The 
 letter, which is in French, comforts him by the avowal 
 that the writer is not unhappy, and feels rather grate- 
 ful to him than the contrary for delivering her from 
 a world which never suited her. She says she is 
 happy with her books, her drawings, her music, and 
 the affection of the best of brothers. She concludes 
 thus : 
 
 ‘I have often, during the last two years, been pleased to 
 hear you spoken of both at London and Paris, where your 
 writings, which I have not yet been able to procure, are ad- 
 mired and esteemed. It is said you are attached to the 
 Princess with whom you travel, who, judging from her 
 ingenuous and intellectual physiognomy, seems well fitted 
 to make the happiness of a soul as sensitive and delicate as 
 yours. It is also said that she is afraid of you (I clearly 
 recognise you in that): without desiring it, or perhaps with- 
 out being aware of it, you have irresistibly this ascendant 
 over all who love you. I wish you, from the bottom of my 
 heart, the continuation of the blessings and real pleasures of 
 this world; and if chance should bring about another meet- 
 ing, I shall always have the greatest satisfaction in learning 
 thus much from yourself. Adieu! PENELOPE.’ 
 
 The quondam lover must have been in an un- 
 forgiving and uncongenial mood when he discovered 
 traces of original ineradicable sin in this epistle. 
 
 After the 10th of August, 1792, Paris became an 
 unsafe as well as a disagreeable place of abode; but it 
 was no easy matter to escape from it. Armed with 
 passports from the Venetian and Danish ministers, the 
 only remaining foreign ministers about the phantom of 
 a court, as well as from the sectional authorities, Alfieri 
 and the Countess made the attempt on the 18th of 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 229 
 
 August. On arriving at the barrier they found four or 
 five soldiers of the national guard with an official who 
 were about to let them pass, when, from a neighbour- 
 ing pot-house, thirty or forty of the lowest populace 
 rushed out, shirtless, drunk and furious,— 
 
 ‘These, at sight of two carriages loaded with trunks and 
 imperials, and a suite of two woman-servants and three 
 men, cried out that all the rich wanted to fly from Paris 
 and carry off their treasures, leaving the poor to starve. 
 Then began an altercation between the few and wretched 
 guards, and the many and wretched ragamuffins: those to 
 let us out, these to keep usin. I sprang from the carriage 
 into the crowd, armed with all the seven passports, and set 
 about squabbling, shouting, and gesticulating more than 
 they,—a method by which one always gets the better of the 
 French. Angry and excited to the highest pitch, I three 
 times over took back my passport, and repeated at the pitch 
 of my voice: “Look! hear! my name is Alfieri. Italian, 
 not French. Tall, lean, pale, red-haired. I am he! look at 
 me: we have our passports, we have them in full from those 
 who have a right to give them; we demand to pass, and 
 pass we will, per Dio.”’ 
 
 The row lasted half an hour, at the end of which 
 they got clear, and made the best of their way beyond 
 the frontier. After a month at Brussels, they went by 
 Germany and Switzerland to Florence, where they 
 permanently established themselves, except during 
 three months when the French occupation of the city 
 caused them to abandon their town house for a 
 neighbouring villa. This did not lessen Alfieri’s hatred 
 of the French, so vehemently expressed in his 
 ‘Misogallo.’ Cornelia Knight relates, that when an 
 order arrived for a stated number of Tuscan youths to 
 be sent to Paris to be educated there with a view to 
 the French service, civil or military, and various 
 expedients for evading the order were discussed, 
 Alfieri suddenly cried out : ‘ Ammazzarli (kill them)’ 
 A fruitless attempt made by the French Commander- 
 
230 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 in-Chief gave occasion for another burst of Miso- 
 gallicism; and the poet’s unsociability increased daily. 
 Over the entrance of his house, for days together, hung 
 a tablet, inscribed: ‘ Count Alfieri is not at home,’— 
 a mode of preventing interruption not uncommon in 
 Germany. Maturin (the author of ‘ Bertram, &c.) 
 was in the habit of sticking a black wafer on his 
 forehead as a warning to his household not to disturb 
 his meditations; but Alfieri’s brow, it is said, intimated 
 clearly enough without the wafer when he was not to 
 be crossed or brought down from his poetic heaven 
 with impunity. A ludicrous instance of his irritability 
 is given by Melchior Delfico, the historian of the 
 Republic of San Marino. In the winter of 1795, he 
 was on his way to be introduced to Alfieri by 
 Pindemonte, when they suddenly fell in with the far- 
 famed dramatist and haughty noble on the quay of the 
 Arno, 1n the act of hotly pursuing and boxing the ears 
 of a boy who had splashed his stockings by throwing a 
 stone into a puddle. Delfico thanked Pindemonte, and 
 said that the personal knowledge thus obtained of his 
 illustrious friend was enough. 
 
 The provocation may have been greater than ap- 
 peared, for he was commonly busied with composition 
 during his wanderings, and many of his longer poems 
 were composed piecemeal whilst he was walking or 
 riding. Unlke Dr. Johnson,—who ridiculed the 
 notion that the intellectual powers depended on weather 
 or the direction of the wind,—Alfieri, when he com- 
 mitted his verses to paper, made a note of the state of 
 the atmosphere and the precise tone of mind in which 
 they were produced. In 1795, being then in the forty- 
 sixth year of his age and the twentieth of his literary 
 life, he began studying Greek with his characteristic 
 energy; and read through successively, with the aid of 
 Latin translations, Homer, Hesiod, A“schylus, Sophocles, 
 Euripides, Aristophanes, and Anacreon. He gave up 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 231 
 
 Pindar in despair, disgusted with the literal prose ver- 
 sions of the lyrics from which he had anticipated so 
 much. ‘The ‘ Alcestes’ of Euripides fastened on hi 
 imagination to such an extent that, although he had 
 resolved to write no more dramas, he could not resist 
 the temptation of borrowing the plot for a tragedy. 
 He was particularly proud of having mastered Homer. 
 ‘It came into my head that, as every labourer is 
 worthy of his hire, I should bestow a reward on my- 
 self, and this ought to be a decoration and an honour, 
 not a gain.’ Accordingly, he dubbed himself Knight 
 of Homer, and adopted as his badge a golden collar to 
 be set with jewels engraved with the names of twenty 
 poets ancient and modern, and a cameo representing 
 Homer hanging from it. 
 
 In 1794 he took it into his head to come out as an 
 actor, and, with the aid of some new acquaintances, 
 got up a respectable representation of three or four of 
 his plays. His favourite part was ‘ Saul,’ and his pride 
 in the performance recalls that of Voltaire in the part 
 of the Sultan in ‘ Zaire.’ The rarest of all things is a 
 poet who can read or declaim his own verses without 
 undue or misplaced emphasis, and no man had greater 
 need of Hamlet’s advice to the players, to ‘use all 
 gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and I may 
 say whirlwind, of your passion, you must acquire and 
 beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.’ We 
 find, as we expected, that overcharged expression was 
 his fault. Goldsmith envied the puppets for attracting 
 attention from himself: Alfieri coveted the admiration 
 bestowed on an improvisatrice, Teresa Bandettini, called 
 the Etruscan Amaryllis. 
 
 His passion for horses remained undiminished. Till 
 confined by the gout, he drove a kind of tilbury, 
 dressed in black with a scarlet cloak, his red hair 
 parted from the forehead and falling on his neck. His 
 tone and humour for the day are said to have depended 
 
232° THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 on the neigh or whimper of the favourite horse which 
 he fed every morning with his own hand. 
 
 M. de Reumont acknowledges, with marked re- 
 luctance, that all the pastimes of this eccentric genius 
 were not equally innocent or excusable. The stretch 
 of his faculties required them to be occasionally unbent 
 in a manner the most opposite to his habitual tastes 
 and studies. Strange to say, we find him seeking 
 relaxation in a club of both sexes of a not very elevated 
 class, where one of the amusements was to make bur- 
 lesque verses. He actually did duty as secretary of 
 this ‘nameless, and worthy to remam nameless, 
 Academy,’ as it is called on the title-page of a collec- 
 tion of their ‘thoroughly bad poetry.’ In one of his 
 own contributions to it, he compares himself, whilst so 
 employed, to Hercules at the distaff. The comparison 
 was true in a double sense. There was an Omphale, 
 perhaps more than one, in the case. 
 
 In his verses on ‘A Visit to the House where 
 Rousseau lived with Madame de Warens,’ Moore 
 breaks into a tone of sorrowing indignation to think 
 how ill the practice of poets, moralists and senti- 
 mentalists is sometimes found to correspond with their 
 theory : 
 
 ‘How, with the pencil hardly dry 
 From colouring up such scenes of love 
 
 And beauty, as make young hearts sigh, 
 And dream, and think through heay’n they rove, 
 
 They who can thus describe and move, 
 The very workers of these charms, 
 
 Nor seek, nor know, a joy above 
 Some Maman’s or Theresa’s arms.’ 
 
 Alfieri was one of these. The lofty idealism of 
 his passion for his carissima donna did not prevent him 
 from indulging in caprices of a less ecstatic and more 
 sublunary kind both at Sienna and Florence ; and it is 
 difficult to place implicit evidence in his assurance that 
 no crimination or recrimination ever arose between the 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 2338 
 
 Countess and himself. She may, indeed, have been 
 kept silent, by the fear to which his friend Penelope 
 alludes; or, like Queen Caroline tolerating ‘ my good 
 Howard,’ she may have come to the philosophical 
 conclusion that masculine infidelity neither implies the 
 loss of influence, nor is necessarily influenced by the 
 imagination or the heart. To risk a less favourable 
 hypothesis, she may have had a lurking consciousness 
 that her own conduct would hardly justify her in 
 calling on a lover for a strict and literal account of 
 his. She was always given tocoquetry. In 1774, the 
 third year of her marriage, Walpole writes: ‘ The 
 young Mr, Coke is returned from his travels in love 
 with the Pretender’s queen, who has permitted him to 
 have her picture.’ Certain it is that, considerably 
 before Alfieri’s death, his successor had been designated, 
 although the notion that his image could be displaced 
 or replaced in his adored and adoring Princess’s heart 
 never crossed his mind fora moment. That there, if 
 anywhere, he and he only should be enshrined, was-the 
 proudest of his living boasts and the dearest of his 
 dying wishes. 
 
 He died on October the 7th, 1803, without spiritual 
 aid ; and it is insinuated as a reproach to the Countess 
 that she did not encourage or take advantage of sundry 
 religious yearnings which he, a professed freethinker, 
 is reported to have felt. .But she herself was an 
 esprit fort of the eighteenth century, and their prior 
 relations were not of a nature to qualify her for 
 the austere monitress of his death-bed. Before his 
 remains were committed to the earth, he received a 
 homage which, could he have looked forward a few 
 years, he would have appreciated highly : Chateaubriand, 
 who was passing through Florence, saw and hung over 
 him in his coffin. 
 
 By his last will he left everything, ‘moveables and 
 immoveables,’ gold and silver, books and manuscripts, 
 
234 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 to the Countess Louise D’Albany; and by a separate 
 testamentary paper he confided to her exclusively the 
 printing of his literary remains, and the guardianship of 
 his literary fame. She fully answered his expectations 
 in these respects, by publishing a carefully corrected 
 edition of his posthumous works, and by procuring him 
 a grave in the Church of Santa Croce, the Westminster 
 Abbey of Florence. Bigotry is of no clime, and the 
 Tuscan clergy started objections almost identical with 
 those which were raised by the Dean and Chapter of 
 Westminster against the claim of Byron to a niche in 
 Poets’ Corner. The Italian man of genius was more 
 fortunate than our illustrious countryman. The priestly 
 interference, which proved paramount in Protestant 
 England, was summarily set aside in Roman Catholic 
 Tuscany. Alfieri was buried alongside of Machiavelli, 
 and Canova was engaged to construct a monument, 
 which Lord Broughton has pronounced to be one of the 
 heaviest productions of his chisel. On one side of the 
 base is the inscription: ‘ Victorio Alferio Astensi 
 Aloisia e Principibus Stolbergis Albonize Comitissa 
 MOB AC, An SVE SUC xs 
 
 On the 24th November, 1803, the Countess writes 
 thus to Count Baldelli: 
 
 ‘You may judge, my dear Baldelli, of my grief, by the 
 manner in which I lived with the incomparable friend I 
 have lost. It will be seven weeks next Saturday, and it is 
 as if this misfortune had befallen me yesterday. You who 
 have lost an adored wife may conceive what I feel. I have 
 lost all consolation, support, society, all, all! I am alone 
 in this world, which has become a desert for me.’ 
 
 We should be loth to suppose that much of this 
 alleged grief was simulated; for the human heart is 
 strangely given to self-deceit in such matters, and prone 
 to pronounce itself inconsolable when the means of 
 consolation are in actual use or immediately at hand. 
 ‘There are certain tears which often deceive ourselves 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 233 
 
 after having deceived others.’ It would not be learned 
 from M. de Reumont’s polished and over-charitable 
 pages, but the fact is no less plain, says M. St. René 
 Taillandier, that she loved Fabre before Alfieri had 
 descended to the tomb. It is clear also that the 
 constantly increasing misanthropy of the poet had con- 
 demned her to a solitude uncongenial to her tastes. 
 
 One of the worst consequences of an illicit passion is 
 the habit of self-indulgence engendered by it. The 
 hallowed charm of authorised affection, necessarily 
 wanting to the tie, is supplied rather than compensated 
 by gallantry and flattery, by a constant succession of 
 excitements which resemble opium-eating or dram- 
 drinking in their ultimate effects. Their sudden 
 cessation leaves a feeling of exhaustion which must be 
 relieved, an aching void which must be filled up in some 
 manner, adequately or inadequately; and the dear 
 deceased is simply paying the posthumous penalty for 
 his own transgression when his pedestal is occupied 
 by the image of another : 
 
 In her first passion woman loves her lover, 
 In all the others what she loves is love. 
 
 It grows a habit she can ne’er get over, 
 And fits her loosely, like an easy glove. 
 
 A few months after Alfieri’s death, Fabre was in- 
 stalled in his place in the hotel of the Lung’ Arno, the 
 Casa di Aljiert, as it is still called. He was a painter 
 of some reputation in his profession, an exquisite judge 
 of art, a man of sense and honour, with a highly cul- 
 tivated mind ; but there was nothing poetic in his ap- 
 pearance or character, nothing to catch the imagination, 
 to fascinate, to charm. He was thirty-seven in 1803, 
 and the Countess fifty-one ; a disparity which helps to 
 explain, without excusing her attachment. ‘On ne 
 compte dordinaire la premiere galanterie des femmes 
 que lorsqw’elles en ont une seconde.’ If the second ought 
 ever to bear the accumulating responsibility of the first, 
 
236 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 it is when a Fabre succeeds an Alfieri; but there was 
 no social protest, no outward and visible sign of even 
 conventional repugnance to the change. 
 
 When great ladies, separated from their natural pro- 
 tectors by death or exile, were flying from country to 
 country, and constantly on the move, a still wider 
 license was tacitly accorded to them. At all events, 
 they claimed it, and conceded it to one another, and 
 in too many instances the Countess of Albany would 
 have been prepared with a telling retort, had her female. 
 friends ventured to fling her pet painter in her teeth. 
 Far from thinking of such a thing they made a point 
 of paying him, through her, the prettiest attentions. 
 The Duchess of Devonshire sends him an engraving by 
 way of souvenir, or asks anxiously about his gout ; and 
 Madame de Staél writes: ‘I request you to speak of me 
 to M. Fabre, who inspired me with a great desire to 
 be made intimately acquainted with him.’ Indeed, the 
 society at the Casa Alfieri was never so brilliant as 
 when, to modern apprehension, it had become unworthy 
 of its name. The most eminent of the Italian nobility 
 were its habitués ; and all travellers who had any claim 
 to the distinction hastened to inscribe their names on her 
 visiting list. Several have recorded their impressions of 
 her. Lamartine, speaking of her in 1810, says that 
 nothing at this period recalled either the queen of an 
 empire or the queen of hearts. 
 
 ‘She was a little woman whose figure had lost all light- 
 ness and all elegance. The features of her face, too rounded 
 and too obtuse, also preserved no pure lines of ideal beauty. 
 But her eyes had a light, her fair hair a tint, her mouth 
 an attraction, all her physiognomy an intelligence and a 
 grace of expression which made you remember if they no 
 longer made you admire. Her soft manner of speaking, her 
 easy manner, her reassuring familiarity, raised at once those 
 who approached her to her level. You did not know whether 
 she descended to yours or elevated you to oe there was so 
 much nature in her bearing.’ 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 237 
 
 In Paul Louis Courier’s ‘ Works’ is a note of a Con- 
 versation chez la Comtesse d’ Albany in 1812. ‘The 
 subject is the relative superiority of the warrior and 
 the artist, the interlocutors being the Countess, Fabre, 
 and Courier. The controversy is supported with great 
 spirit, but internal evidence justifies a suspicion that 
 much of the conversation is imaginary. Still it proves 
 the estimate formed by the reporter of their respective 
 powers. In this year, 1812, began her acquaintance 
 with Ugo Foscolo, which soon ripened into warm 
 friendship, and would have formed a conspicuous epoch 
 in her biography had it not been thrown into the shade 
 by the more glorious memory of Alfieri. It was, not- 
 withstanding, more to her lasting honour in one respect. 
 The highly beneficial influence which she exercised, for 
 the second time, over an eccentric genius, was acquired 
 without any unbecoming sacrifice on her part. No 
 feminine weakness obliging her to humour his self-love, 
 her advice is uniformly sound : 
 
 ‘ You are too much occupied with what is said, and with 
 what is written in the journals. If you make good books, 
 no one will make them bad. Have not people taken it into 
 their heads to write against Racine, who cannot be dethroned ? 
 He is more solidly established than the kings of the earth,’ 
 
 All who knew her are agreed that her conversational 
 powers were of the highest order; and her admirers 
 claim for her the credit of having done more than any 
 woman of her time to centralise and generalise the art 
 and literature of the most enlightened nations, and 
 confer a cosmopolitan character on European thought. 
 It was to the change operated in great measure through 
 her instrumentality that Sismondi alludes when writing 
 to her from Geneva shortly before her death :—‘ Your 
 Florentines are beginning to return the visits we for- 
 merly paid them; without doubt the mass still slum- 
 bers and lives from day to day, society lacks interest, 
 
238 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 
 
 but there is, notwithstanding, a perceptible progress in 
 men’s minds; this mingling of nations, this reciprocal 
 sympathy with which they mutually watch each other, 
 will end by introducing amongst all what is good, by 
 destroying in all what is bad, so far at least as enlight- 
 enment can triumph in the long run over petty passions 
 and petty interests.’ 
 
 The importance attached to her salon is sufficiently 
 established by the flattering persecution it entailed upon 
 her. In May, 1809, she received an imperial order to 
 repair to Paris without delay. She came, accompanied 
 by Fabre, and at her first audience with the Emperor 
 was thus addressed: ‘I know your influence over the 
 society of Florence. I know also that you employ it 
 in a sense adverse to my policy: you are an obstacle 
 to my projects of fusion between the Tuscans and the 
 French. This is why I have summoned you to Paris, 
 where you will have full leisure to satisfy your taste 
 for fine arts.’ She was not allowed to return to 
 Florence till November, 1810. 
 
 She died there on the 29th January, 1824. By her 
 will, after leaving, as remembrances, some object or 
 other to each of her relatives and principal friends,—a 
 service of china to one, a cameo to a second, a portrait 
 to a third, and so on,—she constitutes Fabre her 
 universal legatee, as fully and completely as she had 
 been constituted the universal legatee of Alfieri. The 
 result was that all the books, manuscripts, statues, 
 paintings, medals, curiosities, and rarities of all sorts, 
 that had been collected by Charles Edward and Alfieri, 
 became the property of the French painter. After 
 raising a monument to the Countess, he resolved to 
 return to his native country ; and after presenting the 
 poet’s manuscripts to the city of Florence, he obtained 
 leave from the Grand Duke to carry off the rest of his 
 treasures, the whole of which he subsequently made over 
 to his native city of Montpelier. The municipality 
 
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY AND ALFIERI. 239 
 
 caused a building to be constructed for their reception 
 and that of the donor, who resided in it till his death 
 in 1837. He is described as cold, discreet, disdainful, 
 tormented by the gout, angry at the revolution of July, 
 and though always respectful towards the Countess, 
 avoiding all mention of her name. Such was the 
 foundation of the Musée Fabre, from which the most 
 valuable of the materials for M. de Reumont’s work 
 and M. Saint René Taillandier’s articles have been 
 derived. 
 
 We are not aware that we can add any reflection that 
 will not spontaneously occur to the majority of readers. 
 The Countess’s life, with all its crosses and alternations 
 of fortune, is deficient in romantic interest, as well 
 as in moral weight; for her character was essentially 
 prosaic: she preferred the real to the ideal; and we 
 nowhere find that she sacrificed for a passion, or a 
 sentiment, any one solid comfort or advantage that she 
 could command or retain. If she had been endowed 
 with much fancy or imagination, delicacy or sensibility, 
 the notion (carried out by her last will) of making the 
 French painter the personal representative of the royal 
 husband and the poet-lover, would have been rejected 
 with a shudder if suggested to her. Yet she had as 
 much heart and soul as many women who have filled a 
 larger space in history. She was the connecting link 
 of half a century of celebrities. She inspired Alfieri : 
 she controlled Foscolo: she thwarted Napoleon: she 
 gave Italian thought a standing-point : she strengthened 
 it by arich infusion of foreign elements, and she mingled 
 minds on an admitted footing of equality with the very 
 first spirits of her day. 
 
240 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 (From THR ‘ QUARTERLY REVIEW,’ JANUARY 1872.) 
 
 Recollections of Past Life. By Sir Henry Holland, Bart., 
 M.D., D.C.L., &c. &c., President of the Royal Institute 
 of Great Britain, Physician in Ordinary to the Queen. 
 London, 1872. 
 
 ‘WE stand ’—exclaimed Burke, addressing the House 
 of Commons in 1782—‘ we stand where we have an 
 immense view of what is and what is past. Clouds, 
 indeed, and darkness rest upon the future. Let us, 
 however, before we descend from this noble eminence, 
 reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has 
 happened within the short period of the life of man. It 
 has happened within sixty-eight years. There are 
 those alive whose memory might touch the two 
 extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might 
 remember all the stages of its progress. He was in 
 1704 of an age, at least, to be made to comprehend 
 such things.’ . . . ‘Fortunate man, he has lived to see 
 it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that 
 shall vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his 
 day.’ 
 
 Change Lord Bathurst for Sir Henry Holland: take 
 the seventy-one years of the present century instead of 
 the sixty-eight dating from 1704, and you have a 
 longer and more momentous period brought vividly 
 within the memory of one man. In 1800, Sir Henry 
 Holland was in his twelfth year, with a mind actively 
 awake tot he rush, stir, and tumult of the times. It 
 has since been his lot to watch the shifting fortunes, 
 the alternating decline and. progress, of mighty nations 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 247 
 
 and communities in every quarter of the globe—to 
 find the political and social aspect of the civilised 
 world transformed three or four times over—to see 
 thrones rocking and dynasties overthrown—the rise 
 and fall of two empires, two monarchies, and three or 
 four republics, in France—the prostration, division, 
 revival, union, and triumph of Germany—confusion 
 worse confounded, the normal state of things, in Spain 
 —the prolonged struggle of nationality and civil 
 liberty against foreign and spiritual domination in 
 Italy—the fairest provinces of America desolated in 
 the names of freedom and humanity—Europe in arms 
 to decide a fantastic point of military honour—the 
 clearest principles of international law deliberately 
 violated or cynically set aside—the lust of conquest let 
 loose; and no sound constitutional government dis- 
 coverable from one end of the Continent to the other, 
 except in two or three small States, whose individual 
 existence would not be worth a week’s purchase if the 
 struggle for warlike supremacy or territorial aggrandise- 
 ment should recommence. 
 
 True, he has seen England weather storm after 
 storm: the cotton famine causing no perceptible 
 diminution of her wealth: the Indian mutiny restoring 
 and confirming the prestige of her arms and the con- 
 viction of her power: the ease with which Fenianism 
 has been kept under, showing that it might be stamped 
 out, like the cattle-plague, if England should get angry 
 and rise in her might. He sees her now, proudly (we 
 trust, not vainly) secure in her island independence, 
 enjoying a greater amount of prosperity and rational 
 freedom than ever fell to the lot of any other people, 
 ancient or modern. But the political barometer 
 points to ‘stormy ;’ there is a fearful chasm between 
 the very rich and the very poor which widens as we 
 gaze upon it: the war between capital and labour may 
 at any moment become internecine: Enelish Socialism 
 
 VOU. If. R 
 
249, SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 bears an awkward resemblance to French Communism : 
 the republican spirit stalks abroad unabashed : we have 
 contracted the dangerous habit of estimating institu- 
 tions, the most time-honoured, the most suited to our 
 habits, by their cost: opinions, especially destructive 
 opinions, ripen with startling rapidity ; and considering 
 the green old age of the reminiscent, he may be 
 apostrophised in the very words of Burke: ‘ Fortunate 
 man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he 
 lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect or 
 cloud the setting of his day.’ 
 
 If unparalleled opportunities for observation, if the 
 widest possible experience of human nature under 
 every imaginable variety of form and influence, could 
 qualify a man to penetrate to the occult causes and 
 probable results of the scenes he has witnessed, of the 
 events that have come to pass in his time, Sir Henry 
 Holland should be exceptionally endowed with that 
 ‘mystical lore’ which the sunset of life gave to the 
 Scottish seer, should be able to forecast the future 
 whilst throwing a flood of fresh light on the present 
 and the past. He has been everywhere : he has seen 
 everything: he has known everybody. ‘ Survey man- 
 kind from China to Peru!’ Why, he has surveyed 
 mankind from the North Pole to the South, in both 
 hemispheres, in all climes, in all degrees of latitude. 
 He has crossed the Atlantic sixteen times; travelled 
 over more than 26,000 miles of the American con- 
 tinent ; made four expeditions to the Hast, mcluding, 
 Cairo, Damascus, and Jerusalem; three tours in 
 Algeria, two in Russia, two in Iceland, several in 
 Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, 
 and voyages without end to the Canary Isles, the West 
 Indies, Madeira, Dalmatia, &c., with (to use his own 
 words) ‘ other excursions which it would be useless to 
 enumerate.’ He has visited, he tells us, and most of them 
 repeatedly, every capital in Europe; and in every 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. YAS 
 
 capital he has been drawn,as by a kind of natural 
 fitness or affinity, into the circle most eminent for rank, 
 birth, genius, learning, accomplishment, and fame. 
 
 Candide was somewhat surprised at Venice to find 
 that he had been supping with six ex-royalties. Sir 
 Henry Holland would think nothing of it. He has 
 seen so much of august and illustrious personages—of 
 kings and emperors, ex or actual—that it would 
 require an effort of charity or philosophy on his part 
 not to hold them cheap. At Rome in 1814 he was in 
 daily intercourse with Charles IV. of Spain, his Queen, 
 the Infante, and Godoy—the Queen of Etruria, a 
 Princess of Sardinia, a Prince of Saxe-Gotha, the ex- 
 King of Holland, Lucien Bonaparte and his wife, 
 Cardinal Fesch, Prince Poniatowski. He was profes- 
 sionally consulted by the Queen of Spain and Godoy, 
 and was presented with a rosary as a mark of favour 
 by the Pope. In 1818, he fell in at Spa with the 
 Emperor Alexander, the Prince and Princess of Orange, 
 the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland, the Duke of 
 Wellington, Lord Londonderry, the Duc de Richelieu, 
 Hardenberg, and Talleyrand. He made the acquaint- 
 ance of Leopold I. of Belgium beside the couch of the 
 Princess Charlotte. In the spring of 1831 he was 
 hastily summoned to a house in Holles Street, and found 
 there a young man labouring under gastric fever, and 
 a lady hanging over his bed. They turned out to be 
 Prince Louis Napoleon (now ex-Emperor) and_ his 
 mother, Queen Hortense. Besides royal and princely 
 patients, he can boast of six Prime Ministers of Eng- 
 land, with a host of continental statesmen, including 
 Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo, Guizot, Palmella, Bulow, 
 and Drouyn de Lhuys : 
 
 ‘Such practice cannot occur without a certain knowledge 
 of political events, and occasional anticipation of changes 
 not yet obvious to the public eye. Several instances of this 
 kind come to my memory, connected chiefly with changes 
 
 R2 
 
244 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 of Ministry at the time. I refrain from mentioning details ; 
 nor would they now in truth have any value, save in show- 
 ing how largely bodily temperament has its share with 
 mental in the government of the world; and how many ano- 
 malous incidents of history may find possible or probable 
 solution in the fluctuating health of the actors concerned in 
 them. When reading the histories of the great revolutions 
 of the world, as well asthe biographies of eminent men, such 
 suggestions have often occurred to me.’ 
 
 This is a tantalising, provoking passage ; intimating 
 that information of the most interesting kind has been 
 withheld from (we cannot say false) notions of delicacy. 
 We know full well how largely and powerfully bodily 
 temperament acts upon the mind; how often fears of 
 the brave and follies of the wise may be resolved into 
 gout, indigestion, or catarrh. ‘Our happiness,’ re- 
 marked a Turkish lady to Boswell, ‘depends on the 
 way in which our blood circulates.’ And so may our 
 courage, our virtue, our imagination, or our intellect. 
 Undeniably true is the materialist doctrine (not 
 necessarily leading to materialism) that a single grain 
 of matter in the sensorium, might have made a coward 
 of Bayard and a raving idiot of Pascal. ‘The irresolu- 
 tion of Napoleon at Borodino was notoriously owing to 
 stomach. According to Hoffman, who was close to 
 the scene of action, the Emperor’s coup dil on the 
 third day at Dresden was perceptibly impaired by the 
 effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions ; 
 and the nature of the complaint which reduced him to 
 comparative inactivity at Waterloo is the subject of a 
 curious note by M. Thiers. The collapse of the 
 Chatham Administration of 1766 was caused by 
 suppressed gout. During the delivery of the speech 
 to which he made his famous reply in the debate 
 on the Coalition in 1783, Pitt was vomiting behind 
 the Speaker’s chair. It immeasurably enhances our 
 estimate of Nelson’s heroism to know that he was 
 a frequent sufferer from sea-sickness. Mr. Croker 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 245 
 
 plausibly maintained that it was impossible to be a 
 ereat man without being a good sleeper; his favourite 
 examples being Napoleon, Pitt, and Wellington. 
 
 Instance upon instance, throwing light upon what 
 Sir Henry terms the anomalous incidents of history, 
 must be included amongst his recollections of the six 
 premiers. He could probably account, in the simplest 
 manner, for what has hitherto seemed unaccountable ; 
 why one of them (Lord Russell) wrote that imprudent 
 letter which fell amongst his party like a bomb-shell, 
 or another (Lord Palmerston) made that angry speech 
 which precipitated his fall. It was simply because 
 their guide, philosopher, and doctor was not called 
 in an hour sooner, because the blue pill or colchicum 
 was administered too late. 
 
 But he rightly, ifunluckily, deems that a physician’s 
 lips should be sealed like a confessor’s. Recollections 
 and reminiscences are commonly entertaining in pro- 
 portion to their indiscretion ; and he is never indiscreet. 
 He carries reticence almost to a fault, rarely indulging 
 In even a stray anecdote; and although his impressions 
 of celebrated persons are freely and fairly given, his 
 conversations with them are carefully kept back. He 
 might take to himself, without the change of a word, 
 the imitative self-commendation of Pope : 
 
 ‘Envy must own I live among the great, 
 No pimp of pleasure, and no spy of State, 
 With eyes that pry not, tongue that ne’er repeats, 
 Fond to spread friendships, but to cover heats : 
 To help who want, to forward who excel; 
 This all who know me know, who love me, tell.’ ! 
 
 To live among the great as Sir Henry Holland has 
 lived, to hold the social and intellectual position which 
 he has held for sixty years, requires tact, temper, sound 
 and varied knowledge, a wide range of sympathies, 
 liberality of thought and feeling, independence of 
 tone and bearing,—in short, the very combination of 
 
 1 Tmitated from Horace. Serm. Lib, 2. 
 
246 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 _ qualities reflected in his Recollections; and it will be 
 found both curious and instructive to trace the growth 
 and formation of his character. We shall also en- 
 deavour to compensate for his reserve by bringing 
 together from other sources, oral and printed, some 
 scattered traits and desultory notices of his contem- 
 poraries, which might otherwise pass gradually into 
 oblivion or obscurity. 
 
 He was born at Knutsford, on the 27th of October, 
 1788, of respectable parentage, as we collect from the 
 incidental mention of the old family house of Sandle- 
 bridge, and sent to school at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where 
 he remained four years, making apparently good use 
 of his time; for on being transferred to Dr. Estlin’s 
 school at Bristol, he was named head-boy at once, in 
 succession to John Cam Hobhouse, the late Lord 
 Broughton. This position required to be maintained, 
 like the championship of England, by the fist; and he 
 settled the difficulty by challenging two boys to fight at 
 once. The combat never came off but the bravado. 
 served his purpose, and tam Marte quam Mercurio 
 might have been his well-earned motto at starting. 
 Besides a smattering of the classics, which he afterwards 
 improved into scholarship, he received his introduction 
 to physical science in his school days, and the first 
 chemical experiment that interested him was the effect 
 of laughing-gas. 
 
 The choice of a profession is too frequently a matter 
 of caprice or accident. The popular and successful 
 physician was within an ace of becoming a trader, being 
 actually under articles to a mercantile firm at Liver- 
 pool, when his better genius interposed, and sent him 
 to study medicine at Edinburgh, where he graduated in 
 the autumn of 1811. Three years were yet wanting 
 of the age required for admission to the College of 
 Physicians, and he resolved to employ the interval in 
 
 % 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 247 
 
 indulging that love of travel which may be well called the 
 master-passion of his life; for at a subsequent period, 
 when he was rising into practice, he came to the bold reso- 
 lution of taking two months out of every year for a trip. 
 He began with Iceland, and we must do him the justice 
 to say that he was no holiday excursionist, no idler by 
 the way. He broke away from the beaten tracks into 
 comparatively unknown regions at a time when the 
 beaten tracks presented difficulties enough to give scope 
 for the full spirit of enterprise. 
 
 There is a well-authenticated anecdote that, no 
 longer ago than 1829, the late Sir Robert Peel, then 
 Home Secretary, having occasion for a man of proved 
 energy, gave the preference to a barrister (Mayne) on 
 hearmg that he had made the grand tour during the 
 long vacation. The grand tour might now be com- 
 pleted, without extraordinary exertion, i a month ; 
 but the stock of impressions which the hurried tourist 
 by rail and steam brings back with him, will be found 
 meagre in the extreme, his main object being to be 
 able to say that he has seen certain places which (ac- 
 cording to a well-known suggestion of Sheridan’s) he 
 might as well say without seeing them. The charm of 
 the old mode of travelling by malleposte, eilwagen, 
 diligence, or vetturino, was in lingering by the road, in 
 getting acquainted with the intervening country, in 
 being shaken up with strange companions, in seeing 
 something of the manners and customs of the people ; 
 and we rather wonder that the monotony of the present 
 mode did not pall on Sir Henry when he had gone 
 the full length of his tether in the same direction three 
 or four times over. 
 
 There are ‘The Art of Travel’ of Mr. Galton, and 
 the ‘How to Observe’ of Miss Martineau, both 
 abounding in valuable hints; but we were not the less 
 eager to learn what Sir Henry Holland had to say 
 upon the same subject, and how far his experience 
 
248 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 confirms their suggestions or advice. At the same 
 time, large allowances must be made for the differences 
 of physical strength; since one man might be pros- 
 trated by an amount of privation and fatigue of which 
 another would make light. Some fifteen years since we 
 happened to encounter at Cologne an eminent member 
 of the Bar, afterwards a distinguished ornament of 
 the Bench (Willes) who had come from England by a 
 night boat, en route for Copenhagen with Sir Henry 
 Holland. They were to proceed without stopping to 
 their destination, and our learned friend was so dead- 
 beat already that (as he privately confided to us) his 
 most fervent prayer was that there would be a hitch 
 about the passports, which his companion had gone to 
 look after. They unluckily turned out all right, and 
 he was dragged off, looking more like a condemned 
 convict than a pleasure-seeker. 
 
 ‘There are few people,’ says Lord Macaulay, when 
 accounting for the intimacy of Warren Hastings with 
 the Baroness Imhoff, ‘ who do not find a voyage which 
 lasts several months insupportably dull. Anything 
 is welcome which may break that long monotony—a 
 sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most 
 passengers find some resource in eating twice as many 
 meals as on land. But the great devices for killing the 
 time are quarrelling and flirting.” Sir Henry was 
 driven to none of them: he did not over-eat himself: 
 he did not flirt or quarrel: he was never weary of the 
 waves. A voyage was to him ‘a life of open space, 
 pleasantly passed in walking, reading, gazing on the sea 
 and skies, and sleeping—a word I put into italics, as em- 
 phasismg what I have felt as the most genial of the 
 many forms of sleep.’ He had also the invaluable 
 resource of writing articles for Reviews; which have 
 largely benefited by the gift (as it may well be termed) 
 of concentrating the thoughts under such circum- 
 stances: of giving definite shape in the cabin to 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 249 
 
 the preparatory reading of the road.t Carrying few 
 books, he touchingly records the loss of one which he 
 prized as Parson Adams prized his Aischylus. ‘A 
 little volume of Burns, cherished from long familiarity, 
 was swept overboard by a huge Atlantic wave, during 
 a run from Teneriffe to another of the Canary Isles in 
 a half-decked boat. A good daughter replaced it by 
 another copy for my next voyage ; but I would rather 
 have lost many things of greater nominal value than 
 this little fellow-traveller of former times.’ When sleep 
 is the object, he gives it as the result of his experience 
 that the sonnet is the most effective soporific, in what- 
 ever language it may be written. We should have 
 given the preference to the epic in blank verse. He 1s 
 silent as to the rest of his equipment, leaving us in 
 doubt whether he travelled zmpeditus, like a Sybarite, 
 with a portable bath, or ewpeditus, like Sir Charles 
 Napier (the General), who required nothing but what 
 might be contained in a knapsack, and when, on his 
 arrival at Calcutta, Lord Dalhousie intimated that there 
 was time for a bath before dinner, replied that he had 
 undergone a good wash at Alexandria. 
 
 It was said of one travelled physician that he was 
 wont to start for a two months’ trip with a clean shirt 
 in one pocket and a box of pills in the other, fre- 
 quently forgetting the shirt. This could never apply 
 to Sir Henry Holland, who, meet him when and where 
 you would—in New York or Norway, the prairie or the 
 desert, on the mountain or the main—was invariably 
 attired with the same neatness and trimness, and in 
 identically the same costume in which he may be seen at 
 all seasons on his way down Brook-street or at his club. 
 
 In ‘ Evenings at Home,’ that pearl of books composed 
 for the instruction of the young, is a story entitled 
 
 1 See ‘Essays on Scientific and other subjects contributed to the 
 “ Edinburgh” and “ Quarterly” Reviews.’ By Sir Henry Holland, 
 Bart., etc. etc. London, 1862. 
 
250 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 ‘ Hyes and No Eyes; or, The Art of Seeing.’ ‘Two boys 
 take the same walk, over the heath and through the 
 meadows, by the river-side. The one, on being inter- 
 . rogated, has nothing to say but that he thought it very 
 dull, and had rather by half have gone along the turn- 
 pike road. The other has passed a delightful evening, 
 finding objects of mterest in every aspect of nature that 
 met his view. He had traced the remains of a Roman 
 camp, and brought back his handkerchief full of curio- 
 sities. ‘And so it is,’ moralises the tutor; ‘one man 
 walks through the world with his eyes open, and an- 
 other with them shut ; and upon this difference depends 
 all the superiority of knowledge the one acquires above 
 the other. I have known sailors who have been in all 
 quarters of the world, and could tell you nothing but 
 the signs of the tippling-houses they frequented in dif- 
 ferent parts, and the price and quality of the liquor. On 
 the other hand, a Franklin could not cress the Channel 
 without making some observations useful to mankind.’ 
 
 Unfortunately minds of the Franklin cast are rare. 
 On a division between Lyes and no Lyes, the No 
 Eyes would have it hollow. ‘ How little,’ remarked 
 Johnson, ‘does travel supply to the conversation 
 of any man who has travelled; how little to Beau- 
 clerk!’ Boswell—‘ What say you to Lord Charle- 
 mont?’ Johnson—‘I never but once heard him talk 
 of what he had seen, and that was of a large serpent 
 in one of the Pyramids of Egypt.’ The reason why 
 the great majority of travellers bring back nothing, is 
 that they take out nothing. There is a Spanish pro- 
 verb, that he who would bring home the wealth of the 
 Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him ; 
 meaning that he must have capital to trade with. Just 
 so, a traveller perfectly qualified for a wide range 
 would go far towards realising Imlac’s conception of a 
 poet, which Rasselas pronounced an impossibility. He 
 should at least be a good modern linguist, a classical 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS, 25E 
 
 scholar, a geographer, and a geologist; he should 
 possess a smattering of chemistry, a cultivated taste for 
 art, and a fair stock of historical reading. In short, he 
 should be a man of letters and a man of science, or his. 
 journey may prove both objectively and subjectively 
 barren: he will see nothing in external nature beyond 
 the surface, and no associations will be awakened by 
 the genius of the place. 
 
 In looking for the site of Dodona, Sir Henry Holland 
 came upon that of the oracle of Nympheum, near 
 Apollonia, similarly described by the ancients as a foun- 
 tain of fire. His attention was attracted by an extensive 
 and thick deposit of asphaltum (mineral pitch) and, close 
 at hand, a small circular pool of water, which seemed 
 almost as if boiling from the volumes of gas escaping : 
 
 ‘Knowing well the nature of this gas, I struck a light and 
 applied it to some of the bubbles, kindling a flame which 
 speedily spread itself over the pool, to the great admiration 
 of my Albanian guards;—a flame which disclosed imme- 
 diately the secret as well as the site of the oracle of Nym- 
 pheum. It is in some sort an offence against classical lore 
 to reduce these mysteries to the vulgar level of coal-gas, 
 even expressed under the learned name of hydro-carbon. 
 But science is harsh in its demands for reality, and ministers 
 very little to the poetry of human life, still less to its super- 
 stitions. Julius Cesar must have passed close to Nympheum, 
 on his march from Apollonia to the passes of Pindus. But 
 the great Dictator was not a man to halt on his way for the 
 responses of an oracle.’ 
 
 Here was a discovery requiring a combination of 
 classical, geographical, and scientific knowledge. 
 
 ‘Thus kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire, 
 As summer clouds flash forth electric fire. 
 * * * % 
 And hence the charm historic scenes impart, 
 Hence Tiber awes and Avon melts the heart. 
 Aérial forms, in Tempe’s classic vale, 
 Glance through the gloom, and whisper in the gale, 
 In wild Vaucluse, with love and Laura dwell, 
 And watch and weep in Eloisa’s cell.’ 
 
252 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 ‘Far from me, and from my friends,’ exclaims the 
 ereat moralist, ‘ be such frigid philosophy as may con- 
 duct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground 
 which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or 
 virtue.’ The self-same indifference which he deprecates, 
 may be caused by ignorance. How many will use the 
 new route by Brindisi, without once thinking of Horace’s 
 journey to Brundusium! How many have stopped at 
 Corfu, or coasted the Isles of Greece, without referring 
 to the Odyssey ! How numerous are those whose patriot- 
 ism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, 
 and whose piety would not grow warmer among the 
 ruins of Iona! As for the fine arts, nineteen out of 
 twenty of the well-dressed mob who lcunge through 
 the Louvre, the Pitti Palace, and the Vatican would 
 own, if they were frank, that they were performing a 
 piece of task-work ; and that, for want of artistic edu- 
 cation or cultivated taste, they agreed at bottom with 
 Lord Byron, when he writes: ‘You must recollect that 
 I know nothing of painting and detest it, unless it re- 
 minds me of something I have seen or think it possible 
 to see.’ 
 
 Endowed with most of the qualifications principally 
 in request, there was one which Sir Henry found it con- 
 venient to keep back. Except when humanity required 
 him to act in that capacity, he discreetly suppressed 
 the doctor, especially in the East, where, he says, the 
 professional demands made upon him by pashas and 
 their subordinates were an absurd mockery of practice, 
 to which the term ludicrous is the lightest that can be 
 applied. ‘Conversation on poisons with Ali Pasha, 
 designedly but warily brought on, ended by his asking 
 me whether I knew of any poison which, put on the 
 mouthpiece of a pipe or given in coffee, might slowly 
 and silently kill, leaving no note behind. The instant 
 and short answer I gave that, “as a physician I had 
 studied how to save life, not to destroy it,” was probably, 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS, 253 
 
 as I judged from his face, faithfully translated to him. 
 He quitted the subject abruptly, and never afterwards 
 reverted to it.’ 
 
 Law is proverbially a jealous mistress, and we have 
 been wont to fancy Medicine equally strict in requiring 
 the exclusive and unremitting attentions of her votaries. 
 We should have thought that, if a physician were in 
 the habit of going away for months together at stated 
 tervals, his patients would call in another, or take an 
 unfair advantage of his absence to get well. But Sir 
 Henry experienced no diminution of fees from the 
 bold scheme of life he had laid down; nay, he was 
 speedily in a condition to assign a limit to his practice: 
 to say, thus far shall it go, and no farther ; to declare 
 that it should never exceed five thousand pounds a 
 year; and to feel that he could easily have exceeded 
 that very respectable maximum if he thought fit. He 
 attributes this exceptional privilege of combining pro- 
 fit with pleasure to the degree in life of his patients, 
 mostly denizens of May Fair, who migrated with the 
 season; but we think he may fairly take credit for the 
 confidence he inspired, and the comfort they derived 
 from consulting one who cheered and soothed instead 
 of frightening or depressing them. 
 
 We collect from another passage, what indeed was 
 tolerably well-known already, that he visited the states- 
 men, the orators, the celebrities, the fine ladies, the stars 
 of all sorts that glitter on his page, not merely as a medi- 
 cal adviser, but as a friend. ‘The practice of a West- 
 end physician in London (he frankly admits) abounds in 
 cases which give little occasion for thought or solicitude, 
 and are best relieved by a frequent half-hour of genial 
 conversation.’ This will go far towards explaining the 
 prosperous result of the experiment which he thus 
 exultingly records : 
 
 “My early resolution as to this matter of travel, steadily 
 
254 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 ‘persevered in, has proved a gain to me through all succeed- 
 ing life. I have come back each year refreshed in health of 
 body and mind, and ready for the ten months of busy prac- 
 tice which lay before me. On the day, or even hour, of 
 reaching home from long and distant journeys, I have gene- 
 rally resumed my wonted professional work. The new 
 methods of intercommunication since steam and electricity 
 hhave held empire on the earth, often enabled me to make en- 
 gagements for the very moment of my return. I recollect 
 having found a patient waiting in-my room when I came 
 back from those mountain heights—not more than 200 
 miles from the frontiers of Persia—where the 10,000 Greeks 
 uttered their joyous cry on the sudden sight of the Euxine. 
 The same thing once happened to me in returning from 
 Egypt and Syria, when I found a carriage waiting my arrival 
 at London Bridge, to take me to a consultation in Sussex- 
 square ; the communication in each ease being made from 
 points on my homeward journey. More than once in 
 returning from America, I have begun a round of visits from 
 the Euston Station.’ 
 
 Of moving accidents by flood and field,—he once 
 narrowly escaped shipwreck in a Greek brig, which, 
 two days afterwards, was nearly captured by a pirate. 
 In crossing a crevasse in Iceland, on a bridge of 
 congealed snow, one of his legs went through, and he 
 was saved by the adroit use of their snow-poles by his 
 guides. He was robbed of his portmanteau, containing 
 journals, sketches, and plans, at the instigation of 
 Ali Pasha, who had reasons of his own for wishing 
 to become acquainted with the contents. He was 
 occasionally arrested on suspicion; and he had two 
 fair chances of being swallowed up by earthquakes. 
 An eager inspector of battle-fields, he was never 
 present at an action; and he says: ‘I can even affirm 
 {although without boasting of it) that I have never fired 
 gun or pistol in my life, either as sportsman or in any 
 other capacity.’ He therefore could not have been the 
 physician who, complaining to Sydney Smith that 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 255 
 
 he had failed in killing some pheasants that had 
 confidently alighted in the little wood at Combe Florey, 
 was reproachfully reminded that he might have 
 prescribed for them. 
 
 Chronological arrangement has been altogether 
 disregarded in these reminiscences, and any attempt to 
 weave them into a regular narrative would be 
 embarrassing from their desultory character and their 
 multiplicity. Sir Henry’s Travels in Portugal, Sicily, 
 the Ionian Islands, and Greece were published in 
 1815, when we find Mrs. Piozzi writing to a Welsh 
 baronet from Bath : 
 
 ‘We have had a fine Dr. Holland here. He has seen and 
 written about the Ionian Islands, and means now to practise 
 as a physician, exchanging the Cyclades, say we wits and 
 wags, for the sick ladies. We made quite a lion of the man. 
 I was invited to every house he visited at for the last three 
 days. So I got the queue du lion, despairing of le ceur.’ 
 
 His reputation had preceded the publication of 
 this book. On his return to England, in 1814, he 
 formed the acquaintance, which speedily ripened into 
 friendship, of Lord Lansdowne and Lord Holland, at 
 whose houses he fell in with a brilliant and unbroken 
 succession of notabilities. Madame de Staél was the 
 novelty who, next to Byron, attracted the largest 
 amount of lhcmage; so much so that to be publicly 
 associated with her was a recommendation in itself. 
 
 ‘I first met her at a great dinner at Bridgewater House ; 
 whence the party adjourned in the evening to the opening 
 of the British Gallery, of which our host the Marquis of 
 Stafford was then President. The accident of her taking 
 my arm during our stay in the crowded Gallery made me a 
 witness of the curious eagerness to see and hear her which 
 prevailed at the time. It also brought me immediately 
 several invitations to meet her in society, from persons whom 
 I had not known before. These things are characteristic, it 
 must be owned, of what may be called foibles, as well as 
 
256 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 features, of London life. Time has done little since to alter 
 them.’ 
 
 Her taking his arm may not have been an accident. 
 Rogers used to tell how she took his at a crowded 
 reception at Lansdowne House, and made him stand 
 with her half the evening at the exact spot where she 
 could be best seen and approached. Sir Henry was 
 dining with her at Sir Samuel Romilly’s when the news 
 arrived of the entry of the Allied Armies into Paris. 
 ‘Her emotion was great, and ardently expressed, 
 though leaving it somewhat doubtful whether pleasure 
 or pain predominated.’ Her life had borne this mixed 
 character throughout. In a single passage she thus 
 denotes her mental temperament: ‘Calme et animé ; 
 ce qu'il faut étre, et ce que je ne suis pas.’ It should be 
 added that she was speaking of Richmond Park. 
 
 Coleridge said of ghosts that he had seen too many 
 to believe in them: Madame de Staél, that she feared 
 without believing in them. ‘Je n’y crois pas, mais je 
 des crains.’ In her case, the ingrained superstition of 
 the nursery was too strong to be overcome by philo- 
 sophy ; in /zs, the consciousness of a morbid condition 
 of mind and body had taught him to distrust the 
 most vivid impressions of the senses as unreal and 
 visionary. Surpassed by many of her sex in fancy, 
 imagination, and delicacy of touch, she may fairly be 
 named as the woman who, by masculine vigour of 
 understanding, in cultivation, comprehensiveness, and 
 power, has done most to rival the boasted superiority 
 of man. Her work on Germany, and her political 
 writings, although M. Thiers terms them the perfection 
 of mediocrity, have never been approached by any female 
 writer in the same line; and it is therefore curious to 
 mark how the feminine love of personal admiration 
 clung to her in the height of her literary fame. 
 
 ‘From my own observation, as well as that of others, I was 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 257 
 
 led to believe that she would willingly have surrendered 
 something of her intellectual fame for a little more of per- 
 sonal beauty. She was ever curiously demonstrative of her 
 arms, as the feature which best satisfied this aspiration. A 
 slip of paper often in her hand, and sedulously twisted 
 during her eager conversation, might be a casual trick of 
 habit, though there were some who gave it a more malicious 
 interpretation. Even admitting this, however, and other 
 foibles, Madame de Staél cannot be otherwise described than 
 as a woman of extraordinary endowments.’ 
 
 She is reported to have said that she would give all 
 her fame (or her genius) for the power of fascinating ; 
 in which she was sadly deficient, as what woman 
 who aims eternally at shining or convincing is not? 
 Speaking of one of the dinner-parties at which he met 
 her, Lord Byron writes: ‘ We got up too soon after the 
 women, and Mrs. Corinne always lingers so long after 
 dinner, that we wish her—in the drawing-room.’ 
 
 The heroines of her two celebrated novels, Corinne 
 and Delphine, were more or less intended for herself. 
 Talleyrand was also represented in Delphine under the 
 disguise of a scheming old countess, and on being 
 asked by the authoress whether he had read the book, 
 he replied, ‘ Non, Madame, mais on n’a dit que nous y 
 sommes tous les deux, déquisés en femmes.’ As Sir Henry 
 Holland must have been familiar with her practice in 
 this respect, we are surprised to find him giving even 
 cursory sanction to a foolish report connecting another 
 person with Corinne. Speaking of the parties at 
 Kdinburgh during his student days, he says : 
 
 ‘Those of Mrs. Apreece gained for a time a mastery over 
 all others. Coming suddenly to the Scotch capital as a 
 young and wealthy widow—with the reputation and fashions 
 of a continental traveller, at a time when few had travelled 
 at all—acquainted with Madame de Staél, and vaguely re-: 
 ported to be the original of Corinne, then fresh in fame— 
 this lady made herself immediately a circle of her own, and 
 vivified it with certain usages new to the habits of Edin- 
 
 VOL. II. Ss 
 
258 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 burgh life. <A stranger to local politics, her parties were 
 largely frequented by the fashion as well as learning of the 
 city, and admission to them eagerly coveted even by the 
 graver departments of science. The story was current of a. 
 venerable Professor seen stooping down in the street to ad- 
 just the lacing of her boot. My relations of intimacy with 
 her, begun here, were continued after her marriage with Sir 
 H. Davy—a union productive of little happiness—and ended 
 only with her death.’ 
 
 Before reading this passage, we should have thought 
 it impossible for any one who knew Lady Davy to 
 entertain the notion of her having been the original of 
 Corinne. She was a clever, active-minded woman, 
 with popular manners, very vain, and very demonstra- 
 tive. Foreign literature was certainly not her forte, 
 and some of her comical mistakes in French and 
 Italian are current still. Despite her estimable 
 qualities, therefore, a touch of ridicule clung to her. 
 On hearing that she had been nearly upset from a boat 
 into a lake, Sydney Smith said she was so brown and 
 so dry that she would have turned it all into toast- 
 and-water. On her complaining to Rogers that he had 
 been abusing her, he replied, ‘ Lady Davy, I pass my 
 life in defending you.’ Playfair was the venerable 
 Professor who knelt down in the street to adjust the 
 lacing of her boot; and her Edinburgh experience 
 seems to have inspired her with a notion that she was 
 a constant object of pursuit. Lord Holland had a story 
 of her turning short upon an Italian soldier, who was. 
 unconsciously following her at Rome, with ‘ Infame 
 soldato, que volete?’ She called to a French postilion : 
 Allez avec votre ventre sur la terre; and nearly took 
 away a foreign friend’s character by the unlucky 
 application of the term meretrice.! | 
 
 1 T heard her, at Mrs. Damevr’s in Tilney Street, tell a story of her 
 riding on a donkey near Naples, when the wind blew so hard as to carry 
 
 off garment after garment till, she said, ‘I had nothing left but my seat ’"— 
 which was not much, 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 299 
 
 The story of her second marriage is told in Dr. 
 Bence Jones's history of ‘The Royal Institution,’ a 
 book abounding in curious and valuable information, to 
 which we shall presently have occasion to recur. In an 
 undated letter to his mother (which Dr. Bence Jones 
 conjectures to have been written about the end of 
 1811), Davy writes : 
 
 ‘My pear Morurer,—You possibly may have heard reports 
 of my intended marriage. Till within the last few days it 
 was mere report. It is, I trust, now a settled arrangement. 
 Iam the happiest of men in thé hope of a union with a 
 woman equally distinguished for virtues, talent, and accom- 
 plishments. 
 
 ‘You, I am sure, will sympathise in my happiness. I be- 
 lieve I should never have married but for this charming 
 woman, whose views and whose tastes coincide with my own, 
 and who is eminently qualified to promote my best efforts 
 and objects in life.’ 
 
 Early in 1812 Sir Joseph Banks writes to Sir George 
 Staunton in China: 
 
 ‘We are going on here as usual, but I think the taste for 
 science is on the increase. The Royal Society has been well 
 supplied with papers, and continues to be so. Davy, our 
 secretary, is said to be on the point of marrying a rich and 
 handsome widow, who has fallen in love with science, and 
 marries him in order to obtain a footing in the academic 
 groves; her name is Apreece, the daughter of Mr. Carr, who 
 made a fortune in India, and the niece of Dr. Carr, of 
 Northampton. If this takes place, it will give to science a 
 kind of new éclat; we want nothing so much as the coun- 
 tenance of the ladies to increase our popularity.’ 
 
 The Royal Institution, at all events, has been eagerly 
 countenanced by the ladies, who would be equally 
 ready to attend the meetings of the Royal Society, if 
 any opening were afforded—if the smallest amount of 
 temptation were held out: in the shape, for example, 
 
 8 2 
 
260 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 of a lecture on the Darwinian system, by Owen or 
 Huxley; on heat, by Tyndall; electricity, by Wheat- 
 stone ; or astronomy, by the President. 
 
 On the 9th of April, 1812, Davy was knighted: on 
 the 10th he delivered his last lecture (on the metals) at 
 the Royal Institution: on the 11th he was married. 
 He mentions the knighthood and the marriage with 
 apparent unconsciousness of any necessary connection 
 between the two events; but it was no secret at the 
 time that the powerful friends of the lady had procured 
 the title to smooth away her objections to what she was 
 weak enough to consider a mésalliance : 
 
 Friday, April 10, 1812. 
 
 ¢My prsar Brotuer,—You will have excused me for not 
 writing to you on subjects of science. I have been absorbed 
 by arrangements on which the happiness of my future life 
 depends. Before you receive this these arrangements will, I 
 trust, be settled, and in a few weeks I shall be able to return 
 to my habits of study and scientific research. I am going to 
 be married to-morrow, and I have a fair prospect of happi- 
 ness with the most amiable and intellectual woman I have. 
 ever known. 
 
 ‘The Prince Regent, unsolicited by me or by any of my 
 intimate friends, was pleased to confer the honour of knight- 
 hood on me at the last levée. This distinction has not often 
 been bestowed on scientific men ; but I am proud of it, as the 
 ereatest of human geniuses bore it, and it is at least a proof 
 that the world-has not overlooked my humble efforts in the 
 cause of science.’ 
 
 Two months afterwards, June 12th, he dedicated his 
 ‘Elements of Chemical Philosophy’ to Lady Davy, ‘ as 
 a pledge that he shall continue to pursue science with 
 unabated ardour ’—an equivocal compliment, even more 
 susceptible of a mischievous interpretation than the well- 
 known and well-meant dedication (Milman’s) to a wife, 
 as ‘ one who has made the poetry of life reality,’ z.e. con- 
 verted it into prose. Sir Humphry’s pledge, we all know, 
 was religiously kept; and if, in his case, the pursuit of 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 261 
 
 science was interrupted or impeded by matrimony, the 
 result was undoubtedly not produced by uxoriousness. 
 Domestic harmony is rare when both man and wife 
 have high intellectual pretensions, and neither is dis- 
 posed to concede the palm of conversational superiority 
 to the other. Not content with differing at home, 
 Sir Humphry and Lady Davy would wrangle in mixed 
 company across a dinner-table. There is not so much 
 as a passing allusion to her in the touching letters to his 
 brother and sister during his last illness. 
 
 The ample tribute to the Berry sisterhood from the 
 eraceful pen of Lady Theresa Lewis has secured them 
 their full meed of fame. Passing over Sir Henry’s 
 notice of them and their salon, we turn to his short 
 account of another lady who filled an analogous position, 
 Lydia White, the Liydia of Horace (Twiss). The 
 Berrys came out under the patronage of Walpole. 
 Lady Davy had her own fortune and connections, with 
 (latterly) her second husband’s fame, to trade upon. 
 How Lydia White won her position remains unexplained. 
 It is not everyone, however ready to give dinners to 
 the élite of the literary or fashionable world, that can 
 get the élite of the literary or fashionable world to dine 
 with them. 
 
 ‘This lively and kind-hearted woman, with no pretence to 
 learning of any kind, and suffering under a disease of which 
 she well knew the certain and fatal issue, yet almost to the 
 last made her house in Park Street the open and welcome 
 resort of the best literary society of the day. Dinner parties 
 elsewhere sent their most approved guests to “look in at 
 Lydia’s ” in the evening, where all who came were sure of a 
 genial reception, of good society, and thorough freedom 
 trom constraint. The whimsical licence of her own speech 
 gaye some sanction to it in her guests. Many circles of 
 society have gained fame in memoirs of the time, though 
 
 less deserving it than the pleasant, open-hearted evenings at 
 Lydia White’s.’ 
 
 The bon mot by which she would be remembered 
 
262 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 had she never made another, shows that she had some 
 tincture of classical acquirement as well as wit. When 
 the prospects of the Whigs were at the lowest, a party 
 of them were dining at her house, she herself being a 
 decided Tory: ‘We are certainly in a bad way,’ 
 said Sydney Smith, ‘and must do something. We 
 could not do better than sacrifice a Tory virgin.’ 
 Intuitively seizing the allusion to Iphigenia, she replied, 
 ‘Well, I believe there is nothing the Whigs would not 
 do to raise the wind,’ 
 
 Lady Holland may be pi aE introduced here ; 
 for we agree with Sir Henry that the organisation of 
 dinners, and what may be called the police of the 
 dinner-table, were never brought to greater efficiency 
 than by her : 
 
 ‘The London Season, as it is called, abounds in good 
 dinners and good company; and these dinners take high 
 rank among our social usages. But at Holland. House 
 (itself a classical spot) there met almost daily, during a 
 series of years, round a luxurious table, guests, eminent in 
 such various ways that their mere conjunction stamped its 
 character on the society. English and Foreign Ministers 
 and Diplomatists, men of learning and of science, historians, 
 poets, artists, and wits, were so skilfully commingled as to 
 make it sure that none but a master-hand could have accom- 
 plished the result. 
 
 ‘The master-hand here was that of the mistress, Lady 
 Holland—a remarkable woman in every way, well-remem- 
 bered by all who knew her—difficult to describe to those 
 who did not. Supreme in her own mansion and family, she 
 exercised a singular and seemingly capricious tyranny even 
 over guests of the highest rank and position. Capricious it 
 seemed, but there was in reality tention in all she did ; 
 and this intention was the maintenance of power, which she 
 gained and strenuously used, though not without discretion 
 in fixing its limits. No one knew better when to change 
 her mood, and to soothe by kind and flattering words the 
 provocation she had just given, and was very apt to give. 
 In this latter case, indeed, she was aided by a native gene- 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS, 265 
 
 rosity of mind which never failed to show itself in kindness 
 where kindness was wanted. In my long and intimate 
 knowledge of Lady Holland, I never knew her desert an old 
 friend, whatever his condition might be. 
 
 ‘Her management of conversation at the dinner table—- 
 sometimes arbitrary and in rude arrest of others, sometimes 
 courteously inviting the subject—furnished a study in itself. 
 Every guest felt her presence, and generally more or less 
 succumbed to it.’ 
 
 This is admirably written, with the finest discrimina- 
 tion of character ; but Sir Henry should have added that 
 it often required all the prestige of the company and the 
 place, all the charm of Lord Holland’s manner and con- 
 versation, to overcome the prevalent feeling of appre- 
 hension and restraint. When Lord Dudley was asked 
 his reason for persistently refusing to dine at Holland 
 House, he replied, he ‘ did not choose to be tyrannised 
 over while he was eating his dinner.’ Very many did 
 not lke it, though they bore with it; there being always 
 one consolation, that highest and lowest were subject 
 to the same tyranny. She once sent her page round 
 the table to Macaulay, to tell him to stop talking as she 
 wanted to hear Lord Aberdeen. She told Rogers, 
 ‘Your poetry is bad enough, so pray be sparing of 
 your prose.’ At a dinner in South-street she fidgeted 
 Lord Melbourne so much. by making him shift his 
 place when he was seated to his liking, that he rose 
 exclaiming, ‘Ill be d dif I dine with you at all;’ 
 and walked off to his own house, fortunately at hand. 
 In telling the story he added, ‘ I was d—d sorry though 
 when I cooled, for she had a good dinner and I had 
 none.’ 
 
 She requested a celebrated dandy to move a 
 little farther off, on the ground that her olfactory 
 nerves were offended by his blacking; the blacking 
 which he vowed was diluted with champagne. Her 
 
264 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. — 
 
 sneer at the Belgians for being so designated, and the 
 prompt retort of M, Van de Weyer, are well known.* 
 She never bore malice against those who rebelled 
 against her despotism : indeed, they rather rose in her 
 good graces by a timely exhibition of self-respect; 
 thus fully confirming what Sir Henry Holland says of 
 her native generosity of mind, Rogers distinctly stated 
 (as reported in his ‘Table Talk’) that, instead of 
 sending him to put the crucial question to Sir Philip 
 Francis, she put it herself in his (Rogers’) presence, 
 and elicited a reply beginning, ‘Madam, do you mean 
 to insult me?’ She died in 1845; and we wish some- 
 body gifted with her nerve would ascertain the truth 
 of her reported threat, that, if the reminiscent (who 
 was plain Dr. Holland till 1853) by accepting a 
 baronetcy brought another Lady Holland into the 
 field, he should never cross the threshold of Holland 
 House again.” 
 
 The current of his London life is again suspended in 
 1814. In the summer of that year he accepted an 
 engagement to attend Caroline, Princess of Wales, as 
 physician during the first year of her intended resi- 
 dence on the Continent. The time was a most exciting 
 one, and the most tempting opportunities were pre- 
 sented to him for observing what was passing behind 
 the scenes. It is disappointing, therefore, to find this 
 episode introduced with the remark: ‘I have never 
 been a practised relater of anecdotes, and do not 
 pretend thus late in life to take up that character.’ 
 The Princess travelled as became her rank, and was 
 
 1 See vol. i. p. 290. 
 
 * It would be impossible to form such a society as used to meet in 
 the library at Holland House. The elements are wanting. But a more 
 brilliant company was never assembled than has frequently been grouped 
 about the grounds within the last ten or twelve years; and the liberal 
 hospitality of that classic abode was never more gracefully dispensed 
 than by its present mistress, assisted by the charming aide-de-camp who 
 is about to become its historian. 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 265 
 
 everywhere received with the honours due to un- 
 blemished royalty. Their chosen course towards Italy 
 was by Germany and Switzerland. During a fortnight 
 at Brunswick, he conversed a good deal with the Duke, 
 and remarked in him ‘a grave simplicity, tinged with 
 a shade of melancholy, which might almost, by a 
 superstitious observer, have been interpreted as a fore- 
 
 boding of evil at hand.’ This realises the picture in 
 ‘Childe Harold: ’ 
 
 ‘Within a window’d niche of that high hall 
 Sate Brunswick’s fated chieftain: he did hear 
 That sound the first amidst the festival, 
 And caught its tone with Death’s prophetic ear.’ 
 
 The halt of a day at Géttingen enabled Sir Henry to 
 visit the veteran Blumenbach, and to spend some time 
 with him in his museum. . ‘ My visit, hurried as it was, 
 showed me the energy and clearness of his mind, little 
 impaired by years.’ Seventeen years afterwards we 
 found him unchanged. ‘ Pointing to skull after skull of 
 known persons, he said it was impossible to doubt the 
 dependence of mental power and the moral sense on 
 the distribution and quantity of the brain, but he 
 contemptuously disclaimed all belief in “‘ bumps” or in 
 the alleged capability of the professors of phrenology 
 to map out a skull into sections indicative of the 
 minutest shades of character. On coming to the skull 
 of Robert Bruce, he said that, on receiving it by the 
 kindness of a Scotch nobleman, he was puzzled what to 
 make of it, and wrote a hasty note to the librarian 
 requesting that all books relating to the hero might be 
 forwarded without delay. “Judge,” he naively added, 
 ‘‘of my astonishment when informed that a wheel- 
 barrow-full, a first instalment, was on the way.” ’ 
 
 One of the many questions in history touching which 
 the contemporary evidence is hopelessly irreconcilable 
 is, when, and from whom, the Congress of Vienna 
 received the first intelligence of the escape of Napoleon 
 
ad 
 
 266 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 from Elba. Sir Henry Holland has set down the ~ 
 occasion on which the news reached Naples, and would 
 probably have no difficulty in fixing the date. The 
 scene was a Court ball.. ‘Among the guests was the 
 Countess Walewski, very recently arrrived from Elba 
 with her young son; and attracting much attention 
 from her known relation to the great prisoner there, as 
 well as from the graces of her own person and manner. 
 Her sudden presence at Naples, and certain other 
 collateral incidents, excited suspicions without defining 
 them. It was that vague whisper which often precedes 
 some event close at hand.’ The arrival of this lady 
 from Elba is a fact bearing on another curious point of 
 history, on the romantic story told by Lamartine of 
 her reception at Fontainebleau, in April 1814: 
 
 ‘ Adversity made her lapse from virtue almost sacred and 
 her love more dear. She wrote to Napoleon to ask to see 
 him again and to offer to follow him wherever he might be 
 led by misfortune. He consented to this interview. The 
 night but one before his departure from Fontainebleau, the 
 young woman was introduced by a secret staircase into the 
 saloon adjoining the bedchamber of her lover. The confi- 
 dential servant announced to his master the presence of her 
 whom he had consented to see again. Napoleon was 
 plunged in the kind of dreamy stupor which absorbed him 
 since his fall. He replied that he would soon in. person 
 summon her who braved shame and adversity for his sake. 
 She waited vainly and in tears a long half of the night. He 
 did not summon her. He was heard walking up and down 
 in his room. The servant entered and reminded him of who © 
 was waiting. “Let her wait,” said the Emperor. Finally, 
 the entire night being spent and the day beginning to 
 threaten to reveal the secret of the assignation, the young 
 woman, repelled, lost in grief, and wounded to the quick, 
 was led back to her carriage by the confidant of her last 
 adieux.’ 
 
 1 See vol. i. p. 67. 
 
SIR: HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 267 
 
 She must have been of a most forgiving disposition if 
 she afterwards followed her imperial lover to Elba. 
 
 Apropos of Monti and Pindemonti, with whom he 
 fell in at Milan, Sir Henry states that, when Lord 
 Byron finally left England, he gave his illustrious 
 countryman a letter to Pindemonti. ‘Some months 
 afterwards I received an answer from the latter, 
 affording curious proof how much he had _ been 
 perplexed by the perfervidum ingenium and wayward 
 character of the English poet. No two men could be 
 more diverse in their qualities. . I presume that any 
 intercourse between them must speedily have come to 
 an end.’ There was no room for presumption. Ina 
 letter to Mr. Murray, dated Venice, June 4th, 1817, 
 Lord Byron writes: ‘To-day, Pindemonti, the cele- 
 brated poet of Verona, called on me. He isa little 
 thin man, with acute and pleasing features; his ad- 
 dress good and gentle, his appearance altogether very 
 philosophical, his age about sixty or more. 
 After having been a litle libertine in his youth, he is 
 erown devout, and takes prayers, and talks to himself, 
 to keep off the devil; but, for all that, he is a very 
 nice old gentleman.’ , 
 
 Sir Henry’s professional connection with Queen 
 Caroline led to his being called asa witness for the 
 defence at the Trial of 1821. He positively stated 
 that he had seen nothing improper or derogatory in her 
 demeanour towards Bergami-or any other person at 
 any time, and stood the cross-examination well. What 
 (he says) struck him most in the great lawyers who 
 conducted the case, was their ignorance of foreign 
 usages and the mistakes into which they were con- 
 sequently led. He was in unremitting attendance on 
 the Queen during her fatal illness till her death; and 
 he mentions, as one of the strange coincidences of 
 medical life in London, that he was called in to see 
 Mrs. Fitzherbert as a patient not long after he had left 
 
268 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 the Princess of Wales, and that he continued to attend 
 her for many successive years. 
 
 On his arrival in England, after leaving the Princess, 
 he found a pressing invitation from Lord Amherst to 
 join the embassy to China as physician. This he de- 
 clined at once; but before regularly beginning his pro- 
 fessional career in London, he made a trip to Belgium, 
 Holland, and France, reaching Paris at the most inter- 
 esting period of the occupation : 
 
 ‘The day after my arrival I witnessed a magnificent mili- 
 tary show in the review of more than 30,000 English and 
 Hanoverian troops on the plains of St. Denys, where were 
 repeated certain of the manceuvres of the battle of Sala- 
 manca—the Duke of Wellington commanding in person ; 
 the Emperors of Russia and Austria, Blucher, Schwartzen- 
 berg, Platoff, and many other officers of fame present on the 
 field. Lord Palmerston, then in the early stage of his poli- 
 tical life, was among the English spectators of the scene.’ 
 
 The scene is more fully and rather differently de- 
 scribed by Lord Palmerston in one of the journals 
 discovered by Mr. Cowper-Temple too late to be incor- 
 porated by Sir Henry Bulwer (Lord Dalling) in the 
 ‘Life.’ According to Lord Palmerston, the army re- 
 viewed by the Duke amounted to 60,000 men, double 
 the number at which it is computed by Sir Henry 
 Holland : | 
 
 ‘The Duke of Wellington told me afterwards that he had 
 not even looked at the ground; that he had intended to 
 have done so, but never could find time, and had only a 
 sketch of it made by one of his officers, whom he sent to 
 reconnoitre it. The Duke had given no orders but to 
 appear upon the ground, and there was not a general of 
 division who knew what was to be done. The first thing 
 the Duke did was to change the position of the whole line, 
 advancing it some little distance forward from the ground 
 they had originally taken up. He then gave a sort of repre- 
 sentation of his manceuvres at the battle of Salamanca.’ 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 269 
 
 The review was a complete success. There was 
 another, in the October following, with a smaller army 
 (about 28,000), composed of Danes, British, Hanove- 
 rians, Saxons, and Prussians. It was a sham fight, and 
 on seeing the red-coats advancing in three lines to 
 the front attack, ‘it was not,’ says Lord Palmerston, 
 ‘national prejudice or mistaken vanity that made us at 
 once exclaim, “How beautiful!”’ This review was 
 followed by a dinner : 
 
 ‘When dinner was announced, the Emperor took Lady 
 William Russell, the King (of Prussia) took Lady Worcester. 
 Alexander beckoned to the King to go first. The King 
 refused. The Emperor insisted. The King was obstinate. 
 The ladies looked foolish. The company expected a battle 
 royal; when at last Alexander gave a vehement stamp 
 with his foot, and the King, probably recollecting that his - 
 own cudgellers were at Sedan, a long day’s journey off, con- 
 sented to take the post of honour and go first. The second 
 day the King said that, as he had given way before, he hoped 
 Alexander would do him la grace to take his proper place, 
 which was graciously assented to.’ 
 
 There were only four ladies present at this dinner, 
 all Englishwomen and wives of English aides-de-camp 
 Lady William Russell, Lady Worcester, Lady Frances 
 Cole, and Lady Harvey. One of these, remarkable, 
 amongst her numerous gifts and accomplishments, for 
 quick perception and accurate memory, has retained a 
 ‘different impression of the scene. She says that, the 
 dinner being at the Russian head-quarters, the Czar 
 considered himself at home, and therefore requested 
 the King to go first: that the contest was one of smiling 
 courtesy on both sides: that there was no display of tem- 
 per, no stamping of feet; and that the ladies did not look 
 foolish, which most assuredly one of them never did. 
 
 ‘In January 1816 (continues the reminiscent) I 
 entered on my professional life in London, at the age 
 
 1 Lady William Russell, the ‘accomplished lady of rank’ mentioned 
 in vol. i. p. 382. 
 
270 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 of twenty-seven, with a fair augury of success, speedily 
 and completely fulfilled.’ His success, he adds, was 
 materially aided by visits for four successive years to 
 Spa, at the close of the London season. Spa then 
 nearly monopolised the society which may now be 
 found distributed between Hombourg, Baden Baden, 
 Carlsbad, and a host of other watering-places ; and his 
 list of distinguished visitors contains most of the first- 
 rate celebrities of the period. | 
 
 The prevalent belief in Spiritualism is not more dis- 
 creditable to the understanding than the belief in luck ; 
 z.e. the belief that runs of luck at games, more or less 
 dependent upon chance, may be influenced, modified, 
 or foreseen and turned to account. The majority of 
 practised whist-players believe in packs and _ seats, 
 namely, that they have a better chance of winning in 
 particular seats or with particular packs; and every 
 continental gambling-table is haunted by speculators 
 who confidently rely on some infallible contrivance for 
 breaking the bank. Benjamin Constant was reduced 
 to this state of mental and moral degradation when 
 Sir Henry Holland saw him at Spa: 
 
 ‘It was melancholy to see a man of his ability passing 
 the total day at the rouge-et-noir table; defrauding himself 
 by those follies of calculation which bring ruin upon so 
 many weaker minds. He was manifestly ashamed of being 
 thus seen, but the seduction was too strong for his will to 
 overcome. There was indeed in Constant a certain moral 
 feebleness and fastidiousness which prevented his ever re- 
 taining long together the position to which his intellect and 
 acquirements entitled him. He reasoned and speculated 
 about events eloquently and ingeniously; but had little 
 faculty either of action upon or resistance to them.’ 
 
 Benjamin Constant may have had recourse to the 
 eambling-table for self-forgetfulness. He had been the 
 devoted friend, more than the friend, of Madame de 
 Staél. They vowed a common hatred to Napoleon, 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 271 
 
 who had expelled him from the Tribunat with ex- 
 pressions of contempt. Yet at the commencement of 
 the Hundred Days, he submitted to a private interview 
 with the imperial despot, and came forth a confirmed 
 Bonapartist and salaried Counsellor of State. 
 
 ‘In 1818, returning by Paris, I was one of the guests at.a 
 dinner there which I have every reason to remember. It 
 was at the house of the Countess Rumford, the widow of 
 Lavoisier, a reminiscence in itself. Atthe table were seated 
 Laplace, Cuvier, Berthollet, Gay Lussac, and Prony ; Madame 
 Laplace, Madame Berthollet, and Mrs. Marcet. Berzelius, 
 whose acquaintance I had teats the same day at ne Insti- 
 tute, came in the evening.’ 
 
 In the preface to the work already mentioned, Dr. 
 Bence Jones says of Rumford: ‘ Not the least strange 
 fact in the history of this original man is that during 
 his life he received no thanks for all that he did for the 
 Royal Institution. Moreover at the present time he is 
 scarcely known as the finder of Davy, and the founder 
 of that’ place where very many of the greatest scientific 
 discoveries of this century have been made.’ It is 
 stranger still that the actual President of the Institu- 
 tion, Sir Henry Holland, should describe Rumford’s 
 widow as if her sole title to distinction was derived 
 from her first husband. The life of Rumford, in the 
 clear and terse narrative of Dr. Bence Jones, has all 
 the interest of a romance; and no more striking 
 example of Self-help is to be found in the animating, 
 hope-inspiring pages of Mr. Smiles. 
 
 The Count, Benjamin Thompson by birth and 
 baptism, born in 1753, the son of an American 
 farmer, was apprenticed, in his thirteenth year, to a 
 general dealer at Salem. He neglected the shop or 
 store, drew caricatures, dabbled in science, kept a 
 school, and was altogether in an unpromising way, 
 when (in his twentieth year) a woman of fortune 
 married him and gave him a position. At the com- 
 
Jie SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 mencement of the War of Independence he held a 
 major’s commission in the insurgent army, but his 
 loyalist opinions led to his proscription ; he changed 
 sides, came to England, and was taken into the 
 Secretary of State’s office by Lord George Germain, 
 who, in September 1780, made him Under Secretary 
 of State for the Northern Department. The year 
 following he is in command of a regiment of dragoons 
 in Carolina ; then Commander-in-Chief of the cavalry 
 under Sir Henry Clinton; and in 1783 his rank and 
 half-pay as colonel in the British Service were con- 
 firmed to him for hfe. He had been simultaneously 
 pursuing his scientific researches, and was elected a 
 Fellow of the Royal Society in 1778. In the autumn 
 of 1783 he was on his way to Vienna, with the view of 
 taking part in the war between Austria and Turkey, 
 when he attracted the attention of Prince Maximilian, 
 nephew and heir-presumptive of the Elector of Bavaria, 
 and was induced to spend some days at Munich. 
 These he turned to such account that in less than a 
 year the uncontrolled administration of Bavarian 
 affairs, civil and military, was practically confided to 
 him. | 
 
 The reforms he effected in every department of the 
 State changed its entire aspect. He built barracks and 
 warehouses on plans of his own: he established an 
 excellent police: he suppressed mendicity: he set the 
 finances in order: he put the army on an entirely new 
 footing; and his multiplhed adaptations of science to 
 the arts of life were no less remarkable for their utility 
 than their originality. Well-earned honours showered 
 upon him: he was knighted by George III.: he was de- 
 
 1 A highly honourable tribute to the memory of Rumford has been 
 recently paid by Professor Tyndall, who in his valuable work on ‘ Heat 
 as a Mode of Motion,’ says of Rumford’s Essay on the Source of Heat, 
 printed in 1798: ‘ Hardly anything more powerful against the materi- 
 ality of heat has been since adduced, hardly anything more conclusive 
 in the way of establishing that heat is what Rumford considered it to 
 be, Motion’ (p. 581). 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. Vig 
 
 corated by several foreign sovereigns: he was made 
 honorary member of several academies, and, after 
 being formally named Chief of the War Department 
 and Lieutenant-General of the royal armies in Bavaria, 
 he received the crowning honour of Count of the Holy 
 Roman Empire in 1791. During the next six or seven 
 years he was constantly on the move, and, in the 
 autumn of 1798, having resolved to return to England 
 for the restoration of his health, the Elector appointed 
 him Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James’. 
 Lord Grenville, then Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, refused to ratify the appointment of an Briglish 
 subject to this post, and, the Elector dying soon after- 
 wards, nothing more was heard of it. 
 
 The Count, after wavering between the United States 
 and England, resolved on settling here, and, along with 
 
 two or three other schemes of mixed science and 
 - philanthropy, set about the foundation of. the Royal 
 Institution. The most auspicious event in its annals— 
 the engagement of Davy—is announced by him as just 
 effected through his instrumentality, in a letter dated 
 February 16, 1801. Congeniality of pursuit and aim 
 was not the only point in common between these men. 
 Their domestic destinies were strikingly alike. The 
 relations in which the Countess Rumford and Lady 
 Davy stood to their respective lords, before and during 
 marriage, were almost identically the same. The same 
 self-delusion, the same high hopes, the same bitter dis- 
 appointment. Alas for science and philosophy! On 
 January 22, 1804, Rumford, who had been eleven 
 years a widower, writes to his daughter from Paris: 
 
 ‘I shall withhold this information from you no longer. 
 I really do think of marrying, though Iam not yet abso- 
 lutely determined on matrimony. I made the acquaintance 
 of this very amiable woman in Paris, who, I believe, would 
 have no objection to having me for a husband, and who in 
 all respects would be a proper match for me. She is a 
 VOL. II. T 
 
274 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 widow without children, never having had any, is about my 
 own age, enjoys good health, is very pleasant in society, has: 
 a handsome fortune at her own disposal, enjoys a most re- 
 spectable reputation, keeps a good house, which is frequented 
 by all the first philosophers and men of eminence in the 
 science and literature of the age, or rather of Paris, and, 
 what is more than all the rest, 1s goodness itself’ 
 
 His amatory style is colder than Davy’s, but allow- 
 ance must be made for former experience of matrimony 
 and difference of age. It grows a little warmer in the 
 next letter : 
 
 ‘She is fond of travelling, and wishes to make the tour of 
 Italy with me. She appears to be most sincerely attached 
 to me, and I esteem and love her very much.’ 
 
 The marriage did not take place until the 24th 
 October, 1805, and in less than three months (January 
 15, 1806), he writes : 
 
 ‘Between you and myself, as a family secret, I am not at 
 all sure that two certain persons were not wholly mistaken, 
 in their marriage, as to each other’s characters. Time will 
 show. But, two months barely expired, I forbode difficul- 
 ties. Already I am obliged to send my good Germans 
 home—a great discomfort to me and wrong to them.’ 
 
 On the first anniversary of the marriage, he writes 
 to announce the utter failure of the experiment: 
 
 ‘Very likely she is as much disaffected towards me as I 
 am towards her. Little it matters with me, but I call her a. 
 female dragon—simply by that gentle name! We have got 
 to the pitch of my insisting on one thing and she on another.” 
 
 On the second (October 24, 1807), to say that he 
 was literally in hot water : 
 
 ‘T am almost afraid to tell you the story, my good child, 
 lest in future you should not be good; lest what I am about 
 relating should set you a bad example, make you passionate, 
 and so on. But I had been made very angry. A large 
 party had been invited I neither liked nor approved of, and 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 275 
 
 invited for the sole purpose of vexing me. Our house being 
 in the centre of the garden, walled round, with iron gates, I 
 put on my hat, walked down to the porter’s lodge, and gave 
 him orders, on his peril, not to let anyone in. Besides, I 
 took away the keys. Madame went down, and when the 
 company arrived she talked with them, she on one side, they 
 on the other, of the high brick wall. After that she goes 
 and pours boiling water on some of my beautiful flowers.’ 
 
 They came to what is called an amicable separation 
 in June 1809, when he utters a wild shriek of liberty : 
 ‘I find myself relieved from an almost insupportable 
 burden; and, above all, that eternal contradiction ! 
 Oh! happy, thrice happy, am I to be my own man 
 again !’ 
 
 Amonest Sir Henry Holland’s recollections of events 
 or sketches of character critical attention is naturally 
 attracted to those which surprise by novelty or invite 
 comment. In February 1827, he was sent for to 
 Brighton to attend Mr, Canning. On his return he 
 hastened to Lord Liverpool : 
 
 ‘Having satisfied his inquiries as to Mr. Canning, he 
 begged me to feel his own pulse—the first time I had ever 
 done so. Without giving details, I may say that I found it 
 such as to lead me to suggest an immediate appeal to his 
 medical advisers for careful watch over him. The very next 
 morning Lord Liverpool underwent the paralytic stroke 
 which closed his political life. His pulse alone had given 
 me cause for alarm; but there were one or two passages in 
 our half-hour’s conversation so forcibly expressing the harass- 
 ing anxieties of his position, that I could hardly dissociate 
 them from the event which thus instantly followed.’ 
 
 In the August following he was in attendance on 
 the death-bed of Canning, when the dying statesman 
 said to him, ‘I have struggled against this long, but it 
 has conquered me at last.’ 
 
 ‘Moi,’ exclaimed the lively Frenchman, ‘je fais 
 des chateaux en Espagne. ‘Et moi,’ replied the 
 
 T2 
 
276 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 melancholy one, ‘j’y fais des cachots.” According to 
 Sir Henry Holland the same contrast in temperament 
 existed between Lord Palmerston and Lord Aber- 
 Been 
 
 ‘The inborn vivacity and optimism’ of the former (Lord 
 Palmerston) pervaded his life both public and private; 
 rescuing him in great degree from many of those anxieties 
 which press, more or less, upon every step of a minister's 
 career. . . . Lord Aberdeen habitually looked at objects 
 and events through a more gloomy atmosphere. He was 
 wanting in that elasticity of body and spirit so influential in 
 a public career. I recollect, on one occasion, to have seen 
 them as patients in immediate succession for several days 
 together, when this contrast was presented under those 
 strongly-marked colours which illness more especially 
 discloses.’ 
 
 He also bears testimony to Lord Palmerston’s extra- 
 ordinary power of conquering pain, or rather the 
 disabling effects of pain, by dint of volition. ‘I have 
 seen him, under a fit of gout which would have 
 sent other men groaning to their couches, continue his 
 work of writing or reading on public business almost 
 without abatement, amidst the chaos of papers which 
 covered the floor as well as the tables of his room.’ 
 
 Of Sydney Smith he says: 
 
 ‘He never looked over again what he had once written ; 
 and, as I know, could hardly ever be persuaded to correct 
 the errors of a proof sheet. He revelled in his own manner 
 of handling a subject, and was comparatively careless of its 
 effect on others.’ 
 
 That Sydney Smith was indifferent to the effect of 
 his writings, is a statement which we should be loth to 
 receive on inferior authority ; and Sir Henry surely 
 goes a little too far in naming Robert (the elder 
 brother of Sydney), popularly called Bobus, ‘the most 
 accomplished scholar and profound thinker he has 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 277 
 
 ever known, which is tantamount to calling him the 
 most accomplished scholar and profound thinker of 
 the nineteenth century. He was personally unknown 
 beyond a select circle; and we cannot consent to 
 place the man who shrank fastidiously from the open 
 arena above the one who (like Sydney Smith) was 
 ready for all comers at all. times, although he occa- 
 sionally got a fall. Yet Mr. Robert Smith’s wit, 
 learning, and fine qualities of understanding are beyond 
 dispute. His Latin poems led Lord Dudley to rank 
 him with Lucretius and Catullus; and we know few 
 things better in sarcastic humour than his well-known 
 description of Joseph Hume and Vansittart (the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer) as ‘Penny Wise and 
 Pound Foolish. He was a lawyer, an ex-advocate- 
 general, and happened to be engaged in argument 
 with an excellent physician touching the merits of 
 their respective professions. ‘You must admit,’ urged 
 Dr. ——, ‘ that your profession does not make angels 
 of men.’ ‘No,’ was the retort; ‘there you have the 
 best of it; yours certainly gives them the first chance.’ 
 
 James Smith is mentioned as the author of ‘The 
 Rejected Addresses.’ It was the joint composition of 
 James and his brother Horatio; and their respective 
 shares have been published on authority. Two of the 
 best, the parodies of Scott and Byron, were by Horatio, 
 with the exception of a few lines. 
 
 Amongst the Spa reminiscences is one of a man who 
 is still imperfectly understood : 
 
 ‘Those—and there are yet many—who recollect the 
 genial temperament and masculine, though eccentric, intel- 
 lect of Henry Drummond, will appreciate the pleasure of a 
 fortnight’s travel with him through a country new to both. 
 He had eyes and understanding peculiar to himself for all 
 he saw, and language and manner as original as his thoughts. 
 He was a man who could not tread along the highway of 
 common opinion either in religion or politics; but his 
 
 1 Jn the First Series of these Essays, vol. i, p. 157. 
 
278 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 aberrant path was always pursued with honesty as well as 
 vigour,’ : 
 
 If Drummond had heard his path called ‘ aberrant,’ 
 he would have objected that, although error is multi- 
 form and truth is one, it would be as well to say ‘ dis- 
 cursive’ or ‘digressive,’ till the right path in polities 
 and religion shall have been satisfactorily defined. 
 Quitting the highway to enjoy a prospect is not 
 erring. His mind was constantly putting out feelers. 
 His opinions were not so much formed or fixed as 
 tentative. His intellectual appetite needed variety. 
 His mental constitution required change. Thomson, 
 the author of ‘The Castle of Indolence ’ (the story has 
 been told of Gay), was seen strolling round Lord 
 Burlington’s garden, with his hands in the pockets of 
 his dressing-gown, biting off the sunny sides of the 
 peaches. It was somewhat in this fashion that Drum- 
 mond dealt with subjects, books, and men. He 
 contented himself with the choicest mouthful of each. 
 
 To judge him by consistency, was to misjudge him. 
 He never pretended to it. He thought it the mark 
 of a fettered and contracted mind. At Albury Park 
 —which had much in common with Bowood—the 
 society was as miscellaneous and as well chosen for 
 his purpose as the library, and there were few repre- 
 sentative men, few men of mark, be their politics what 
 they might, who did not consciously or unconsciously 
 contribute to his store of facts and theories. His 
 conversation, always rich, animated, sparkling, sug- 
 gestive, and desultory, resembled a kaleidoscope in the 
 brilliancy and heterogeneous character of the materials ; 
 whilst his perfect breeding and exquisite refinement of 
 tone, gave the last finish to its charm. His speeches 
 were comparatively ineffective for want of sustained 
 argument and continuity, although he never rose with- 
 out commanding the attention of the House, did 
 capitally for the first ten minutes, and rarely sat down 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS: 279 
 
 without giving utterance to a telling sarcasm, a pointed 
 paradox, or a condensed truth. Under what category 
 should we arrange his favourite doctrine, that there are 
 only two effective modes of governing mankind— 
 by force or corruption, by grapeshot or French 
 cookery ? ! 
 
 It enhances the value and interest of Sir Henry Hol- 
 land’s impressions that they are given as originally 
 stamped upon his mind by personal observation, with- 
 out any attempt to confirm or correct them by autho- 
 rity. We shall not complain, therefore, of his taking 
 no notice whatever of our recent account of Talleyrand’s 
 bonmots—especially of the Quot, déja? which (if ap- 
 plied by Talleyrand to Montrond, which we doubt) was 
 made two hundred years ago.” But an historical 
 parallel like the following seems to challenge com- 
 ment : | 
 
 ‘In studying Talleyrand—and it was a curious study—a 
 comparison often suggested itself to me in Cardinal de Retz. 
 Their intellectual and moral qualities were of the same 
 general stamp, and attested much in the same way, though 
 on a very different scale of action. Their epigrammatic 
 maxims have the same peculiar flavour, and their ecclesias- 
 tical positions the same relation to the actual religion of the 
 two men. The Cardinal, however, doubtless stands lowest 
 in the comparison. The petty incidents and passions of the 
 “ Guerre de la Fronde” were little fitted to dignify a public 
 career.’ 
 
 We should be puzzled to name two characters more 
 diametrically opposed. Talleyrand was a man. of in- 
 trigue, a closet statesman, cautious, circumspect, and 
 prudent to timidity. De Retz was a man of action, 
 ready at the shortest warning to lay down the crosier 
 
 1 A succinct and clear account of his opinions and distinctive qualities 
 has been given by his noble son-in-law. See the Preface to ‘ Speeches 
 in Parliament, and some Miscellaneous Pamphlets, edited by Lord 
 Lovaine (now Duke of Northumberland), 1860. 
 
 2 ¢The Quarterly Review,’ Bulwer’s (Lord Dalling’s) ‘ Historical 
 Characters, vol. cxxiii. pp. 401-402. 
 
280 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 for the sword, bold, stirring, and rash to recklessness. 
 Talleyrand always kept in the background, watching 
 the signs of the times, regulated his course accordingly, 
 and influenced events through instruments which he 
 moved, as a wire-puller moves puppets, from behind the 
 scenes. The share he had in bringing the Allies to 
 Paris in 1814, and again in helping Louis Philippe to 
 the throne in 1830, was so managed as to enable him 
 to claim or disclaim the credit or discredit of complicity, 
 as it suited him. De Retz courted responsibility in- 
 stead of shrinking from it. When his plots were ripe, 
 he came prominently to the front to execute them. In 
 the course of a single day, towards the commencement 
 of the Fronde, he preached a seditious sermon in full 
 canonicals at Notre Dame, and appeared armed to the 
 teeth on the barricades. Compare Talleyrand dodging 
 to evade ‘ the frequent inkstand whizzing past his ear’ 
 or quailing beneath the pitiless contempt of Napoleon, 
 with De Retz confronting Anne of Austria and Mazarin 
 in her privy-chamber, his hand on the hilt of a con- 
 cealed dagger, his resolute glance crossing her angry 
 frown as sword crosses sword, and her haughty spirit 
 effectually subdued by his. With regard to their 
 maxims or sayings, there is this essential difference : 
 Talleyrand’s were polished and prepared, often bor- 
 rowed, witticisms; De Retz’s were either maxims of 
 state, broad and practical in scope and application, or 
 signal proofs of never-failing presence of mind and rare 
 readiness—as, when knocked down in the tumult, with 
 an arquebuss levelled at his head, he apostrophised the 
 assailant, an apothecary’ s lad, itt was about to fire, 
 ‘Ah, malheureux, si ton pere te voyait!’ 
 Talleyrand respected the decencies and convention- 
 alities: De Retz laughed at them. ‘Talleyrand took the 
 earliest opportunity of flinging off the ecclesiastical cha- 
 racter; De Retz stuck to it, ‘made it a stepping-stone, 
 and complacently narrates his duels and amours with an 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 281 
 
 archbishopric at hand and a cardinal’s hat in prospect.? 
 Allowing that the arena on which Talleyrand figured 
 was better fitted to dignify a public career, his was cer- 
 tainly not a dignified one. But the passions of the 
 Fronde were like other passions in troubled times, with 
 a strong infusicn of romance: the passion of Rochefou- 
 cauld for Madame de Longueville, epitomised in his 
 « Maxims’ and immortalised by his couplet,” was one of 
 them: the armies of the Fronde were led by Condé 
 and Turenne ; nor can the rising of a great capital, the 
 civil commotions which convulse a great nation, be 
 deemed ‘ petty incidents,’ in which it is degrading to 
 be mixed up. In morals and religion these mundane 
 priests were about upon a par—Arcades ambo (which 
 Byron translates ‘blackeuards both’)—and in assigning 
 the highest place to De Retz, we are simply proceeding 
 on the same principle as Colonel Mannering, when he 
 preferred Dirk Hatteraick to Glossin as the bolder 
 scoundrel of the two. 
 
 ‘If (continues the reminiscent) I were to seek a 
 strongly-marked contrast to the character, figure, and 
 speech of Talleyrand, I might name Lord Sidmouth, a 
 patient of mine at the same period.’ ‘The contrast is 
 so strong that the bare juxtaposition looks strange. 
 Canning’s parodies and epigrams had not prepared us 
 to find ‘the Doctor’ taking the lead in conversation. 
 Yet so it was: the scene Lord Stowell’s house in 
 Grafton Street, the doorplate of which was the ee 
 of Jekyll’s joke. 
 
 ‘Lord Sidmouth was the talker of the party; but the 
 whimsical roll of Lord Stowell’s massive shoulder, when 
 uttering some interlocutory phrase of dry humour, was 
 worth more to the eye than any amount of speech to the ear. 
 Lord Alvanley’s description of him, as “a conceited Mus- 
 
 1 Late in life he applied to the Pope to wncardinalise him. The Pope 
 refused, and Madame de Sévigné describes him as ‘ recardinalisé.’ 
 2 ¢Pour mériter son cceur, pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, 
 J’ai fait la guerre aux rois, je laurais faite aux Dieux.’ 
 
Ou SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 covy duck,” had an amusing personal reality about it, felt 
 even by those who knew his high merits as a Judge and 
 master of international law. His house curiously illustrated 
 the habits of the man, in its utter destitution of all the 
 appliances of luxury or comfort. The furniture was never 
 either changed or cleaned. Year after year I-wrote pre- 
 scriptions there with the same solitary pen—the single one, 
 I believe, in his possession, and rarely used by himself after 
 his retirement from public business. He had corresponded 
 with Dr. Johnson early in life. Latterly be rarely wrote a 
 letter. Of society, even legal, he had little or none, and he 
 did not covet it.’ 
 
 Lord Stowell (then Dr. Scott) was Johnson’s travel- 
 jing companion from Newcastle to Edinburgh, and was 
 accidentally prevented from accompanying Johnson and 
 Boswell in the tour to the Hebrides. They frequently 
 dined together at the Mitre, besides meeting at the 
 Club. He won the Doctor’s heart by giving Boswell, 
 who was teasing all his acquaintances for a definition of 
 taste, the following: ‘That faculty of the mind which 
 leads a Scotchman to prefer England to his own 
 country. Speaking of investments, he avowed a 
 marked predilection for ‘ the beautiful simplicity of the 
 Three per Cents.’ He defended dinners for public or 
 local purposes, on the ground that a dinner lubricates 
 business. In penuriousness and fondness for port, 
 Lord Stowell and his brother Lord Eldon were alike. 
 It is a moot point which of them said of the other, in 
 answer to the inquiry how much wine he could drink 
 at a sitting, ‘ any given quantity.’ 
 
 An entire chapter of the ‘ Recollections’ is devoted to 
 the question, ‘which, indeed, every existing generation 
 has motive and right to ask, as to its relations of better 
 or worse—morally, intellectually, and socially—to the 
 generation going before it. Sir Henry has supplied 
 materials for an answer, rather than a complete answer 
 in itself, and done so in a manner to ward off, at all 
 events, the imputation commonly levelled at elderly 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 283° 
 
 moralists—that, by the very law of their being, they 
 are eulogists of the past. There would be ample 
 apology for him, if he was. It is undeniable that there 
 are eras or cycles of intellectual excellence, as the 
 Augustan age, the Elizabethan age, the age of Louis 
 Quatorze, the age of Queen Anne. If any one who 
 had lived in, and outlived, one of these eras were 
 to say, during a blank interval, that he discerned 
 symptoms of decline, the odds are that he would be 
 expressing nota prejudice but the fact. 
 
 There was a period in Sir Henry Holland’s past life 
 when England could boast a constellation of celebrities : 
 —Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, 
 Crabbe, Moore, Rogers, Proctor, Campbell, in poetry ; 
 Grey, Grenville, Sheridan, Canning, Brougham, Castle- 
 reagh, Plunkett, Grattan, Tierney, Peel, in oratory and 
 statesmanship; Hallam, Milman, Southey, Jeffrey, 
 Mackintosh, Gifford, in history and criticism; the 
 Kembles, Kean, Mathews, Farren, Young, Liston, Miss 
 O'Neil, (Lady Becher), Miss Stephens (Lady Essex), on 
 the stage; Jekyll, Frere, the four Smiths (Bobus, 
 Sydney, James, Horatio), Theodore Hook, Alvanley, 
 Luttrell, Lady Morley, Lady Aldborough, in wit; 
 Ellenborough, Stowell, Sir William Grant, on the 
 Bench ; Scarlett, Romilly, Copley, at the Bar; Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence, Constable, Wilkie, Turner, Flax- 
 man, Chantrey, representing Art; and the Iron Duke, 
 the centre of a gallant band, personifying war. 
 
 Then came another not altogether disconnected nor 
 yet wholly extinct period, when the reminiscent might 
 have gazed round a circle luminous with the names of 
 Melbourne, Palmerston, Aberdeen, Russell, Clarendon, 
 Derby, Grote, Macaulay, Froude, Buckle, Mahon 
 (Stanhope), Lockhart, Herschel, Whewell, Babbage, 
 Murchison, John Stuart Mill, Carlyle, Lytton Bulwer, 
 Tennyson, Browning, Monckton Milnes, Hood, King- 
 lake, George Eliot, Caroline Norton, Mrs. Somerville, 
 
284 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 Dickens, Thackeray, Landseer, Eastlake, Maclise, 
 Watts, Millais, Macready, Charles Kean, Fanny 
 Kemble, Wigan, O’Connell, Shiel, Gladstone, Disraeli, 
 Lewis, Wilberforce, Cobden, Bright. Reverting to 
 such periods, seeing nothing coming on to replace 
 what is dying out, no rising genius, nothing first-rate 
 under forty, an octogenarian might be excused for 
 assuming and speculating on an undeniable decline. 
 
 It will be understood, of course, that we make a 
 broad exception for the physical sciences, which (under 
 a cluster of bright lights) are advancing with such 
 rapidity that ‘what yesterday was an invisible point 
 is our goal to-day, and may be our starting-point to- 
 morrow. ‘Travellers like Speke, Grant, and Living- 
 stone,—explorers like Rawlinson, Layard, and Strze- 
 lecki, have simultaneously extended and _ elevated 
 geography. 
 
 But this is far from implying a corresponding 
 improvement in mind and morals, or in the tone, 
 habits, and constitution of society. Sir Henry Holland 
 has drawn up a kind of debtor and creditor account 
 without declaring the balance. His first item of 
 charge is the ‘ over-crowding of the London world: 
 a phrase which will be appreciated by all who have ~ 
 lived in its midst.’ The dinner-parties and evening 
 parties, the gatherings of all sorts (he contends) are too 
 large for rational enjoyment. The upper ten thousand 
 (swelled to thirty) are formed by centripetal attraction 
 into crowds resembling mobs, in which the finer 
 elements get mingled with the coarser, to the inevitable 
 deterioration of the best. There is no set or cirele to 
 impose laws or pass sentences. Fashion, for want of 
 an autocrat, resembles the lower empire. The black 
 sheep of one quarter may be the milk-white lamb of 
 another. Expelled from Belgravia she has only to 
 pitch her tent in Tyburnia or May Fair. Intrusive 
 vulgarity, backed by wealth, has gained by this state of 
 things, and to it we are indebted for the acclimatisation 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 285 
 
 on Enelish soil of the demi-monde, on the discovery of 
 which M. Dumas the younger, the new Academician, 
 prides himself as on the discovery of a star. But, on 
 the other hand, let it be remembered that Fashion, in 
 its heyday, was a crushing and degrading, if a refining, 
 tyranny; that its benefits were confined to the 
 privileged few, and that we are well rid of it, if the 
 ereatest happiness of the greatest number is to be the 
 test. | 
 
 Sir Henry says that he was once called in to prescribe 
 for a fair patient whose illness was occasioned by the 
 refusal of a subscription to Almack’s. A non-medical 
 friend of ours was recently called in to advise on a 
 similar case,—that of a young lady who was fretting 
 herself into a fever because she had not been invited to 
 a ball given to the Prince and Princess of Wales at 
 Strawberry Hill. As she happened to be very pretty, 
 Lady Waldegrave proved less obdurate than the patron- 
 esses, and the fitting remedy was applied. But the ma- 
 terial difference between the two cases was this: our 
 friend’s patient would have missed a pleasant evening ; 
 Sir Henry’s was exposed to a downright loss of caste. 
 To be free of the exclusive coterie, to have the entrée of 
 certain houses, in her time, was like belonging to the 
 noblesse under the ancient régime in France. There 
 are now plenty of pleasant houses, with parties of all 
 sorts and sizes, small and select as well as large and in- 
 discriminate: cultivated men and women abound in 
 every quarter ; and lines of demarcation are not want- 
 ing, although not very rigidly drawn nor very strongly 
 cuarded. What we miss are the great houses which 
 were discriminating without being exclusive. 
 
 Although rank and wealth still command their fair 
 share of weight and influence, the tendency of recent 
 changes has been towards a mingling of ranks—towards 
 placing the middle class more on a level with the 
 higher. Clubs and railroads have powerfully co-ope- 
 
286 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 rated in this direction. Men of moderate means now 
 dine and travel like the millionaire: they need not 
 envy the richest noble his post-horses, his library, his 
 drawing-room, or his cook. The notion that men are 
 lured away from the family circle is a mistake, for the 
 percentage who pass their evenings at clubs is not 
 enough to produce the smallest difference in domesti- 
 city ; and that club-life is an improvement on tavern- 
 life, it would be paradoxical to dispute. 
 
 An important step towards the assimilation of classes 
 ‘was forced upon the aristocracy by the overcrowded 
 state of what used to be considered the only gentleman- 
 like callings and professions : 
 
 ‘She (the Duchess in “ Lothair”) frets herself too much 
 about her boys; she does not know what to do with them. 
 They will not go into the Church, and they have not fortune 
 for the Guards. 
 
 ‘TJ understood that Lord Plantagenet was to be a civil 
 engineer,” said Lady Corisande. 
 
 ‘And Lord Albert Victor to have a sheep-walk in 
 Australia,” continued Lady St. Jerome.’ 
 
 There are Lords in Trade and Honourables on the 
 Stock Exchange. Levelling doctrines and - pseudo- 
 liberality apart, is this precisely as it should be? 
 Noblesse oblige. There was a time-honoured custom 
 in Bretagny for a noble, about to engage in trade, to 
 lay down his titles and armorial bearings, not to be re- 
 sumed until the derogatory occupation had been defi- 
 nitively abandoned.! There was good sense and far- 
 sighted policy in this custom, although modern manners 
 may not admit of its revival. Commerce has not gained 
 in public estimation of late years, notwithstanding this 
 accession of rank and title. ‘It is gone, that chastity 
 of (mercantile) honour, which felt a stain like a wound.” 
 
 1The required formality, as witnessed at Rennes by Yorick (in the 
 
 “Sentimental Journey’), was for the noble publicly to deposit his sword 
 in the hands of the president during a meeting of the States. 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 287 
 
 To rig the market, to circulate a delusive prospectus, 
 involves no loss of credit, unless there come a crash; 
 and then the judicious speculator, who has sold his 
 shares at a premium, can safely laugh at the dupes. 
 
 ‘Populus me sibilat ; at mihi plaudo 
 Ipse domi, simulac nummos contemplor in arca.’ 
 
 We cordially go along with Sir Henry Holland in de- 
 precating theneglect of English Classics, the want of fami- 
 liarity with Milton, Pope, Dryden, Swift, Addison, and 
 even Shakspeare (now that he has nearly dropped out of 
 the acting drama) which is hourly betrayed by cultivated 
 people in society, and most especially by writers for the 
 periodical press. And yet, we equally agree with him, 
 the vast amount of talent, knowledge, and wit expended 
 in journalism is one of the most notable characteristics 
 of the times. The English newspapers have well-nigh 
 realised Benjamin Constant’s axiom: ‘The Press is the 
 tribune enlarged ; speech is the vehicle of intelligence, 
 and intelligence is the mistress of the world.’ As vehi- 
 cles of intelligence, as workshops of opinion, as mirrors 
 of passing events, as the arena in which conflicting 
 notions and theories are fought out, they supply the 
 best possible materials for self-government, if (as may 
 be plausibly contended) they do not practically and 
 substantially constitute it. Chatham protested in his 
 loftiest strain against calling the Lords and Commons 
 of England together to register the decrees of ‘ one too 
 powerful subject.’ He would protest in vain against 
 their being called together to register the decrees of the 
 Press. But it is the Press distilling the essence of 
 books, speeches, and reviews—the Press, to which we 
 all of us contribute in some shape—the Press, represent- 
 ing the enlightened majority of the nation, the provin- 
 cial equally with the metropolitan press, that holds this 
 sovereignty and dictates its conclusions or its will. 
 
 Admirably as many of the local newspapers. are 
 
288 SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 written and conducted, they are mainly indebted for 
 their elevation to the electric telegraph, which places 
 them, in point of information, on a footing of equality, 
 and gives them the start in time. At Manchester, 
 Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, 
 Dublin—at all the great towns and cities except London 
 —the merchant relies perforce on the local paper for 
 his news, and takes the London paper (when he takes 
 it) as a luxury. 
 
 Sir Henry avoids the nice question of social morality, 
 but he is severe on modern dress, male and female. 
 Men dress carelessly and negligently, whilst women 
 are guilty of excesses which are both inexcusable and 
 unaccountable: such, for example, as the unhealthy 
 and unbecoming practice of heaping masses of artificial . 
 hair upon their heads. We speak within compass when 
 we say that the dress of a woman of fashion costs three 
 times what it did thirty years since: and the problem 
 where some of them find the means of payment is one 
 which, although frequently raised, it might be deemed 
 indelicate to discuss. ‘This extravagance, being carried 
 farthest by ‘ fast’ people, may be connected with that 
 ‘increased fastness of living’ which has grown up in all 
 classes and occupations. 
 
 ‘ Looking especially at home, we find that the augmented. 
 speed and hurry of locomotion (and I can affirm that people 
 walk faster in the London streets than they did when I first 
 knew these great thoroughfares) is carried into every other 
 department of life; politics, commerce, literature, science, 
 professional and social existence. The loiterers in life are 
 fewer, and the charm of a tranquil leisure is less appreciated 
 and sought after. The country life of England has also 
 undergone various alterations. Country-houses, if not left 
 
 vacant for the year, are peopled for a shorter time than 
 heretofore.’ 
 
 When Fox was expatiating on the pleasure of lying 
 on the lawn at St. Anne’s Hill, with a book in his hand, 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 289 
 
 Sheridan objected—‘ And why the book?’ He used 
 to say that he would not give a farthing for a 
 man who could not be agreeably occupied by his 
 own ideas or notions as they spontaneously arose. 
 He would find few sympathisers amongst the rising 
 race of any class. Young Rapid is their model, 
 and their motto, ‘move on.’ At the same time we 
 do not think that country-house life has deteriorated, 
 although shortened by the habit of passing the early 
 autumn abroad. Even here, however, there is too 
 much movement; too much hurrying from house to 
 house. The late General Phipps made it a rule never 
 to accept an invitation for a less period than would 
 cover the expense of posting at the rate of a day 
 for every ten miles. A tariff on the same principle, 
 adapted to railroad travelling, might be laid down. 
 
 To turn to graver topics, our attention is invited to 
 the influence of physical science in promoting a more 
 general and more earnest call for proof in matters which 
 peculiarly belong to faith. We are also told to mark 
 the altered tone and direction of religious controversy, 
 which, no longer content to deal with forms or abstruse 
 doctrines, roughly grapples with the Scriptures, their 
 history, their inspiration, and their truth : 
 
 ‘ Declining, as I must, all speculation as to the causes and 
 future results of the changes just described, I am bound to 
 notice one present good arising out of them, in the increased 
 zeal and activity of the Clergy at large—an effect made 
 known to me professionally as well as by general observation. 
 These qualities would be still more beneficial in their in- 
 fluence were they less alloyed by those sectarian struggles 
 and hatreds which dishonour religion now, as they have done 
 at every preceding period of ecclesiastical history.’ ; 
 
 If ecclesiastical history leaves an unfavourable 
 impression by recording the intestine divisions of 
 Churches, it bears strong evidence to the innate 
 
 VOL. IL. U 
 
290 SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 ‘strength of revealed religion, by showing how often 
 it has recovered and righted itself, when, like a tempest- 
 tossed ship, it seemed on the point of sinking. Its 
 alternating fortunes have been clearly traced, and 
 the logical conclusion (whether quite satisfactory or 
 not) ingeniously deduced, by Canon Liddon, in the 
 series of lectures which he has recently delivered in 
 St. Paul’s. But if durability or irrepressible vitality 
 implied divine origin, it equally follows that the 
 Roman Catholic Church is founded on the rock of 
 truth. ‘She saw the commencement of all the govern- 
 ments and all the ecclesiastical establishments that now 
 exist in the world; and we find no assurance that she 
 is not destined to see the end of them.’? | 
 Arguing @ priori, it might be inferred that the 
 growing demand for positive proof would be fatal to 
 imposture and quackery. But the contrary is the fact. 
 ‘It is curious to note how periodical these epidemic 
 visitations of miracle have become. Mesmeric visions 
 and prophecies, clairvoyance, spirit-rappings, table- 
 turnings and liftings, succeed one another m popular 
 fashion, with certain intervals between, to allow prior 
 detections to be forgotten, and to catch the credulous 
 of a new generation.’ The last visitation of Spiritualism 
 has been both virulent and widespread; exposure has 
 proved powerless as an antidote, and the epidemic 
 has recently broken out, with aggravated symptoms, in 
 the very stronghold of science, the Royal Society itself. 
 ‘Tn all superstitions,’ says Lord Bacon, ‘wise men 
 follow fools.’ Learned men, who are not necessarily 
 wise men, occasionally do: they also occasionally 
 follow rogues ; and there is consequently little cause for 
 wonder when a combination of folly and roguery, like 
 Spiritualism, counts distinguished proselytes by the 
 score. It is the eternal ineradicable hability to such 
 delusions that renders the human mind essentially the 
 
 1 Macaulay’s Essays, 
 
SIR HENRY HOLLAND’S RECOLLECTIONS. 291 
 
 same in all ages; we fear we must say nearly the same 
 of the heart. What reliance can be placed on educa- 
 tion for thoroughly purifying or perfecting either, 
 when we so frequently see the most highly educated 
 men setting the worst example to the rest? Knowledge 
 may prove a panacea for the social errors or abuses 
 which proceed from ignorance, and their name is 
 legion; but, assuming its universal diffusion, it will 
 hardly endow the people at large with the qualities 
 which have been found wanting in the wisest, brightest : 
 in a Bacon, a Brougham, a Voltaire, a Pope. It will 
 not render them proof against vanity, cupidity, or 
 caprice ; it will not confer honour or integrity. They 
 will not perforce become provident and self-sacrificing ; 
 habitually foregoing immediate personal gratification 
 for general and lasting good. Knowledge may clear the 
 surface without penetrating to the core. As for 
 legislation— 
 
 ‘ How small of all that human hearts endure, 
 That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.’ 
 
 Or, to adopt Mr. Gladstone’s words in his Greenwich 
 speech: ‘The social problems which confront us are 
 many and formidable. Let the Government labour to 
 its uttermost, let the Legislature spend days and nights 
 in your service; but after the very best has been 
 achieved, the question whether the English father is to 
 be the father of a happy family, and the centre of a 
 united home, is a question which must depend mainly 
 upon himself.’ The grand hour of trial for society will 
 be when all bad laws shall have been abolished, when 
 all material obstructions to progress shall have been 
 removed, when the baflled demagogue, vainly looking 
 round for a public grievance, shall be brought face 
 to face with the invaluable adage: ‘ Let every man’s 
 reform, like his charity, begin at home, and society, 
 like Thames water, will purify itself.’ Public or 
 
 U2 
 
292, SIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 political virtue reposes on a different foundation from 
 private or domestic virtue: the one must grow 
 spontaneously, the other may be promoted or enforced ; 
 and the problem started by Sir Henry Holland’s 
 retrospect, the problem to be solved by the England of 
 the future, is neither more nor less than whether the 
 highest civilisation can overcome the vices and weak- 
 nesses which we have been taught to believe inherent 
 in mankind. 
 
LADY PALMERSTON. 293 
 
 LADY PALMERSTON. 
 (From THE Times oF SepremBer 15, 1869.) 
 
 Amone the pictures at Panshanger, the seat of Earl 
 Cowper in Hertfordshire, is one by Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 of more than common excellence, representing two 
 boys seated or half-reclining on the trunk of a felled 
 tree, and a girl of more tender years with a basket of 
 flowers in her hand. This picture possesses an interest 
 far beyond what it may derive from being one of the 
 last great works of the master; for the figures are por- 
 traits of William Lamb, second Lord Melbourne, Fre- 
 deric Lamb, third Lord Melbourne, and Amelia Lamb, 
 Viscountess Palmerston, who died on Saturday last. 
 The eldest of those boys grew up to be one of the 
 most remarkable men of the age, and the girl one 
 of the most remarkable women: the superiority in 
 each instance being rather gradually and uncon- 
 sciously reached than asserted, rather conceded than 
 compelled. The brother rose to be Prime Minister 
 of England, without commanding eloquence or lofty 
 ambition, lazily and loungingly as it were, by the spon- 
 taneous display of fine natural abilities, by frankness, 
 manliness, thorough knowledge of his countrymen, and 
 good sense. The sister became the undisputed leader 
 of English society, equally without apparent effort : 
 without aiming at the fame of a wit like Madame de 
 Staél, or that of a beauty hke Madame de Recamier, 
 or that of a party idol lke Georgiana, Duchess of 
 Devonshire: without once overstepping by a hair’s- 
 breadth the proper province of her sex: by the 
 unforced development of the most exquisitely feminine 
 qualities, by grace, refinement, sweetness of disposition, 
 
294 LADY PALMERSTON. 
 
 womanly sympathies, instinctive insight into character, 
 tact, temper, and—wonderful to relate—heart. 
 
 Lady Palmerston, born in 1787, was the daughter 
 of Peniston, first Lord Melbourne. Her mother was 
 the sister of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the father of Lady 
 Noel Byron; and Lady Palmerston was a striking 
 illustration of the maxim that personal, especially mental, 
 oifts and qualities are usually inherited through the 
 mother. Lady Melbourne exercised a marked influence 
 over a large circle of distinguished acquaintance. 
 Lord Byron alludes to her in 1813 as ‘the best 
 friend I ever had in my life, and the cleverest woman.’ 
 In 1818 he writes: ‘The time is past when I could 
 feel for the dead, or I should feel for the death of Lady 
 Melbourne, the best, the kindest, the ablest female I 
 ever knew, old or young.’ 
 
 Lady Palmerston’s childhood and girlhood passed 
 like those of other young ladies of her rank, and her 
 education, except what must have accrued imperceptibly 
 from maternal influences, was the same. Female 
 education did not then aim at crowding the memory 
 with what is called useful knowledge : its chief objects 
 were grace and accomplishment, and the results were 
 seen in individuality and variety of character, in the 
 freer development of the natural faculties, in greater 
 ease, freshness, and elasticity. Women of quality 
 differed like their handwriting, which is now uniform 
 and generic, instead of personal and peculiar. Such, 
 at least, is the broad inference we should draw from 
 the many bright illustrations that have survived to our 
 day, beginning with the one who has given occasion 
 for these remarks. 
 
 The first event in her life requiring notice was her 
 marriage with Harl Cowper in 1805. She immediately 
 took her place in the brilliant galaxy of beautiful and 
 accomplished women of rank, who continued to form 
 the chief ornament of the British Court during successive 
 
LADY PALMERSTON. 295 
 
 reigns, till they were gradually replaced, not outshone, 
 by a younger, not fairer or more fascinating race. It 
 was about the period of the imperial and royal visits 
 to London, in 1814-15, that these ladies, as if by a 
 common understanding, concentrated their attractions ; 
 and it was during these two eventful years, when the 
 metropolis glittered with stars, ribands, and bright 
 eyes, that, conspicuous in her own despite among the 
 gay and dazzling throng, was the charming Lady 
 Cowper, like ‘grace put in action,’ whose softness 
 was as seductive as her joyousness— 
 
 ‘ Whose laugh, full of mirth, without any control, 
 But the sweet one of gracefulness, rang from her soul.’ 
 
 Yet that throng comprised Sarah, Countess of Jersey, 
 Corisande, Countess of Tankerville, Mary Isabella, 
 Duchess of Rutland, Lady Charlotte Campbell, and a 
 long array of formidable competitors. - One result or 
 product of this period was the institution ef Almack’s. 
 On the introduction of quadrilles and waltzes after the 
 Peace, grown-up people had to learn their dancing 
 over again, and a high-born party met daily at Devon- 
 shire House, where it was agreed to establish a series 
 of subscription balls on the cheapest and most restricted 
 plan. Lady Cowper was one of the first six patronesses, 
 and during her long tenure of power (for it was 
 power) in that capacity, her influence was uniformly 
 exerted to modify the exclusiveness of her colleagues. 
 Her fond admiration for her brother William, and 
 the jealous watch which she kept over his reputation 
 to the last, leave little doubt that she was no indifferent 
 or unappreciating observer of the adventures, or mis- 
 adventures, of her political friends before or after their 
 accession to office in 1830. But what may be called 
 her public life dates from 1839, when she married 
 Lord Palmerston, Lord Cowper having died in 1837 ; 
 although no one would have been more surprised than 
 
296 LADY PALMERSTON. 
 
 herself if, at that time, she had been told that she was 
 about to begin a career which, in any sense, could be 
 called public. 
 
 A celebrated writer (the Countess Hahn Hahn) has 
 declared her sex incapable of the sustained pursuit of an 
 elevated object for its own sake. ‘When a woman’s heart 
 is touched, when it is moved by love, then the electric 
 spark is communicated and the fire of inspiration flares 
 up; but even then she desires no more than to suffer 
 or die for what she loves. That woman remains to be 
 born who is capable of interesting herself for an abstract 
 idea.’ Lady Palmerston formed no exception to this 
 theory. The motive power in her case was love of 
 Lord Palmerston: it was her intense interest in him, 
 and in his political fortunes that made her a politician: 
 her source of inspiration was not an abstract idea or 
 principle, but the man. To place him and keep him 
 in what she thought his proper position, to make people 
 see him as she saw him, to bring lukewarm friends, 
 carping rivals, or exasperated adversaries within the 
 genial atmosphere of his conversation, to tone down 
 opposition and conciliate support—this was thenceforth 
 the fixed purpose and master passion of her hfe. 
 
 If she had deliberately set about the formation of a 
 salon for an interested end, the probability is that she 
 would have failed, as so many equally qualified by 
 birth and fortune have failed both before and since, 
 from not understanding the delicate structure of our 
 society, which will neither be led nor forced, pro- 
 fessedly and ostensibly. The grand attraction of 
 Holland House, Lansdowne House, and Devonshire 
 House in the olden time, was the conviction that these 
 princely residences were open to merit of every sort, 
 that the noble owners had a genuine relish for intel- 
 jectual eminence, and cordially sympathised with the 
 artists, men of letters, and others of purely personal 
 distinction, who were their guests. The attraction of 
 
LADY PALMERSTON. 297 
 
 Lady Palmerston’s salon at its commencement was the 
 mixed, yet select and refined, character of the as- 
 semblage, the result of that exquisite tact and high 
 breeding which secured her the full benefits of exclusive- 
 ness without its drawbacks. Among the habitués of 
 Panshanger, from the time she became its mistress, had 
 been men and women of European celebrity, such as 
 Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo, the Princess Lieven, the 
 Duchess di Dino. The diplomatic corps eagerly con- 
 gregated at the house of the Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs. So did the politicians: the leading members 
 of the fine world were her habitual associates; and the 
 chief difficulty of her self-appointed task lay in recruiting 
 from among the rising celebrities of public life, fashion, 
 or literature. 
 
 From the time Lord Palmerston became Prime 
 Minister, she grew less particular and discriminating, 
 and although the current story of her ‘ gilded cards’ 
 (which never were gilded) was grossly exaggerated, a 
 limited number of invitations were occasionally distri- 
 buted with direct reference to votes. But so many were 
 simultaneously distributed from higher motives that the 
 tone and complexion of the company remained sub- 
 stantially unchanged. She had a marked predilection 
 for youth and beauty, along with an equally marked 
 dislike to vulgarity and ungainliness. She would have 
 ‘those two pretty girls;’ and she would not have 
 ‘that fat woman with her ugly daughters,’ although 
 the fat woman was the wife of a county member, and 
 the two pretty girls had neither father nor brother in 
 either House. The élite of the London world were 
 invariably asked without regard to politics, and the 
 most liberal hospitality was extended to all foreigners 
 of note. 
 
 Few things admitting of order can be thoroughly well 
 done without it. Her visiting book was kept as regularly 
 as a merchant’s ledger. So long as her health allowed, 
 
298 LADY PALMERSTON. 
 
 she made a point of filling up her cards with her own 
 hand, and she knew exactly whom she had invited for 
 each of her alternate nights. She used to say that she 
 rarely gave a large party without its being attended by 
 three or four persons not invited for the night or not 
 invited at all. But not a shade of manner on her part 
 betrayed her recollection of the fact. ‘If,’ she would 
 say, ‘it amused them to come, they were quite welcome.’ 
 Indeed, her good nature was inexhaustible, nor was it 
 ever known to give way under any extent of forward- 
 ness or tiresomeness. The quintessence of high breed- 
 ing is never to ruffle, offend, or mortify—never to 
 sause an unpleasant feeling by a tone, a gesture, or a 
 word ; and, instead of interrupting or abruptly quitting 
 wearisome or pushing visitors, she would listen till they 
 ceased of their own accord, or were superseded and 
 went away. 
 
 There is a prevalent notion tha sensibility and im- 
 pressibility are destroyed or blunted by advancing 
 years. But, on a calm analysis of the alleged instances, 
 it will be found that, where fancy and feeling are 
 supposed to have decayed or died out, they never, in 
 pomt of fact, existed. The flash and exuberance 
 of youthful spirits were mistaken for them. Lady 
 Palmerston never lost her wonderful freshness. Her 
 impressions were as lively, her sympathies as warm, 
 her affections as expansive, when she had passed eighty, 
 as when, in opening womanhood, she was pelting 
 _ flowers or rowing on the lake at Brocket, or playfully 
 proposing to bound over the billiard-table at Petworth. 
 Familiar topics did not weary her, nor strange repel. 
 She felt the same vivid interest in things and people, 
 old and young, as if she was just entering life; and 
 this enviable faculty—be it remembered to her im- 
 mortal honour—was retained through sixty years of 
 pomps and vanities, of luxury and flattery, of social 
 and political scheming, of alternate elation, and de- 
 
LADY PALMERSTON. 299 
 
 spondency, of all that is factitious, most illusion-destroy- 
 ing, most demoralising in what serious people shun, 
 denounce, and deprecate as ‘ the world.’ 
 
 It isa boon or a penance to be exempt from the 
 operation of that kindly law of nature, which makes 
 those whose pilgrimage through life has been pro- 
 longed beyond the common span, comparatively in- 
 sensible to the gradual dropping off of their early 
 companions on the way? Lady Palmerston was 
 saddened and depressed by the death of the late 
 Countess of Tankerville, followed by that of another 
 cherished friend, Lady Willoughby, to an extent that 
 caused serious apprehension for her health. The 
 morning of a grand dinner to the Italian Princes at 
 Cambridge House, Lady Tankerville was taken ill and 
 unable to be present. The moment the party broke up, 
 Lady Palmerston, without waiting for her carriage, got 
 into a hack cab and hurried off to the bedside of the 
 invalid in Hertford Street. 
 
 Whoever was fortunate enough to be once received 
 on a cordial footing of intimacy might count securely 
 on her enduring regard and her generous advocacy if 
 required. She was thoroughly, enthusiastically loyal, 
 and would tolerate no doubt, suspicion, or depreciation 
 of a friend. She was also placable in the extreme 
 towards wn-friends, provided they had not been guilty 
 of the unpardonable sin of caballing against Lord. 
 Palmerston, or transgressed the limits of fair party 
 warfare in assailing him. Then a change came over 
 her: the patte de velours shot out its claws: the dove 
 seemed armed with the beak and talons of the hawk. 
 One of the most cutting letters of reproach ever 
 written was addressed by her to the late Charles 
 Greville, whom she valued and esteemed, on hearing that 
 he had taken an active and hostile part in the Pacifico 
 affair. Her anger was short-lived. She might have 
 taken for her motto, ‘ Benefits in marble, injuries in 
 
300 LADY PALMERSTON. 
 
 dust.’ She never forsook a friend, and always forgave 
 a foe. | 
 
 Englishwomen cannot talk politics, properly so 
 called, whatever may be the case with Frenchwomen, 
 whose alleged superiority 1s open to doubt. The 
 reason has been already indicated. Their views are 
 purely personal ; ‘men, not measures,’ is their maxim: 
 their thoughts are running on whether a husband, a 
 brother, or a lover is to achieve distinction or get a 
 place. Lady Palmerston seldom attempted or pre- 
 tended to understand the bearings of a complicated 
 question. ‘ You must write that down,’ she would say 
 if a communication struck her, ‘and I will show it to 
 Lord Palmerston when he comes in; or stay, perhaps 
 he is not gone out.’ The bell was rung, the servant 
 was sent with a scrap of paper, or a simple message, 
 and the summons was immediately obeyed. Long 
 experience had taught him that her tact, her intuition, 
 were infallible in such matters, and these were similarly 
 displayed in her choice of correspondents as well as in 
 the selection from their letters which she laid before him. 
 
 The services of the great lady to the great statesman 
 extended far beyond the creation of a salon. What 
 superficial observers mistook for indiscretion, was 
 eminently useful to him. She always understood full 
 well what she was telling, to whom she was telling it, 
 when and where it would be repeated, and whether 
 the repetition would do harm or good. Instead of the 
 secret that was betrayed, it was the feeler that was put 
 forth; and no one ever knew from or through Lady 
 Palmerston what Lord Palmerston did not wish to be 
 known. His death was a terrible shock, from which she 
 slowly recovered. She afterwards expressed her belief 
 that it had actually prolonged her life. She was haunted 
 by the fear that his strength and faculties would break 
 down without his being conscious of the decline. She sat 
 up for him every night when he attended the House of 
 
LADY PALMERSTON. 301 
 
 Commons, and she was wearing herself away with 
 anxiety. 
 
 Subsequently to Lord Palmerston’s death, her 
 domestic circle was almost exclusively confined to her 
 family and connections ; and a most agreeable society 
 it was, comprising a more than ordinary amount of 
 accomplishment and charm. She rightly counted 
 her children and grand-children among the choicest 
 blessings that Providence had bestowed upon her: her 
 heart was large enough for all: she had no favourites 
 among them: the presence of each inspired the same 
 pure, unselfish pleasure; and it was by being con- 
 stantly surrounded by objects of interest and affection, 
 that she was enabled to bear up against a bereavement 
 which must have proved fatal had it condemned her to 
 solitary grief. 
 
 She undertook the entire management of the house- 
 hold at Brocket, Cambridge House, and Broadlands, as 
 well as that of her own property ; personally inspecting 
 the accounts, and leaving nothing to agents, stewards, 
 or head servants but what fell strictly within their 
 respective departments. The consequence was, that 
 she was admirably served, and that an air of ease and 
 comfort pervaded each of her establishments. She 
 kept a journal, which, some time or other, may furnish 
 valuable aids to history. 
 
 She had read a good deal in a desultory way, and, 
 when roused to the exertion, could talk on a wide 
 range of subjects with a vigour and accuracy which 
 would have astonished those who had only seen her 
 trifling gracefully with the Cynthia of the minute, the 
 floating rumour or gossip of the hour. She possessed 
 a keen insight into character, and was singularly 
 happy in conveying a trai. py an epithet or a graphic 
 sketch by a phrase ; letting fall her felicitous touches 
 with an ease and trontaneity that showed her uncon- 
 scious of the gift. 
 
302 LADY PALMERSTON. 
 
 She was rigidly just in her fixed estimates of 
 character: chary, with rare exception, of her pre- 
 ferences: mild, yet firm, in her disapproval: warm, 
 but not extravagant, in her praise. Above all, she 
 never indulged in that false enthusiasm for books, 
 pictures, or persons which so often tries to pass current 
 for the cream of amiability and taste. Her name will 
 live, her memory will endure, indissolubly blended with 
 one of the most brilliant episodes of the social “life of 
 England, with many a sweet scene of domestic happiness, 
 with many a glowing image of conjugal and maternal 
 love, with many a delightful hour of ‘social pleasure, 
 ill exchanged for power ’—with all that is winning, 
 high-minded, warm-hearted—with nothing that is petty, 
 ungenerous, ungraceful, uncharitable, or false. It has 
 been confidently predicted that the days of the grande 
 dame of France, the great lady of England, have passed 
 away as out of keeping with the age. It is certainly 
 only by a happy accident that the loss we are now 
 lamenting will be replaced. But should an attempt 
 be made to ascend the vacant throne by any duly 
 qualified aspirant, she will hit upon no surer mode of 
 advancing her pretensions than by treading in the foot- 
 steps of her admired, beloved, and universally 
 regretted predecessor. 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. 303 
 
 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 (From THE SaTuRDAY REviEw, FEBRuaRy 7, 1863.) 
 
 THE death of Lord Lansdowne is one of those events 
 which, although long anticipated with their conse- 
 quences, are never thoroughly appreciated till they 
 occur. On the morning of Sunday last, all men more 
 or less connected with the world of politics, fashion, 
 science, literature, or art, felt that they had lost 
 something more than a sagacious counsellor, a courteous 
 and liberal host, a valued friend, a cultivated companion, 
 or a munificent patron. A link was simultaneously 
 broken in the chain which binds men of intellectual 
 mark together for high and useful purposes, and in that 
 which connects the leading minds of the present 
 generation with the past. 
 
 Placed by birth from boyhood in the position which 
 others, destitute of that advantage, spend years in 
 struggling for, Lord Lansdowne eagerly profited by his 
 opportunities. He could relate how he had listened to 
 Burke in one of his most excited moods at Beacons- 
 field, and how he had strolled in the garden or turnip- 
 field at St. Anne’s Hill— 
 
 When in retreat Fox lays his thunders by, 
 And Wit and Taste their mingled charms supply. 
 
 Having encountered Pitt in actual debate, he could 
 repeat, with the emphasis of conviction— 
 Stetimus tela aspera contra, 
 
 Contulimusque manus. Experto credite, quantus 
 In clypeum assurgat, quo turbine torqueat hastam. 
 
 He was showing only the other day at Bowood a 
 copy of Boswell’s Johnson presented to him ‘ from 
 
304 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 the Author;’ and one of the most valuable contributions 
 to ‘the Johnsonian Urn’ is his letter describing his 
 visit to Mrs. Piozzi whilst she was busy with ‘ Retro- 
 spection’ in 1799.1. His manhood and old age were 
 passed, like his youth, among all that was gifted or 
 famous, learned, accomplished, refined, or elevating— 
 attracted round him far more by his unaffected 
 sympathy and congenial habits than by his rank. He 
 did not extend a haughty or condescending patronage 
 to men of talent or genius. He claimed brotherhood 
 with them : he sought them out as his natural associates ; 
 and his value as their common centre is the measure 
 of their loss. There is no longer a house at which the 
 celebrities of all nations may be sure of meeting, as on 
 tableland of which D’Alembert holds out a prospect in 
 some future state; and the richest store of varied and 
 instructive reminiscences existing in our time is gone 
 with the deceased nobleman to the grave. 
 
 Although his fortune came from Sir William Petty 
 through a female, he was lineally descended in the 
 male line from the Fitzmaurices, Harls of Kerry. He 
 was the second son of the celebrated Earl of Shelburne, 
 whose ambition, justified by his abilities, was balked by 
 the suspicion, justly or unjustly entertained, of his 
 sincerity. When Gainsborough painted his portrait, 
 his lordship complained that it was not like. The 
 painter said he did not approve it either, and begged to 
 try again. Failing a second time, he flung down his 
 pencil, saying, ‘ D it, I never could see through 
 varnish, and there’s an end.’ We commend this story 
 to those who believe in hereditary qualities, for the late 
 Marquis was frankness and truth personified. In 
 allusion to the LEarl’s nickname of Malagrida (a 
 Portuguese Jesuit), Goldsmith once naively remarked to 
 
 * Addressed to me and printed in Autobiography, Letters, Sc., of Mrs. 
 Prozzt, vol, i. p. 345, 2d. ed. 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. 305 
 
 him, ‘ Do you know, I never could conceive the reason 
 why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very 
 good sort of man.’ To console him for missing the 
 Premiership, he was made a Marquis, and he busied him- 
 self during the remainder of his life with the adornment 
 of Lansdowne House and the formation of the fine 
 collection of pictures, statues, books, and manuscripts 
 which was reluctantly dispersed by his eldest son and 
 immediate successor. 
 
 Henry, the third Marquis, first known to fame as 
 Lord Henry Petty, was born on July 2, 1780. He 
 was educated at Westminster, where, according to 
 tradition, just before leaving school at the age of six- 
 teen or seventeen, he was unjustly and improperly 
 flogzed. He was next sent to Edinburgh under the 
 care of a tutor, Mr. Debarry, where, at the table of 
 Dugald Stewart and in the Speculative Society, he 
 associated with a set of young men who were destined 
 to work a revolution in literature and (some of them) 
 to play a conspicuous and important part on the 
 political arena,—with (among others) Jeffrey, Sydney 
 Smith, Lord Palmerston, Horner, Lord Brougham, and 
 Sir. Walter Scott. He was wont to say that the 
 preparation of his essays and speeches for their debating 
 club was the most useful mental trainmg he underwent 
 at any period. 
 
 Before he left Scotland he was entered of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1801. 
 The impression left by him on his late associates at 
 Edinburgh, and the expectations formed of him, may 
 be learned from one of Horner’s letters to his friend, 
 Murray (the late Lord Murray), dated April 10, 1801 : 
 
 ‘Pray remember me to Petty. Iam surprised he is not 
 yet gone abroad, but you must deem it a very fortunate cir- 
 cumstance for yourself, as there cannot be a more agreeable 
 companion. If Lord Henry has continued to improve that 
 yery strong understanding, and to augment that store of 
 
 VOL. II. x 
 
306 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 valuable information which he appeared to possess when I 
 had the pleasure of knowing him, his society must be equally 
 instructive and pleasing. Partiality aside, would you still 
 distinguish him bya cool, clear-thinking head, a plain, firm, 
 manly judgment ?’ 
 
 When the Peace of Amiens re-opened the Continent 
 to English enterprise or curiosity, Lord Henry Petty 
 started for what was called the Grand Tour, attended 
 by Dumont, the translator and exponent of Bentham, 
 taking Lausanne and Geneva on his way.  ‘ Coxe’s 
 Travels in Switzerland’ was still fresh in Swiss 
 recollection, and it was at one of these places, as he used 
 to narrate, that the landlord boasted of having lodged 
 the two most celebrated of his countrymen, Jonszeur 
 Fox et Monsieur Cove. The renewal of the war 
 speedily drove back the travellers, and Lord Henry 
 took his seat for Calne, the borough which, under his 
 control or counsel, certainly contributed more than its 
 full share to the eloquence, knowledge, and ability of 
 the Legislature. His maiden speech was on the Bank 
 Restriction Act, but his first decided parliamentary hit 
 was a speech against Lord Melville, of which Horner 
 (April 19, 1805) writes thus to Mackintosh : 
 
 ‘Lord Henry Petty has gained immense reputation by his 
 speech on the 8th instant. I have heard several persons say 
 that Fox’s compliment was seriously deserved when he called: 
 it the best speech that had been made that night. Lord 
 Henry is moving very steadily on to a high station both in 
 the public opinion and in office. His discretion, his good 
 sense, his pains in acquiring knowledge, and the improve- 
 ment of his power as well as taste in speaking, make such a 
 prophecy with regard to his future destiny very safe.’ 
 
 Tierney said, ‘It is a matter of pride to any man to 
 be able to call himself the friend of such rising talents 
 and eloquence.’ ‘Let me here,’ says Earl Stanhope, 
 in his ‘ Life of Pitt,’ ‘interrupt my narrative to notice 
 that such signs of success in Lord Henry must have 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. 307 
 
 b 
 
 cheered the closing hours of his father ;’ who died 
 within a month of this time. So high was then the 
 estimate of the young orator’s capacity that he was 
 supposed equal to a repetition of the part played by Pitt 
 in 1784, had he been ready to throw off the party 
 ties that bound him to Fox; of which, however, none 
 of his friends so much as suspected him. His fealty 
 had been already tried; for we learn from Earl 
 Stanhope that, when Pitt was forming his Government 
 in 1804, ‘he proposed an office (not in the Cabinet) 
 to the second son of his old chief Shelburne. This was 
 Lord Henry Petty, a young man of rare promise. 
 The offer was sent him through Mr. Long, but was 
 declined by Lord Henry, who adhered to the party of 
 Fox. It was a refusal of which the consequences 
 extended far beyond the time in question. How 
 greatly, in after years, would the party of Pitt have 
 gained could they have reckoned amongst their 
 leaders the present Marquis of Lansdowne!’ 
 
 He was to have moved the Amendment to the 
 Address on the opening of the Session of 1806, when 
 party warfare was suspended by the alarming illness 
 of Pitt; on whose death he was rewarded for his 
 exertions and straightforwardness by a place in the 
 Cabinet of All the Talents. That, as their Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, he did not lose ground with the 
 public, is clear from the manner in which Horner 
 continues to speak of him : 
 
 ‘I talk of him asif he were already a Minister; almost all, 
 the world talk of him as on the high road to it, and Mr. Fox 
 regards him as his successor in the only station he has ever 
 held, or may, perhaps, ever hold. I should hardly write 
 with so little reserve about our friend, Lord Henry, to any 
 other person, and, at present, he is in everybody’s mouth.’ 
 
 On vacating his seat by acceptance of office, he 
 stood for the University of Cambridge with Lord 
 x 2 
 
308 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 Palmerston asa competitor ; and itis astriking proof of 
 the gradual breaking down of political differences by 
 the sheer force of events, that these two statesmen, the 
 one starting as a Tory and the other as a Whig, should, 
 during several years, without an imputation of mcon- 
 sistency on that account, have been co-operating more 
 cordially than, perhaps, any two other English states- 
 men of equal eminence. ‘They seem to have reached 
 from opposite sides the same commanding heights, 
 from which the same broad views of government and 
 policy were opened to them. Their electoral contest 
 is immortalised by ‘ Hours of Idleness :’ 
 
 ‘Then would I view each rival wight, 
 Petty and Palmerston survey, 
 Who canvass there with all their might, 
 Against the next election day. 
 
 ‘One on his power and place depends— 
 The other on—the Lord knows what ; 
 Each to some eloquence pretends, 
 Though neither will convince by that.’ 
 
 The same question, Catholic Emancipation, lost Lord 
 Henry both his place and his seat for the Uhiversity. 
 He held the seat only a year, and was succeeded by 
 Sir Vicary Gibbs, to whom an equally short tenure was 
 promised in the punning quotation : 
 
 ‘Nec cultura placet longior annua ; 
 Defunctumque laboribus 
 ANiquali recreat sorte vicarius.’ 
 
 Lord Henry was re-elected for Caine, which he repre- 
 sented till his accession to the Marquisate, by the death 
 of his brother, in November 1809. In March 1808, he 
 had married Lady Louisa Straneways, a daughter of 
 the Earl of Ilchester ; and on the 27th October, 1808, 
 Horner writes to Murray : 
 
 ‘I passed a few days lately with Petty in the beautiful 
 country where he has taken an old house in the midst of old 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. 309 
 
 trees, and I cannot tell you how much I am pleased with 
 Lady Louisa. I believe you saw her; so I need say nothing 
 of her beauty. The gentleness of her manner has a degree 
 of shyness joined with it, but not the least reserve ; so that 
 you soon discover a good and well-informed understanding. 
 I could not fancy a wife better suited to him.’ 
 
 Her fine taste became of incalculable use to him in 
 completing, fitting up, and adorning his two principal 
 residences, especially Bowood, which for felicitous 
 arrangement, refined luxury, harmonising objects of 
 art, pictures, and furniture, gradually grew into the 
 most finished or (to borrow the French expression) 
 best-mounted house in Europe. ‘ When,’ says Mrs. 
 Jameson, ‘the Marquess succeeded to the title, there 
 was not, I believe, a single picture in the family 
 mansion, except, perhaps, a few family portraits. 
 Without setting forth any of the pretensions of con- 
 noisseurship—without apparently making it a matter: 
 of ambition or ostentation to adda gallery of pictures 
 to the other appendages of his rank—guided simply by 
 the love of art, and a wish to possess what is beautiful 
 in itself, for its own sake—Lord Lansdowne has 
 eradually collected together about 160 pictures, all of 
 more or less merit, honourable to the taste which 
 selected them, and not a few of rare interest and 
 value. Lady Lansdowne used to say that, when she 
 first came to Bowood, she had to borrow a rush-chair 
 from the lodge to sit down upon. He trusted to his 
 own judgment or feeling, and the result is, that his 
 pictures please no less by the subject than by the 
 execution : a recommendation of which collectors for 
 vanity’s sake never think at all. 
 
 The Lansdowne collection is particularly rch in 
 Reynoldses, including Mrs. Sheridan, ‘the beautiful 
 mother of a beautiful race,’ as St. Cecilia, and 
 Laurence Sterne, a much admired and most remarkable 
 portrait. Many of the pictures are the early works of 
 
310 LORD LANSDOWNE 
 
 painters little known till Lord Lansdowne brought 
 them forward. Many are associated with noteworthy 
 incidents or remarks. Newton's ‘ Olivia brought back 
 to her Home’ (a scene from the ‘ Vicar of Wakefield ’), 
 is represented with her face hidden in her father’s 
 bosom. ‘It is not very difficult,’ remarked a carping 
 critic, ‘to paint a figure without the face.’ ‘ But it as 
 very difficult,’ retorted Constable, ‘to paint asob.’ What 
 Lord Lansdowne bought was the sob. 
 
 Almost the last (if not the very last) purchase he 
 made was Mr. Rankley’s picture of ‘The Prodigal’s 
 Return.” When told that it had passed into a dealer's 
 hands, having left the walls of the Academy unsold, he 
 exclaimed, with much warmth, ‘ Unsold! where were 
 people’s eyes? Where were their hearts?” dag 
 ‘Teacher of Music, by Mr. Millais, was another of his 
 latest favourites. 
 
 The fitness of each picture for its allotted place, and 
 its harmony with the room and the accompaniments, 
 were carefully subjected to experiment; and when 
 vividly impressed with a favourite specimen or a new 
 purchase, he would take it with him from town to 
 country, or country to town, as if for the uninterrupted 
 enjoyment of its society. With the exception, perhaps, 
 of the Canaletti room at Woburn, there is nothing in 
 England more happily conceived than the dining-room 
 at Bowood, panelled with views by Stansfield in his 
 finest manner. 
 
 In ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Lord 
 Henry is accused of being deep in the counsels of the 
 bard’s presumed enemies— 
 
 ‘Holland with Henry Petty at nis back, 
 The whipper-in and huntsman of the pack.’ 
 
 During many years he had ample leisure for both 
 literature and art; for a long and (to his political 
 friends) tedious interval was to elapse before he was 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. SEF 
 
 to take part again in the practical administration of 
 affairs— 
 
 ‘ Nought’s permanent amongst the human race, 
 Iixcept the Whigs not getting into place.’ 
 
 Lord Lansdowne, however, was thoroughly imbued 
 with the broad principles of civil and religious liberty, 
 and never missed an opportunity of advancing them by 
 opportune advocacy. They gradually won their way 
 forward ; till the ground occupied by the Eldon school 
 of Tories became untenable, and the Canning ministry 
 was formed; from which Lord Grey held haughtily 
 and insultingly aloof, whilst Lord Lansdowne eagerly 
 and cordially supported it. He used to relate, with 
 evident relish of the absurdity, the objection started by 
 William IY. to his joining the Cabinet in 1830. His 
 father had proposed or suggested the cession of 
 Gibraltar ; and His Majesty required a written promise 
 that the proposal or suggestion should never be 
 renewed by the son. 
 
 It is unnecessary for the purposes of this sketch to _ 
 enumerate the offices he filled, or the measures he 
 passed or promoted, from 1827 to 1852, when he 
 formally seceded from the leadership of the House of 
 Lords. Suffice it to say that once at least during the 
 intervening period, and once again prior to the 
 formation of the Aberdeen Ministry, he refused the 
 Premiership.* 
 
 He also refused a dukedom. His acceptance of a 
 seat in the Cabinet without office was a purely unselfish 
 act, dictated by a sense of duty and a wish to gratify 
 the Queen. After the death of the Duke of Welling- 
 
 1 In February 1855, after the resignation of Lord Aberdeen, and prior 
 to Lord Palmerston’s becoming Premier, Lord Lansdowne was again em- 
 powered to form a Ministry, and applied to Mr. Gladstone to retain the 
 Chancellorship of the Exchequer, which Mr, Gladstone declined. I have 
 heard Mr. Gladstone declare that, without pretending to say to what ex- 
 
 tent the course of events was influenced by his refusal, there was no act 
 of his political life which he regretted more. 
 
S12 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 ton, Lord Lansdowne filled the vacated place of 
 constitutional adviser and referee about the throne ; and 
 perhaps no one man ever intervened so often and so 
 successfully to reconcile political adversaries or com- 
 petititors for power. As for coalitions, it would seem as 
 if the mitis sapientia Leeli formed an essential and 
 inevitable part of them. 
 
 We must not omit to state that, as Home Secretary, 
 in 1828, he introduced an important Act for the con- 
 solidation of the Criminal Law, and another for 
 rendering the affirmation of Quakers admissible in 
 criminal cases. But, limited as we are for space, we 
 prefer dwelling on his social position and influence ; 
 which were personal and peculiar, resulting more from 
 taste and temper than design. Consciously or uncon- 
 sclously, he acted on Goethe’s rule, never to pass a day 
 without reading some good poetry, hearing some good 
 music, and seeing some fine picture. ‘ He looks,’ writes 
 Sydney Smith, ‘for talents and qualities amongst all 
 ranks of men, and adds them to his stock of society 
 as a botanist does his plants; and whilst other aristo- 
 crats are yawning amongst Stars and Garters, Lans- 
 downe is refreshing his soul with the fancy and genius 
 which he has found in odd places, and gathered to the 
 marbles and pictures of his palaces.’ He looked also 
 for brilliancy and attractiveness among women; and 
 the renown of more than one celebrated beauty dates 
 from her début at Lansdowne House— 
 
 ‘In early days, when I, of gifts made proud, 
 That could the notice of such men beguile, 
 
 Stood listening to thee in the brilliant crowd, 
 With the warm triumph of a youthful smile.’ ! 
 
 Brillat-Savarin lays down that, to make a pleasant 
 dinner party, the guests should beso selected ‘ that 
 their occupations should be varied, their tastes 
 
 * Mrs. Norton, Dedication to Lord Lansdowne of ‘The Lady of 
 Garaye.’ 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. 313: 
 
 analogous, and with such points of contact that there 
 shall be no necessity for the odious formality of pre- 
 sentation.” The guests at Lansdowne House were so 
 selected ; the host took care that all should share in the 
 conversation ; and when they were re-assembled in the 
 drawing-room, he would adroitly coax them into 
 eroups, or devote himself for a minute or two, care- 
 lessly and without effort, to the most retiring or least 
 known. He was emphatically described as a right- 
 divine gentleman by one (Talfourd) whom he had just 
 been putting at his ease in this manner. He talked 
 delightfully, and he listened as well as he talked. 
 
 To be gathered together, received, and fused, as it 
 were, in this fashion, is a widely different thing from 
 being lionised or invited for an obviously political end ; 
 yet it is not the less true that the Whig party benefited 
 largely by his refined and discriminating, although 
 uncalculating and cosmopolitan, hospitality : 
 
 ‘Many a time has the successful débutant in Parliament 
 or the author just rising into note, repaired to Holland or 
 Lansdowne House, with unsettled views and wavering ex- 
 pectations, fixed in nothing but to attach himself for a time 
 to no party. He is received with that cordial welcome which 
 warms more than dinner and wine ; he is presented to a host 
 of literary, social, and political celebrities, with whom it has 
 been for years his fondest ambition to be associated ; it is 
 gently insinuated that he may become an actual member of 
 that brilliant circle by willing it, or his acquiescence is tacitly 
 and imperceptibly assumed; till, thrown off his guard in 
 the intoxication of the moment, he finds, or thinks himself, 
 irrecoverably committed, and, suppressing any lurking in- 
 clination towards Toryism, becomes deeply and definitely 
 Whig.’ ? 
 
 There is a passage in Lord Macaulay’s Essays, 
 in which, after sketching the interior of Holland 
 House, he suggests how the surviving members of its 
 
 1¢The Art of Dining.’ 
 
314 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 circle might revert to it: ‘They will remember how 
 the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the 
 last comedy of Scribe in another; whilst Wilkie gazed 
 with modest admiration on Sir Joshua’s “ Baretti;’ 
 
 whilst Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to 
 verify a quotation; whilst Talleyrand related his con- 
 versations with Barras at the Luxembourg, or his ride 
 with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. The 
 awakened fancy might roam in like manner through 
 some well-remembered scenes at Lansdowne House. 
 
 There is the dinner-table at which Rogers, placed 
 between Hallam and Macaulay, complained that they 
 wrangled and fought over him, ‘as if I was a dead 
 body :’ at which, in precisely similar circumstances, 
 the great French historian and statesman (Thiers) fell 
 asleep. There are the grim, gray statues, looking down 
 from their niches on the recumbent figure (by Canova) 
 in white marble that gave rise to the somewhat 
 hazardous joke of Payne Knight, which the Marquis 
 did not repeat till the ladies had withdrawn. It was 
 in the doorway of that concert-room that the brilliant 
 and fastidious Frenchman uttered his now celebrated 
 saying: ‘ You English cling to your established beauties 
 as you stand by your old institutions ;’! and it was in 
 the adjoining saloon that Madame de Stiiel, after a-con- 
 sultation with her host as to the best position for at- 
 tracting notice, took her premeditated stand. 
 
 A descent to the subterranean portion of the building 
 might possibly lead to the room in which (according 
 to a plan of the second Marquis) thirty fiddlers were to 
 have been hermetically sealed up, so as to form a 
 reservoir of music for every quarter of the house under 
 the control of stopcocks ; when an insuperable difficulty 
 arose in supplying the fiddlers with air without an 
 escape and waste of sound. 
 
 1 Said to be by Montalembert, 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. 315. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne had an exquisite sense of humour,, 
 and told his stories with inimitable zest and «@ propos. 
 One afternoon at Bowood, when waiting for the ladies 
 to take a walk, he raanifested some impatience at their 
 delay, which he explained by saying that the water 
 from the lake was set on for the waterfall, and that he 
 feared it would not last till they came. He then told 
 the story of his poetic neighbour, Bowles, being over~ 
 heard, on the announcement of visitors, ordering his 
 
 gardener to set the fountain ee and carry the her mit 
 his beard. 
 
 One of the raciest of his latest stories was of a 
 distinguished diplomatist who had a country, residence 
 near the Thames, and was out fishing when he called. 
 On repairing to the scene of action, he found the 
 Minister in a dubious contest with a monster pike, 
 anxiously watched by an attaché, who, whenever the 
 pike seemed to be getting the upper hand, instinctively 
 clutched his chief’s coat-tail and held him tight. The 
 fish was landed after a protracted strugele, and has 
 been stuffed and preserved as a trophy of the pisca- 
 torial prowess of His Excellency. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne’s commerce with picture-dealers and 
 artists supplied him with some comic incidents. Looking 
 at the portrait of Sir Thomas More in the National 
 Portrait Gallery, he identified it by a crack which was 
 pointed out to him many years before by a vendor, as 
 greatly enhancing the value, being relied on as a proof 
 that this was the identical portrait flung out of the 
 window by Henry VIII., when Sir Thomas first set up 
 his conscience against the royal will. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne used to relate that when, after 
 Turner’s death, he went to the artist’s house, on a foggy 
 afternoon, in the hope of getting a sight of his reserved 
 works, the old woman in charge, looking up through 
 the area railings, took him for the cat’s-meat man, and 
 told him he needn’t come again, since some rascal had. 
 
316 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 stolen her cat. The best stories recorded by Moore 
 are Lord Lansdowne’s ; but Moore was an unsafe carrier 
 of a joke. In his Diary, edited by Lord Mussell, 
 Canning is made to say that the Post Office refused to 
 convey Sir John Cox Hippisley’s pamphlet in an official 
 frank, because it was so bulky. Canning said heavy. 
 
 ‘Tt is wonderful,’ said Johnson, ‘to think how men 
 of very large estates not only spend their yearly 
 incomes, but are often actually in want of money. It 
 is clear they have not value for what they spend. 
 Lord Shelburne told me that a man of high rank, who 
 looks into his own affairs, may have all he ought to 
 have, all that can be of any use, or appear with advan- 
 tage, for 5000/. a year.’ The son’s ordinary expendi- 
 ture, although he was an excellent manager, probably 
 more than quadrupled the sum set down by the 
 father (in 1778) as enough. 
 
 The manner in which princely fortunes are muddled 
 away, without doing good or giving pleasure to any- 
 body, is both strange and melancholy; but, to our 
 minds, it is still more wonderful to think that it never 
 crosses the mind of a man with from fifty to a hundred 
 thousand a year, or a million in the funds, that he may 
 add ineflably to the happiness or comfort of half the 
 people with whom he lives in intimacy, or of a dozen 
 families taken at random, without the smallest deduc- 
 tion from his own or his heir’s superfluities. The 
 thought frequently occurred to Lord Lansdowne, who 
 also knew and felt that the haunts of squalid poverty 
 are not the places where objects of benevolence must 
 exclusively be sought; and that, among the severest 
 sufferers from pecuniary embarrassment, are persons in 
 a higher walk of life, painfully strugeling to keep up 
 appearances. We know of three instances in which, with 
 a graceful reference to the privileges of age, he placed 
 large sums (two of 1000/. each) at the disposal of ladies 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. DER 
 
 of condition, who had no sort of claim upon him 
 besides sudden and unmerited distress. The affec- 
 tionate gratitude inspired by him in one to whom 
 (wholly apart from money matters) he had been 
 “patient and kind through many a wild appeal,’ is 
 beautifully expressed in the Dedication of ‘The Lady 
 of Garaye. The morning after Rogers’ bank was 
 robbed, Lord Lansdowne wrote to say that his entire 
 balance at his banker’s was at the service of the aged 
 poet. The considerate kindness and generosity shown 
 to Moore, and continued to his widow, by the lord 
 and lady of Bowood, form part of the literary annals 
 of the country. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne’s literary acquirements were pre- 
 cisely of the kind required by his position and society. 
 He was well versed in the Latin, English, French, and 
 Ttalian classics; and he knew enough of most subjects 
 to lead the conversation upon them till it was taken up 
 by those who had made them an especial study. He 
 was thoroughly at home in constitutional history, strong 
 and sound in political economy. He had no particular 
 liking for science, although he delighted in the society 
 of such men as Lyell, Owen, Brewster, Wheatstone, 
 and Murchison; and he was extremely amused with 
 the matter-of-fact earnestness of one of them (Murchi- 
 son) who—when a very eminent statesman (Lord 
 Palmerston) laughingly remarked that, according to 
 Darwin’s theory, a star-fish might become an Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, passing through the intermediate 
 stage of a Bishop of Oxford—gravely assured his 
 Lordship that no such transmutation could take place. 
 
 When some one was mentioned as a ‘ fine’ old man 
 to Swift, he exclaimed with violence that there was 
 no such thing. ‘If the man you speak of had either a 
 mind or a body worth a farthing, they would have 
 worn him out long ago.’ Yet surely the term is fairly 
 
318 LORD LANSDOWNE. 
 
 applicable to an old man like Lord Lansdowne, who, 
 without deep passions, high imagination, or wearing 
 intensity of thought, retains his flow of mind, his taste, 
 his memory, his sensibility, his attachments, his rational 
 pleasures, his eagerness to give pleasure and confer 
 benefits, at eighty-two. Any deduction to be made 
 on the score of deafness was more than counter- 
 balanced by his mode of bearing up against this 
 infirmity. On a summer’s evening, soon after the 
 appearance of the ‘ Idylls of the King,’ he was seated 
 on a lawn not far from Kensington between two 
 handsome sisters, one of whom read ‘ Vivien’ with 
 that sweet clear voice which Shakespeare calls ‘an 
 excellent thing in woman.’ Nor did the group strike 
 any one as incongruous. No one understood better 
 the art of growing old; and if there be any truth in 
 Rochefoucauld’s maxim—on est plus heureux par le 
 sentiment quon a, que par le sentiment qu’on inspire— 
 most assuredly (fatuity apart) those that can admire, 
 adore, love,—longest, have the best of it. 
 
 The week before the accident which caused _ his 
 death, he was slowly wending his way to Jeff's, 
 in Burlington Arcade, to order M. Van de Weyer’s 
 sparkling brochure, ‘Cobden, Roi des Belges.’ Three 
 days before he died, he was reading and discussing 
 Kinelake’s History. He sank gradually without pain, 
 and when he breathed his last, seemed rather to fall 
 into a deep sleep than to die. 
 
 Johnson, following in the wake of the Roman satirist, 
 indignantly proclaims— 
 
 ‘See nations, slowly wise and meanly just, 
 To buried Merit raise the tardy bust.’ 
 
 Lord Lansdowne’s contemporaries are not open to this 
 reproach. On his retirement from public life, a 
 subscription (limited to a guinea each, in order to 
 
LORD LANSDOWNE. 319 
 
 comprise the greatest number of subscribers) was set 
 on foot, to present him with a bust of himself. It was 
 executed by Marochetti, and, with a Latin inscription 
 from the pen: of Hallam, now stands in the inner hall 
 at Bowood. Fortunate in all things, he enjoyed in his 
 lifetime what is commonly a posthumous tribute; and 
 he read in marble the chosen words, more lasting than 
 marble, in which his name and memory will live for 
 ages to come. 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 (From THE Times, JUNE 3, 1872.) 
 
 Literary and political aspirants of forty-five years 
 ago may remember three competitors, constantly 
 together, who attracted attention by their social 
 position, their personal gifts, and their easy, careless, 
 unmistakable air of latent superiority. They had 
 hitherto done little or nothing to distinguish them from 
 other young men of promise, although they looked and 
 talked as if they could do anything or everything when 
 they chose to set about it. But they had turned aside 
 from College honours: they would hardly take the 
 trouble of getting up a subject for a debating club; 
 and the most admiring of their contemporaries would 
 have been startled to be told that this sauntering, 
 pleasure-loving, pococurantt trio were to become, one, 
 Lord Chief Justice of England, the mainstay and 
 ornament of the Judicial Bench: another, an eminent 
 statesman and one of the first writers of the age: the 
 third, the representative of Great Britain as chief of 
 some half-dozen Embassies in succession ending with 
 Constantinople, and a successful author to boot. 
 
 We need hardly say that we are speaking of Sir Alex- 
 ander Cockburn, Lord Lytton, and his elder brother, 
 Lord Dalling and Bulwer, familiarly known as Henry 
 Bulwer, whose character has just been brought within 
 the recognised domain of biography by death. If not 
 the most distinguished, it was certainly not the least 
 remarkable of the three careers; and proves, perhaps, 
 more strikingly than either of the others what volition 
 and energy can effect, when ambition or the love of 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 391 
 
 fame has become the master passion and a_ well- 
 defined object is in view. 
 
 His birth and parentage are well known. His 
 paternal ancestry has been traced to a Danish rover or 
 sea-king, named Bolver, and his maternal to a Welsh 
 prince of the ninth century. Although a second 
 son, he inherited a considerable fortune from a 
 grandmother. He was educated at Harrow and 
 Cambridge, but left the University without taking a 
 degree, and became a cornet in the Life Guards. 
 Nature never meant him for the military profession, 
 and, finding the regimental duties very little to his 
 taste, he speedily sold out, and, after an expedition 
 which produced his Autumn in Greece, became a 
 diplomatist. He was attached to the Berlin Embassy 
 in 1827, and taking Paris in his way, won there 
 between six and seven thousand pounds at play. 
 This curiously enough became the starting-point of 
 his diplomatic fortunes. There was then a whist- 
 playing set at Berlin, mustering principally at Prince 
 Wittgenstein’s, and including the leading personages 
 of the Court. The high stakes (500 louis the rubber 
 was not uncommon) kept the members of the Eng- 
 lish Embassy aloof, with the exception of Bulwer, 
 who fearlessly risked his recently acquired capital. 
 Although by no means a first-rate whist-player, he 
 eventually came off a winner, and through the inci- 
 dental intimacy with Princes and Ambassadors begun 
 at the card-table, he learnt a great deal about im- 
 portant matters from which his official superiors were 
 shut out: he also formed connections of permanent 
 value. High play was then common in the highest 
 continental circles, and he occasionally jomed in it at 
 other places, without having a decided turn for it at 
 any time. 
 
 He was transferred from Berlin to Vienna, and from 
 Vienna to the Hague, from which, in 1830, when the 
 
 VOL, II, Ve 
 
Se LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 Belgian Revolution broke out, he was despatched by 
 Lord Aberdeen to watch its progress and report on the 
 probability of its success. ‘'The insurrection (he wrote) 
 broke out at Ghent when I was in the Grande Place, 
 and the Commissaire of the Hotel was shot by my 
 side.’ In the performance of this duty he attended a 
 public meeting, at which a well-known English Radical 
 (Bowring) presented himself, and told the assembled 
 Belgians that, come what might, they might reckon on 
 the support of his countrymen. Bulwer rose directly 
 afterwards to say that he himself, the member of an 
 TKmbassy, was no great things (pew de chose); that his 
 friend was nothing and nobody; and that the patriots 
 whom he had the honour to address had better rely on 
 their own patriotic efforts than on the promises of 
 English co-operation, made without the semblance of 
 authority by this gentleman. 
 
 In his Life of Lord Palmerston he states that he 
 obtained a full and complete knowledge not only of all 
 that was actually domg by the Belgian party through- 
 out Belgium at that moment, but of all that was to be 
 done during the next few days. He was informed of 
 the officers who were gained, the regiments that would 
 revolt, the fortresses on which the Belgian flag would 
 be hoisted. ‘As my information came to me in a way 
 that imposed no secrecy, I returned home and com- 
 municated it. But my reports were not—and this was 
 very natural—in conformity with Sir Charles Bagot’s, 
 who was in Holland, and they were received coldly 
 and with no small degree of disbelief.’ They were 
 so speedily and satisfactorily verified by events that, 
 in little more than a week, Lord Aberdeen sum- 
 moned him to London, complimented him, and sent 
 him back to Brussels, to reside there and continue his 
 reports. When Belgium became a kingdom he was 
 made Secretary of Legation at Brussels, where he 
 subsequently acted as Chargé d@ Affaires. 
 
 “ 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 323 
 
 While the settlement of Belgium was still pending, he 
 made an arrangement with the late Lord Pembroke for 
 a seat in Parliament for the borough of Wilton, which 
 he helped to disfranchise by his vote on the second 
 reading of the first Reform Bull in 1831. This act of 
 self-sacrifice was not approved by the electors, who 
 would have nothing more to say to him at the ensuing 
 election, whereupon he got chosen for Coventry, which 
 he represented till the dissolution of 1832. He sat for 
 Marylebone from 1833 to 1837, and made two or 
 three speeches, especially one on Spanish affairs in 1836, 
 which rescued his irregular and intermittent par- 
 liamentary career from the imputation of having been 
 mute or commonplace. 
 
 Book XII. of his Lxfe of Lord Palmerston is 
 headed : 
 
 ‘I go to Constantinople as Secretary of Embassy-—State 
 of Things there—Characters of Khosrew and Reschid Pachas 
 —Position of Mehemet Ali in Egypt.’ 
 
 This Book might pass for a chapter of his auto- 
 biography—a characteristic and most amusing one. 
 Nothing can be better than his account of the way in 
 which he contrived to get a Commercial Treaty from 
 the Porte, or the sketch of that pre-occupation of the 
 ambassadorial mind which left the field free for the 
 operations of the Secretary : 
 
 ‘A new rumour was every day in circulation. The 
 French and English ambassadorial residences were then 
 fixed within a stone’s throw of each other, at Therapia, a 
 small village fronting the entrance into the Black Sea; and 
 the two ambassadors, Admiral Poussin and Lord Ponsonby, 
 each went to his window on getting out of bed, the one at 
 6 in the morning, the other at 6 in the afternoon, prepared 
 to see without surprise the Russian fleet anchored under 
 their eyes. It was, perhaps, the only point on which these 
 representatives of the two countries agreed.’ 
 
 The Treaty was quietly settled and signed before 
 
 ¥ 2 
 
324 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 the French Embassy, who had been long manceuvring 
 for a similar one, were aware that it was in progress ; 
 and Bulwer had the gratification of announcing it 
 to the French Secretary, ‘a charming man, who 
 sang beautifully, was very gallant, and excelled 
 in calembourgs, and had declared the Treaty an 
 impossibility : 
 
 ‘French Secretary.—tIs it possible, my friend, that you 
 have played us such a trick ? 
 
 ‘ Bulwer.—What trick? We have only found possible 
 what you believed impossible. 
 
 ‘French Secretary.—But what is to be done ? 
 
 ‘ Bulwer.—Nothing more easy, my dear fellow; here is a 
 copy of our Treaty, do you get another copy made and 
 signed to-day, and then let the journal at Smyrna (a jour- 
 nal in the French pay) say that this happy result was en- 
 tirely brought about by Admiral Poussin’s influence and 
 your great knowledge of commercial affairs.’ 
 
 The best of the joke was that the French Secretary 
 followed this advice to the letter, and got the entire 
 credit of both Treaties with his countrymen. 
 
 In May 1839 Bulwer was transferred from Constan- 
 tinople to the more important place of Secretary of 
 Embassy at Paris. Our Ambassadors have, or had, a 
 knack of being absent from their posts at critical 
 moments, and it so happened that he was Chargé 
 d’Affaires during the Eastern complication of 
 1840-1841, which threatened at one time to end 
 in a Kuropean war. His correspondence with Lord 
 Palmerston (given in the Life) is full of interest. 
 His instructions were to discover if possible the real 
 intentions of the French Government. ‘ You say (writes 
 Lord Palmerston), Thiers is a warm friend, but a 
 dangerous enemy: it may be so, but we are too strong 
 to be swayed by such considerations. I doubt, however, 
 that Thiers is much to be relied on as a friend, and 
 knowing myself to be in the right, do not fear him as 
 
oll 
 
 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 329 
 
 anenemy. The way to take anything he may say, is to 
 consider the matter as a fait accompli, as an irrevocable 
 decision, and a step taken that cannot be revoked.’ 
 
 This is just what M. Thiers objected to. His game 
 was to avoid committing himself to anything that 
 could be construed into an ultimatum, and Bulwer 
 used to relate a curious illustration of his method of 
 evading responsibility. The scene is a long room 
 or gallery in a chateau at Auteuil, in which the 
 Hnglish Secretary and the French Premier are walking 
 up and down in grave and animated converse. ‘ Well, 
 then,’ said Bulwer, by way of arriving at a result, 
 ‘IT am to tell my Government that your intentions are 
 hostile if the four Powers adhere to their policy.’ 
 ‘Non, mon amt, pas précisément ; vous direz seulement, 
 gue vous Vavez lu sur ma figure.’ 
 
 What we suppose to be the same interview is some- 
 what differently related in the Life; where it is stated 
 that the conference broke off upon an understanding 
 that, to avoid mistakes, Bulwer was to state what he 
 deemed the upshot of the conversation in a despatch to 
 Lord Palmerston. He did so, and began by saying that 
 M. Thiers would probably find some moment at which 
 he might force the King (Louis Philippe), to follow him 
 even to war if he (M. Thiers) thought proper. On 
 showing this to M. Thiers, he exclaimed, ‘ Mon cher 
 Bulwer, comment pouvez-vous vous tromper ainsi? Vous 
 gatez une belle carriere ; le roi est bren plus belliqueux 
 que moi. But do not let us compromise the future more 
 than we can help. Don’t send this despatch. Let Lord 
 Palmerston know what you think of our conversation.’ 
 When M. Thiers resigned, the King said to Bulwer: 
 ‘M. Thiers is furious against me because I have not been 
 willing to go to war. He says that I have spoken of 
 making war. But speaking of making war, and making 
 war, Mr. Bulwer, are two widely different things.’ 
 
 Some years before (1834), Bulwer had published his 
 France ; Social, Literary, Political, which was followed 
 
326 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 in 1836 by his Monarchy of the Middle Classes—books 
 which, besides being replete with acute observation 
 and fine criticism, may still be consulted with advantage 
 for the valuable information which they convey. By 
 the time he had lived another year in France he had 
 completed his knowledge of the country and the people; 
 and few Englishmen knew them better, for he had not 
 limited his intercourse to the upper or the political class. 
 He knew both the grand monde and the demi monde : 
 he was on intimate terms with all the authors and 
 journalists of note; and one of the most celebrated 
 of Georges Sand’s novels (Mauprat) was currently 
 reported to have been suggested or inspired by him. 
 Alluding to the influence of successive male friends on 
 this lady’s writings, Madame Emile Girardin (née 
 Delphine Gay) remarked that she was an illustration of 
 Buffon’s maxim, ‘ Le style, c'est Phomme.’ 
 
 Lord Aberdeen, who had replaced Lord Palmerston 
 at the Foreign Office in September 1841, was so pleased 
 with Bulwer’s reports from Paris, that he requested 
 their continuance during the presence on duty, as well as 
 during the absence, of his chief—a somewhat irregular 
 proceeding, which caused just offence to the Ambassador 
 —and in November 1843 his Lordship gave the best 
 proof of appreciation and approval by naming Bulwer 
 Minister Plenipotentiary at Madrid. Here he did good 
 service by arbitrating between Spain and Morocco, and 
 had his counsels been followed, it is quite conceivable 
 that the famous Spanish marriages might never have 
 come off; for, acting on an erroneous estimate of 
 the situation, Lord Palmerston (who had returned 
 to office in 1846) backed the wrong candidate and for- 
 warded M. Guizot’s views instead of counteracting them. 
 ‘Nescia mens hominum fat sortisque future.’ Who 
 would have thought that these marriages, which 
 threatened to set the world in arms, would turn out of 
 no historical importance whatever, or that the dynasty 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 327 
 
 they were to make all-powerful by the union of the 
 two Crowns, would be uncrowned and in exile within 
 two years! 
 
 Bulwer’s Spanish mission came to an untimely and 
 disagreeable end in 1848, when Narvaez sent him his 
 passports at a moment’s notice on a charge of complicity 
 with the insurgent Liberals ; and his summary dismissal 
 was first made known by his arrival to report himself at 
 the Foreign Office. Lord Palmerston was not the man to 
 throw over a subordinate whose real transgression con- 
 sisted in carrying out his instructions with spirit by 
 remonstrating against the high-handed and arbitrary 
 courses of the reactionary faction at Madrid. The 
 cause of the expelled Plenipotentiary was made the cause 
 of the country; and England remained unrepresented 
 at the Spanish capital till the mutual exasperation had 
 cooled down. In the course of the diplomatic corre- 
 spondence caused by this affair, the Duc de Sotomayer 
 (the Spanish Secretary for Foreign Affairs), who had 
 lived on terms of intimacy with Bulwer, thought proper 
 to allude to a delicate matter, of a strictly private 
 character, in a way which Bulwer deemed personally 
 offensive, and, under the advice of Count d’Orsay, he 
 had written a letter for the express purpose of pro- 
 voking a challenge, when two English friends (the late 
 Charles Greville being one), who fortunately became 
 aware of his intention, intervened and saved him from 
 what might have proved a grave and (for an English 
 public man) very damaging indiscretion. Only just 
 _ before, however, two foreign Ministers, with two col- 
 leagues for seconds, had fought a duel at Madrid. 
 
 In December 1848, Bulwer married Georgiana Char- 
 lotte Mary, daughter of Lord Cowley. In December 
 1849 he was named Minister Plenipotentiary at Wash- 
 
 1 A full account of the diplomatic transactions regarding the Spanish 
 
 marriages, was given by Bulwer in his review of the eighth volume of 
 M, Guizot’s Memoirs in the ‘Quarterly Review’ for January 1868, 
 
328 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 ington, where he raised an enduring monument to his 
 diplomatic ability by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. We 
 have now before us one of his last letters, dated 
 ‘ Rhoda-on-the-Nile, February 17, 1872, in which he 
 writes : 
 
 ‘I do regret indeed not being in England. The prophecy 
 I made in withdrawing my motion about America has been 
 too closely fulfilled. Of course the time to settle the ques- 
 tion was when every sensible man in the United States was 
 disgusted by Sumner’s speech. By allowing it to lie on the 
 public mind, it sank into it and has become now a semi- 
 national theory. How, when our only inducement to make 
 a treaty was to set this claim for indirect damages at rest, 
 we could frame one which opened it, is to me miraculous. 
 How they could introduce into such a document the term 
 ‘crowing out of,’ which would hardly occur to any one but 
 a market gardener, is also a marvel. As to the confidence 
 displayed in American statesmen—when I had to make a 
 treaty with them, I took the trouble of going over all their 
 old treaties, and in important passages I only used such 
 words as they had used in the sense in which they had used 
 them. ‘Then, when they began their usual disputes about 
 interpretation, I quoted their own authority.’ 
 
 He was Minister at Florence for about three years, 
 beginning with 1852. In 1855 he was employed on a 
 mission for the settlement of the Danubian Prin- 
 cipalities; and in 1857 he was appointed Ambassador 
 at Constantinople in succession to Lord Stratford de 
 Redcliffe, who exercised an amount of influence to 
 which no representative of a Huropean power has 
 attained since, or is likely to attain again, mainly 
 owing to force of character, and in some degree to the 
 state of things then, differing as it did so greatly from 
 the present. Turkey is now practically, if not 
 formally, placed under the guardianship or tutelage of 
 the Five Powers (Austria, Prussia, Russia, France, and 
 England), and no one of them could dictate or sway 
 the counsels of the Sublime Porte, as England repre- 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 329 
 
 sented by the great Hlchee, occasionally did prior to 
 the Crimean War. The position of Bulwer is correctly 
 described in the Conversations-Lexicon, where he is 
 termed ‘the prop and pillar of the Palmerstonian 
 policy in the East.’ 
 
 When matured by experience, no man represented 
 his country better in a negotiation or a conference. 
 His views were broad and statesmanlike; and he had 
 a certain loftiness of sentiment in all that regarded 
 the greatness or dignity of England which is rarely 
 found in combination with so much adroitness and 
 finesse. A distinguished Frenchman told his nephew, 
 Robert Lytton, que chasse de race—the lineal and 
 collateral heir to genius and capacity: ‘De tous vos 
 compatriotes, est celur qui a Cesprit le plus frangats, 
 tout en ayant le ceur le plus anglais.’ 
 
 He was not so well fitted for the daily details of 
 social representation at a permanent mission. His habits 
 and his health caused him to be thought odd and 
 uncongenial by the ordinary run of English travellers, 
 who expected to be entertained at the embassy; and 
 his taking a house at Scutari (under the impression 
 that the air was milder on the Asiatic side of the 
 Bosphorus), was currently attributed at Pera to an 
 inhospitable desire to isolate himself. In extreme 
 sensibility to cold he resembled a sensitive plant; and 
 an amusing story is told of a contest, nearly ending 
 in an open rupture, between him and the French 
 Ambassador touching an open window at his back, 
 which he insisted on having shut. It is a pity they 
 did not think of the expedient adopted by Archdeacon 
 Paley, who called out at a dinner of the clergy : ‘Shut 
 the window at my back, and open one behind the 
 curates at the lower end of the table.’ The attachés 
 would have been as enduring as the curates. 
 
 He was thoroughly genial and hospitable; and _ his 
 notions of expenditure resembled those of a Grand 
 
330 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 Sergneur of the olden time,—of that Condé, for 
 example, who, when a son returning from college 
 exultingly produced the savings of his pocket-money, 
 flung the purse contemptuously amongst the lackeys 
 of the ante-chamber. Bulwer could never endure 
 the custom (till recently confined to England) of 
 scrupulously dividing the reckoning at a restaurant; — 
 still less of permitting the ladies to pay their share. 
 Yet he was never guilty of profuseness: he was en- 
 tirely free from the littleness of ostentation; he 
 never spent money, nor indeed did anything, for show. 
 His only expensive superfluities were his personal 
 attendants: including at one time (after he had retired 
 on his pension) a Greek doctor, a private secretary, a 
 French valet (an excellent servant), and a super- 
 numerary or two who helped each other in doing 
 nothing. <A friend once found two of his suite (Greeks 
 or Turks) separated from their master, and bewailing 
 their hard fate, at a railway station in Germany; and 
 we well remember his arriving in London without so 
 much as a change of linen or a dressing-case: his 
 servants having contrived between them to leave all 
 his luggage scattered between Paris and London. ‘This 
 condition of his establishment was more owing to 
 kindness of heart than carelessness. It was the story 
 over again of the cross old woman at Byron’s lodgings, of 
 whom (as Moore relates) his friends thought themselves 
 well rid when he married. But no; there she was ready 
 to do the honours of his new abode in a new silk gown. 
 ‘The poor old devil,’ he said, in excuse for retaining 
 her, ‘was so fond of me!’ Bulwer would have urged 
 a similar plea for his hangers-on. 
 
 The climate of Constantinople during more than 
 half the year was his constant subject of complaint, 
 and his resignation in 1866 was principally owing to an 
 intimation that the public service might suffer from 
 the prolonged periods of absence which he required, 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 331 
 
 Those who saw him for the first time during the last 
 ten or fifteen years would have wondered how any sus- 
 tained intellectual or physical exertion was possible with 
 such aframe. But the projects he conceived, the literary 
 works he executed, the journeys he undertook in his 
 decline, might have tasked a strong man in his 
 maturity. He vividly recalled Dryden’s lines on 
 Shaftesbury : 
 
 A fiery soul, which working out its way, 
 
 . Fretted the puny body to decay, 
 
 And o’er-informed the tenement of clay. 
 
 But Bulwer’s soul was more restless than fiery ; 
 he could not exist without movement and agitation ; 
 fix him to a spot, forbid excitement, and he would 
 have passed away like the little Dutch Governor (men 
 tioned by Washington Irving) who pined away so imper- 
 ceptibly that, when he died, there was nothing of him left 
 tobury. Yet the puny invalid, who may have been 
 seen shivering in a warm autumn on the Bosphorus, 
 spent a cold winter month in canvassing Tamworth, 
 and came back the better for it, proving that, frail as 
 he was, he had more of the malade imaginaire about 
 him than he would allow. His ordinary preparation 
 for dinner was the production of two or three boxes of 
 pills, which he ranged beside his plate with his bread. 
 The Greek doctor who long formed part of his 
 establishment, on being asked why he prescribed such 
 a variety of mixtures, openly protested,—* Moz, 
 Monsieur, lui faire de telles ordonnances! Ma tache 
 journaliere cest de Vempécher de prendre de la 
 médecine. Richelieu signing death warrants with one 
 foot in the grave, Pitt vomiting behind the Speaker’s 
 chair by way of preparation for the greatest of his 
 speeches, Scott dictating romances with the cramp in the 
 stomach which made him roll about in agony—these 
 were trifles to Henry Bulwer going down to the House 
 of Commons with a hectic suffocating cough, to make a 
 
Boe LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 speech on the Irish Church, which there was no 
 imaginable necessity for his making, and which was 
 inaudible to more than the ten or dozen members who 
 closed up to him. These heard enough to convince 
 them that, given the physical requisites, the speech 
 would have proved an undeniable success.* 
 
 Our high estimate of his writings has been ex- 
 pressed from time to time on the successive appearance 
 of hisworks. They are incomplete in many respects, 
 particularly as regards style and artistic finish, but most 
 of them, especially the Mistorical Characters and The 
 Life of Lord Palmerston, derive a marked value and 
 attraction from the circumstance that the author had 
 been practically conversant with affairs: that he had 
 been mixed up with the events he described: that he 
 had made, or assisted in making, as well as written, 
 history. 
 
 He was a most agreeable letter-writer, and his 
 correspondence, could it be collected, would form the 
 truest reflex of the distinctive qualities of his. mind,— 
 of his versatility, playfulness, refinement, earnestness, 
 and good sense. Several of his most characteristic 
 letters have been placed at our disposal by one of 
 his most valued female correspondents,—Marie Prin- 
 cess of Liechtenstein, the Marie Fox of Holland House, 
 one of those finely-organised rarely-gifted women who, 
 from early girlhood, bind young and old in the same 
 electric chain of sympathy, and irresistibly attract 
 the communion of superior minds by the charm of 
 being understood. She was under eighteen when this 
 correspondence began.” 
 
 Torquay : December 25, 1870, 
 No lady should send photographs, and I will tell you why. 
 An absent admirer, if he recalls anything, recalls the most 
 
 1 Judging only from the corrected report in Hansard, it belonged to a 
 high order of oratorical composition. 
 
 * She has had nothing to do with the selection of passages for publi- 
 cation, which was left unreservedly to me, 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. B00 
 
 bewitching glance, the most charming smile, the happiest 
 expression of the countenance of which he dreams. His 
 imagination does the work of the most skilful artist: the 
 photographer undoes it. Mind, feeling, disappear from the 
 portrait. The triumph of the painter is to give your best 
 aspect, the necessity of the photographer to give your worst. 
 Photographs, I believe, are now carefully arranged ; still I 
 would not trust them. I suspect, moreover, that most 
 gentlemen get photographs to show them. They take out 
 a photograph, and say to some fellow; ‘What do you think 
 of this, eh?’ Well, every man likes to mortify the vanity 
 of another, and if he can say anything disagreeable, he does. 
 
 In regard to first love, it has undoubtedly the charm 
 which the imagination has over the real. What we love is 
 our idea of what should be loved. It is ourselves, that is to 
 say, our own thoughts, turned inside out. We love, too, 
 with all trustfulness ; but we love, in nineteen cases out of 
 twenty, a delusion. I know I have been shocked at meeting, 
 ten or fifteen years afterwards, the ladies I loved in my youth. 
 No ; the age of man ought to be at least 120. Sixty years 
 he might give to learning what should be loved, sixty to 
 loving, and sixty more to forgetting he had loved. But you 
 have a philosophy, or, rather, what is better than a philosophy 
 —a religion, that arms youatall points; and I am convinced 
 that anyone who believes that what is is best, will find 
 itso. Now, with regard to Holland House.! Your conception 
 of the work seems to me perfect, and, I assure you, your 
 mode of explaining that conception is perfect also. I have 
 rarely found anyone who can say so clearly what he wants to 
 say as you can. 
 
 Torquay: 29th. 
 
 I have read through the two chapters. It isas I supposed. 
 The work broadens out as it continues, and must be finally 
 judged en masse. These chapters, especially the one on the 
 Library, are excessively interesting, and the anecdotes 
 artistically interspersed. 
 
 J admire your answer to my suggestion ; I mean the spirit 
 of it, ‘Truth and not fiction.’ But it is in the spirit of the 
 lady, not of the writer. For myself, I would welcome any 
 fiction that could carry me out of this wretched little place, 
 
 1 Her forthcoming ‘ History of Holland House,’ 
 
334 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 which gives itself the airs of a world, and is a hole. Did 
 you ever read the commencement of the ‘Strange Story’? 
 It describes such a place, and is admirable. 
 
 An ex-French Ambassador, who has got his house and 
 horses at Paris, comes to me and sits hours at a time ex- 
 pressing his hopes that the capital will surrender before his 
 stud is eaten and his furniture pillaged. The spirit of con- 
 tradiction has urged me to promise him that the siege will 
 last six months—but, it is over. Is one to regret or rejoice ? 
 Houghton must be already on the road to breakfast with 
 Jules Favre, and dine with Bismarck. The Emperor and 
 the Empress come again upon the stage. The whole affair is 
 a drama for Astley’s. King William walking ‘ majestically,’ 
 as the special correspondent says, to his coronation : 
 Gambetta flying in his balloon to his defeated armies: the 
 Emperor, hobbling up with his fire-baptized child in a 
 Prussian uniform, preceded by the Empress waltzing with 
 Moltke. These great surprises in affairs are not lasting ; 
 but that is all one can predicate about them. 
 
 I am hesitating as to whether I shall go up to town or not, 
 for the opening of Parliament. A little will depend on the 
 state of affairs and a little on the state of the weather. I 
 have just been reading Wilberforce’s Life, which ought, I 
 think, to be more interesting. But Iam forced back again 
 upon old friends. It is really startling to find the tone of 
 modern novelists. Their heroes and heroines are the lowest 
 types of society. There is not a gentleman above a Life- 
 Guardsman, or a lady that a gentleman could love and 
 respect, in the list of them. a 
 
 I don’t know where we are going to, publicly or privately ; 
 but when society does not perish, there is always a degree of 
 bad which produces a reaction to good. In the meantime, 
 one’s admiration for the delicate, the talented, the noble- 
 minded, and the beautiful is increased by its contrast with 
 surrounding objects.—Thus, I am ever yours, 
 
 H.. Gam: 
 
 I have been busy for these four days revising a third 
 edition of Palmerston. I suppose you got the books at last, 
 since the publisher vows he sent them. 
 
 My time otherwise has passed in looking through books 
 and on the waves. The latter feed meditation most. Still, 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 335 
 
 I caught hold of two books which, though bad as books, 
 have interested me from their subject. 
 
 The one was a very ordinary Life of Gibson, the sculptor. 
 What charmed me was, the idea it brought out of a man of 
 talent and imagination living amongst the most beautiful 
 forms, and solely occupied with the study of beauty for the 
 purpose of creating it. Waking and sleeping, there was 
 beauty before his eyes, occupying his thoughts, guiding his 
 hand, dictating his dreams. He at one time thinks his 
 ideal has embodied itself in a work (I should like to see it) 
 for Mrs. Preston. It was a Venus, and he had painted her, 
 and sat for five years worshipping her, and thinking if he 
 could improve her—unwilling to let this Egeria of marble 
 out of his grotto. In thinking ofall this, I remembered that 
 on early coins the Greek face has not its magnificent type, 
 but a mere Egyptian one—forehead sloping back, eyes long 
 and full, cheek-bones more visible. Is it not possible that 
 the constant study which the Greeks made of the beautiful 
 gave them beatity? Greek beauty always is, we must re- 
 member, beauty expressing thought, the sort of beauty that 
 might grow out of and harmonise with thinking of that 
 style of beauty. Every Venus has her «nward expression, 
 as well as her outward. 
 
 And if it were so, ifthe thought of beauty could by degrees 
 mould the features of a race into beauty, how much more 
 naturally would good and noble thoughts form their cha- 
 racter and fit it for good and noble deeds? 
 
 We, in our ignorance, talk of education and spreading 
 education. What is the education of a people—to read and 
 write ?—Stupidity. It is the directing and elevating their 
 minds to great virtues and great things. Our education 
 now turns on one subject, making money; our politics, on 
 one subject, making money—that is buying and selling. 
 I will not say that any pursuit need debase the mind; but if 
 there is one more calculated than another to do so, it is 
 making money. Our ancestors prohibited gentlemen from 
 making money. We call this a prejudice, but it was not. 
 A man by making money might become a gentleman, but 
 when he was become a gentleman, his thoughts were to live 
 in a higher sphere, and he was no more to be thinking how 
 a penny might be saved or a pound got. The people under- 
 
336 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 stood this, and had an idea of a gentleman as above a trader, 
 thinking his ideas would be above those of bargaining. Now 
 the gentleman is gone, and therefore the respect for gentle- 
 men is gone, and gentlemen hardly respect themselves. 
 
 You will think me an antediluvian. No. I only think 
 we are on a wrong road: we are progressing in our cultiva~ 
 tion of all material things about man, but not in our culti- 
 vation of man. It is possible that I read too much in my 
 youth of Plutarch’s Lives, the Roman history, and Don 
 Quixote’s library of books of chivalry. But I confess to a 
 hankering after the heroic. 
 
 It is apropos of that that the other book I allude to 
 interested me. It is Chatterton’s Life. He died, poor boy ! 
 before he was 18, and he had thought, suffered, and written 
 enough for a long life. Finding or fancying his genius un- 
 appreciated, he burns his writings, takes to his bed, and dies. 
 Nothing can be more tragic than this end. 
 
 You will see the religious debates on Gladstone’s innocent 
 letter about the Pope. There seems by fatality a general 
 silence when he does anything wrong, and an ungenerous 
 outcry when he does anything right. It is strange that 
 people should not see that, if the Government of Great 
 Britain and Ireland can take no interest in the fate of the 
 Head of the Catholic Church, the Catholic people of Ireland 
 will wish to have a separate Irish Government that can. 
 Nothing shows the inherent savageness of man’s nature more 
 than the fact that, if you actually give him a religion which 
 preaches peace and charity, he will find the means of making 
 it a cause for contention. 
 
 Never allow your faith in religion to be shapen, nor 
 listen to those who would talk to you about what is reason- 
 able or is not reasonable in religion. The religious feeling 
 is not arrived at by argument: it isan instinct in the human 
 breast, which the glorious gift of the imagination renders our 
 nature capable of adopting. The various and even absurd 
 divinities which men have at times worshipped prove the 
 necessity they have felt for some divinity. Iam disposed to 
 think that the religion anyone feels satisfied with, and which 
 gives him the satisfaction of confidence in prayer, is for him 
 the best, though the vanity of men has made every sect believe 
 that its peculiar tenets are the only ones agreeable to God, 
 
9 
 
 LORD DALLING AND BULIWER. a fi 
 
 But, at all events, though the Roman Catholic priesthood 
 adopt this dogma, as most priesthoods do, there is certainly no 
 religion more capable of creating a sublime enthusiasm than 
 that of the Roman Catholic Church; and if it does this to 
 you, God speaks to you through it, and your soul should rest 
 satisfied, and not allow itself to be disturbed. 
 
 Do you know well, or Mdlle-——_——-well ? 
 
 It would seem that one is not tired of marriage, and the 
 other very anxious to try it; but the union, though it strikes 
 one as odd at a first glance, is rational enough when one 
 considers. People change their situation when they are not 
 satisfied with that which they have, without considering 
 attentively the advantages and disadvantages of the one they 
 propose to enter. Mdlle. wants a comfortable home, 
 and an agreeable house. 
 
 Love, in its passionate meaning, is not required. I will 
 give you a simile which I gathered from a water establish- 
 ment. Apply a cold, not icy, piece of wet linen to your 
 chest, and cover it nicely over, it gets warmer and warmer, 
 and at last produces perspiration. Put on a hot one, and it 
 gets colder and colder, until it gives you the rheumatism. 
 Passion decreases after passing too often through the madness 
 of jealousy. Liking and affection increase—increase con- 
 stantly, even in despite of bad temper, which is the greatest 
 enemy to happy association. But never be tempted, by any 
 consideration, to marry any one against whom you feel a 
 repulsion. It is, I believe, the most horrible of all sensations, 
 and one which nothing abates or compensates for,! | 
 
 The disadvantages to which a young lady in our way of 
 
 1 He takes the hand I give not—nor withhold— 
 
 Its pulse nor check’d—nor quickened—calmly cold, 
 
 And when resigned, it drops a lifeless weight 
 
 From one I never loved enough to hate. 
 
 No warmth these lips return by his imprest 
 
 And chill’d remembrance shudders o’er the rest. 
 
 —The Corsaar. 
 
 The feeling of repulsion is still more forcibly, though less poetically 
 expressed by Honor, when sympathising with Sophia’s antipathy to 
 Blifil. 
 
 YOu. II. Z 
 
338 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 making marriage is exposed are monstrous. I believe the 
 French way the best; but, at all events, ours is the worst, 
 and puts me in mind of the combat in which one man had a 
 net and the other a javelin or a sword: unless you cast your 
 net skilfully, you are pierced to the heart. 
 
 The two following letters are addressed to an object 
 of his especial interest, his accomplished god-daughter, 
 the Comtesse de Puliga (née Harriet Sansom) author 
 of ‘Madame de Sévigné: Her Correspondence and Con- 
 temporaries. They are in reply to her girlish and 
 unaffected delight at the social successes—she had 
 unexpectedly, but most deservedly, achieved, particu- 
 larly by her amateur performance in one of Alfred de 
 Musset’s best pieces, [1 faut qu'une Porte soit ouverte 
 ou fermée, at Lady Molesworth’s, before a distinguished 
 audience comprising both French and English royalty. 
 
 [No date; written in the summer of 1865. ] 
 
 ‘My dearest Hetty,—Your letter, like yourself, is charm- 
 ing. You do well to tell me of your triumphs—I share 
 them. You are quite right: it is not external objects that 
 are reflected in our mind, it is our mind that is reflected in 
 them. Brightness within one makes all bright without. 
 
 ‘London is the same this year as the last, but you feel 
 differently and see it different. Don’t, however, build too 
 much on the world’s favour, nor on anything which goes and 
 comes like the wind. One of the absurdities of the English 
 character at the present day is that no one has an estimate 
 of his own intrinsic value. You see the greatest people 
 raised or debased in their own opinion by being invited or 
 not toa ball. Rely on yourself for what you are your- 
 self: take a modest estimate, but never let anyone have it 
 in their power to make you think more or less of yourself 
 than you deserve. If you make a habit of this in early life, 
 you will be almost independent of the accidents of fortune 
 till the day of your death. 
 
 ‘Accustom yourself, also, to do good things from good 
 motives. Two people may act just alike, and one man be a 
 villain and the other a saint. If you give in charity, let it 
 be from the kindly feeling of helping a human creature, 
 
LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 339 
 
 and not from any motive which holds out to yourself any 
 advantage. 
 
 ‘If you are kind and courteous, let it be not from a sel- 
 fish desire to be popular, but from a genial desire to give 
 pleasure and not pain. All this much depends on the habit 
 one trains one’s mind to when young. 
 
 ‘God bless you, Hy,’ 
 
 ‘My dear Hetty,—Many thanks for your letters: you 
 have had many triumphs: they are the most difficult trials. 
 Don’t let them turn your head. A woman has to marry. 
 It’s a great bore, and there is nothing perfect in the institu- 
 tion; but it is like being born and buried—a necessity. 
 
 ‘The qualities for a husband, remember, are to be lasting. 
 They are to tell in every hour of the day. For this, good 
 temper is the main thing to look to. Good sense, if pos- 
 sible, providing there is not too much of it. Don’t marry a 
 man whom physically you dislike, but it is not necessary 
 that you should adore him. Scanty means create a constant 
 struggle: great wealth is not necessary, but it is quite as 
 easy to marry a rich man as a poor one. 
 
 ‘Men will not marry a woman so much because they 
 admire her as because they think she admires them. If 
 you wish to keep well with your husband, and if you wish 
 to get a husband, the happy individual must think you con- 
 sider no man equal to him. All men will believe this, and 
 think it quite natural. Better marry a man from ten to 
 fifteen years older than yourself. It is like buying a riding 
 horse that has been broken, instead of a colt. You save 
 yourself fifteen years during which the adorable creature 
 would be committing absurdities. A ridiculous man is a 
 nuisance: a man much admired is a nuisance also. There 
 is a lecture for you. 
 
 ‘Try and pass the winter in some fine climate where I 
 shall be. It will be a comfort to me and I shall be a coun- 
 sellor to you. God bless you, lim ivy 
 
 Among his many personal gifts was one which almost 
 exceptionally distinguished him. His temper was 
 perfect, and it was not a temper painfully formed by 
 habits of self-restraint. It arose from genuine sweet- 
 ness of disposition, from unaffected amiability, from a 
 
 | z2 
 
340 LORD DALLING AND BULWER. 
 
 kind, gentle, affectionate nature. Tis judgment was 
 never disturbed by irritability ; he weighed motives and 
 conduct in exquisitely poised scales; and his estimates 
 of character were seldom equalled for sagacity and 
 truth. When he mingled in the polemics of diplomacy 
 or literature, he wielded the weapon of controversy 
 like a small-sword, and ‘never carried a heart-stain 
 away on the blade.’ His grace, his tact, his high-bred 
 manner, made him a general favourite in society ; and 
 what Scott says of Rashleigh Osbaldistone’s conversation 
 may be said of Bulwer’s : 
 
 ‘He was never loud, never overbearing, never so much 
 occupied with his own thoughts as to outrun either the 
 patience or the comprehension of those he conversed with. 
 His ideas succeeded each other with the gentle but unre- 
 mitting flow of a plentiful and bounteous spring; while I 
 have heard those of others, who aimed at distinction in con- 
 versation, rush along like the turbid gush from the sluice of 
 a millpond, as hurried and as easily exhausted.’ 
 
 Bulwer always talked his best, and always took up 
 by preference the topics on which mind could meet 
 mind and glowing thoughts or sparkling fancies might 
 be struck out. He was past sixty-eight when he died, 
 but his vivacity was unabated, his vitality seemed un- 
 impaired, and those who knew him best were so 
 accustomed to see him overcoming matter by mind, 
 that they were no less startled than saddened by the 
 announcement that the most delightful of companions, 
 the truest and most sympathising. of friends, was taken 
 from them. 
 
341 
 
 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS.! 
 
 (From FrRAsER’s Magazine, NovEMBER 1867.) 
 
 ‘ But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast 
 
 To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.’ 
 THERE is a familiar fable of a man who bequeathed 
 with his land a buried treasure to his sons without in- 
 dicating the spot. They dug up the whole of the land 
 without finding it; and the treasure (this is the moral) 
 turns out to be the increased fertility of the soil. The 
 Junius secret is a treasure of the same sort. The value 
 lies in the search, in the industry it stimulates, in the 
 discriminating spirit of inquiry it promotes, in the 
 biographical and historical harvest for which it pre- 
 pares the ground. Crowning the long line of learned 
 and ingenious essays comes the latest and most impor- 
 tant contribution to the Junian literature, in the shape 
 of Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, begun by the late 
 Mr. Joseph Parkes, completed and edited by Mr. 
 Herman Merivale. Purporting to demonstrate that 
 Francis was Junius, this book raises, in our opinion, 
 the strongest presumption that he was not. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Parkes is creditably known in author- 
 ship by his History of the Court of Chancery: he 
 played a considerable though subordinate part. in 
 politics : he was largely conversant with public affairs : 
 he was sufficiently behind the scenes to mark the 
 working of the springs: he was in his element amongst 
 obscure or neglected manuscripts, and his professional 
 habits may be supposed to have taught him how to 
 
 1 Memoir of Sir Philip Francis, K.C.B., with Correspondence and 
 Journals. Commenced by the late Joseph Parkes, Esq., completed 
 and edited by Herman Merivale, M.A. In two volumes. London: 
 Longmans, 1867, 
 
342 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 collate and weigh evidence. On first hearing, some 
 years ago, therefore, that he had undertaken such a 
 work, we cordially wished him long life to finish it; 
 but with our present knowledge of his mode of 
 execution and his plan—much as we may regret the 
 cause of the suspension—we cannot but rejoice that 
 his labours were suspended, and that the pen which 
 dropped from his hand was caught as it fell by Mr. 
 Merivale. | 
 
 ‘Had Mr. Parkes continued his researches on the 
 Junian portion of the memoir with the same minute- 
 ness with which he has treated what preceded it,’ says 
 Mr. Merivale, ‘the whole biography must have cost 
 him ten or twenty years of a life already far advanced, 
 and would have occupied many volumes. I felt myself 
 unequal to continuing it on this scale; I doubted 
 whether the public would encourage me had IL 
 attempted it.’ This is a mild mode of stating the 
 dilemma. Mr. Parkes had evidently never heard or 
 had forgotten the great truth, so repeatedly impressed 
 by Sydney Smith, that we no longer live m the age of 
 Methuselah, when people could afford to lounge over 
 an essay or pamphlet for six or seven years. We 
 undertake to say that, continued as begun, the work 
 would never have been completed within the compass 
 of a generation, and would never have been fairly read 
 through by anyone if it had been so completed. 
 
 When the Italian convict was given the choice of 
 the galleys or reading through Guicciardini (the story is 
 told by Macaulay) he chose Guicciardini, but stuck fast 
 in the wars of Pisa, thought better of it, and took to the 
 oar. Any English convict who should have been shown 
 such a work as Mr. Parkes contemplated, would have 
 taken to the oar at once. The fact is, this most 
 estimable person was Junius-mad. He saw Junius in 
 every anonymous writer of the period, who rose, or was 
 thought to rise, above the common level, and in some 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 343 
 
 who certainly fell beneath it. Wherever he saw 
 Junius he saw Francis too : 
 
 Afra was present when he named her name, 
 And when he named another, Afra came. 
 
 Turn where he would, he was haunted by the same 
 name and image, like Fitzjames : 
 
 Can I not mountain maiden spy, 
 
 But she must bear the Douglas’ eye ? 
 
 Can I not view a Highland brand, 
 
 But it must match the Douglas’ hand ? 
 
 Can I not frame a fever’d dream, 
 
 But still the Douglas is the theme ? 
 He conceived himself to have identified them under 
 from twenty-five to thirty signatures between August 
 2, 1764, and January 21, 1769 (the date of the first 
 letter signed Junius). The process of each identifi- 
 cation 1s minutely and scrupulously described. 
 
 Mr. Parkes’ share of the memoir ends abruptly in 
 the middle of the year 1768, half a year before the 
 appearance of the first letter under the signature of 
 Junius, and occupies less than half the first volume. 
 All the rest 1s composed and compiled by Mr. Merivale. 
 who, under the obvious difficulties of such a succession, 
 has produced (quite independently of its bearing on 
 the grand controversy) a very valuable and very 
 interesting book. The lovers of anecdote will find it 
 excellent gleaning ground, and future historians like 
 Earl Stanhope and Mr. Massey, as well as future 
 writers on British India, will eagerly and profitably 
 repair to it? On the present occasion we shall confine 
 ourselves to those portions which concern the Junian 
 mystery, and recapitulate no more of the biographical 
 details than are absolutely essential to the argument. 
 
 Philip Francis was born in Dublin, October 22, 
 1740. His father was Philip Francis, D.D., the 
 translator of Horace, Demosthenes, and A‘schines, who 
 (in 1751-2) kept a school, at which Philip the son 
 
344 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 received his first education. In November 1753 he 
 was removed to St. Paul’s School, where he remained 
 till 1756, under the tuition of Mr. George Thicknesse, 
 who declared him and his friend, Philip Rosenhagen 
 (to whom Junius has also been attributed), the 
 cleverest boys and the best scholars of his entire term 
 of mastership. Another schoolfellow was Woodfall. 
 On leaving school (1786), Francis was appointed to a 
 junior clerkship in the Secretary of State’s office 
 through the interest of Henry Fox, the first Lord 
 Holland, with whom his father was much connected, 
 being at one time almost domiciled at Holland House. 
 In 1758 he obtained through Wood, the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, the temporary appointment of secretary 
 to General Bhgh during the expedition to the coast of 
 France, at the termination of which he resumed his 
 clerkship. In January 1760 he was appointed, on 
 Wood’s recommendation, secretary to Lord Kinnoul’s 
 special embassy to Lisbon, where he passed some 
 months, and then returned to his old place, which had 
 been kept open for him. , 
 
 The ensuing period of comparative leisure was 
 devoted to a course of classical and constitutional 
 reading. Introduced by the same steady friend, 
 Wood, he acted as occasional amanuensis to the Great — 
 Commoner between January 7, 1761, and the advent 
 of Lord Bute’s ministry in May 1762. This is stated 
 to be the only personal connection of Francis at any 
 period with Lord Chatham, and it led to nothing in the 
 way of promotion or preferment. In 1761 he fell in 
 love with, and in the spring of 1762 married, contrary 
 to the wishes of his father, Miss Macrabie, a young 
 lady without fortune, the daughter of a retired 
 merchant of small means. Wood, still his friend, got 
 him, about December 1762, the appointment of first 
 clerk in the War Office. the Secretary of War being 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 345 
 
 Mr. Wellbore Ellis, who was succeeded in July 1765 
 by Lord Barrington. 
 
 Francis, alas Junius, is represented as having 
 broken ground politically under the pseudonym of 
 Candor in a letter to the Public Advertiser of August 
 2, 1764; which so frightened Woodfall that he 
 declined the rest of the intended series. It was con- 
 sequently transferred to Almon, and printed as a 
 pamphlet. ‘This publication,’ says Mr. Parkes, ‘ was 
 the first of a series of political pamphlets on the 
 liberty of the press, doubtlessly from the same pen, 
 continued to the termination of the Junius letters, now 
 designated as the Candor Pamphlets. The authorship 
 has continued as great a mystery as that of Junius.’ 
 Lgnotum per ignotius. 
 
 They were continued till 1774, and showed sufficient 
 learning and research to be attributed by turns to 
 ereat lawyers and statesmen ; but far from occupying 
 all the spare time of our young clerk (which Francis 
 then was), they must have been flung off as easily as 
 a rattling letter to his wife about (as will presently be 
 seen) his unremitting dinners and amusements en 
 gargon. 
 
 No less than twenty-seven signatures were, we are 
 assured, employed by Francis-Junius in the course of 
 the next two or three years; many of them being re- 
 spectively attached to a series, or used several times 
 over. During the pre-Junian period, he addressed 
 three letters to Mr. George Grenville and one to Lord 
 Chatham (January 2, 1768), which, unluckily, is at 
 utter variance with several letters confidently assigned 
 to Junius. During the entire eight or nine years 
 Francis was doing all the heavy work of the War Office. 
 ‘The great majority of the drafts of letters in answer 
 to those received are still extant in the handwriting of 
 
 1 Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 305, note. 
 
346 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 Francis,! rarely altered by the Secretary at War, and 
 never by Deputy D’Oyly.’ How he found time for 
 such multifarious labours, or how he averted suspicion, 
 is not explained. 
 
 There is no direct evidence of his being the writer of 
 any one of the pamphlets or letters. There is nothing 
 that can be called proof of his having written for the 
 newspapers at all prior to his departure for India, be- 
 yond an apocryphal statement of his second wife and 
 copies of two insignificant communications preserved 
 by him, which naturally suggest the query why he did 
 not preserve more. There is not a hint, a trace, a sign, 
 a token of such a thing in his confidential correspondence 
 with his father, his wife, his brother-in-law or his chums, 
 Tilman and Baggs; nor (stranger still) in his autobio- 
 graphy, in which he sets down many things far more 
 compromising than any revelations touching the Candor 
 pamphlets or the Anti-Sejanus letters could have proved. 
 He must have resembled the wearer of the invisible 
 coat. Considering his convivial habits, he must have 
 led a life like Sydney Smith’s voter by ballot; who 
 talked with the wrong people, advocated the wrong 
 side, subscribed to the wrong club, huzzaed at the 
 wrong dinner, broke the wrong head, led a long life of 
 lies; ‘and he must have done this, not only in his calm 
 and prudential state, but warmed with wine and ex- 
 panded with alcohol.’ 
 
 These difficulties never once occur to Mr. Parkes, 
 nor in their full force to the far more acute and dis- 
 criminating mind of Mr. Merivale, although he is oc- 
 casionally staggered by an incongruity. We have seen 
 how confidently Mr. Parkes speaks of the Anti-Sejanus 
 letters. This manuscript note was found among the 
 original Woodfall papers, addressed to the Public 
 Advertiser : 
 
 ‘Sir,—I am alarmed to see in yours of yesterday, the ac- 
 
 1 They are no longer extant in the War Office. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 347 
 
 knowledgment of the receipt of a letter signed “A Friend 
 of Anti-Sejanus,” of which neither myself nor any of my 
 friends are acquainted with the writer. As it is one of ow? 
 signatures, I hope your candour will suppress it, if there is 
 anything in it that may discredit any of the party.—I am 
 very sincerely, your friend and most humble servant, 
 
 ‘ ANTI-SEJANUS.’ 
 
 This letter, the sole specimen of the handwriting of 
 Anti-Sejanus, is pronounced to be, in the opinion of 
 Mr. Parkes himself, ‘ certainly not that of Francis ;’ and 
 Mr. Merivale states it as a ‘ probable conclusion, to be 
 drawn from this and other portions of the evidence, 
 first, that, in much of the correspondence previous to 
 the letters signed Junius, Francis had colleagues ; 
 secondly, that the Woodfalls, or H. 8. Woodfall, at 
 least, were not wholly unacquainted with the combina- 
 tion of clever party writers to whom they owed so 
 much of their continued reputation and success.’ 
 
 Then what becomes of the theory that Francis, the 
 reserved, uncommunicative, inscrutable Francis, was 
 writing the whole or the greater part of the most re- 
 markable letters in Woodfall’s paper for a series of 
 years, unaided and unknown? The motive is equally 
 unintelligible. In reference to this (the Anti-Sejanus 
 period), we are told that, ‘ notwithstanding an excitable, 
 sensitive, and occasionally a morbid temperament, his 
 (Francis’) severe industry and dominant resolution to 
 labour for his proper place in life, never failed. 
 
 He has thus far been traced as an active, voluntary, 
 and unpaid contributor to the London press, on political 
 and other subjects, from 1763 to 1766, and never 
 in any instance under his proper name.’ A clerk ina 
 public office labours for his proper place in life by un- 
 paid anonymous contributions to the newspapers, which 
 he dared not avow to his dearest friend—which he 
 could not publicly avow without ruin and disgrace! 
 This is a specimen of the reasoning into which an 
 
348 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 experienced man of the world may be hurried by @ 
 hobby or a creed. 
 
 The Junius letters of the pre-Junian period form 
 indispensable links in the cham. But Lord Stanhope, 
 always fair, well-informed, and accurate, speaks of 
 them as beginning at the latest in April 1767," and 
 the Woodfall account fixes the 28th April, 1767, as 
 the day on which ‘ the first public address of this cele- 
 brated writer was received.’ 
 
 We pause to observe that all the pamphlets and 
 letters attributed to Francis were in acrimonious op- 
 position to the proceedings and policy of his benefactors 
 and friends. This is stated with surprising simplicity 
 in the Memoirs : 
 
 ‘Lord Egremont had been only lately his chief, and had 
 only lately promised him preferment had he continued in 
 the Secretary of State’s office. Mr. Wood, the under-secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, the secondary but principal instru- 
 ment of the seizure of Wilkes, was his early and constant 
 patron, to whom he was indebted for his new position in the 
 War Office. Mr. Welbore Ellis, the Secretary at War, was 
 the member of the Administration by whom the clerkship 
 was nominally given him. His own father was a leading 
 partisan writer, in the interest of Lord Bute and the exist- 
 ing ministry. The clerk of the War Office had therefore 
 every concewable motive to keep his opinions to himself, 
 
 Instead of doing so, he put them forward in the shape 
 best adapted to damage his patrons and deprive them, 
 with their places, of the power of assisting him. It is 
 difficult to conceive a greater amount of treachery and 
 fatuity than such conduct would imply. It is taking a 
 
 1 History of England from the Peace of Utrecht. By Lord Mahon 
 (Earl Stanhope), vol. v. chap. xlvii. This (including the appendix in 
 the last edition) is the clearest and most satisfactory statement of the 
 case for Francis, as it stood prior to the revelations of Mr. Parkes and 
 Mr. Merivale, Dr, Mason Goode, the principal editor of the Woodfall 
 edition, is charged, not without reason, in the Atheneum, with admitting 
 many spurious letters on insufficient grounds, besides tampering with the 
 dates of genuine letters, 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 349 
 
 favourable view of his proceedings to compare him to 
 the Irishman in Hogarth’s print, sawing away at the 
 beam on which he is astride, and reckless of the break- 
 neck tumble he may get. 
 
 His private life was dispiriting enough. In June 
 1768 he writes to his brother-in-law in India : 
 
 ‘Domestic news is as insipid as usual. Children bawl- 
 ing, servants fighting, my wife scolding, your father and 
 mother weeping, and Patty raving mad. These, with the 
 addition of a preternatural appearance, and some unaccount- 
 able noises which have been repeatedly in my house in 
 Duke Street at the dead of night, make up the perpetual 
 history of my family.’ 
 
 It is clear from other pasages, however, that he took 
 every opportunity of amusing himself; that he was 
 often engaged in convivial parties, ending (like most 
 convivial parties of that day) in a close approximation 
 to drunkenness; that he was in the habit of betting, 
 and that he occasionally gambled in the funds. One 
 specific loss of 500/. isrecorded. On January 4, 1769, 
 he writes : 
 
 ‘T am just returned from spending a riotous fortnight at 
 Bath. Gravier and two others filled a post coach, which 
 was dragged with no small velocity by four horses. We 
 travelled like gentlemen, and lived like rakes. All our 
 news here is that Wilkes is elected Alderman of Farringdon 
 Without. At this rate I see no reason why he may not be 
 Sheriff and Lord Mayor in regular succession: and why not 
 Prime Minister before he dies. Jn short, nothing can be 
 more ridiculous than everything that happens about this 
 gentleman. Every attempt that has been made to injure 
 or oppress him, has in reality done him service ; yet, after 
 all, I apprehend he will infallibly be expelled the House of 
 Commons. The election for Middlesex has raised such a 
 ferment, that even America has been lain aside, and Corsica 
 not once thought of. The ministry are supposed to be in a 
 strange state of confusion, and many changes are actually 
 talked of. So much for news and politics. 
 
350 - MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ‘The domestic history of Duke Street is pretty much the 
 same as in my last. My son—that is your nephew and 
 Gravier’s grandson—thrives admirably, though God knows 
 the weather is bad enough to kill a horse. While I lived 
 at Bath in every species of débauche my health was unim- 
 pared, but the moment I return to this cwr'sed regularity 
 of drinking nothing, and going to bed and getting up early, 
 me voici enrhumé comme un tigre. I can hardly see, 
 breathe, or speak ; therefore I see no reason why I should 
 write any more.—Sick or well, drunk or sober, yours I 
 remain, ‘Pi Kee 
 
 This letter was written exactly one fortnight before 
 the first Junius; and amongst the miscellaneous letters 
 under other signatures by the same writer are one of 
 the 14th November, one of the 21st November, and 
 one (very important, addressed to Mr. Grenville) of 
 15th December, 1768. Was the riotous fortnight at 
 Bath a preparation for the grand effort, a relaxation 
 from past labours, or both? Was Francis-Junius sick 
 or well, drunk or sober, when he composed the first of 
 the series which forms the copestone of his fame, or the 
 letter to Horne Tooke, to which we shall presently 
 have occasion to refer? Whatever difference may 
 exist as to the merit of Junius, there can be none as to 
 the amount of severe attention—the lime labor—re- 
 quired for such a style. The private letters show that 
 he was fastidious and sensitive in the extreme. ‘ For 
 material affection, for God’s sake, read maternal,’ is the 
 beginning of one. It is difficult to picture him polish- 
 ino his balanced periods, or meditating his indignant 
 appeals to a rapt public, in the intervals of a debauch, 
 surrounded by noisy companions at an inn. 
 
 The letters to the brother-in-law and Major Baggs 
 indicate the average tone of his correspondence at this 
 epoch, so far as we are permitted to learn from selec- 
 tions carefully made by Mr. Merivale and Mr. Parkes. 
 If the one just quoted had immediately preceded a 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. . 351 
 
 Junius letter about Wilkes, we should have been told 
 to mark the coincidence, and if a blank had been left, 
 or a passage cut out to suppress a personality or a 
 ribald jest, it would have been announced that in that 
 teasing blank, or in that provoking excision, lay the 
 whole clue to the mystery. 
 
 In one instance, when Francis, in a private letter, 
 mentions the three principal topics of public interest in 
 the same order in which they had recently been treated 
 by Junius, we are requested to note down this un- 
 erring indication of identity. By a parity of reasoning, 
 we could prove half of our acquaintance to be frequent 
 contributors to the Zimes. 
 
 The Junius on the affair of the Falkland Islands ap- 
 peared on January 30,1771; and on the 6th February, 
 Philo-Junius writes, ‘I hope your correspondent Junius 
 is better employed than in answering or reading the 
 criticisms of a newspaper.’ It would seem he was, if 
 Francis were Junius, for Francis writes to his brother- 
 in-law on the 12th: 
 
 ¢ Tilman dined with me yesterday, and swallowed a moiety 
 of two bottles of claret. .... We lead a jolly kind of life. 
 This night to a concert, on Thursday to a ridotto, on Satur- 
 day the opera—and on Tuesday following a grand private 
 ball at the London Tavern. We desire nothing but that 
 you were here to partake with us.’ 
 
 On June 25, 1771, to Major Bages: 
 
 ‘Dear Phil,—You will hardly believe that the hint I 
 threw out about the East Indies related to myself. The 
 idea was carried pretty far, but circumstances being altered 
 with respect to the plan of government in India, that affair 
 is over, and must never be mentioned. Jor the next three 
 years I am likely enough to remain in my present state of 
 uninteresting indolence.’ But I am secure of a in 
 the next 
 
 1 This was written in the very thick of the Junius correspondence, 
 and must consequently be interpreted by the rule of opposites or in the 
 non-natural sense, 
 
352 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ‘The Duke of Grafton, since his appointment to the Privy 
 Seal, has had a peppering letter from Junius, who promises 
 a continuance of his correspondence as long as he is in office. 
 I will send you newspapers whenever an opportunity offers. 
 Of changes I see no prospect. Wilkes may perhaps have 
 the pleasure of being hanged before his shrievalty is ex- 
 
 ‘Fitzpatrick, Tilman, Gravier, and I dined yesterday at 
 the Queen’s Arms. They drank immoderately, and even I, 
 who drank nothing but thimblefuls, grew intoxicated at 
 last.’ 
 
 This peppering letter appeared three days before, 
 June 22. On July 22 (in the middle of the Horne 
 Tooke controversy) to Major Baggs : 
 
 ‘To-morrow Godfrey, Tilman, another gent, and I set out 
 upon a tour through Derbyshire, and propose to reach Man- 
 chester. I wish you were of the party.’ 
 
 On July 31 (the day on which Horne’s letter ap- 
 peared) he writes from Derby to his wife: 
 
 ‘Our journey has been as prosperous as we could expect, 
 though we have seen nothing yet but the bare face of the 
 country. The Duchess of Bedford, and be d d to her, 
 would not let us see Woburn Abbey, which we all ane! 
 
 regret.’ 
 
 Hine ille lachryme. Hence of course the renewed 
 virulence with which the Duke of Bedford was assailed ; 
 or had the Duchess an instinctive consciousness that 
 she was excluding the calumniator ? 
 
 He enjoys his trip in true gentish fashion, and does 
 not return till Monday the 13th—the day on which 
 appeared the answer to Horne containing the dignified 
 panegyric on Chatham. On the 20th, Francis to 
 Baggs: 
 
 ‘Junius and Wilkes seem to make common cause. Poor 
 
 Horne is drubbed till he screeches for mercy. Never was 
 there such a letter as Junius has flattered him with. <Al/ 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 353 
 
 mankind agree that it is his masterpiece, and now I hope 
 we shall never hear any more of them. We have no altera- 
 tions of any kind. I send you newspapers as often as I can, 
 and hope to-morrow to send youa great bundle. Of Stephen 
 I hear nothing. Godfrey, Tilman and I returned last 
 Monday from our grand tour.’ 
 
 They were absent eighteen days. In a letter from 
 Oxford, August 10, to his wife at Fulham, he ‘ proposes 
 to have the happiness of seeing her on Sunday night’ 
 (the 12th). He did not arrive in London till Monday 
 the 13th, but Mr. Merivale, taking for granted that he 
 arrived on the 12th, writes : 
 
 ‘A somewhat minute, but special instance of chronologi- 
 cal correspondence between the performances of Junius and 
 contemporary events in the life of Francis, requires now to 
 be noted. On July 31, 1771, Horne addresses Junius in an 
 elaborate “ reply,” intended to be a complete summary of 
 the controversy. Junius does not answer this until August 
 13—rather a long interval for so prompt a combatant. So, 
 at least, Horne thought; for in his rejoinder, on August 16, 
 he says, “I congratulate you, sir, on the recovery of your 
 wonted style, though vt has cost you a fortnight.” If Francis 
 was Junius, the occurrence of this interval of a fortnight is 
 exactly accounted for by the dates of the following letters 
 [those already quoted], addressed to his wife at Fulham, 
 where she was no doubt staying with her father, Mr. 
 Macrabie.’ 
 
 A great stress is laid on this ‘chronological corre- 
 spondence’ by Mr. Parkes and Mr.-Merivale, their 
 srand point being that the silence or-delay of Junius 
 corresponds with the absence of Francis, who (it is to 
 be implied) could not acquire his information or com- 
 pose such letters out of London, and dared not trust 
 them to the post. Well, then, where did he compose, 
 and how did he transmit, this answer to Horne, which 
 (according to Francis) all mankind agreed to be his 
 masterpiece ? or how, if he could transmit it from the 
 country, is the exact interval of a fortnight to be 
 
 VOL. Il. AA 
 
354 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 accounted for by the letters to his wife? He might 
 surely have transmitted it at any period of his tour. 
 That Junius occasionally used the post, is proved by 
 an original letter now before us stamped post-paid. 
 The private correspondence shows that letters were 
 frequently delayed by Woodfall, proofs being some- 
 times required by Junius ;/ and the date of any pub- 
 lished letter is commonly anterior to the day of 
 publication. A letter to the Times rarely corresponds 
 in date with the Times in which it appears. If the 
 letters to the Public Advertiser are always dated the 
 day of their appearance, the dates must have been 
 inserted by the printer.2, Then what becomes of the 
 chronological argument? The cautious Junius would 
 most likely have taken care that the dates of his letters, 
 and the indications of his movements contained in them, 
 should not correspond with the facts. The answer to 
 Horne’s letter of July 31, however, must have been 
 both written and sent whilst Francis was on his tour. 
 On August 22,1771, Francis writes to Baggs : 
 
 ‘Dear Phil,—I wrote to you last Tuesday very fully by 
 the common post, as I have done several times, though you 
 continue to reproach me with neglect. I now take the 
 opportunity of Lieutenant Hoy of the 39th to send you 
 newspapers. You will find the famous Junius among them, 
 but you ought to read Horne’s letter first.’ 
 
 The first allusion to Junius in the family correspon- 
 dence occurs in letters from Dr. Francis to his son: 
 
 Bath, January 28, 1769. 
 ‘Give all my love to Mr. Calcraft. Tell him he is to 
 
 1 See private letter, Jan. 6, 1772 (when Francis was at Bath), from 
 which it appears that the last letter to Lord Mansfield, then ready, was 
 to reach Woodfall on the 8th or 9th; that he was to send proofs imme- 
 diately, and not publish it before the 21st. What did it signify where 
 Junius was on the 21st? 
 
 * It appears from the proofs in the British Museum, that the dates 
 were added on the proofs, 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 355 
 
 expect a very spirited and exceeding honourable defence of 
 LL. G—y (Granby) against the virulent Junius, by our friend 
 Sir W. D—r. I truly honour him for it.’ 
 Bath, January 5, 1769. 
 ‘TI really honour Sir W. D—r. I know the motives of his 
 writing. Qui non defendit, alio culpante. I wish his 
 ietter had been shorter: perhaps you think so too of this 
 epistle.’ 
 Bath, February 11, 1769. 
 ‘Poor Sir William! I am glad he is gone to Clifton, 
 where he may eat his own heart in peace. So sensible to 
 friendship, what must he suffer in -his feelings for his own 
 Reputation? When he repeated to me some passages of his 
 letter, I bid him prepare his best philosophy for an Answer. 
 But who is this Devil Junius, or rather Legion of Devils? 
 Is it not B—k’s (Burke’s) pen dipped in the Gall of 
 Sa—lle’s (Sackville’s) heart? Poor Sir William! .,. . 
 
 The editor has printed in the appendix a curious 
 <dlocument, which is thus described : 
 
 ‘The following paper of Remarks on Junius is printed from 
 one contained ina letter-book of Sir Philip Francis, written 
 in his best clerical hand, and indorsed, “‘ Copied from a very 
 loose incorrect paper of Dr. Francis,” probably written in the 
 year 1772. Bound up with it is a foul draft in the hand of 
 Dr. Francis himself. (See p. 320.) 
 
 ‘It is plain from the last paragraphs that the Doctor’s 
 suspicions pointed to Edmund Burke as the author of 
 Junius; and various passages in his son’s correspondence 
 show that he endeavoured to create this belief in the minds 
 of his acquaintances. (See pp. 220, 243.)’ 
 
 This is one way of putting it. Another is that the 
 son shared the suspicions of the father, adopted a com- 
 mon opinion, and speculated on Junius like the rest of 
 his cultivated acquaintance or contemporaries. But 
 the Franciscan theory absolutely requires that Francis 
 shall never be supposed to write or act naturally. 
 
 In answer to a question from Macrabie, Francis 
 wrote on June 12, 1770: 
 
 AA2 
 
356 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ‘Junius is not known, and that circumstance is perhaps 
 as curious as any of his writings. I have always suspected 
 Burke; but, whoever he is, it is impossible he can ever dis- 
 cover himself. The offence he has given to his Majesty and . 
 is more than any private man could support; he would 
 soon be crushed. Almon has been found guilty of republish- 
 ing the letter to the King, and Woodfall, who was the origi- 
 nal publisher, is to be tried to-morrow. If he be found 
 cuilty, I fancy he will have reason to remember it. I have 
 been a tour through Wiltshire, as far as Bath, on horseback, 
 and incompany with Tilman. The more I know this youth, 
 the better I like him.’ 
 
 These frequent references to Junius preclude the 
 notion that the excised passages in the letters would 
 (as Mr. Merivale thinks) have ‘led into the heart of 
 the mystery "—unless we are to suppose that Francis 
 was cautious and careless, reserved and frank, at the 
 same time to the same correspondents. This remark 
 equally applies to the autobiography. If he was merely 
 playing a part, it must be admitted that he played 
 it to admiration. Indifference in the midst of anxiety, 
 idleness and dissipation in the midst of severe mental 
 toil, could not have been more naturally assumed. 
 We have seen that more than his fair share of official 
 work devolved upon him. On February 7, 1770, he 
 writes : ‘The present condition of politics is enough to_ 
 agitate the mind of a calmer person than I am; 
 and with official business, I promise you, I am almost 
 overwhelmed.’ The famous letter to the Duke of 
 Grafton appeared on the 14th. 
 
 ‘No man but he who with a thorough knowledge of 
 our author’s style undertakes to examine all the numbers 
 of the Public Advertiser for the three years in question 
 can have any idea of the immense fatigue and trouble 
 he (Junius) submitted to by the composition of other 
 letters, under other signatures, in order to support the 
 pre-eminent pretensions and character of Junius.’ 
 
 . . ‘Junius had no time for remote excursions, nor 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 357 
 
 often for relaxation, even in the vicinity of the metro- 
 polis itself.’ 4 
 
 When accused by Horne of writing under a variety 
 of signatures, Junius admits the fact, and asks: ‘Is 
 there no merit in dedicating my life to the information 
 of my fellow-subjects? What public question have I 
 declined? What villain have I spared? Is there no 
 labour in the composition of these letters? Mr. Horne, 
 I fear, is partial to me ; and measures the facility of my 
 writings by the fluency of his own.’ The letter to 
 Lord Mansfield fills thirty-seven pages in Almon’s 
 edition : the address to the. King twenty-eight pages. 
 They were all carefully copied; probably by an 
 amanuensis ; for occasionally there were corrections or 
 interlineations in a different hand. | 
 
 On December 11, 1770, Francis writes to his brother- 
 in-law : ‘ My life is one continued scene of fermentation. 
 The approach of a war loads me with business, as, by- 
 and-by, I hope it will with money.’ ‘The pecuniary 
 value of his War Office appointment (observes Mr. 
 Parkes) is unascertainable. The salary was no doubt 
 trifling, but the secretary, the deputy secretary, and 
 chief clerk, had fees and perquisites—considerable in 
 time of war.’ How Francis found money for his style 
 of life is not explained. He states that the loss of the 
 5002. (early in 1771) had cured him of stock-jobbing. 
 In after life he was remarkable for his penuriousness, 
 which was observed on his arrival in India, and cannot 
 therefore be set down as a ‘ good old gentlemanly vice.’ 
 The profits of the collected letters promised to be large, 
 and Woodfall’s offer was a strong temptation to such a 
 man. On December 17, 1771, he writes: ‘I have strange 
 projects in my head. I have got five children, you 
 may remember, and in a few months shall have a 
 sixth. This makes a man look serious, bon gré mal 
 
 1 Woodfall’s edition. Preliminary Essay, 
 
9) 
 
 358 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 gré” These strange projects fluctuated between India 
 and America. 
 
 Woodfall assumes it to be unquestionable that Junius 
 was in easy, if not affluent, circumstances. To an offer 
 of half the profits of the first collected edition he 
 replied : ‘ What you say about the profits is very hand- 
 some. I like to deal with such men. <As for myse/f, 
 be assured, I am far above all pecuniary views; and no 
 other person, I think, has any claim to share with you. 
 Make the most of it, therefore, and let your views in life 
 be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence: 
 without it, no man can be happy, nor even honest.’ 
 
 In another private letter to Woodfall, April 12, 1769: 
 ‘You, I think, sir, may be satisfied that my rank and 
 fortune place me above a common bribe.’ 7 
 
 In his first letter to Sir William Draper, he says: 
 
 ‘I should have hoped that even my name might carry 
 some authority with it, if I had not seen how very little 
 weight or consideration a printed paper receives from the 
 respectable signature of Sir William Draper.’ 
 
 On November 27, 1771, in a private letter to 
 Woodfall : 
 
 ‘ Though we may not be deficient in capacity, it is possible 
 that neither of us may be cunning enough for Mr. Garrick. 
 But with a sound heart, be assured you are better gifted, 
 even for worldly happiness, than if you had been eursed with 
 the abilities of a Mansfield. After long experience of the 
 world, I affirm before God I never knew a rogue who was 
 not unhappy.’ 
 
 In another, December 17, 1771: 
 
 ‘When the book is finished, let me have a sett bound in 
 vellum, gilt, and lettered Junius i. ii. as handsomely as you 
 can—the edges gilt: let the sheets be well dried before 
 binding. I must also have two setts in blue paper covers. 
 This vs all the fee I shall ever require of you.’ 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 359 
 
 These ‘setts’ were sent, and have never been 
 traced. 
 
 In the last letter Woodfall ever received from him, 
 January 19, 1773, after a complete silence of nine 
 months, he says: 
 
 ‘I meant well by the cause and the public. Both are 
 given up. I feel for the honour of this country, when I see 
 there are not ten men in it who will unite and stand to- 
 gether upon any one question. But it is all alike vile and 
 contemptible. You have never flinched that I know of, and 
 I shall always rejoice to hear of your prosperity.’ 
 
 This was six months before Francis was appointed 
 to the India commissionership, and a year after he had 
 left the War Office. 
 
 All the letters of Junius, especially the private 
 letters, are distinguished by the same high, proud, 
 lofty, disinterested, and independent tone,—no more 
 capable of sustained imitation or assumption during a 
 series of years than the azr noble or the look and 
 bearing of a gentleman. It is curious to mark 
 how Wilkes, who had lived familiarly with the 
 oreat, is caught by the grand manner of Junius.’ 
 Francis, arrogant enough in after life, was associating 
 at this time with an inferior set of people; and 
 the most dignified of his political occupations was 
 helping Calcraft in a humble and subordinate way : 
 
 ‘From 1769 to 1771 [says Mr. Merivale]| they were fellow- 
 
 1 Mr. Charles Butler states, in his Reminiscences, that he and Mr. 
 Wilkes were convinced that Junius must bea manof high rank from the 
 tone of equality which he seemed to use, quite naturally, in his addresses 
 to persons of rank, and in his expressions respecting them. ‘ How diffi- 
 cult it is for a person of inferior rank to do this, appears from Swift’s 
 letters, and the anecdotes of him, in which his consciousness of inferiority, 
 notwithstanding his assumption of equality, pierces through every dis- 
 guise.’ During the Junius period the distinction of ranks was far more 
 rigidly observed than at present. In Humphrey Clinker the peer refuses 
 what is called the satisfaction of a gentleman to the squire, on the ground 
 of inequality of rank. Junius speaks of the Dukes of Grafton and 
 Bedford, Lord Mansfield, and the King, in the very tone in which Lord 
 George Sackville or Lord Temple would have spoken of them. 
 
360 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 conspirators in a great scheme, that of overturning the 
 Grafton government and subsequently that of Lord North,,. 
 and persuading or forcing Lord Chatham into power. Such 
 was the general outline of the purpose of their combination. 
 Calcraft’s part in executing it the “ Chatham Correspond- 
 ence” fully shows. It will be seen that he was in constant 
 communication with Chatham, urging, encouraging, advising, 
 and informing him. And the correspondence of Francis, 
 together with what we know from other sources, equally de- 
 monstrates his share in the business. He—unknown to the 
 proud and recluse Lord Chatham, except as his young ama- 
 nuensis of a short time—only approached the great man 
 through Caleraft. His business was to collect materials for 
 Calcraft: to stimulate him by use of the plentiful resources 
 of his own wit, courage, and information; to act, m short, 
 as the jackal’s provider, who was himself providing for the 
 lion.’ 
 
 Francis never had wit; and neither wit nor courage 
 was displayed in collecting the materials for Calcraft, 
 which were scanty and commonplace. Whe describ- 
 ing Francis, Mr. Merivale, as usual, had Junius in his 
 mind. In allusion to his connection with Calcraft, 
 Francis says in his autobiography : 
 
 -*In the course of the above debates in the House of 
 Lords, a circumstance happened, which I think deserves to 
 be remembered, that it may appear how much the greatest, 
 men may be and often are indebted to little ones. Woodfall 
 the printer had been tried before Lord Mansfield at Nisi 
 Prius, for printing a libel,—J think it was Junius’ letter to 
 the King, and found guilty of printing and publishing only. 
 Lord Mansfield accepted the verdict. .. .’ 
 
 So Junius was in doubt whether Woodfall was or 
 
 was not tried for printing Junius’ letter to the King. 
 But to proceed : 
 
 ‘The Attorney-General moved the Court of Queen’s Bench 
 that the verdict might be entered up according to the legal 
 sense of the words. Woodfall’s counsel petitioned for a new 
 trial. According to the established proceedings of the 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. S61 
 
 Court, the grounds for granting or refusing a new trial 
 must arise from some defect in the verdict itself, and must 
 appear on the face of the record. Lord Mansfield, in 
 making his report to the Court, stated the charge which he 
 had given to the jury, and went into all the proceedings at 
 nisi prius. All this discourse was calculated to serve other 
 purposes. With respect to the question before the Court, it 
 was extrajudicial and improper—as the lawyers call it, he 
 travelled out of the record. I caught a hint of this irregu- 
 larity from Bearcroft one night at a tavern, and immedi- 
 ately drew up an argument upon it in proper form, and sent 
 it to Calcraft, desiring him to transmit it to his friend. 
 Within three days after, I heard the great Earl of Chatham 
 repeat my letter verbatim in the House of Lords, not only 
 following the argument exactly, but dressing it in the same 
 expressions that I had done. His speech the neat day 
 jiamed in the newspapers, and ran through the kingdom. } 
 
 Granting that Francis affected not to know whether 
 the point arose at Woodfall’s trial for publishing the 
 letter to the King, it will hardly be urged that he 
 feigned such utter ignorance of the point itself as he 
 betrays, considering that the incident is narrated by 
 way of self-glorification, and that he assumes the entire 
 credit of Lord Chatham’s argument. Now, the trial of 
 Woodfall most especially excited the indignation of 
 Junius, who stated the point with technical accuracy 
 whenever he had occasion to recur to it. He em- 
 phatically recurs to it, for the third or fourth time, in 
 the preface to the collected edition of 1772, quoting 
 that very argument of Lord Chatham’s which Francis 
 pretends to have supplied. As quoted by Junius, 
 Lord Chatham said : 
 
 ‘The noble judge, when he delivered the opinion of the 
 Court upon the verdict, went regularly through the whole 
 
 1 This is a specimen of Francis’ utter disregard of truth. One paper, 
 The Evening Post, published a meagre report of the speech. The rest, 
 including The Public Advertiser, took no notice of it. Parliamentary 
 reporting was then prohibited by both Houses. 
 
362 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 of the proceedings at nist prius, as well as the evidence 
 that had been given at his own charge to the jury. This 
 proceeding would have been very proper had a motion been 
 made of either side for a new trial, because either a yver- 
 dict given contrary to evidence, or an improper charge by 
 the judge at nzsz prius, is held to be a sufficient ground for 
 eranting a new trial. But when a motion is made in arrest 
 of judgment, or for establishing the verdict by entering it up 
 according to the legal import of the words, it must be on 
 the ground of something appearing on the face of the record: 
 and the Court, in considering whether the verdict shall be 
 established or not, are so confined to the record, that they 
 cannot take notice of anything that does not appear on the 
 face of it; in the legal phrase, they cannot travel out of the 
 record.’ 
 
 This is the exact contrary of the statement in the 
 autobiography. Francis, acting on a sudden hint and 
 having no occasion to recur to the point, may have 
 confused or forgotten it, even after the lapse of three 
 or four years. Not so Junius, on whose mind it must 
 have been (so to speak) stereotyped by the sustained 
 earnestness with which he returns to and dwells upon it. 
 
 The letter, dated December 1, 1770, from Francis 
 to Caleraft, which is published in the appendix and (in 
 the editor’s opinion) ‘ appears to be that mentioned in 
 the Autobiographical Fragment,’ is a loose and wander- 
 ing attack on Lord Mansfield, and contains not a single 
 allusion to the point so repeatedly and energetically 
 urged by Junius. 
 
 Another curious thing in connection with this matter 
 is that Junius, whose letters were really flaming in the 
 newspapers, and running through the kingdom, should 
 be proud of having a letter repeated in the House of 
 Lords ; and such a letter, if it be really the one printed 
 in the appendix.’ 
 
 1 Since this was written, we have found a key to the enigma in The 
 Grenville Papers, vol. ili. p. exiv., and The Chatham Correspondence, vol. 
 lil. p. 444; vol. iv. pp. 48 and 128. The letter used by Lord Chatham 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 363 
 
 What Mr. Parkes calls ‘A Fragment of Autobio- 
 eraphy,’ is simply a rude outline or sketch of the career 
 and views of Francis during the four years preceding 
 his departure for India. It occupies only fifteen pages, 
 is supposed to have been written at Calcutta not later 
 than 1776, and was found by Mr. Parkes in a large 
 parcel of unsorted papers, chiefly on Indian finance. 
 The breaks with dots represent passages cut out with 
 scissors in the original. In no single instance does the 
 context justify a presumption that the excised passages 
 touched upon the great secret; and the argument from 
 the bare fact of excision resembles that addressed by 
 Curran to an Irish jury, when he claimed a verdict on 
 the ground that his only witness had been spirited 
 away by the attorney for the defence. Besides, as 
 already intimated, the mode of referring to Junius 
 precludes the presumption that the writer was off his 
 guard, or disposed to be communicative, on this topic. 
 There is another argument, a sort of argument ad 
 verecundiam, which sounds strange : 
 
 ‘ And the editor can only add, as an assertion to which he 
 hopes credit will be given, that all his examination of the 
 mass of papers submitted to his eye, and from which the 
 work now offered to the public contains only a trifling selec-- 
 tion, has tended towards the same result. He has not dis- 
 covered a single record or a single passage which raises 
 
 was not written or sent by Francis. The two letters from him, forwarded 
 by Caleraft to Lord Chatham, are in his handwriting and purport to be 
 from him. This particular letter is not in his handwriting, nor in his 
 usual tone; and it is endorsed by Calcraft—‘ Anonymous: received De- 
 cember 9, well worth attention.’ It begins: ‘Should anything more be said 
 in Parliament concerning the administration of justice, the following fact. 
 may be worth attending to.’ This refers to a recent discussion in the 
 House of Commons, of which Calcraft was a member ; and he is not re- 
 quested to transmit the paper to his friend. Francis evidently heard 
 from Calcraft how Lord Chatham got the argument; and subsequently, 
 probably after Calcraft’s death, assumed the credit of it; having only a 
 vague notion of it at any time. We suspect that the assumption was 
 not reserved for the Autobiography; and it will appear that this was by 
 no means his sole assumption of the kind. 
 
364 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 (by comparison of dates, sentiments, or other circumstances) 
 the slightest improbability against the current supposition. 
 On the contrary, he can subscribe literally to the conclusion 
 of Mr. Taylor, in his ‘Junius Identified,” arrived at fifty 
 years ago, from far less copious materials for judgment : 
 ‘‘ In all his researches, the writer has never met with one 
 thought, one fact, one word, which wm the slightest degree 
 impeded the course of his demonstration. This is a nega- 
 tive criterion of the truth, but is of no small value after so 
 extensive a survey, and it properly crowns the whole pile of 
 evidence.” ’ 
 
 Three years before (1813) Mr. Taylor, who is pleased 
 to term his argument a demonstration, had come to a 
 widely varying conclusion from the same premisses 
 in his Discovery; and we should have thought that 
 Mr. Merivale, who adopts his words in all their extra- 
 vagance, must have seen or read enough of the falli- 
 bility of literary judgment to inspire some inkling of 
 distrust. Without the least questioning his good faith, 
 we must be pardoned for declining to abide by his 
 authority in this matter, and for wishing that the selec- 
 tion had been made by some one less confident in a 
 foregone conclusion than himself or Mr. Parkes. If 
 they have failed to see how the new evidence affects 
 the case, they may have unwittingly thrown aside other 
 evidence from an equally mistaken estimate of its 
 worth. To say nothing of the modes of thought and 
 ways of life revealed by the familiar letters, or the 
 fatal discrepancy on the law point betrayed by the 
 autobiography, let us see, for example, how the new 
 evidence affects the very pivot of the controversy :. 
 what fresh light is thrown on the circumstances under 
 which Francis left the War Office, and the terms on 
 which, on quitting it, he stood with Lord Barrington. 
 
 To show how much depends on this evidence, we 
 have merely to call attention to the time and manner 
 in which general suspicion was first directed to Francis, 
 whose name was never publicly mentioned in connec- 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 365 
 
 tion with the authorship of Junius till 1812. It is not 
 mentioned by Almon, who, in the preface to his edition 
 of the Letters in 1806, passes seventeen claimants or 
 candidates in review. It only occurs incidentally in 
 Woodfall’s edition of 1812—in the fourth letter of 
 Veteran: 
 
 ‘To the Printer of the Public Advertiser. 
 March 23, 1772. 
 
 ‘ Sir,—I desire you will inform the public that the worthy 
 Lord Barrington, not contented with having driven Mr. 
 D’Oyly out of the War Office, has at last contrived to expel 
 Mr. Francis. . . . I think the public have a right to call 
 upon Mr. D’Oyly and Mr. Francis to declare their reasons 
 for quitting the War Office. Men of their unblemished cha- 
 racter do not resign lucrative employments without some 
 sufficient reasons. . . . When the public loses the services 
 of two able and honest servants, it is but reasonable that the 
 wretch who drives such men out of a public office should be 
 compelled to give some account of himself and his proceed- 
 ings.’ 
 
 Francis formally gave up his place about this time, 
 having virtually vacated it two months before, and 
 Veteran, in his three former letters, obviously proceeds 
 upon the notorious fact that D’Oyly had been super- 
 seded by Chamier. He does not write like one who 
 had been behind the scenes, or who knew more than 
 was known to the public. The intention of Junius to 
 write the Veteran letters, and his motive in writing 
 them, were announced in a private letter to Woodfall, 
 Garedan, 25,177 2.: 
 
 ‘Having nothing better to do, I propose to entertain 
 ~myself and the public with torturing that bloody wretch 
 Barrington. He has just appointed a French broker his 
 deputy, for no reason but his relation to Bradshaw. J hear 
 from all quarters that it 1s looked upon as a most ympu- 
 dent insult to the army. Be careful not to have it known 
 to come from me. Such an insignificant creature is not 
 
366 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 worth the generous rage of Junius. I am impatient for the 
 book (the collected letters).’ 
 
 In another private letter to Woodfall, about 
 February 22, 1772: 
 
 ‘The appointment of this broker, I am told, gives universal 
 disoeust. That * * * would never have taken a step 
 apparently so absurd, if there were not some wicked design 
 in it more than we are aware of. At any rate, the broker 
 should be run down. That, at least, is due to his master.’ 
 
 Sunday, May 3, 1772. 
 
 ‘The proceedings of this wretch are unaccountable. 
 There must be some mystery in it, which I hope will soon 
 be discovered to his confusion. Next to the Duke of 
 Grafton, I verily believe that the blackest heart in the 
 kingdom belongs to Lord Barrington.’ 
 
 Francis knew perfectly well that there was no mys- 
 tery, beyond that in which he himself thought fit to 
 involve his resignation so far as the public were con- 
 cerned. Nor can it be said that he waited till he had 
 formally left the office before he began venting his 
 generous (or ungenerous) rage against his chief; and 
 we collect from the correspondence that he would have 
 been the last man to announce that he had been ex- 
 pelled, or to court public inquiry into the circumstances. 
 It is also clear that Lord Barrington, with far better 
 means of tracing the libeller at the time than persons 
 writing forty years afterwards, never suspected Francis. 
 No sooner, however, did the Veteran letter appear 
 with the other private letters in 1812, than suspicion 
 was directed to Francis, and at length culminated in 
 ‘A Discovery of the Author of the Letters of Junius : 
 printed for Taylor and Hessey, 1813.’ The author 
 (Mr. Taylor) claims the merit of novelty on the distinct 
 ground that neither of the two persons he brings 
 forward had been surmised for the authorship, and says 
 that he was led to his discovery by the later (meaning 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 367 
 
 the Veteran) letters. The two persons are Sir Philip 
 and Dr. Francis: the supposed War Office grievance 
 suggested the son, and the son suggested the father. 
 
 The advantage of this theory is, that much of the 
 discrepancy between different letters under the Junius 
 signatures is accounted for, by supposing them to be 
 the composition of two persons of different ages, habits, 
 and pursuits; and Mr. Taylor advanced so far towards 
 the establishment of the Doctor’s tenancy-in-common, 
 as to be seriously embarrassed when it became ne- 
 cessary to draw back. The proofs and presumptions, 
 deduced by him from the similarity of the father’s style 
 and peculiarities of expression, were unluckily stronger 
 and more numerous than the corresponding proofs and 
 presumptions relating to the son. The double theory, 
 however, was found not to hold water; and the Diés- 
 covery was superseded by Junius Identified in 1816 ; 
 in which, with unabated confidence, Sir Philip is pro- 
 nounced tobe the man. Alone he did what three years 
 before had been ‘demonstrated ’ to be the work of two. 
 
 In the Preface it is distinctly stated that the Veteran 
 letter of March 23rd gave the clue. Before printing the 
 Essay ‘the publishers called on Sir Philip and informed 
 him that, if he had the shghtest objection to have his 
 name connected with the investigation, he might rely on 
 the suppression of the work.’ He replied, ‘ You are quite 
 at liberty to print whatever you think proper, provided 
 nothing scandalous be said regarding my private 
 character.’ Mr. Taylor’s impression was that Francis 
 was rather pleased than displeased by the intimation, 
 and shrewd suspicions were abroad that the surmise of 
 identity emanated from himself. 
 
 It is curious that the Discovery is not so much as 
 mentioned by Mr. Merivale. Why has it been passed 
 
 1 ¢There is scarcely one peculiar expression in the whole of his (Dr. 
 Francis’) Demosthenes and Horace of which an example cannot be found 
 in the last edition of the works of Junius,’—A Discovery, Se, 
 
368 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 over or kept back? But our immediate object is to 
 show how much the Franciscan theory depends on 
 connecting Junius with the War Office, and on proving 
 that Francis was turned out or left on bad terms with 
 Lord Barrington. 
 
 In a letter to his wife, Bath, December 23, 1771, 
 F rancis writes: ‘ Mr. D’ Oy ly as resigned, but of this 
 say nothing. To the same, Bath, December 24, 
 1771: ‘I am very impatient to hear what Lord 
 Barrington has determined about the War Office. 
 L neither desire nor expect any alteration in my own 
 situation. Very likely Mr. Bradshaw may succeed.’ 
 On January 24, 1772, to Baggs: 
 
 ‘You will have heard that Mr. D’Oyly has resigned his 
 employment. He didit while I was at Bath. Immediately 
 upon my return, my Lord Barrington was so good as to 
 make me the offer, with many obliging and friendly ex- 
 pressions. I had, however, solid reasons for declining the 
 offer, and Mr. Anthony Chamier is appointed. All this I 
 should be glad you would communicate to anybody that is 
 willing to hear it.’ 
 
 The next document is a letter from Lord Barrington 
 to Francis, dated February 26, 1772: 
 
 Cavendish Square, February 26, 1772. 
 
 ‘ Dear Sir,—Mr. Marsh has desired to remain where he is: 
 it will therefore be necessary that I should look out for a 
 first clerk now a stranger to the office. I came late to-day 
 thither, which prevented my telling you my present plan, 
 which Mr. Chanier will commumecate. The matter will 
 soon be known to so many persons that tt cannot remain a 
 _ secret; I must therefore remind you of the letter I men- 
 tioned to you at my house. I hope you will be able to com- 
 pose it so as to answer my wish without any inconvenience 
 or detriment to yourself. I have no objection to your men- 
 tioning any of those things which have given you uneasiness 
 heretofore, if you add [what I hope you may add with sin- 
 cerity | that I have since made you easy as to those points. 
 It will be absolutely necessary that I should tell some few 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 369 
 
 persons the occasion of my losing you, and I had much 
 rather do it in your words than mine.—I am ever, dear sir, 
 most faithfully yours, ‘ BARRINGTON.’ 
 
 Lord Barrington was thus prepared with an ex- 
 planation if required; and Francis could gain nothing 
 (and might lose everything) by publicly demanding 
 one. The Veteran letters were at direct variance 
 with his known wishes and interests. 
 
 It is clear from Lord Barrington’s letter that the 
 clerkship was then virtually vacated ; but Francis con- 
 tinued to do the duties till (at least) the 20th March 
 following, as is proved by an official letter from the 
 War Office, signed by him. That he left it on friendly 
 terms with Lord Barrington is undeniable, and this 
 is a fact (as will presently be seen) bearing with over- 
 whelming weight on the question of identity. What is 
 also important to mark, he speaks without resentment 
 or contempt of Mr. Chamier and Mr. Bradshaw, and 
 in reference to the failure of his political speculations in 
 the spring of 1771, he states in the autobiography : 
 
 ‘The prospect on every side was gloomy and dispiriting. 
 From that tume I never ceased to form projects for quitting 
 the War Office. India was the only quarter where it was 
 possible to make a fortune, and this way all my thoughts 
 were directed.’ 
 
 The probabilities are that Francis came to a 
 frank explanation with Lord Barrington as to his views 
 and projects, and left the office upon an understanding 
 that Lord Barrmgton would forward them should an 
 opportunity occur. Two paragraphs in the Public 
 Advertiser favour this supposition : 
 
 ‘Jan. 10, 1772. D’Oyly has resigned. The Deputy- 
 Secretary’s place, being a mere clerkship of 400/. a year, 
 could neither in advantage nor honour be worth holding by 
 a man in the station and circumstances of a gentleman. 
 
 ‘Feb. 2, 1774. In justice to Mr. Francis, whose name 
 VOL, -11. BB 
 
9 
 
 370 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 was mentioned in our paper of yesterday, it ought to be 
 observed that he resigned his place of First Clerk in the 
 War Office a year anda half before he was appointed by Par- 
 liament to be one of the council of Bengal; consequently he 
 was not taken out of the War Office to be sent to India. He 
 at the same time declined the place of Deputy-Secretary at 
 War, which was offered to him wm the handsomest and most 
 friendly manner ; and it is well known that his conduct, in 
 both instances, was founded upon honourable and disinte- 
 rested motives.’ 
 
 Junius, long before the break-up at the War Office, 
 had been in the habit of treating Bradshaw and 
 Chamier, brothers-in-law, de haut en bas, as low 
 creatures of the Duke of Grafton. But they were really 
 nothing of the sort, as Francis well knew ; nor is there 
 the slightest proof that Francis nourished any private 
 ill-will to either of them. Chamier, although he had 
 been for a short time on the Stock Exchange, was an 
 educated and accomplished gentleman. That he was 
 so esteemed, is proved by the fact that eight years 
 before his appointment to the deputy-secretaryship, he 
 had been elected an original member of the Literary 
 Club—the Club founded by Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, 
 &c., in 1764. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, 
 and represented Tamworth for many years. | 
 
 Nothing whatever has been made known of the 
 private life of Francis, from the period of his quitting 
 the War Office in March 177 2, till the July following, 
 when he left England on a continental tour with a 
 friend. ‘They returned on December 14, having passed 
 the greater part of the time in Italy— 
 
 ‘The hopes of employment were yet distant and uncertain. 
 The interval was to be amused, and 2f possible with credit. 
 Mons. de Pinto’s “ Essay on Circulation” had fallen into my 
 hands abroad. I thought I might reap some benefit from 
 giving a translation of it, with notes, to the public.' I went 
 
 1 Junius, at a loss for literary employment, can think of nothing but 
 the translation of a commonplace and long-forgotten book! 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. BY ids 
 
 over to the Hague in May to consult the author, who re- 
 ceived me with transports of joy. He was a perfect Atheist, 
 with a most benevolent heart. He was vain of his book, but 
 had no notion of fame, except that which he could enjoy in 
 his lifetime. I had a letter of introduction from Lord 
 Suffolk to Sir Joseph Yorke, the prince of coxcombs. It 
 was the time of the fair, so I passed a week tolerably well 
 between . .. Jews and Gentiles. The work was nearly 
 finished, when I was called upon to act. .... Upon 
 accepting my present appointment, I surrendered all my 
 papers to Stephen Baggs, in whose name the translation has 
 been published. . 
 
 ‘But neither this nor any other occupation was sufficient 
 to defend me from fits of despondence. It was in vain to 
 shut my eyes to my situation. Wherever I went or what- 
 ever I did, the spectre haunted and pursued me. Mr. Alex- 
 ander Mackrabie was lately returned from America. He had 
 purchased a thousand acres for me in Pennsylvania, where I 
 meant to secure a retreat for myself or my family, if ever 
 England should cease to be the seat of freedom. The ques- 
 tion now seriously agitated in my mind, was whether I ought 
 not to transplant myself at once, and take possession of this 
 establishment before my little capital was echausted.' This 
 was actually the subject of a dismal conversation between 
 Mackrabie and me, on the fourth of June, when we acct- 
 dentally met a gentleman in the park, who informed me 
 that John Cholwell, one of the intended Commissioners for 
 India, had declined the nomination. I immediately went 
 to D’Oyly, who wrote to Grey Cooper. It was the King’s 
 birthday, and Barrington was gone to Court. I saw him the 
 next morning; as soon as I had explained my views to him, 
 he wrote the handsomest and strongest letter imaginable in 
 my favour to Lord North. Other interests contributed, but I 
 owe my success to Lord Barrington. It was remarkably 
 fortunate for me that Cholwell had deferred his resignation 
 to so late a day. The Regulation Bill had been some days 
 before the House of Commons. If the Minister had had 
 more tume to look about him, I should probably have been 
 defeated by some superior interest. He sent for me on 
 Tuesday the 8th of June, and with a multitude of flattering 
 
 1 Calcraft had just before left him a legacy of 1,000/. 
 BB2 
 
Sie MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 expressions desired my leave to recommend me to Parlia- 
 ment to be one of the Council General at Bengal, in addi- 
 tion to Mr. Hastings, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, 
 and Mr. Barwell.’ 
 
 Ten months (he adds) elapsed between the passing 
 of the Regulation Bill and his departure for India. ‘A 
 great part of this interval was lost in mere inactivity. 
 The rest was employed in debates and intrigues at the 
 India House.’ He did not embark for India till the 
 30th of March, 1774, two years and ten weeks after the 
 virtual cessation of the Junius letters. All chronological 
 correspondence consequently between the cessation or 
 suspension of the letters and the appointment or 
 departure for India is at end. The manner in which 
 the appointment came about completely negatives the 
 popular belief that it was the stipulated hush-money or 
 (as Lord Campbell calls it) ‘ the little provender thrown 
 to “the great boar of the forest.” ’ 
 
 When it suits the purpose of the biographers, Francis 
 is a man of influence and reputation, capable of 
 
 ‘sustaining the elevated tone of Junius. When it no 
 longer suits their purpose, he sinks into the position of 
 ‘a young and obscure retired clerk in the War Office,’ 
 on whom it was absurd to suppose that the appoint- 
 ment just declined by a Mr. Cholwell would be con- 
 ferred without some hidden motive. The truth lies 
 between. If Francis had done all the chief work of 
 the War Office for seven years, he must have been 
 known at the Treasury as precisely the sort of man to 
 co-operate with Monson and Clavering, who were 
 deficient in habits of business and little conversant with 
 forms. We have seen how he was received by Lord 
 North, to whom George III. writes (June 8, 1773): 
 ‘As to the other gentlemen who have applied to you, 
 I don’t know anything of their personal qualifications, 
 except Mr. Francis, who is allowed to be a man of 
 talents (sze).’ It may be doubted whether His Majesty 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. oD 
 
 and Lord North would have corresponded in this easy 
 open fashion about Junius; and we are quite sure that 
 the secret would have never been kept long if they had. 
 Wraxall tells a story of the king saying in 1773, after 
 Junius had long done writing: ‘ We know who Junius 
 is; he will write no more.’ But this may pair off with 
 William IV.’s story (related to Lord Braybrooke), of his 
 royal father’s saying: ‘I am convinced that it (Junius) 
 cannot be the work of one person, and that several 
 were concerned.’ ! | 
 
 Lord Barrington, too, must have been a party to the 
 arrangement ; a circumstance which it is difficult to 
 reconcile with the terms on which he and Francis 
 continued to correspond and associate till his lordship’s 
 death in 1793. Lord Barrington, on this hypothesis, 
 may not have known that Junius was Veteran; but he 
 must have known and remembered the notices which 
 the eo-nomine Junius had vouchsafed to him. We cite 
 two amongst many. ‘The person interrogated in the 
 following passage is the king: 
 
 ‘Is it bona fide your interest or your honour to sacrifice 
 your domestic tranquillity, and to live in a perpetual dis- 
 agreement with your people, merely to preserve such a chain 
 of beings as North, Barrington, Weymouth, Gower, Ellis, 
 Onslow, Rigby, Jerry Dyson, and Sandwich? Their very 
 names are a satire upon all government, and I defy the 
 gravest of your chaplains to read the catalogue without 
 laughing.’ (April 3, 1770.) 
 
 Ellis, who appointed Francis to his clerkship, as well 
 as Lord Barrington under whom he was then serving, 
 figures in the list by way of rounding the imputed 
 treachery and folly. Again: 
 
 1 Diaries of a Lady of Quality, second edition, p. 282. ‘ Lord Sid- 
 mouth informed his son-in-law, on Lord Grenville’s death, that George 
 the Third and Lord Grenville had both separately told him that they 
 knew who was the author of Junius, and that he thought it probable 
 some discovery would be made.’—(Life and Correspondence of Henry 
 Viscount Sidmouth, vol. iii. p. 449.) 
 
374 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ‘When the Guards are called forth to murder their 
 fellow-subjects, it is not by the ostensible advice of Lord 
 Mansfield : that odious office his prudence tells him is better 
 left to such men as Gower and Weymouth, as Barrington 
 and Grafton.’ (October 3, 1771.) 
 
 Lord Barrington is repeatedly twitted by Junius with 
 employing Bradshaw as a pimp. 
 
 After mentioning an exchange of notes between 
 Francis and his ex-chief after the appointment, Mr. 
 Merivale proceeds : 
 
 ‘On whatever terms Francis may have quitted the War 
 Office, it is clear that no ostensible quarrel remained be- 
 tween the two, and that Lord Barrington must have been 
 wholly unaware of any rancour lingering in the heart of his 
 subordinate. For several years after his arrival in India, 
 Francis addresses to Lord Barrington long and confidential 
 reports of matters there—seeks to inoculate his lordship with 
 all his own personal views and enmities—invokes him as his 
 mediator with Lord North—terms him and Welbore Ellis 
 his only two real friends in the government. “To Lord Bar- 
 rington,” he says, to another correspondent, “I have at all 
 “times laid open my heart with unlimited freedom.” Lord 
 Barrington’s answers, though few, are very friendly, and 
 often familiar and gossiping: and it is strange enough to 
 “Junian” readers to find these two exchanging compli- 
 mentary inquiries and answers about Chamier and condo- 
 lences on the death (by his own hand) of poor “ cream- 
 coloured ” Bradshaw; “an irreparable loss to me and others,” 
 says Lord Barrington (March, 1775). After Francis’s return 
 from India, we shall find him visiting at Lord Barrington’s 
 house in the country.’ 
 
 Strange enough certainly, if Junius was Francis ; not 
 strange at all, if he was not. Everything depends on 
 proving that Francis wrote the abusive letters against 
 Lord Barrington under the signature of Veteran 
 (undoubtedly written by Junius) in February, March, 
 and May, 1772, and for this some semblance of a 
 motive must be shown. Lord Stanhope, speaking of 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 375 
 
 Francis’s clerkship in the War Office, says: ‘ This post 
 he held until March, 1772, when he resigned, or was 
 removed, full of wre against Lord Barrington, who had 
 promoted Mr. Chamier over his head to be Deputy 
 Secretary at War.’ The noble writer was not aware of 
 the fresh evidence supplied by the family letters and 
 the autobiography, but Mr. Merivale was aware of it, 
 and he writes thus : 
 
 ‘The story is simply told in the note to Bohn’s “ Junius,” 
 ii. 392, that “Chamier was successor in the War Office to 
 Mr. D’Oyly, who was discarded to make room for him.” 
 D’Oyly was the personal friend of Francis. But whether the 
 indignation of Francis was really occasioned by any slight, 
 to D’Oyly, or by the shght to himself in not being appointed 
 D’Oyly’s successor, remains, as far as I can trace the details 
 uncertain. The wtense fury into which Junius (not by that 
 name, of which he carefully avoided the use in this part of 
 his performances) lashed himself as to this matter is well 
 known to his readers. All his dignity, all his power of keen 
 anatomising sarcasm, all his caustic elegance of language, all 
 the qualities which make him a classical author, desert him 
 on this occasion. Mere brutal abuse becomes the substi- 
 tute. The letters of Veteran to Lord Barrington [* Miscel- 
 laneous,” January 28 to March 10, 1772, and the private 
 letters to Woodfull, Nos. 52 and 53] are specimens of vulgar 
 ferocity, as discreditable to the writer’s intellectual power 
 as to his self-respect and manliness of character.’ 
 
 What have we to do now with the old story in 
 Bohn’s Junius? D’Oyly writes on the 21st December 
 that he had resigned that morning, and that Smith was 
 mentioned as his probable successor. Francis had the 
 offer ‘with many obliging and friendly expressions ’ 
 before the place was given toChamier. Far from there 
 being any ‘ ostensible quarrel,’ there was the best pos- 
 sible understanding. Yet the indignation of Francis is 
 taken for granted, and the reader is led on to connect 
 it with ‘the intense fury into which Junius lashed him- 
 self, as by the easiest and most natural transition. We 
 
376 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 are expected to believe, in the teeth of all evidence and 
 probability, that Francis was not only constantly writ- 
 ing against his patron and chief during the whole 
 period covered by the letters signed Junius, but that he 
 went on assailing him with ‘vulgar ferocity ’ for three 
 months after the cessation of these letters. 
 
 All this time his main dependence is on Lord Bar- 
 rington. Itis to Lord Barrington that he repairs when 
 the Indian appointment is in view; it is to Lord 
 Barrington ‘I owe my success ;’ and it is Lord Bar- 
 rington with whom he maintains the most amicable 
 relations during the remaining twenty years of their 
 joint lives. In 1777, Lord Barrington writes to 
 express his gratification at hearing of the good under- 
 standing between Francis and Clavering: ‘I love you 
 both so much that I cannot wish you to continue long ~ 
 in a situation so painful though so creditable to you.’ 
 
 The question is not merely whether Francis was 
 a man without honour, honesty, truth, feeling, or 
 sensibility ; but whether he was guilty of the extremity 
 of human baseness, indefinitely multiplying the chances 
 of detection, with the attendant ruin and disgrace, with- 
 out the semblance of a reason which the most per- 
 verted ingenuity can suggest. | 
 
 We have too high an opinion of Junius, based on the 
 tone and tenor of his writings, to suppose him «so 
 unmitigated, gratuitous, and indiscreet a scoundrel as 
 those who confound him with Francis would make out. 
 We should be sorry to think so ill of Francis either. 
 Take either of them apart, and you have a character 
 in which the good qualities may be fairly set against the 
 bad. Roll the two into one, and the product is a 
 prodigy of falsehood, meanness, ingratitude, treachery, 
 folly, and malignity unrelieved; the faulty monster 
 that the world ne’er saw. We are far from believing 
 that men are always guided by their interest. We 
 make full allowance for caprice, envy, vanity, vin- 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS, fs 
 
 dictiveness, or malignity. But no selfish, ambitious, or 
 money-loving man, who had his fortune to make, and 
 was struggling to make it, ever persevered in gratifying 
 his worst passions for seven or eight years without once 
 listening to the dictates of prudence. It is the im- 
 puted folly, not the imputed rascality, of Francis that 
 startles us. He is represented systematically writing 
 against every friend, benefactor, and patron in succes- 
 sion, without a rational motive or an intelligible cause. 
 
 On the Franciscan hypothesis, the relations between 
 Calcraft and Francis (as described by Mr. Merivale) 
 afforded another instance of unintelligible baseness. 
 Caleraft died on the 23rd of August, 1772. By his 
 will, dated January 23, 1772, he directs his executors 
 to use their interest to procure the election of Francis 
 for his borough of Wareham. By a codicil, dated 
 March 24, 1772, he leaves ‘my much-respected friend,’ 
 Philip Francis, 1,000/., and a contingent provision of 
 200/. a year for his widow. Now in one of the most 
 studied letters of Junius, dated October 5, 1771, we 
 find : 
 
 ‘I willingly accept of a sarcasm from Colonel Barré, or a 
 simile from Mr. Burke. Even the silent vote of Mr. Cal- 
 craft is worth reckoning in a division. What though he 
 riots in the plunder of the army, and has only determined 
 to be a patriot when he could not be a peer.’ 
 
 We unequivocally admit that, if Francis was Junius, 
 he was blackguard enough for anything ; and he speaks 
 of his generous friend in the most injurious terms in 
 the autobiography, which he probably never intended 
 to see the light. But why should he publicly depreciate 
 his friend and coadjutor at a time when he had every 
 imaginable motive for exalting him? Mr. Merivale 
 thinks that Calcraft must have been aware that Francis 
 was Junius. Was it, then, to promote their common 
 interest, and by Calcraft’s consent, that he was thus 
 branded by a satirist who scorched to blackness what- 
 
378 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ever he touched? Was it sufficient compensation to 
 have his silent vote classed with a sarcasm from Barré 
 or a simile from Burke? Having to choose a bitter 
 thing, did he elect for an allusion to the peculation of 
 which he was suspected, and to his vain struggle for a 
 peerage, the chief disappointment of his life ? 
 
 No reader of Junius can have forgotten the terms 
 on which he and Sir William Draper parted after their 
 second encounter—the burning resentment on the one 
 side, the withering contempt on the other. In the 
 letter of 14th February, 1770, Junius describes Sir John 
 Burgoyne as ‘sitting down for the remainder of his 
 life, infamous and contented.’ Well, on December 11, 
 1787, when Francis had to repel the charge of having 
 allowed himself to be included in the list of managers 
 of the impeachment of Hastings, his personal enemy, 
 to whom did he appeal? He stated that the two 
 gentlemen whom he had consulted as the best judges of 
 points of honour were Sir William Draper and Sir John 
 Burgoyne. Draper was dead, but Burgoyne rose and 
 handsomely responded to the appeal ; which, if Francis 
 was Junius, is the strongest example of gratuitous folly 
 and brazen impudence on record. Why aggravate 
 the consequences of a discovery which was always on 
 the cards? 
 
 There is another topic connected with Draper which 
 we may as well dispose of in this place. In a letter to 
 him, February 21, 1769, Junius asks: ‘When you 
 receive your half-pay, do you, or do you not, take a 
 solemn oath, or sign a declaration upon honour, to the 
 following effect: That you do not actually hold any 
 place of profit, civil or military, under his majesty?’ 
 Draper replied immediately: ‘I have a very short 
 answer for Junius’ important question: I do not either 
 take an oath, or declare upon honour, that I have no 
 place of profit, civil or military, when I receive the 
 half-pay of an Irish colonel. My most gracious 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 379 
 
 sovereign gave it me as a pension. He was pleased to 
 think I deserved it.” On this a writer in the Quarterly 
 Review (January, 1852) remarked : ‘ Had Junius been 
 Francis, he must have known, as first clerk in the War 
 Office, the exact facts of Sir William’s position ; and of 
 course would not have made an attack which could be 
 so easily repelled.’ Lord Macaulay’s attention having 
 been called to this inference, he writes : 
 
 ‘I talked that matter over more than ten years ago, when 
 I was Secretary at War, with two of the oldest and best in- 
 formed gentlemen in the department; and we all three came 
 to a conclusion the very opposite of that at which the re- 
 viewer has arrived. Everybody who drew half-pay through 
 that office made the declaration which Junius mentions. 
 But Draper’s half-pay was on the Irish establishment; and 
 of him the declaration was not required. Now, to me and 
 to those whom I consulted, it seemed the most natural 
 thing in the world that Francis, relying on his official know- 
 ledge, and not considering that there might be a difference 
 between the practice at Dublin and the practice at West- 
 minster, should put that unlucky question which gave 
 Draper so great an advantage. I have repeatedly pointed 
 out this circumstance to men who are excellent judges of 
 evidence, and I never found one who did not agree with 
 me.’! 
 
 The reviewer’s point is that, if Junius had been first 
 clerk in the War Office, he must have known the exact 
 facts of Sir William’s position, namely that he was in 
 receipt of a pension, not (technically speaking) half- 
 pay. We do not see much in this point, but instead of 
 being met by Lord Macaulay, it is rather strengthened 
 when he says that ‘everybody who drew half-pay 
 through the office made the declaration which Junius 
 mentions.’ Then everybody who drew half-pay knew 
 the practice as well as the clerks; and the clerks, along 
 
 1 Letter to John Murray, Esq. Appendix to the fifth volume of Lord 
 Mahon’s (Earl Stanhope’s) History of England since the Peace of Utrecht, 
 last edition. 
 
380 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 with all half-pay officers, must have known, what 
 Junius did not know, that the form required was a 
 declaration, not an oath. Junius, evidently from im- 
 perfect knowledge, puts the question alternatively: Do 
 you, or do you not, take a solemn oath, or sign a 
 declaration upon honour? If, again, there had been 
 a difference between the practice at Dublin and the 
 practice at Westminster, there would have been no 
 necessity for converting the half-pay into a pension for 
 the purpose of avoiding the declaration. 
 
 As to the positive assertion that War Office paper 
 was used by Junius, it always seemed unaccountable 
 that Woodfall, Wilkes, and others, who saw the original 
 letters, should never have thought of Woodfall’s old 
 school-fellow in connection with the secret. To satisfy 
 ourselves as to the paper, we repaired to the War 
 Office with an original Junius, kindly lent to us (by 
 Mr. Merivale) as a specimen; and we were favoured 
 with an inspection of the letter-books. The paper 
 differs in form from that on which copies of letters 
 sent had been preserved, but agrees in form, quality, 
 colour, and water-mark with the majority of letters 
 received. It is obviously the paper in common use at 
 the period. We also ascertained that there was then 
 no War Office paper; 7. e. no paper with a peculiar 
 stamp or mark of any kind. 
 
 The editor of the Grenville Papers states that the 
 paper on which one of the letters from Junius to Mr. 
 Grenville was written is identically the same as that 
 which Lord Temple was using at the time. One of 
 the interesting letters addressed to me by the late Chief 
 Baron Pollock bears on this point : 
 
 ‘Jan. 7, 1868. My dear H.—I have just finished your 
 More About, and I must say I do not believe that Francis 
 
 * It was by the kindness of Captain Douglas Galton, then Under- 
 Secretary of War, that I was enabled to institute this comparison, in 
 which he assisted. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 381 
 
 was the author of Junius. One great point made by Parkes 
 was that every letter was written on paper used in the War 
 Office. Junius was most anxious not to be discovered and 
 took all pains to avoid it. It is, therefore, very unlikely 
 that he would use War Office paper, if he was a clerk in the 
 War Office. Junius might studiously do so to put inquirers 
 on a wrong scent.’ 
 
 In an immediately preceding letter my distinguished 
 correspondent writes : 
 
 ‘Joe Parkes came here shortly before his death with a 
 bag full of papers, and he satisfied me then that Francis 
 was the author; but the joint work of Parkes and Merivale 
 does not contain a syllable of the evidence that satisfied me. 
 Parkes professed to trace the seals (copies of which are given 
 in Woodfall’s edition) to two members of Francis’s family : 
 there is nothing of this in the publication or of other similar 
 matters.’ 
 
 ‘That Junius moved in the immediate circle of the 
 court, and was intimately and confidentially connected, 
 either directly or indirectly, with ad/ the public offices: 
 of Government, is, if possible, still clearer than that he 
 was a man of independent property; for the feature 
 that peculiarly characterised him, at the time of his 
 writing, and that cannot even now be contemplated 
 without surprise, was the facility with which he became 
 acquainted with every ministerial manceuvre, whether 
 public or private, from almost the very instant of its 
 conception.’ 
 
 It was the extent and variety of his sources of in- 
 formation that baffled the most eager and persevering 
 attempts to unearth him. No sooner was he thought 
 to be traced to one department, than he was showing 
 up some alleged abuse in another ; but his information 
 (as in the foregoing instance) was general, and sub- 
 
 1 Woodfall’s Junius, Preliminary Essay, where a number of illustra- 
 tions are given. It appears from the private letters that a great many 
 communications were forwarded to him, 
 
382 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 stantially rather than technically correct; and in 
 another case (Vaughan’s) we find him making the 
 amende honorable for its inaccuracy.! If, we repeat, it 
 had been of a nature to prove his connection with any 
 particular department, he would have been traced. 
 The officials of all ranks were constantly on the alert 
 to discover him. His choice of subjects, again, was 
 obviously regulated by their fitness for popular effect, 
 not by private pique; and one capital error of recent 
 commentators has been to forget that subjects which, 
 dwarfed by distance, appear petty to us, may not have 
 appeared petty to his contemporaries. In their eyes, 
 for example, City matters were of the highest interest. 
 
 We also think that a great deal too much im- 
 portance has been attached to supposed leanings 
 towards statesmen so prominently before the public as 
 Lord Chatham, Lord Holland, and Mr. George Gren- 
 ville; even if Francis and Junius agreed in each 
 instance, which they do not. Indeed they differ 
 decidedly on all three. As to supposed antipathies, 
 again, nothing is more common than for a public writer 
 to work himself into a generous or ungenerous rage on 
 a subject in which he has no individual interest. No 
 attempt has been made to trace to personal enmity the 
 diatribes of Junius against the King, the Duke of Grafton, 
 the Duke of Bedford, Lord Mansfield, and many others 
 which are hardly to be surpassed in virulence. 
 
 It cannot have failed to strike everyone who has 
 attentively followed the controversy, that evidence is 
 weighed in different scales when it shakes instead of 
 strengthening the hypothesis. A genuine Franciscan is 
 eternally straining at gnats or swallowing camels: 
 ‘craning’ at low fences or dashing wildly at stone walls 
 
 ? The facts of General Gansell’s affair were of a nature to be publicly 
 known, and in a private letter Junius says, ‘ The only thing that hinders 
 my pushing the subject, is really the fear of ruining that poor devil 
 Gansell, and those other blockheads.’ 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 383 
 
 or through quickset hedges with his eyes shut. When 
 a letter contains anything which Francis is not likely to 
 have written, or something at utter variance with his 
 position, circumstances, or personality, the invariable 
 answer is that it was inserted as a blind. Junius 
 intimates that he attended the debates in the House 
 of Lords on one or two remarkable occasions. So did 
 Francis ; so did Boyd (another candidate); so probably 
 did many others.’ But Junius also states that he 
 remembered the ‘ great Walpolean battles,’ the last of 
 which was fought before Francis was breeched. 
 Junius appeals to his ‘long experience,’ and in a 
 private letter to Wilkes, who offers a ticket for the 
 Lord Mayor’s ball and his daughter for a partner, 
 writes simply and good-humouredly: ‘Many thanks 
 for your obliging offer; but, alas, my age and figure 
 would do but little credit to my partner. I acknowledge 
 the relation between Cato and Portia; but in truth 
 I see no connection between Junius and a minuet.’ 
 
 In his dedication he says: ‘I am the sole depositary 
 of my own secret, and it shall perish with me.’ In 
 a private letter to Woodfall, September 10, 1769, we 
 find : ‘ The last letter you printed was idle and improper, 
 and, I assure you, printed against my own opinion. 
 The truth is, there are people about me whom I would 
 wish not to contradict, and who had rather see Junius 
 in the papers ever so improperly than not at all.’ In 
 a private letter (Aug. 6, 1769) to Woodfall three lines 
 are written in a different hand from the rest and 
 (judging from the facsimiles in Woodfall’s edition) 
 resembling the handwriting of Boyd. Junius (in a 
 private letter to Woodfall) says, ‘The gentleman who 
 
 1 At the request of Junius, Woodfall announced in his paper an in- 
 tended motion by the Ministry, that no gentleman may be refused admit- 
 tance into either House on the day of the Debate on the Falkland 
 Islands. Both Houses were consequently crammed, This was one occa- 
 sion on which Junius was probably present. 
 
9D 
 
 384 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 does the conveyancing part of our business, tells me 
 there was much difficulty last night.’ This gentleman, 
 therefore, must have understood the nature of the 
 business. 
 
 Wonder has been expressed at the manner in which 
 the secret has been kept. But has it been so closely 
 kept? May not an accurate guess, or a genuine betrayal, 
 have been too hastily disregarded ? Burke told Reynolds 
 that he knew Junius. Boyd, according to Almon, 
 as good as let out the secret to him. Dr. Parr 
 stood out for Lloyd. Rosenhagen and Kent claimed 
 the authorship. Lord Grenville and Mr. Thomas 
 Grenville knew, or believed that they knew, Junius, 
 and declared that he was neither of the persons to whom 
 the letters have been popularly ascribed. Fox, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Charles Butler, used to say that, ‘ though 
 he would not take single-speech Hamilton against the 
 field, he would bet him against any single horse.’ 
 ‘Might not the same bet,’ asks Mr. Butler, ‘with a 
 oreater chance of success, be laid upon Lord George 
 Sackville?’ Sir William Draper’s suspicions wavered 
 between Lord George and Burke, until Burke’s un- 
 equivocal denial, when they permanently fixed on Lord 
 George. The case made out by Mr. Coventry for 
 Lord George would be the strongest of any, if the re- 
 quired cultivation could be proved.t M. Charles de 
 Remusat, the statesman and academician, wavered 
 between Francis, Earl Temple, and Lord George. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, who had broken a lance with Junius, 
 told Boswell, ‘I should have believed Burke to be 
 Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is 
 capable of writing these letters ; but Burke spontaneously 
 
 1 It seemed unlikely that Lord George could have had the classical 
 knowledge (not very deep) displayed by Jurius. But I find that, during 
 the Lord-Lieutenancy of his father, the Duke of Dorset, Lord George 
 was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, and had the reputation of a 
 good classical scholar. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 385 
 
 denied it to me.’ Junius (unwilling, it is surmised, to 
 annoy a valued friend) made no reply to Johnson’s 
 attack in his pamphlet on the Falkland Islands. We 
 have heard the late Mr. O’Connell, who had given par- 
 ticular attention to the inquiry, confidently assert the 
 authorship of Burke; whose power of disguising or 
 imitating style is proved by the ‘Vindication of 
 Natural Society,’ which the best judges, including Lord 
 Chesterfield and Bishop Warburton, believed for many 
 years to be the genuine production of Bolingbroke. 
 Mr. Prior, who gives fourteen reasons or arguments 
 for believing Burke to be Junius, says: ‘It was 
 the universal belief at the time with both his own 
 and the other party, that he was Junius: and con- 
 temporary opinion, as formed from a variety of minor 
 curcumstances, which do not come within the knowledge 
 of future inquirers, is perhaps, on such occasions, the 
 truest. Why, we repeat, did contemporary opinion 
 altogether overlook, or dismiss as untenable, the 
 coicidences on which so much stress has recently been 
 laid as bringing the authorship home to Francis? 
 
 The credit of first bringing the Franciscan theory 
 before the public is certainly due to Mr. Taylor, but 
 its general acceptance has been principally owing to 
 its unhesitating adoption and eager advocacy by Earl 
 Stanhope and Lord Macaulay, who agreed in resting 
 their case on similarity of handwriting, on the internal 
 evidence of style, and on five points which are thus 
 summarily stated by Lord Macaulay ; 
 
 ‘Was he (Francis) the author of the Letters of Junius ? 
 Our own firm belief is that he was. The evidence is, we 
 think, such as would support a verdict in a civil, nay, in a 
 criminal proceeding.’ The handwriting of Jwinus is the 
 
 1 ¢T think the case cannot be compared to a criminal inquiry founded 
 on circumstantial evidence. There (in general) all the evidence is 
 required that the case is capable of, or the absence of any must be ac- 
 counted for.’ —(The late Chief Baron Pollock, private letter.) 
 
 VOL. II. CC 
 
386 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 very peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. 
 As to the position, pursuits, and connections of Junius, the 
 following are the most important facts, which can be con- 
 sidered as clearly proved :—first, that he was acquainted 
 with the technical forms of the Secretary of State’s office ; 
 secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with the busi- 
 ness of the War Office ; thirdly, that he, during the year 
 1770, attended debates in the House or Lords, and took 
 notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord 
 Chatham ; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appoint- 
 ment of Mr. Chamier to the place of deputy Secretary-at- 
 War; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the 
 first Lord Holland. | 
 
 ‘Now, Francis passed some years in the Secretary of 
 State’s office. He was subsequently chief clerk of the War 
 Office. He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 
 1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham, and some of these 
 speeches were actually printed from his notes. He resigned 
 his clerkship at the War Office from resentment at the 
 appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that 
 he was first introduced into the public service. Now, here 
 are five marks all of which ought to be found in Junius. 
 They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe that 
 more than two of them can be found in any other person 
 whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, 
 there is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.’ ! 
 
 Postponing the question of handwriting for a 
 moment, we beg to observe that the first, second, 
 and fourth of these five important facts (assuming them 
 to be facts) resolve themselves into one. The Secretary 
 at War having no power to sign commissions, &c., the 
 business of the War Office was then carried on in con- 
 cert with the Secretary of State’s office and the Treasury. 
 This being so, the clerk in the War Office who resented 
 the appointment of Chamier must have been acquainted 
 with the business of the War Office and the technical 
 forms of the Secretary of State’s office. But Francis 
 did not resign his clerkship from resentment at the 
 
 1 Essay on Warren Hastings, first published in the Edinburgh Review, 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 387 
 
 appointment of Chamier. Junius did not bitterly resent 
 that appointment, although he bitterly censured it as an 
 abuse of patronage which had given great offence to 
 the army; he shows no peculiar acquaintance with 
 technical forms ; and all attempts to connect him with 
 the War Office have broken down. 
 
 As to the fifth, there is no proof or sign that Junius 
 was bound by some strong tie to Lord Holland. In a 
 private letter to Woodfall, July 21, 1769, he merely 
 says: ‘I wish Lord Holland may acquit himself with 
 honour. If his cause be good, he should at once have 
 published that account, to which he refers in his letter 
 to the Mayor.’ In a published letter, signed Anti-Fox 
 (attributed to Junius), he says: ‘I know nothing of 
 Junius, but I see plainly that he has designedly 
 spared Lord Holland and his family.’ This letter was 
 in reply to one from Charles Fox, complaining of 
 having been wantonly attacked. But granting the 
 strong tie between Jord Holland and Junius, how is 
 the strong tie between Lord Holland and Francis to be 
 made out? Long before the commencement of the 
 Junius Letters, the tie, such as it was, had been 
 irreparably broken. Amongst other passages in the 
 autobiography absolutely railing at Lord Holland, we 
 take the following, and leave readers to make what they 
 can out of the blanks: 
 
 ‘When Lord Holland went to Italy in 1763, he left my 
 father as unprovided for as when he found him, except that 
 he bequeathed him as a legacy to Lord Bute, who transferred 
 him to George Grenville. Through this recommendation, 
 he afterwards obtained a pension out of the privy purse of 
 three hundred pounds a year. In the meantime, however, 
 he felt the distress of his situation, and was stung with the 
 idea of so long having been the dupe of a scoundrel. His 
 resentment burst into a flame. He wrote to Lord Holland in 
 violent terms, which . . . where, for want of better 
 employment, he busied himself in laying schemes. In 
 these . . . J concurred with him heartily, 
 
 cc2 
 
388 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 There goes mark the fifth. Mark the third, when 
 reduced to its proper dimensions, is hardly a mark at all. 
 Both Junius and Francis attended debates in the House 
 of Lords in 1770. We are not aware that more than 
 two occasions (if so many) can be specified ; on each 
 of which the House was notoriously crowded to excess. 
 There is no sort of proof that Junius took notes, 
 although most probably he did. There is nothing we 
 can accept as proof that Francis took notes on more 
 than one occasion. His notes of Lord Chatham’s 
 speech or speeches on February 2, 1770, and the short 
 report (one page) based on them, are printed in the 
 Appendix. These leave by no means a favourable 
 impression of his skill; and, being the only specimen 
 preserved by him, justify a doubt whether he was 
 tempted to try his hand again. It is also a curious cir- 
 cumstance that he was not named or known as a 
 reporter until the suspicious process of identification 
 had commenced. 
 
 Mr. Taylor ‘ was accidentally turning over the pages 
 of Almon’s Anecdotes,’ when his eye was caught by 
 several passages so much in the style of Junius, as to 
 lead him to observe that either Lord Chatham was the 
 author of the Letters, or Junius had reported Lord 
 Chatham’s speeches.’ On closer inspection it appeared 
 that ‘the pages which contained the spirit of Junius’ 
 were very limited in number, containing only the 
 reports of two debates, January 9th and 22nd, 1770. 
 Almon describes the first as accurately taken by a 
 gentleman of strong memory, now (1791) a member of 
 the House of Commons. Another debate was copied 
 into the Parliamentary History, in 1813, with an 
 acknowledement : 
 
 ‘This very important debate was taken by a gentleman 
 who afterwards made a distinguished figure in the House of 
 
 ' Anecdotes of the Life of Lord Chatham, with his Speeches, first pub- 
 lished in 1791, 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 389 
 
 Commons, and by him it has been obligingly revised for this 
 work.’ 
 
 ‘ Application’ (adds Mr. Taylor) ‘was made by my 
 publishers to ascertain, if it was no secret, whether Sir 
 Philip Francis was the gentleman described in the 
 above note, and an answer being received in the affirm- 
 ative, the case, as far as concerns Sir Philip, appears to 
 be sufficiently made out.’ If Sir Philip was a party to 
 this use of his name, the case is sufficiently made out 
 that he was a plagiarist or an impostor, for all the 
 reports he pretended to have supplied from private 
 notes in 1791, have been discovered in the newspapers 
 or periodical publications of 1770: they were all of 
 them published prior to the Letters of Junius, in which 
 the so-called parallel passages occur; and the debate 
 (about forty pages), so ‘ obligingly revised,’ turns out 
 to have been copied verbatim from Almon, with the 
 occasional change of an won into on.’ So much for 
 mark the third. 
 
 Not more than two of these five marks (if so many) 
 can be proved to exist in Junius. Whether more than 
 two can be found in any person whatever besides 
 Francis, is consequently immaterial. But the assertion 
 partakes strongly of the ‘cocksure.’ No case of cir- 
 cumstantial evidence is complete if the proved or 
 admitted facts can be reconciled with a different 
 (however improbable) hypothesis. Is there anything 
 so very improbable in the existence of a second man 
 conversant with official forms, occasionally taking notes 
 of a debate, partial to Lord Holland, and vehemently 
 assailing an abuse of patronage? The five marks (if 
 they existed) would simply amount to this. 
 
 1 The claims of Francis to these reports are fully examined and dis- 
 proved in the concluding paper of an admirable series of articles on 
 Junius in The Atheneum of September 7th, 14th, and 21st, 1850. There 
 is no reason why Junius should not have noted down peculiar ex- 
 
 pressions of Lord Chatham for his own use; but in point of fact those 
 used by him had already appeared in print. 
 
9 
 
 390 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ‘The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar 
 handwriting of Francis slightly disguised.’ The fac- 
 similes published by Mr. Twisleton have enabled all 
 who care to examine them to form an opinion on this. 
 matter. But there are circumstances which might have 
 induced even Lord Macaulay to hesitate before making 
 such an assertion. Francis had acted as amanuensis 
 to Lord Chatham for more than a year, and Lord 
 Chatham’s recollection of his handwriting had been 
 refreshed by letters transmitted through Calcraft shortly 
 before the receipt of a private letter from Junius in the 
 Junian hand (dated January 14, 1772), being the 
 second private letter to Lord Chatham. All the world 
 were then speculating on the identity, and the hand- 
 writing was minutely scrutinised by Lord Chatham and 
 his friends. How came they not to recognize it ? 
 Stranger still, how came Francis to run the risk of 
 sending Junian letters to his old patron in his own 
 ‘very peculiar handwriting slightly discuised.’ 
 
 There is no peculiarity of the Junian hand more 
 striking than its variety ; and there are strong grounds 
 for believing that more than one person was engaged 
 in the penmanship, if not in the composition, of the 
 Letters.2 This variety has greatly aided the experts: 
 
 1 [ stated in the pamphlet that I had shown specimens of the hand- 
 writing of Junius and Francis to at least thirty persons, including emi- 
 nent lawyers and men of letters, and that they were all but unanimous 
 that there was no similarity. Mr. Twisleton having strongly insinuated 
 a doubt whether these were fair specimens, it may be as well to add 
 that they consisted of original letters of Junius and Francis lent me by 
 Mr. Merivale for the purpose, and the facsimiles in the appendix of his 
 book, which I cut out. 
 
 2 A private secretary finds no difficulty in imitating the handwriting 
 of his chief; and two or three persons might agree on a feigned hand, 
 which would vary according to their powers of penmanship. The first 
 letter to Mr. Grenville (dated February 16, 1763), was clumsily written 
 by a person to whom the feigned band was evidently new. The size and 
 slope waver, and change in the third line. The first letter to Lord 
 Chatham in the preceding month (January 2, 1768), is marked by a de- 
 gree of freedom, regularity and fineness of touch that is altogether want- 
 ing in the other. ‘I obServe’ (says Mr. Chabot) ‘ that the letters written 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 391 
 
 who have contrived between them to fix the author- 
 ship on claimant after claimant as they turned up. 
 Three of four experts were ‘disposed’ to fix it on 
 General Lee. A famous expert, Imbert, gave 
 a written certificate in favour of Horne Tooke. Mr. 
 Nethercliffe, the younger, was certain that two letters 
 of Mrs. Dayrolles (the supposed amanuensis of Lord 
 Chesterfield), bore a striking resemblance te the 
 Junian writing; and Mr. Nethercliffe, the elder, 
 declared his deliberate opinion that, in a few lines of 
 Mrs. Dayrolles’ writing there was more of the genuine 
 character of Junius’ hand than in any other specimen of 
 writing submitted to him as a possible performance 
 by Junius.’ 
 
 The handwriting of Francis, also, varied with his 
 mood; and he was remarkably capricious in the for- 
 mation of letters; so as occasionally to exhaust every 
 conceivable mode of forming them. Thus, in the short 
 ‘My dearest, dearest Betsy ’ facsimile (in Mr. Merivale’s 
 Appendix) the three capital T’s are wholly unlike each 
 other: half the 4’s are looped with loops of different 
 sizes, and half are not looped at all: some ?¢s are 
 crossed and others not : and there are three varieties of 
 the r. It would be passing strange, therefore, if a 
 diligent expert could not discover similarities between 
 the Junian and the Franciscan penmanship ; and, in 
 
 by Junius subsequently to December 17,1771, are remarkable for the 
 uniformity of the size and style of the hand in which they are written, 
 wherein they all very nearly agree with the first Junian Letter extant, 
 viz. Junius to Lord Chatham, dated January 2, 1768, ‘more guardedly 
 written in my opinion, than any other letter in the Junian MSS. The 
 feigned hand, then, was atits best in that letter. It was at its worst—in 
 its tentative stage, in the subsequent letter to Mr. Grenville of February 
 6, 1768. This completely reverses the natural order of things if we 
 assume both to have been written by the same person. 
 
 1 The Atheneum, May 6, 1871. In this and the following paper (May 
 13), the subject of identification by handwriting is discussed with com- 
 plete knowledge of the subject and striking acuteness. The similarity 
 of Mrs. Dayrolles’ writing to that of the Anonymous Note is most re- 
 markable. 
 
392 “MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 point of fact, almost all the similarities paraded by 
 Mr. Chabot as coincidences of fixed habits or personal 
 peculiarities, are the casual concurrence of irregulari- 
 ties, or of forms in ordinary use. We will give a 
 specimen—Lx uno disce omnes. 
 
 At p. 215 of the Report, he says : ‘The second of these 
 disguises, viz. the italic manner of writing the letter 
 jf, which Junius specially devoted to the writing the 
 word “of,” connects both of these letters (the second 
 letter to Lord Chatham and the last private letter to 
 Woodfall), with Junius’ second letter and essay sent 
 to Mr. Grenville. See the letter f in the word “ of,” 
 Plate 3, lines 9, 11, 14 and 15; also in Plate 9, line 
 8... We turn to these Plates and find abounding 
 proof that Junius did not specially devote the italic 
 manner, nor any other manner, to the writing the 
 word ‘of’: that perfectly different manners are em- 
 ‘ployed in Plate 9, line 8; and perfectly different 
 manners in Plate 3; in which the italic manner is only 
 used in five instances out of eleven. So that, in the 
 same page, nay in the same line, the disguise is alter- 
 nately abandoned and assumed. 
 
 . Nor is this all. At p. 80: ‘other formations of the 
 letter # were so much more convenient to the hand of 
 Junius, that only five pages of his writing exhibit more 
 than a solitary instance of the italic formation of that 
 letter.’ Then, after mentioning nineteen instances in 
 other pages ; ‘ all these instances are again in the same 
 word “of.” It is clear, therefore, that the writing the 
 word “ of” occasionally gave an impulse to the mind of 
 Junius which influenced him for the moment in the for- 
 mation of the letter fin that word.’ This bit of meta- 
 physics is unluckily in flat contradiction to the statement 
 that he specially devoted the italic manner to the word. 
 To complete the confusion and absurdity, it nowhere 
 appears that the writing of this little word even occa- 
 sionally gave a similar impulse to the mind of Francis, 
 for not a single instance of his having used the italic 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 393 
 
 manner for the f in ‘of’ has been (or can be) adduced. 
 Lherefore, Francis is Junius. ‘ Have you a strawberry 
 mark on your left shoulder. ‘No.’ Then you are 
 my long lost brother.’ 
 
 It is intelligible how experts can be found to supply 
 two or three hundred quarto pages of rubbish; but it 
 is hardly intelligible how they find rational people to 
 pay them for it. 
 
 ‘The private letters have no date but the day of the 
 week. There are only five Junius Letters extant with 
 complete dates, and only two of these are alike as 
 regards points or stops; yet the occasional similarity of 
 Francis mode of dating to these two, is pronounced an 
 infallible proof of identity, although his modes of dating 
 vary and were the modes in ordinary use. 
 
 An expert must be taken upon trust by all who are 
 not prepared to track him step by step, and he cannot 
 be refuted in detail without numerous facsimiles. We 
 have tracked Mr. Chabot step by step; we have re- 
 peatedly found him tripping or at fault; and we have 
 met with nothing which can be accepted as an im- 
 provement of the handwriting argument as it was 
 
 left by Mr. Taylor in 1816. But no clairvoyant or 
 spiritualist ever excelled Mr. Chabot in seeing what 
 the uninitiated cannot see, or ever made a bolder 
 appeal to faith than when he declares that he can read 
 clearly and distinctly seven complete dates (month, day 
 of the month, and year) under seven blotted erasures 
 in the Junius proofs : 
 
 “TI see a hand you cannot see, 
 Which beckons me astray.’ 
 
 The originals in the British Museum have been ex- 
 amined with the aid of glasses by persons conversant 
 with such matters, and they can see nothing that is not 
 equally discernible in the photographed facsimiles: 
 2. e. two or three letters or figures under two of the 
 erasures, and nothing whatever under the other five. 
 Of course, no reliance could be placed on the fac- 
 
394 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 similes in other branches of the controversy, if, as 
 Mr. Chabot contends, they are worthless in this. This 
 alleged discovery of his is mentioned as a criterion of 
 his fallibility, but that the dates he has reproduced 
 are in the natural handwriting of Francis, we deny. 
 They are in a smaller, neater, and more upright hand ; 
 and the stops, said to be distinctive of Francis, are 
 wanting. ‘The argument based on the similarity of 
 paper is at once met by the fact that there were 
 then only two or three sorts of letter paper in ordinary 
 use.? 
 
 Lawyers, the class who have most experience of 
 experts and their ways, have formed a very low estimate 
 of them, which is not confined to this country. It was 
 Berryer who, in the La Ronciere case, compared them 
 to the Roman augurs, who could not look each other in 
 the face without laughing. During the trial of this 
 case, however, the leading French experts concurred 
 in stating that ‘it is impossible for a man, in order to 
 disguise his writing, to do better than he does habi- 
 tually.’ Upon the same principle, the able writer in 
 the ‘Athenzum’ remarks: ‘It is very hard to believe 
 that Francis, whose writing was a thorough official 
 hand, deficient in elegance, fineness, and subtlety, could 
 have produced the delicate, fine, flexible, nervous 
 handwriting of Junius.’ The question is not which 
 writing would carry off most marks in a competitive 
 examination for the Civil Service, or which would be 
 deemed best in an amanuensis or a clerk; but whether 
 the Junian hand is not more delicate, more refined, 
 more gentlemanlike (or ladylike) than that of Francis ; 
 whether it does not display qualities which were unat- 
 tainable by a coarser penman. 
 
 Mr. Chabot ranks Francis’ handwriting even below 
 that of Tilghman, which is utterly devoid of refinement 
 
 1 Ante, p. 380, 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 395 
 
 or grace. Ina Report on the ‘Anonymous Verses,’ pro- 
 nouncing them to be in the handwriting of Tilghman, 
 after mentioning individual traits of resemblance to that 
 of Francis, Mr. Chabot says: ‘The general character of 
 the writing of the “Anonymous Verses” is, in my 
 opinion, essentially different from that of the writing of 
 Sir Philip Francis, and I doubt the capacity of his hand 
 to assume, even after much practice, the particular hand- 
 writing of the Verses.’ Is it not equally open to others 
 to rely on general character, and to doubt the capacity 
 of his hand to assume the particular handwriting of the 
 letter to Garrick, or several of the private letters to 
 Woodfall? Of course generals include particulars ; 
 and whenever the general character is essentially dif- 
 ferent, it will be found that the points of similarity are 
 insignificant or few. 
 
 Facsimiles of these Anonymous Verses and the 
 Anonymous Note accompanying them were circulated 
 some fifty years ago. They were mentioned by Lord 
 Brougham in his ‘ Historical Sketches,’ in 1839; but 
 had dropped out of the category so completely that 
 neither Lord Stanhope nor Lord Macaulay alludes 
 to them. So long as they were under discusssion, it 
 was assumed that both were in the same handwritinge— 
 the handwriting of Francis. The entire point (such as 
 it was) turned upon this assumption, which (if we 
 are not misinformed) was confirmed by at least 
 one expert. Mr. Twisleton states that ‘even now there 
 are persons familiar from childhood with Francis’ 
 handwriting, whom Mr. Chabot’s reports have failed 
 to convince that the Verses were hand-written, not 
 by Francis, but by Tilghman.’ 
 
 If the question were brought before any competent tri- 
 bunal, the evidence of these persons would undoubtedly 
 prevail. In the case of Orton v. Smith, Mr. Chabot gave 
 “a clear and positive opinion’ that the signature could 
 not have been written by the testator; three witnesses 
 
396 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 having sworn that they saw him write it. The Judge, 
 Sir J. Hannen, said: ‘The evidence of Mr. Chabot has 
 entirely failed to satisfy me that the signature was 
 not the signature of the testator. J have compared 
 the signature with the signatures to the other documents, 
 and acting upon the evidence of my own eyes, I am of 
 opinion that it is genuine.’? It will be observed that 
 his Lordship takes the liberty of acting on the 
 evidence of his own eyes, and does not rely on the 
 direct evidence of the witnesses. An expert may be 
 useful in pointing out similarities and dissimilarities, 
 but he goes beyond his province when he insists on 
 thrusting his conclusions down our throats. 
 
 Whether the Verses were hand-written by Francis, 
 or Tilghman, or by neither of the two, seems to matter 
 nothing when a favourite theory is to be upheld.” 
 
 A passage in Mr. Charles Butler’s ‘ Reminiscences ’ 
 bears on this question of handwriting : 
 
 ‘Our conversation on Junius’ Letters began from a whim- 
 sical circumstance. Business having carried me to Ireland 
 in 1776, I wrote to Mr. Wilkes from Holyhead; on my re- 
 turn he informed me that my letter had been stopped at the 
 post-office, from the similarity in the handwriting to that of 
 Junius. This made me wish to see the originals of Junius’ 
 Letters, and he produced them to me. We more than once 
 examined them together, with great attention. All of them, 
 except the letter to the king, are, if I remember rightly, in 
 
 1 Times, December 19, 1872. 
 
 2 In accounting for his possession of the verses, Mr. Twistleton (p. 223) 
 says: ‘This anecdote led to my venturing to institute some enquiries on 
 the subject through the late Lord Clarendon, who was then at Rome, 
 The result was that, through his kind intermediation, the present Earl of 
 Essex made search, and in February, 1868, eventually discovered, in his 
 library at Cassiobury, not, indeed, the Verses, which were no longer there, 
 but an engraved facsimile of the above-mentioned Anonymous Note.’ It 
 was through my intermediation that Lord Issex made search, and hig 
 note to me, communicating the result, is now before me. Ido not see 
 why the fact that I aided in procuring evidence against my own con- 
 clusions was suppressed. I wrote to Mr. Twistleton calling his attention 
 to this and to other statements of which I thought I had reason to com= 
 plain, and received no answer. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 397 
 
 the same handwriting. It is like that which well-educated 
 ladies wrote about the beginning of the century; a large 
 open hand, regular, approaching to the Italian. Mr. Wilkes 
 had a card of invitation to dinner from old Lady Temple, 
 written in her own hand; on comparing it with Junius’ 
 Letters, we thought there was some resemblance between 
 them.' The letter to the king was i a handwriting per- 
 fectly different; a very regular, staid hand, no difference 
 between the fair stroke and the body of the letters; when I 
 see you I will show you some writing very similar to it. As 
 to my own handwriting, it has not now the slightest resem- 
 blance to it, nor do I think it ever had any.’ 
 
 If the paper on which the Letters were written had 
 any peculiar mark, it would certainly have attracted 
 the attention of Mr. Butler and Wilkes, and aided them 
 in the discovery of what Wilkes terms ‘the most 
 important secret of our time.’ He had better means 
 of fathoming it than most others. Besides carrying on 
 a long correspondence of a confidential character with 
 him, Junius writes to Mr. Woodfall, November 8, 1771, 
 ‘Show the Dedication and Preface to Mr. Wilkes, and 
 if he has any material objection, let me know.’ On 
 February 29, 1772: ‘When you see Mr. Wilkes, pray 
 return him my thanks for the trouble he has taken. L 
 wish he had taken more.’ On March 5,1772: ‘IfI 
 saw any prospect of uniting the city once more, I would 
 readily continue to labour in the vineyard. Whenever 
 ~ Mr. Wilkes can tell me that such an union is in pros- 
 pect, he shall hear of me.’ There is another letter in 
 which Junius says he likes not only the cause but the 
 man. All readers of Junius are aware how steadily he 
 supported Wilkes in his public letters under that signa- 
 ture, particularly in the summer of 1771. 
 
 We invite attention to this for two reasons: 1. To 
 show the value of Wilkes’s authority. 2. To contrast 
 
 1 Lady Temple’s writing comes far the nearest to that of Junius of any 
 that have been compared with it. See the facsimiles in the Grenville 
 Correspondence, vol, ili. 
 
398 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 the language in which Francis uniformly speaks of him. 
 We have given some specimens. Here is one more :— 
 May 30, 1771, Francis to Baggs, at Gibraltar : 
 
 ¢ Wilkes and Horne are at open war in the newspapers. 
 Nothing can be more contemptible, in my own opinion, nor 
 less interesting, than the whole of thew correspondence. 
 Horne’s dislike and rancour are wretched beyond all descrip- 
 tion. The other rogue stands his ground.’ 
 
 This was about the time when Junius was so strongly 
 advocating the cause of ‘the other rogue,’ as to make 
 Horne cry out, ‘ Farce, comedy, and tragedy (Wilkes, 
 Foote, and Junius) united at the same time against one 
 poor parson, are fearful odds.’ Junius was taking the 
 warmest interest in the correspondence, than which, 
 according to Francis, nothing could be more contemp- 
 tible nor less interesting. But, writing familiarly to his 
 military friend at Gibraltar, or to his brother-in-law in 
 America, he of course said the precise opposite of what 
 he thought of all the notorious characters and events 
 of the day. All we have to add is that, in the case of 
 other candidates, a less material discrepancy has been 
 repeatedly held vital. 
 
 To come to style, we could heap instance upon in- 
 stance of astute and practised critics failing to discover 
 authorship from internal evidence of the most decided 
 character, until they were put upon the scent. When 
 they were put upon the scent, they immediately opened 
 in full cry. How happens it that this alleged coincidence 
 of style never struck any human being for more than 
 thirty years, and most forcibly impresses a generation 
 that never knew Francis? This is accounted for by Sir 
 Fortunatus Dwarris, who broadly states that no one who 
 knew, heard, or read Francis, thought him capable of 
 producing Junius. We have heard Lord Broughton say 
 the same. Tierney said: ‘I know no better reason 
 for believing the fellow to be Junius than that he was 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 399 
 
 always confoundedly proud of something, and no one 
 could ever guess what it could be.’ D’Oyly writes to 
 Francis in 1778 that the public of Leadenhall Street 
 allowed both Francis and Hastings to be good writers : 
 ‘but, in their opmion, he (Hastings) takes the lead so 
 decidedly as to admit of no comparison.’ 
 
 Junius raised such a host of imitators, that mere simi- 
 larity of manner in anything written after he became the 
 rage proves little or nothing. Forgetting this, Mr. Taylor 
 produced pages of parallel passages, which are rather in- 
 stances of plagiarism than proofs of identity. It strikes 
 us, moreover, that the comparison should be instituted 
 between Junius and the War Office clerk getting drunk 
 with Tilghman, or playing jackal to Calcraft : not be- 
 tween Junius and the member of the House of Commons 
 and Brookes’s, the trained writer and speaker, the as- 
 sociate of Burke and Fox. ‘The letter to Caleraft, of 
 which Francis was so proud, is a studied exposition of 
 the demerits of Lord Mansfield. It is dated December 
 1, 1770, exactly one fortnight after the appearance of 
 Junius first letter to Lord Mansfield, which Francis 
 had evidently read. Is it likely, that, after publishing 
 a masterpiece, the same person should set to work to 
 produce a commonplace confused epistle on the same 
 subject, and feel proud of it ? 
 
 Other known writings of the same period might 
 surely be selected; or materials for comparison might 
 be sought in the Hastings’ controversy, for which 
 Francis’ utmost powers of argument and sarcasm were 
 evoked. If Burke (all whose geese were swans), with 
 any show of reason, called him the prince of pam- 
 phleteers, why do not his admirers produce and abide 
 by his pamphlets—viz., pamphlets of which the author- 
 ship can be proved? We say proved, because he was 
 prone to take credit for what was done by others. 
 Instead of following either of these obvious courses, 
 Lord Stanhope and Mr. Merivale have selected their 
 
400 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 purpurer panni from his parliamentary speeches, fol- 
 lowing the example set by the Edinburgh reviewer in 
 1817, whom we take to be Lord Brougham.! The 
 extracts convince us that Francis assiduously read, and 
 did not write, Junius. He has caught, like many 
 others, some of the sententiousness and antithesis— 
 witiis imitabile—but we miss ‘the glow and loftiness,’ 
 the rhythmical flow, ‘the poised_and graceful structure 
 of the sentences,’ ‘ the elaborate polish of the sarcasms,” 
 the wit and (above all) the ever-abounding and appro- 
 priate imagery. 
 For imagery in Junius take: 
 
 ‘Private credit is wealth. Public honour is security. The 
 feather that adorns the royal bird supports its flight. Strip 
 him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth.’ 
 
 For insight into character and felicitous expression : 
 
 ‘Examine your own breast, Sir William, and you will dis- 
 cover that. reproaches and injuries have no power to afflict 
 either the man of unblemished integrity or the abandoned 
 profligate. It is the middle compound character which alone 
 is vulnerable: the man who, without firmness enough to 
 avoid a dishonourable action, has feeling enough to be 
 ashamed of it. 
 
 e e e e e 
 
 Injuries may be atoned for and forgotten: insults never. 
 They degrade the mind in its own esteem, and force it to 
 recover its level by revenge.’ 
 
 For sarcastic wit,—the concluding query to the Duke 
 of Grafton, as to the source of his influence : 
 
 ‘Or is it only that wonderful sympathy of manners which 
 subsists between your grace and one of your superiors, and 
 does so much honour to you both? Is the union of Bufil 
 and Black George no longer a romance ?’ 
 
 1 Edinburgh Review, for November 1817. A single extract is given 
 from a paper drawn up by Francis in 1811. His speeches, being revised 
 and published by himself, have certainly much of the character of writ- 
 ten compositions. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 401 
 
 Or the passage on Lord Weymouth, whose indulgence 
 in wine was notorious : 
 
 ‘Will your grace (the Duke of Grafton) forgive me if I 
 venture to express some anxiety for a man whom I know 
 you do not love? My Lord Weymouth has cowardice to 
 plead, and a desertion of a later date than your own. You 
 know the privy seal was intended for him; and if you con- 
 sider the dignity of the post he deserted, you will hardly 
 think it decent to quarter him on Mr. Rigby. Yet he must 
 have bread, my lord; or rather, he must have wine. If you 
 deny him the cup, there will be no keeping him within the 
 pale of the ministry.’ 
 
 Francis had no variety in his sword-play, no blow 
 but his swashing blow. He could not trifle with his 
 victims: as Junius trifled with the Duke of Grafton, 
 referring to his marriage with a niece of the Duchess of 
 Bedford and the marriage of his divorced wife to Lord 
 Upper Ossory, the nephew of the Duke of Bedford : 
 
 ‘Marriage is the point at which every rake is stationary 
 at last; and to-day, my lord, you may well be weary of the 
 circuit you have taken, for you have now fairly travelled 
 through every sign in the political zodiac, from the Scorpion’ 
 in which you stung Lord Chatham, to the hopes of a Virgin 
 in the house of Bloomsbury. One would think that you 
 had had sufficient experience of the frailty of nuptial en- 
 gagements, or at least that such a friendship as the Duke of 
 Bedford’s might have been secured to you by the auspicious 
 marriage of your late duchess with his nephew. But ties of 
 this tender nature cannot be drawn too close; and it may 
 possibly be a part of the Duke of Bedford’s ambition, after 
 making her an honest woman, to work a miracle of the same 
 sort upon your grace. This wealthy nobleman has long dealt 
 in virtue. There has been a large consumption of it in his 
 own family; and in the way of traffic, I dare say he has 
 bought and sold more than half the representative integrity 
 of the nation. 
 
 Every one conversant with the literature and episto- 
 lary correspondence of that day must be aware that 
 VOL. II. DD 
 
402 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 they were too often stained by profanity and indelicacy. 
 The Voltairean spirit was widely diffused; and there 
 are many anecdotes in the original letters of Horace 
 Walpole at Strawberry Hill (carefully copied in his best 
 hand for posterity) which could not be read aloud 
 before a modest woman or a bishop, except the Bishop. 
 of That Francis used coarse language, therefore, 
 will not go far towards the completion of the parallel. 
 
 Francis’s attempts in wit, fancy, or light sportive 
 raillery, recall Madame de Staél’s German baron 
 jumping over the chairs and tables pour se faire vif. 
 Mr. Merivale, consciously or unconsciously, admits as 
 much : 
 
 ‘Francis’s printed speeches (which he was very much in 
 the habit of publishing in the form of pamphlets) give a 
 pretty accurate idea of the reason why, with all their merit, 
 they failed to captivate the House of Commons. ‘They were 
 no doubt singularly masculine and “ sinewy” in their fabric; 
 “there was no gummy flesh about them,” says one of his 
 panegyrists. But when they were not strictly and closely 
 business-like, they were generally didactic. He laid down 
 proposition after proposition with the air of a professor ac-— 
 cumulating a sorites.’ 
 
 The specimen selected by Mr. Merivale in this place 
 is a speech of Francis in 1787 on Pitt’s commercial 
 treaty with France. A few sentences will suffice : 
 
 ‘The judgment of a nation appears in its proverbs; the 
 virtues and probably the vices of a nation appear in its pre- 
 judices. ‘To cure a whole people of their prejudices is to 
 efface their distinct character. There is no such thing in 
 existence as a moral or immoral nation. The national mind 
 is formed by circwmstances external to it, not upon the 
 internal principles. The French and English, we say, are 
 natural enemies: not because there is any natural antipathy 
 between them; on the contrary, no people agree better in 
 private life. It is their relative position, their vicinity to 
 each other that furnish a perpetual source of dispute, that 
 make them rivals in peace as well as enemies in war. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 403 
 
 Nations which border on each other never can thoroughly 
 agree: for this single reason, because they are neighbours.’ 
 
 Mr. Merivale thinks this speech ‘exhibits as much 
 of the true vein of epigrammatic generalisation as any 
 of his (Junius’) performances. It sounds to us like a 
 series of commonplaces, pretentiously and clumsily ex- 
 pressed. It recalls—. 
 
 ‘ Barney Bodkin broke his nose ; 
 Want of money males us sad: 
 
 Without feet we can’t have toes; 
 Crazy folks are always mad.’ 
 
 These, however, are intelligible and indisputable pro- 
 positions. But what is the meaning of the national 
 mind not being formed upon the internal principles P— 
 unless, indeed, the orator simply wished to notify his 
 acreement eat Locke. 
 
 A little further on Mr. Merivale returns to the topic : 
 
 ‘It has been a favourite pursuit with some critics to trace 
 resemblances to the Junian style in the speeches of Francis’s 
 best parliamentary period. Generally speaking, the attenvpt 
 has been attended with little success. Our styles change in 
 the course of advancing life, as our bodies and minds change. 
 Francis had worn away by this time much of the eloquent 
 verve of early youth. And, as we have seen, he was by no 
 means as powerful with the voice as. with the pen.’ 
 
 When and where (unless Francis be Junius) have we 
 seen this? This is the very thing we want to see, and 
 request Mr. Merivale to show us. ‘Francis had worn 
 away by this time much of the eloquent verve of early 
 youth. Then why do ‘some critics’ so carefully 
 eschew the productions of his youth, instead of illus- 
 trating its verve? There was a farce in which Liston 
 joins a party, saying that he had put on his best coat 
 for the occasion, but, finding the company not much 
 impressed by it, declares that he has got a better at 
 home. Mr. Merivale, in spite of our call for early 
 
 DD2 
 
404 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 productions, exhibits Francis’s later ones as his best ; 
 but, finding they won’t go down, declares that he did 
 better in his youth. Then why not treat us to a speci- 
 men or two from the letter to the Duke of Richmond, 
 or ‘the large and able paper’ drawn up for his Grace 
 in 1766 ? 
 
 Lord Stanhope enters the lists with an air of more 
 confidence in the goodness of his cause than Mr. Meri- 
 vale. After quoting some passages about lawyers, and 
 some about Lord Chatham, he thinks that ‘the most 
 cursory reader cannot peruse them without feeling in 
 the strongest manner their complete family likeness, 
 both in sentiment and in style, with parallel passages 
 of Junius. These passages having been composed 
 long subsequently to Junius, the likeness, if it existed, 
 might prove only happy imitation. But let us see if 
 it does exist. Francis, as quoted by Lord Stanhope, 
 spoke thus of Lord Chatham in 1784: 
 
 ‘I hope it will not appear improper in me to say that in 
 the early part of my life I had the good fortune to hold a 
 place very inconsiderable in itself, but immediately under 
 the late Earl of Chatham. He descended from his station 
 to take notice of mine; and he honoured me with repeated 
 marks of his favour and protection. How warmly in return 
 I was attached to his person, and how I have been grateful 
 to his memory, those who know me know.! I admired him 
 as a great, illustrious, faulty, human being, whose character, 
 like all the noblest works of human composition, should be 
 determined by its excellencies, not by its defects.’ 
 
 Junius, challenged by Horne Tooke, wrote thus on 
 (the date is important) August 13, 1771: 
 
 ‘It seems I am a partisan of the great leader of the oppo-= 
 sition. If the charge had been a reproach, it should have 
 been better supported. I did not intend to make a public 
 
 1 Some of the letters attributed (we think, wrongfully) to Francis in 
 the Memoirs are at variance with this profession. In one, the writer 
 sneeringly alludes to Lord Chatham’s physical infirmities. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS.. 409. 
 
 declaration of the respect I bear Lord Chatham: I> well 
 knew what unworthy conclusions would be drawn from it. 
 But Iam called upon to deliver my opinion; and surely it 
 is not in the little censure of Mr. Horne to deter me from 
 doing signal justice to a man who, I confess, has grown 
 upon my esteem. As for the common sordid views of ava- 
 rice, or any purpose of vulgar ambition, I question whether 
 the applause of Junius would be of any service to Lord 
 Chatham. My vote will hardly reeommend him to an in- 
 crease of his pension, or to a seat in the Cabinet. But if 
 his ambition be on a level with his understanding; if he 
 judges of what is truly honourable for himself with the 
 same superior genius which animates and directs him to 
 eloquence in debate, to wisdom in decision; even the pen of 
 Junius shall contribute to reward him. Recorded honours 
 shall gather round his monument and thicken over him. It 
 is a solid fabric, and will support the laurels that adorn it. 
 I am not conversant in the language of panegyric. Those 
 praises are extorted from me; but they will wear well, 
 for they have been dearly earned.’ 
 
 We see no likeness here. But likeness or no like- 
 ness, was this the language of a clerk in the War Office, 
 returning from a rollicking expedition with gents (after 
 d——e the Duchess of Bedford) to play jackal to the 
 jackal of Lord Chatham ? 
 
 Lord Macaulay employs some ingenious sophistry to 
 bridge over the chasm in the argument which a direct 
 admission of the inferiority of Francis’s known compo- 
 sitions would create : 
 
 ‘The style of Francis bears a strong resemblance to that 
 of Junius; nor are we disposed to admit, what is generally 
 taken for granted, that the acknowledged compositions of 
 Francis are very decidedly inferior to the anonymous 
 letters. 
 
 ‘The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one 
 which may be urged with at least equal force against every 
 claimant that has ever been mentioned, with the single ex- 
 ception of Burke ; and it would be a waste of time to prove 
 that Burke was not Junius. And what conclusion, after all, 
 
406 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ean be drawn from mere inferiority? Every writer must 
 produce his best work; and the interval between his best 
 work and his second best work may be very wide indeed. 
 
 ‘Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are more 
 decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of Francis, 
 than three or four of Corneille’s tragedies to the rest, than 
 three or four of Ben Jonson’s comedies to the rest, than 
 the Pilgrim’s Progress to the other works of Bunyan, than 
 Don Quixote to the other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is 
 certain that Junius, whoever he may have been, was a most 
 unequal writer. To go no further than the letters which 
 bear the signature of Junius; the letter to the king, and the 
 letters to Horne Tooke, have little in common, except the 
 asperity: and asperity was an ingredient seldom wanting 
 either in the writings or speeches of Francis.’ 
 
 The concluding sentence is a non sequitur. One 
 ingredient common to the best and worst writings of 
 Junius was seldom wanting in the writings or speeches 
 of Francis; therefore, he was capable of writing the 
 best ! The argument, that ‘ every writer must produce 
 his best work,’ &c., might have been advanced with 
 equal force if the authorship of the Waverley Novels, 
 prior to the discovery of the Great Unknown, had been 
 claimed for the author of ‘ Brambletye House’ or Mr. 
 James. ‘This argument would have been a godsend 
 for Swift’s cousin, Theophilus, when he claimed the 
 authorship of the ‘Tale of a Tub.’ Indeed it precludes 
 the argument from inferiority altogether ; and as that 
 argument not only may be, but has been, urged against 
 every claimant except Burke, we do not see why it 
 should not be urged against Francis. 
 
 There are many instances of authors producing one 
 or two masterly compositions in prose or verse, and 
 never rising to the same height or striking into the 
 same rich vem again. Gray’s fame rests on the 
 ‘ Elegy’ and the ‘ Ode to Eton College.’ The ‘ Vicar 
 of Wakefield’ is immeasurably above all the rest of 
 Goldsmith’s prose works. But we know no example 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. AQT 
 
 of a prolonged series of letters or newspaper articles, 
 differing so widely in power and genius from a parallel 
 series by the same writer. 
 
 The letters ascribed to Junius extend over five years 
 at least; Mr. Parkes and Mr. Merivale would say eight 
 or nine. The known compositions of Francis extend 
 over full forty years, including the five years covered 
 by Junius. Francis went to India in the ripeness of 
 his powers: both in India and on his return he had 
 every stimulant to their exertion that ambition, vanity, 
 and personal interest could create. The training he 
 had undergone was of the very best kind; yet when 
 there was every imaginable reason for expecting hin 
 to write best, he wrote worst. The entire forty years 
 supply nothing which will stand comparison with the 
 partly-contemporaneous productions of the five. By 
 some peculiarity of mental organisation, then, he was 
 able to produce in his own person, or in a responsible 
 shape, the arrogance, the scorn, the asperity, which 
 repel and irritate: he was unable so to produce the 
 higher and finer qualities, the force of reasoning, the 
 play of fancy, the richness of imagination, the grace 
 and harmony of language, which compel admiration 
 and confer fame. His cunning of fence deserted him 
 in broad daylight: his charmed blade only glittered 
 in the dark; and as no one saw the hand that wielded 
 it, the world-wide glory of its performances is unjustly 
 or unluckily denied to him. 
 
 But we are here wandering into the realms of pure 
 fancy, and all argument from internal evidence is at an 
 end. With all due deference to the brilliant historian - 
 and essayist, we maintain that the strongest argument 
 in favour of any given candidate is, that (tested by his 
 known writings) he alone was equal to the authorship ; 
 and the strongest argument against any given candidate, 
 that (tested in the same manner) he was unequal to it. 
 
 Mr. Butler, after comparing Francis’s attack on Lord 
 
408 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 Thurlow with Junius’ letter to Lord Mansfield, much 
 to the disadvantage of Francis, remarks : 
 
 ‘Such, in our opinion, is the state of the question; all 
 external evidence is in favour of Sir Philip, all internal evi- 
 dence is against him. Thus the argument on each side 
 neutralises the argument on the other, and the pretension 
 of Sir Philip vanishes.’ 
 
 When Mr. Butler wrote, the external evidence was 
 strong. ‘To what does it amount now? ‘Thanks to 
 the diligence of Mr. Parkes and Mr. Merivale, the 
 chain has been broken in a dozen places, and the links 
 lie shattered and scattered on the ground. If any 
 critic is still of a contrary opinion, let him pick them 
 up, burnish them and reform the chain. Instead of 
 taking for granted the truth of the Franciscan theory, 
 let him begin by assuming, if only for the purpose of 
 the inquiry, that it is unsound. Let him, in the 
 language of the courts, state and prove a primd facie 
 case before calling on the opposite counsel for an 
 answer. Let him, also, bear in mind constantly that, 
 whilst a single point of union proves nothing by itself, 
 a single point of difference is fatal to identity. 
 
 Trifles light as air are to the theorist what they are 
 to the jealous, ‘ confirmation strong as proofs of Holy 
 Writ.’ Witness the provincial antipathy which Lord 
 Macaulay has digressed to fix on Francis, for lighter 
 reasons than had led Prior to fasten it on Burke:? or 
 the burning of the Jesuit books story, told by Mr. 
 Mertvale in his Historical Studies, which has suddenly 
 collapsed. 
 
 Referring in his History to the traditional feeling 
 caused by the treachery of Henry Luttrell in 169], 
 and recapitulating the strong expressions of Junius, 
 
 Lord Macaulay says : 
 
 ‘It is certain that very few Englishmen can have sym- 
 
 * Macaulay’s Works, vol. iii. p. 451, Prior’s Burke, vol. i. p. 191. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 409 
 
 pathised with Junius’ abhorrence of the Luttrells, or can 
 even have understood it. Why, then, did he use expressions 
 which to the great majority of his readers must have been 
 unintelligible? My answer is that Philip Francis was born 
 and passed the first ten years of his life within a walk of 
 Luttrellstown.’ 
 
 The impression conveyed by this mode of statement 
 to all who do not know the situation of Luttrellstown 
 is, that Francis was placed in a position to contract a 
 local prejudice. He was certainly born within a walk 
 of Luttrellstown, for Luttrellstown is only seven miles 
 from Dublin, where he was born; but he left Ireland 
 in his fifth or sixth year, and never revisited the coun- 
 try of his birth. Ifa man were born in Piccadilly, and 
 it were an object to make out that he was familiar from 
 early childhood with a local tradition of Fulham, would 
 it convey a correct impression to persons unacquainted 
 with the locality to state that he was born within a 
 walk of Fulham? The great majority of Lord 
 Macaulay's readers were certainly misled—ourselves 
 amongst the rest, until we looked out Luttrellstown in 
 the gazetteer. 
 
 Nor is this all. The prolonged contest for Middlesex 
 had given ample notoriety to the name of Luttrell, and 
 caused every sort of scandal associated with it to be 
 raked up. Whether very few Englishmen sympathised 
 with Junius’ abhorrence of the Luttrells may be 
 doubted, but most assuredly very many Englishmen 
 must have understood it; for he himself has given his 
 reasons for it ina remarkable note to the first collected 
 edition of the letters of 1772 (vol. 1. p. 305): 
 
 ‘ There is a certain family in this country on which nature 
 seems to have entailed an hereditary baseness of disposition. 
 As far as their history has been known, the son has regularly 
 improved upon the vices of his father, and has taken care to 
 transmit them pure and undiminished into the bosom of his 
 SUCCESBOL, «2 5 5 « 
 
410 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 ‘The present Lord Imham, who is now in the decline of 
 life, lately cultivated the acquaintance of a younger brother 
 of a family, with which he had lived in some degree of inti- 
 macy and friendship. The young man had long been the 
 dupe of a most unhappy attachment to a common prostitute. 
 His friends and relations foresaw the consequences of this 
 connection, and did everything that depended upon them to 
 save him from ruin. But he had a friend in Lord Irnham, 
 whose advice rendered all their endeavours ineffectual. 
 This hoary lecher, not contented with the enjoyment of his 
 friend’s mistress (the notorious Polly Davis, mentioned in 
 the letter above), was base enough to take advantage of 
 the passions and folly of a young man, and persuaded hin 
 to marry her. He descended even to perform the office of 
 father to the prostitute. He gave her to his friend, who 
 was on the point of leaving the kingdom, and the next . 
 night lay with her himself. 
 
 ‘Whether the depravity of the human heart can produce 
 anything more base and detestable than this fact, must be 
 left undetermined, until the son shall arrive at his father’s 
 age and experience.—AUTHOR.’ 
 
 There was a story (true or false) current in English 
 society, prior to the strong expressions of Junius, that 
 Lord Irnham having sent a challenge to Colonel Lut- 
 trell, the exemplary son declined fighting his father on 
 the ground, not that he was his father, but that he was 
 not agentleman. Lord Macaulay’s ancillary argument, 
 therefore, breaks down on every side; yet the effect of 
 such a statement in so popular a book as his History 
 must have been immense. 
 
 The Jesuit book story, again, which first appeared 
 in a widely-circulated magazine (the Cornhill), did 
 much to strengthen the received faith in Francis, till 
 it was proved to demonstration that he was not in 
 Paris when the Jesuitical books were burnt, and the 
 identity of Bifrons with Francis was found to rest 
 on what Mr. Merivale calls singular evidence, but 
 which many will deem no evidence at all. Bifrons con- 
 cludes a letter with ‘C’est ?Amphitryon chez qui Yon 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 411 
 
 dine, not a very recondite quotation, if correct. Mr. 
 Merivale says: 
 
 ‘Singular evidence brings this Bifrons letter home to 
 Francis. In one volume of his collection of pamphlets, 
 bound next to a copy of the Duke of Portland’s case, there 
 is a copy also of the first edition of the Lowther case in 
 ‘reply to it; which latter was published the third week in 
 April. Moliére also was one of Francis’s most favourite 
 French writers, and he had the Paiis 1718 edition of the 
 uvres in his library,’ 
 
 How, then, came Francis to misquote his favourite 
 author to the extent of turning verse into prose? The 
 correct reading is: 
 
 Je ne me trompais pas, messieurs, ce mot termine 
 Toute irrésolution : 
 Le véritable Amphitryon 
 
 Est ?Amphitryon ow l’on dine. 
 
 As for the inference drawn from the case and coun- 
 ter case being bound up in Francis’ collection of pam- 
 phlets, this is tantamount to assuming that possession 
 of pamphlets is proof positive of having written any 
 letters that may have appeared in the newspapers con- 
 cerning them. 
 
 Although this Jesuit book argument is not likely to 
 be re-produced, it is mentioned, along with Lord 
 Macaulay’s Luttrellstown argument, to show how the 
 coincidences, flung in as make-weights, are made out. 
 These, however, are at best but the failing props of the 
 fabric, which must depend upon the solidity of the 
 foundation ; and the foundation has been rudely shaken, 
 if not fatally undermined, by constantly accumulating 
 evidence of the utter disagreement and disparity be- 
 tween Junius and Francis, in character, position, age, 
 habits, opinions, interests, connections, tone, taste, 
 language, genius, and capacity. | 
 
 Conclusive affirmative evidence would have been 
 produced long ago if the Franciscan theory were sound. 
 
412 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 Francis’ first wife died in 1806. He married his 
 second, the daughter of a clergyman, towards the end 
 of 1814, and (without expressly committing himself) 
 he did his best to persuade her that he was Junius. 
 The grand secret was eventually to be divulged through 
 her; and she was no bad instrument for the purpose, 
 for it was impossible to bring her to book on anything. 
 Mr. Merivale calls her ‘one of the most garrulous, 
 credulous, inaccurate, and in every way perplexing, of 
 reminiscents. ‘Some circumstances,’ she says im a 
 letter to Lord Campbell, ‘he (Francis) always regret- 
 ted. One was losing the fame of being known,’ which 
 he would fain have enjoyed without the attendant re- 
 sponsibility,—posthumous fame at all events. The 
 story she repeats about his affronting ‘poor Rogers, 
 whom he liked so much, to avoid an ensnaring ques- 
 tion, is apochryphal at best; but he managed, by a 
 mixture of hints, allusions, and simulated indignation, 
 to gain the mysterious importance, the gwod monstrer 
 digito pretereuntium, which he sought. 
 
 ‘His first gift (she writes) after marriage (prior to 
 Junius Identified) was an edition of Junius, which he 
 bid me take to my room, and not let it be seen, or speak 
 upon the subject; and his posthumous present, which 
 his son found in his bureau, was Junius Identified, 
 sealed up and directed to me.’ It would have been 
 more to the purpose if he had given her the ‘sett’ 
 bound in vellum, or one of the setts in blue paper, which 
 Junius received from Woodfall.’ Or the production of 
 Woodfall’s private letters would have placed the coveted 
 title to the authorship beyond dispute. He left no 
 
 1 After his death an edition of the Letters was published with, by 
 way of frontispiece, an engraved portrait of him wearing the star and 
 riband of the Bath, with the upper part of the face veiled. A copy of 
 this edition was presented by his son to the late (Maria) Marchioness of 
 Downshire, with a letter (which I have seen) claiming the authorship 
 for his father, and treating it as a source of pride to the family, so that no 
 evidence in their possession would have been held back. 
 
MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 413 
 
 satisfactory proof because he had none to leave. We 
 must be excused, after this, from attaching the smallest 
 importance to the contents of his library, or the condi- 
 tion of his books and manuscripts. 
 
 ‘The marriage gift,’ remarks Lord Stanhope, ‘ might 
 pass on the score of vanity, but the posthumous present 
 is not to be so lightly dismissed. To suppose that Sir 
 Philip Francis bequeathed such a book under such cir- 
 cumstances, he not being in truth the author of Junzus, is 
 to heap a most heavy imputation on his memory. It is 
 to accuse him of imparting a falsehood, as it were, from 
 beyond the grave.’ It is heaping a still heavier impu- 
 tation on his memory to believe him. If he was 
 Jumus he was steeped to the lips in falsehood. It 
 may be difficult to assign the motive for a posthumous 
 deceit or bad action. But Lord Stanhope will remem- 
 ber Dr. Johnson’s comment on the posthumous publi- 
 cation of Lord Bolingbroke’s works by Mallet: ‘Sir, 
 he was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for 
 charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality ; 
 a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off 
 himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman 
 to draw the trigger after his death.’ Lady Francis was 
 to draw the trigger of the blunderbuss which Sir Philip 
 left charged to the muzzle with deceit. 
 
 Tenderness for character need scarcely influence the 
 verdict of posterity in this case. It implies no lack of 
 charity to fancy the shade or spirit of Junius, hovering 
 over the grave of Francis with an appalling avowal, like 
 the Moor’s : 
 
 ‘Hr’s LIKE A LIAR GONE TO BURNING HELL— 
 Twas Il THAT DID IT,’ 
 
414 
 
 ADDENDUM. 
 
 In an article headed ‘The Evidence of Handwriting’ 
 (based on Mr. Chabot’s Reports) in the ‘Times’ of May 22, 
 1871, the Hon. Arthur Gordon, Governor of the Mauritius, 
 was named as the authority for an important statement. 
 Reference having consequently been made to him, he wrote 
 the following letter to Sir John Shaw Lefevre, who kindly 
 authorises the publication of it :— 
 
 ‘ Reduit, November 17, 1871. 
 
 ‘My dear Sir John,—I have not once, but very often 
 heard my father say that Mr. Pitt told him that he knew 
 the name of the author of the Letters of Junius, and that 
 the author was not Francis. I have heard this so frequently 
 that, with a single exception, I cannot recall the times or 
 places where it has been said. I do, however, perfectly 
 remember the first occasion on which the story was told in 
 my presence. It was at Drayton, on January 13, 1848. 
 The other guests there were Mr. Goulburn, the Bishop of 
 Oxford, Dr. Buckland, Mr. Hallam, and Sir Charles East- 
 lake. Of these, the Bishop of Winchester is the only one 
 now living. He may possibly remember something of the 
 conversation which, after dinner, turned on Junius; Mr. 
 Hallam, more suo, taking the lion’s share of it. Some one 
 spoke of Sir Philip Francis as Junius. My father said 
 quickly, “No, I know he was not;” and then told us his 
 authority for saying so was Mr. Pitt. The objection was 
 raised, which I see Mr. Twistleton also makes, that the idea 
 of Francis’ authorship had not been started till after Mr. 
 Pitt’s death. My father replied: “ That's stuff :” and went 
 on to say that the notion was very generally current, and 
 that Francis did everything he could to encourage the 
 belief, without actually saying what was false; and that he 
 himself had once dined in company with Francis, when 
 proofs of his being Junius were adduced before him: that 
 he had listened with evident pleasure; and at last exclaimed, 
 in a stilted theatrical manner, “ God! if men force laurels 
 
MORE: ABOUT JUNIUS. ALS 
 
 on my head, I'll wear them!” But the arguments in 
 favour of Francis (I do not mean those advanced at this 
 dinner, but those current generally) had been mentioned by 
 my father to Mr. Pitt, who had assured him that he knew 
 who the author was, and that it certainly was not Francis. 
 
 ‘The conversation then drifted away to the hterary merits 
 of Junius (which Sir R. Peel, as well as my father, thought 
 less highly of than most people).and the personal character 
 of Sir Philip Francis. 
 
 ‘I was interested by what had been said (I was a boy at 
 college at the time), and made a note of it the same even- 
 ing, but I have very often heard its substance repeated. 
 You are aware of the nature of the relations between Mr. 
 Pitt and my father, but very few people are so, and you may 
 therefore as well explain to Mr. Twisleton that Mr. Pitt was 
 one of my father’s guardians, and that, after his mother’s 
 death, my father lived alternately with him and Lord Mel- 
 ville until his majority in 1805, except when at college or 
 abroad; and had consequently unusual opportunities of 
 familiar intercourse with him. You may make any use you 
 please of this letter. 
 
 ‘Yours affectionately, ‘ ARTHUR GORDON.’ 
 
 The Bishop of Winchester has ‘a general recollection of 
 exactly what Arthur Gordon records.’ The statement he 
 records was one among several to the same effect. Lord 
 Aberdeen was a scrupulously accurate and precise man. To 
 suppose that he never talked over the Franciscan theory with 
 Mr. Pitt, is to suppose him the victim of an utterly unaccount- 
 able delusion; and the objection that the idea of Francis’ 
 authorship had not been started till after Pitt’s death, is no 
 longer tenable against the direct evidence that has recently 
 come to light. This idea certainly appears to have been first 
 publely started by Mr. Taylor, and Francis is not named in 
 the list of candidates (fourteen in number) given in the 
 Preliminary Essay to the Woodfall edition of 1812. Neither 
 is Earl Temple. Yet Earl Temple’s suspected identity or 
 connexion with Junius was mentioned by the first Lord 
 Camden in conversation with Hardinge, and had been a 
 frequent and exciting topic at Stowe. 
 
 Francis’ laboured imitations of Junius in his writings and 
 speeches belong to the last century, and it would be strange 
 
416 MORE ABOUT JUNIUS. 
 
 if the system of make-believe by which he endeavoured to 
 attract suspicion had not begun till within four or five years 
 before his death (in 1818). Lord Colborne told Sir Henry 
 Bunbury that, early in life, being thrown into intimacy with 
 Francis, he asked him whether he was the author of Junius, 
 and received a point-blank denial ‘on his honour.’ This 
 Sir Henry Bunbury mentioned to his son, Mr. E. H. Bunbury, 
 who afterwards heard Lord Colborne refer to this denial and 
 add, that he had been in the habit of placing implicit 
 reliance on it until the appearance of ‘Junius Identified,’ 
 which induced him to modify his conclusion. The strong 
 impression of Mr. E. H. Bunbury, a clear-headed and highly- 
 cultivated man, derived from conversations with his father, 
 is, that Francis was suggested as the author long prior to 
 Taylor’s publication. , 
 
 The statement of Lord Aberdeen, which brings the know- 
 ledge home to Mr. Pitt, must be weighed in connection with 
 that which brings the same knowledge home to members 
 of the Grenville family, especially to the Right Hon. T. 
 Grenville and-Lord Grenville. Mr. Grenville told his 
 brother, the first Duke of Buckingham, who thought he had 
 discovered the secret, that it was no news to him, but for 
 family reasons the secret must be kept. He further stated 
 to other members of the family, subsequently to 1816, that 
 Junius was not one of the persons to whom the letters had 
 been popularly ascribed. Lord Grenville told Lord Sidmouth 
 that he (Lord Grenville) knew who Junius was. Lady Gren- 
 ville told Sir Henry Holland that Lord Grenville knew who 
 Junius was. She also stated to Dr. James Ferguson (to be 
 repeated to me) that she had heard Lord Grenville say that 
 he knew who wrote the Junius letters and state that it was 
 not Francis. 
 
 Here is a body of evidence all pointing in an opposite 
 direction from Francis—all pointing to Stowe, and raising a 
 strong presumption that, if Lord Temple was not wholly or 
 in part the author of the Letters, they were at least prompted 
 or inspired by him. 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED BY 
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TING DSH OXe: 
 
 Acton ’s Modern Cookery .....ccccccsessece 
 ALLI=s on Formation of Christendom ...... 
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 PUNE AGES PETC) WS Ooicc Seeatecsceics cscs 
 
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 AMOS S Jurisprudence: ils. ecscscscleee cs 
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 Authority and Conscience ........cccceece 
 Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson .... 
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 —$— ——_ WorkS...ccccccccccccves 
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 on the Senses and Intellect... 
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 ——— Guide to the Western Alps ........ 
 ———-Guide to the Eastern Alps ........ 
 BAYLpon’s Rents and Tillages ............ 
 Beaten Tracks .. Salesian eeateres 
 BECKEn’S Charicles and Gallus ......ceee. 
 BENFEY’S Sanskrit-English Dictionary ... 
 BERNARD on British Neutrality 
 
 eeeceeceoes 
 
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 eeeeeereesevee 
 
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 BLAck’s Treatise on Brewing..... NEMBOCHEE 
 BLACKLEY’s German-Huglish Dictionary .. 
 BU ATN ES RUPA SOLUS ets «cree esis ni crs.s.crexe a 
 
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 BLOXAM’s Metals.. 
 Boorn’s Saint-Simon.. 
 BouLTBEE on 39 Articles .. 
 Bourne on Screw Propeller .........0.. ane 
 *s Catechism of the Steam Engine.. 
 Examples of Modern Engines .. 
 —— —— Handbook of Steam Engine .... 
 Treatise on the Steam Engine.... 
 Improvements in the same...... 
 BOWDLER’S Hately SHAKSPHARE...esecsee 
 Bravppon’s Life in India.. Suee sis 
 BRAMLEY-MooRE’s Six Sister softhe Valley 
 BRANDzr’s Dictionary of Science, Literature, 
 GUA Eh aero ease css eicele oe occ ces vse 
 BrRAyxy’s Manual of Anthropology 
 — Philosophy of Necessity .......... 
 pe eee ITO O Maral e: SV e'e' -sisisie'aie's 078 00, oxele are are 
 (Mrs:) Hartland Forest...........0: 
 BREE’s Fallacies of Darwinism ... 
 BrRownek’s Exposition of the 39 Articles.... 
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 BUcKLE’s History of Civilisation ........+. 
 -— Posthumous Remains .......0. 
 Buu's Hints to Mothers.......... 
 — Maternal Management of Children.. 
 BUNSEN S GOG In HIStOFy.cvetecesa cece cele 
 —————— PIAVEYS cisecesecvcvcececsseeves 
 
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 eeoeeeneeces eeeveseee 
 
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 19 Burgomaster’s Family (Tho) ..... yeieeetett ee 
 15 BuRKkr’s Vicissitudes of Familics...,...... 
 16 Burton’s Christian Church .....s.ccecces 
 aly 
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