The book of the boudoir, Volume 1 (of 2)

By Lady Sydney Morgan

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Title: The book of the boudoir, Volume 1 (of 2)

Author: Lady Morgan


        
Release date: August 15, 2026 [eBook #79367]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Henry Colburn, 1829

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THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.




                                    THE
                                   BOOK
                                  OF THE
                                 BOUDOIR.

                                    BY
                               LADY MORGAN.

                     “Je n’enseigne pas; je raconte.”
                                          MONTAIGNE.

                              IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                  VOL. I.

                                  LONDON:
                   HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
                                   1829.

                                  LONDON:
            SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON’S-COURT, FLEET-STREET.




TO THE READER.


The first page of the following work tells “its being’s aim and object.”
It is not worth the gravity of a preface; and will probably escape the
distinction of a criticism. It is of a species scarcely admitted into
the dignity of British literature; and belongs to that light class of
writing in which the French alone excel. Its character is essentially
egotistical, and its style inevitably careless. Time and labour might
perhaps have cleared it of both these faults, and have rendered it a
better work: but it would not then have been the work it was intended to
be—if, indeed, it was intended to be any thing.

The MS. volumes, from which its pages were extracted, have composed
themselves; and I have copied not always what was best, but what was
safest and most inoffensive. Living, as I occasionally have lived, among
whatever is most noted, eminent, and distinguished, with reminiscences
of all, I have yet confined myself to the mention of those to whom we
are already posterity, or to those who have been so much and so long
before the world, as to have become the property of the public. In all, I
have found much good; and of all, I have said much: for, whatever party
calumny may have put forth to the contrary, any severity which may have
appeared in my writings has been directed against principles rather than
persons. I have written, “from my youth, up,” under the influence of one
great and all pervading cause, Ireland and its wrongs. Truth to tell, it
was not a very gracious inspiration; and it frequently opposed opinions,
inevitably tinctured with bitterness, to a temperament, which those who
know me in private life, will vouch for being as cheery and as genial,
as ever went to that strange medley of pathos and humour,—the Irish
character.

But the day is now fast approaching, when all that is Irish will fall
into its natural position; when fair play will be given to national
tendencies, and when the sarcastic author of the O’Donnels and the
O’Briens, having nothing to find fault with, will be reduced to
write, “_à l’eau rose_,” books for boudoirs, or albums for ladies’
dressing-rooms. Among the multitudinous effects of catholic emancipation,
I do not hesitate to predict a change in the character of Irish
authorship.

I cannot, however, give this little work to the public without a word as
to its title; because I never will, knowingly, contribute to a delusion,
however innocent. All who have the supreme felicity of haunting great
houses, are aware, that those odd books, which are thrown on round
tables, or in the recesses of windows, to amuse the lounger of the
moment, and are not in the catalogue of the library, are frequently
stamped, in gold letters, with the name of the room to which they are
destined: as thus;—“Elegant Extracts, Drawing-room;” “Spirit of the
Journals, Saloon,” &c. &c. As my Book of the Boudoir kept its place in
the little room which bore that title, and was never admitted into my
bureau of official authorship, it took the name of its _locale_, which,
by the advice of Mr. Colburn, it retains.[1] I must, however, here
declare, for the sake of truth, and the benefit of country ladies, that
the word Boudoir is no longer in vogue in any possible way; that it is
a term altogether banished from the nomenclature of fashion; and that
I could scarcely have given my work a title less likely to advance its
interests with the enlightened of the _bon ton_. This is an important
fact, which I have only recently discovered. It is a subject upon which
much, no doubt, may be said; but as I am going to France, I will reserve
all I have to say till my return, in the conviction that _les lumières du
siècle_, on a point so important, will there be afforded me, and every
circumstance connected with the “rise, decline, and fall of the Boudoir”
will be communicated without reserve or restriction. Till then, and in
the glorious hope of returning to my poor, native country, an emancipated
Protestant, I take my leave of that gracious public, of whom, whether at
home or abroad, I have never had reason to complain, and whose grateful
servant I have the honour to subscribe myself

                                                            SYDNEY MORGAN.

_April 4th, 1829, Kildare Street, Dublin._




CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.


                                              Page

    My Book                                      1

    Egoism and Egotism                           7

    Love in Idleness                            21

    Raconteurs                                  25

    Eternity                                    51

    Horne Tooke                                 53

    Richard Kirwan, Esq.                        54

    Très-Distingué                              89

    Aux Petits Soins                            91

    Rapidity                                    92

    My First Rout in London                     98

    Lord Erskine                               117

    Lord Castlereagh                           127

    Meddlers                                   133

    Philosophy of Grammar                      134

    My Visiting Book                           138

    Foreign Visitors                           148

    Irish Union                                156

    Human Machinery                            ib.

    Suicide                                    157

    External Existence                         158

    Eclectics                                  159

    Attitudes of Grief                         160

    Religious Diabolism                        168

    Fêtes, Parties, and Soirées                170

    Doctrine of Causation                      191

    The Countess D’Albany                      193

    Irish Reliquaries                          197

    The Cadenas                                201

    Tofino                                     202

    Religions                                  206

    Tower of Babel                             207

    Mathematical Ladies                        208

    Cardinal Gonsalvi                          212

    French Poetry                              223

    Idleness of Genius                         226

    Frankness                                  232

    Manœuvrers                                 236

    Wonderful Children, and Good Mothers       237

    Toys and Trinkets                          248

    Fauteuil—Bergère—Arm-chair—Episcopal Seat  257

    The Spirit of the Age                      267

    The Key of the Book Case                   281

    Apothecaries                               288

    Maxims—Portraits                           291

    Human Animality                            298

    My Reviewers                               302

    Exclamations                               316

    Irish Judges                               318

    At the Head of his Profession              319

    The Charitable Bazaars of Dublin           320




THE BOOK OF THE BOUDOIR.




MY BOOK.


Last night, as we circled round the fire in the little red room in
Kildare Street, by courtesy called a boudoir, talking about everything,
anything, and nothing at all, I happened to give out some odds and ends,
that amused those who, truth to tell, are not among the least amusable;
when somebody said, “Why do you not write down all this?” and here is
a blank book placed before me for the express purpose. But I suspect
there is no talking upon paper, as one talks “_les pieds couchés sur
les chenets_.” I feel, at least at this moment, that there is all
the difference in the world between sitting bolt upright, before a
marble-covered, blue-lined, lank, ledger-looking, Threadneedle-street
sort of a volume, for the purpose of opening a running account with one’s
own current ideas, and the sinking into the downy depths of an easy
chair, and “then and there, without let and molestation” (as the old
Irish passport has it), giving a careless and unheeded existence to the
infinite deal of nothings which lie latent in the memories of all such,
as have seen and heard much, and have been “over the hills and far away.”
“Thoughts that breathe” will not always write; “words that burn” are
apt to cool down as they are traced; visions that “come like shadows,”
will also “so depart;” and the brightest exhalations of the mind, which
are drawn forth by the sunny influence of social confidence, like other
exhalations, will dissipate by their own lightness, and (beyond the reach
of fixture or condensation) “make themselves air, into which they vanish.”

I never, in my life, kept a common-place-book for preserving such
“Cynthias of the minute.” I have even an antipathy to all albums and
vade-mecums, and such charitable repositories for fugitive thoughts, and
thoughtless effusions—reveries which were never _rêvés_—and impromptus
laboured at leisure. I hardly think I can bring myself to open a regular
saving bank for the odd cash of mind, the surplus of round sums placed
at legal interest in the great public fund of professed authorship: “_on
renvoye tout cela à la pédantisme_.”

Still, however, in the days of pure pedantry, the days of the Scaligers,
Pasquiers, Balzacs, and Thuanuses, genius and simplicity, and high
philosophy too, found frequent shelter in such daily ledgers of
spontaneous thought, and feeling. “Each day of my life is a page in my
book,” says the learned Menage, who scribbled his agreeable Ana, while
Mesdames Sévigné and Deshoulières sat disputing in his chimney corner, on
the merits of coffee, and of Racine, or the fashion of an _hurlubrelu_.
It was such a book, lying temptingly open on the old oak table in the
gothic library of the château Montaigne, that led the charming “_Michel,
gentilhomme Perigordin_,” to note down, (in the pauses of more studied
composition) those natural and amusing things, which, as he himself
quaintly expresses it, come, “_à saute et à gambade_.”[2] But then I am
not Menage nor Montaigne.

The danger of a book like this, lies in the lure it holds out to
egotism. There it is, always ready to receive the perilous confidences
of self-love and self-complacency, like an old lady’s humble companion,
or the confessor of a voluble devotee. “The reason,” says the always
quotable Madame de Sévigné, “why devotees love their confessors, is the
pleasure they have in talking of themselves, even when they have nothing
good to tell: ‘_on aime tant à parler de soi_.’”[3] Oh, the terrible
truth!

There is something too not less dangerous in the way-laying of such a
book for every passing impression. What little sensations, which the
world should never know, may there find permanency! What opinions may
there be recorded, which to broach, were proscription! What honest
indignation may there find vent against the falseness of the professed
friend, or the vileness of the successful enemy,—feelings which it is
vain to express, and undignified to expose. What mere ebullitions of
temperament may there assume the shape of habitual sentiment—though even
in the writing, they dissipate with the breaking forth of a sun-beam, or
lose their acrimony with the shifting of a north-east wind.

Had I not then better cast away this volume, “white and unwritten
still,” ere it bear evidence against me; and leave to “some hand more
calm and sage—the leaves to fill,” who haply may make it the nucleus of
one of those annuals, never destined to be perennial, or the repertory
for some _souvenir_, soon to be forgotten? Such a book may have its
value. It may preserve a sort of proof impression of one’s self, taken
at various sittings, and in various aspects; and thus give one portrait
more to the gallery of human originals, to illustrate the great mystery
of identity,—that volatile subject, which changes as we analyse it.
For even the hand which traced the first line of this farrago, is not
the same agent of the same volition, with that which will write the
last; though the being, in which it resides, is still technically the
same. To leave such an auto-transcript behind one, may assist the moral
anatomist in his demonstrations, as the bequeathing what is called
“our mortal remains” to the dissecting-knife promotes the science of
the physiologist. In either case, there is much to pity, and much to
wonder at; but what is most marvellous and admirable in both, is the
inscrutable mystery by which the complicated machinery is set in motion,
independently of the subject in which it works; constructed, perfected,
moving, stopping!—the power unknown, the end unguessed! At this point,
neither books nor bodies can be further of use. The anatomist drops his
knife, the moralist his pen. At this point too I must drop mine: not that
I am “weary of conjecture,” for I like the animating and enterprising
excursion, even when it proves nothing; but,—I must dress for a ball!

Oh! what a refuge is folly against philosophy; what a shield is pleasure
against persecution! How many have been burned at the stake, who never
would have paid that terrible penalty had they learned to waltz! How
many have been broken on the wheel, who would have escaped its tortures,
had they been cut short in their unpardonable search after truth, by the
necessity of dressing for a ball!




EGOISM AND EGOTISM.


Egoism and egotism—what a difference! The one a vice, the other a
weakness of temperament. The one inspires aversion, for it is always
unsocial; the other awakens ridicule, for it is frequently absurd. Egoism
is in a great degree referable to modern manners, and it is among the
drawbacks on civilization. Egotism is of all ages, and more an affair
of structure than of convention. The egotist must be a very vain man,
but he may be a gifted, and generally is an amiable one. If he had many
serious defects to hide, he would not so frankly give himself up to
public inspection. The pains he takes to canvass for public suffrage is
a proof that he values opinion; but the worst of it is, that the egotist
entrenches on the self-importance of others—that irremissible sin in
society, where every man is his own hero, whatever he may be to his
_valet de chambre_.

Egotism, when accompanied by endowments, is infinite in its resources.
When it cannot relate, it exhibits; but it must always be before the
scene, and occupy the audience. It is seldom found among the heaven-born
members of high society; because egoism and not egotism is the inherent,
almost organic vice of that class. The egoist is one who, uncalled upon
by his necessities for exertions, and led by breeding to resolve all
things into self—who, without effort to make, or suffrage to court, feels
not the value of public opinion, or, feeling it, believes himself above
it. Divested of warm affections, and independent of all sympathy, he is
ever on the side of taste; because no predominant impulse leads him to
its violation. He breaks no form of conventional propriety, nor shocks
a prejudice of time-honoured ignorance. Devoted to self-gratification,
he never seeks it by any greater risk, than comports with his habitual
ease, and place in society. His gallantry, even when profligate, is
passionless, and calculating; it is an air, not an enjoyment—an item
in his ostentatious externals—an addition to the sum of his superfluous
luxuries.

The school of egoists is of recent date. As an affair of temperament, the
vice must in all ages have shewn itself individually, where it dared;
but as a _ton_, as a fashion, the founder of the sect was the Duc de
Richelieu. Among the English aristocracy and their humble followers may
be found his chief disciples. In France, the revolution “scotch’d the
snake,” if it did not “kill it.” For glory and distinction, the motives
of action in the latter generation in France, are too demonstrative, for
the self-recoiling _morgue_ of concentrated egoism. Napoleon’s gallant
marechals were all heroes, and may have been egotists; but egoism
belonged not properly to their new blood nor to their arduous habits.[4]

Although the physiological causes of egoism must exist in all ranks and
classes, (for selfishness is pretty generally distributed in all,) yet
the egoist _par excellence_ must be especially sought amongst the idlers
of fashion, who, if not occupied with themselves, have nothing else to
be busied about. Egotists exist more among men of stirring lives, who
have been forced before the world. Heroes make excellent egotists; they
bring their excuse along with them, and render their vanity respectable,
by the events on which it is founded. It was the egotism of the Moorish
“great captain” which won Desdemona, in spite of his dingy hue; and I
remember being once a little grazed myself by an _enfilade de batterie_
of egotistical heroism, directed against my love of the marvellous, by
one of the great captains of the present age. _Dio buono!_ how I used to
open my eyes and “incline my ear,” while he, like a chevalier of old,
or like “Æneas after supper,” related the tale of his own prowess! With
what delight, evening after evening, I hung upon his well-recited “feats
of broils and battles,—” apart from the egoistical circles, in which the
chances of notoriety had associated us, and which, (composed of “half the
curled darlings of the nation,”) was as worn out on the subject of my
hero and his victories, as on every other; so that I was generally left
“sole auditress,” while he

                “From year to year,
    The battles, sieges, fortunes he had passed,
    Ran through.”

I remember, one evening, while thus occupied, observing a group of
exquisites of both sexes looking slily at us, and laughing _sous cape_.
Though then in my noviciate of fashion, I knew enough of the great
world, to be aware that a ridicule was worse than a crime; and like all
_parvenus_, fearful of incurring the ban of the empire into which I had
been admitted, I planted my hero just as he was planting his victorious
standard “on the moslem walls.” Flying to that great legislator of _ton_,
whose word was then the charter of others, as well as mine, in such
affairs, I asked “What is the matter? What have I done, Lord A——?”

“Nothing, child; only you are a spoony, that’s all.”

“A spoony! what is a spoony?”

“Something that is easily taken in;—at the gambling table, by a black
leg—in society, by a bore?”

“But who is a bore?”

“Oh, by Jove! if you have not found out _that_, you must be left to your
fate.”

“But why is —— a bore?”

“Because all egotists are bores. It is really very amusing to see you,
like a little _gobe-mouche_, swallowing with avidity, what has surfeited
us all long ago. What a God-send you must be to him! There is nothing
like a fresh importation from Ireland.”

I bridled up like a charmer in Richardson’s novels, and replied pertly,
“I prefer an egotist with genius, to an egotist without it, at all times.”

“That’s your affair, dear; but now, at least, you are a purchaser with
notice.”

“I have not, however, had notice to quit—so I will return to my egotist,
and leave you to your egotists;—who has the better bargain?”

“We shall see,” said Lord A——, drily.

He was right. I was obliged to give in, during a fierce combat and a
long siege; and so I _struck_ long before the enemy hauled down a single
colour.

The egotism of Lord Nelson went far beyond that of any of his “great
competitors.” Not that he talked much of his feats, (for “little would
he have graced his tale in speaking of himself”;) but he listened with
the frankest approbation to the verse or song that celebrated his
exploits; assisting at his own apotheosis with as much devotion, as any
of the votarists who brought incense to his altar. There was nothing so
characteristic, or amusing, as the scenes in which he and Lady Hamilton
exhibited together, adoring and adored; during that short epoch of
their fashion, which policy or caprice granted them, in spite of the
frailty and the vulgarity of the one, and the very obvious intellectual
mediocrity of the other. The stage was generally some saloon of supreme
_bon-ton_; the audience, the members of the exclusive circles; and the
prima donna, Lady Hamilton, whose ample person seemed to dilate before
the piano-forte, while her fine full eyes were turned languidly on the
hero of her theme and inspiration, and she sang, at the top of her Poll
of Plymouth voice, the adulating ode, or the deifying cavatina. Meantime,
the conquering hero “leaned over her, enamoured,” bearing chorus, beating
time, and echoing every pæan, raised to his own glory by London lyrists
and Neapolitan laureates.

It was said of Napoleon, “_c’est la moitié d’un grand homme_.”[5] This is
more than can be said of every hero: for some there are, not more than a
third part.

There are anecdotes extant of that ‘royal’ hero, “_Roi, le plus roi,
qui onc fut jamais_,” Louis XIV. which afford a precedent, if not an
excuse for the equally ridiculous vanity and egotism of the immortal Lord
Nelson. “_Le soir on chanta chez Madame de Maintenon_,” says Dangeau,
“_une ode de l’Abbé Genest ‘à la louange du Roi,’ la musique est de La
Lande; et le Roi la trouva si bonne que, quand elle fut finie, il la fit
recommencer._”[6]

Lord Erskine was so noted for talking of himself, that he obtained the
_sobriquet_ of Counsellor Ego. He could scarcely have chosen a more
interesting subject. Actors and actresses are apt to be egotists. They
live so much before the public, that they suppose the world to be always
engaged with them; and yet live so little in the world, that their sphere
of observation is limited to themselves and their profession, and to
their successes and their wrongs, before and behind the scenes, _et voilà
tout_.

The highest order of egotism, and by far the most delightful and
beneficial to society, is autobiography. Where the life, indeed, of
the writer is the mere every day personal adventures of pretending
mediocrity, it is an impertinent imposition, and meets its just reward in
contempt and oblivion. But the egotism of genius, when mingled with great
public events, illustrative of peculiar stages in society, is a debt due
to posterity, which should be paid: it will not fail to be received with
gratitude and delight. Thus have been received the memoirs of all the
great men who have written; and of all the agreeable women who have left
behind them those charming pictures of society, as well as of themselves,
which women only know how to sketch. They are among the great benefactors
of humanity; and the gracious sensations they excite render their works a
better course of morals than any prescribed by collegiate discipline, or
found in the crude pages of didactic essays. As long as we are occupied
and amused, we are seldom vicious; and (to reverse a trite quotation,)
“angels are better than men, because they are happier;”—so, down with
the Doctors of the Sorbonne; and “one cheer more” for the Doctors De
Motteville, La Fayette, De Nemours, De Staël, De Montpensier.

I grieve to be unable to add some fair British writers to this list
of sparkling memoirists: but the female authorship of these realms is
too serious, perhaps too passionate, for the task. English women can
write upon nothing but love and religion; and therefore they write
little besides novels—serious or frivolous, sacred or profane. Wit and
philosophy are very sparingly conferred upon them.

The few female auto-biographists who have graced the literature of
England, were confined to the stirring times of the commonwealth,
when the pressure of circumstances, by acting upon the strongest and
finest feelings of woman, developed her intellect, and forced her upon
active and even perilous existence. The two most brilliant instances
of this charming _genre_ of egotism are to be found in the memoirs of
the fantastic Duchess of Newcastle, and in those of the heroic Mrs.
Hutchinson;—both admirable illustrations of their respective classes,
at the epoch in which they flourished; the one, of the pure, unmixed
aristocracy of England; the other of its gentry, or highest grade of
middle life.

In the long list of biographical egotism, I know but of two persons who
have got out of the scrape handsomely; Cæsar, the tactician in taste
as in war, with his third person,——and Bonaparte, who talks of his
splendid views, and wondrous combinations, in a manner that makes the
individuality of the man disappear before his powerful and personified
intellect. I allude to the sketches and scraps dictated by him to Las
Casas, &c. at St. Helena. His life was a perfect epic—one great dramatic
action. What a subject he would have been for Shakspeare! There is
nothing of scenic effect in Richard the Third, or Julius Cæsar, finer
than the picturesque situations so carelessly traced by the military pen
of Rovigo. For instance—Bonaparte crossing the Red Sea at the head of his
legions, precisely where Moses led his Israelites; the peril in which his
dauntless daring placed his devoted followers; and his saving them by one
of those rapid decisions of mind which characterize the ingenuity, as
well as the firmness of genius. In all great exigencies, the man, as well
as “the woman, _who deliberates_, is lost!”

Another scene, still more picturesque, occurred the night before the
battle of Austerlitz,—the moon shining at its full upon the field,
strewn with legions of the brave, who all, save the watch guards,
slept,—how many soon to sleep for ever!—the emperor, in the midst of
his army, stretched upon straw, under a rude shed, raised over his head
by the tenderness of his soldiers, and sleeping so profoundly that his
aid-de-camp was compelled to shake him roughly, when it was necessary
that he should be roused to learn some movement of the enemy—his
instantly vaulting on his saddled horse—his gallop to the outpost, and
perilous survey of the Russian manœuvre—his return to his bivouac—his
being recognised by the drowsy troops, whose rest his horse’s tramp had
broken,—their cry of _vive l’empereur!_—the lighting of straw torches, a
spontaneous honour to their chief, till the whole field blazed—his return
to his couch, and to that deep sleep from which he was to awaken to the
crowning victory of his great career, that laid the throne of the western
Cæsars at his feet, and placed the destiny of the emperors of the East in
his hands!

One picture more, and I have done. The time, the evening before the
battle of Jena, when Napoleon found the artillery, which was to open the
action, blocked up in a rocky ravine, from which it could neither advance
nor retreat. His concentrated rage, his terrible silence, unbroken by one
reproach of the unskilful commandant—his instant decision, activity, and
remedy of the evil. Resuming his first vocation of a working engineer, he
hastily gathers the cannoniers round him, distributing to one a torch,
to another a pickaxe. Then placing himself at their head, he clears the
brambles, cleaves the rocks, and opens a passage for the guns; and when
the first carriage has passed, returns again to those obedient slumbers,
which, like all else, then awaited on his powerful will. “_J’ai toujours
devant les yeux_,” says Rovigo, “_ce qui se paroît sur les figures de ces
canonniers, en voyant l’Empereur éclairer lui-même, un falot à la main,
les coups rédoublés dont il frappoit les rochers._”[7]

That the life of such a man should be written from the refuse of the
_entresols_ of the Tuileries, and the gossip of London drawing-rooms!
None but a soldier should write the life of a soldier, if he has not the
egotism to write it himself. I am sure the Duke of Wellington is of my
opinion; and I hope he will furnish documents to some of his own gallant
aids-de-camp and companions, to write his military memoirs, beyond the
reach of national prejudices and sordid self-interest, to falsify and to
disfigure his deeds and intentions. Let him not trust to the promises
of living adulation. Be the fate of his imperial competitor his beacon
and guide. As to his legislative memoirs, they are written in two
words:—Catholic Emancipation!




LOVE IN IDLENESS.


    “This Signor Junio’s giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, lord of folded arms.”

How few love-novels are written now! The market is closed, and the
commodity out of date. A Scotch gentleman visited us some time back, and
amused himself, while the conversation was occupied by a group of morning
callers, in examining the books in my husband’s study. He had pitched
on a shelf of natural history, and his attention dwelt on Lacépède’s
voluminous work on fishes. As he ran over the volumes successively,
his voice rising in a climax of tone, with his increasing surprise, he
exclaimed—“Fesh, fesh, fesh, hey! Sirs, what sax bukes all on fesh!!!”
How many hundred thousand of _bukes_ have been written “_all upon
love_;” from the loves of Petrarch, in a thousand and one sonnets, to Mr.
Moore’s “Loves of the Angels,” in one elegant volume! In what various
ways too, the subject has been treated, from “Cassandra,” and “Le Grand
Cyrus,” in folio, to the Nouvelle Héloise, in four goodly thick volumes!
and so on to Werter, in a primmer size, which, bound in black velvet,
was hung by a gold chain round the neck of its fair readers, before the
age of sentiment had passed away! Sooner than write on love, a modern
novellist has recourse to the Newgate Calendar, and the police reports of
the Morning Herald.

The fact is, that there is less love in the world than there was; and the
stock is daily diminishing. The reason is clear—there is less idleness,
and consequently less of the concentration which goes to make passion.
That terrible school-master too, who has, some how or other got abroad,
whips out poor little Love, wherever he finds him,—“a domineering
pedant o’er the boy;” and the utilitarians will not hear of the brat,
with his anti-Malthusian doctrines, but hunt him from the boudoir to
the tread-mill, to suffer and repent, with other young offenders.
Cultivation, business, and education, are “the very beadles to an
humorous sigh.”

The idlest nations are ever the most gallant; and Doctors’ Commons would
have little to do, if the _désœuvrés_ of fashion were reduced to assume
the moral and physical activity of the _tiers-état_. The semi-civilized
great are idle and intemperate: idle, by their institutions, which, being
those of despotism, exclude the mass from a participation in national
concerns; and intemperate, because wealthy idleness gives the desire and
the means of excess. What scenes of wassailing and riot passed among the
courtiers of Henry the VIIIth and Francis the Ist; and amongst those of
Charles the IId, and the early part of the reign of Louis the XIVth.
In the highest state of savagery, men are governed by appetite; in the
highest degree of civilization they are guided by _convenance_. The
Esquimaux, always in the field, and the Englishman always before the
public, and occupied with commerce, politics, science, and the arts, have
neither of them leisure to love, after the fashion of the Petrarchs and
the Rousseaus.

Even now, however, we may have what the French of our days call “_un
sentiment_,” which is a very pretty amusing thing, leaving no scar
behind—heart, conscience, and character, all intact, “_pourvu qu’on est
sage_,” (as a Frenchwoman said to me the other day): an _item_ in the
code of conduct, by the by, never looked for in the days of old French
gallantry.




RACONTEURS.[8]


I am not aware of any word in the English language that precisely answers
to the French “_raconteur_;” and, therefore, I suspect that the gift
which it indicates is not in the catalogue of English accomplishments.

The English declaim better than they converse, and argue better than they
declaim. Free institutions have favoured their successful cultivation of
oratory; habits of public business have made them good logicians: but I
doubt that any moral or political combination would have made them good
_raconteurs_. The talent is too much an affair of temperament; which
institutes and education may direct, but cannot change. It is this that
constitutes national character, that renders the modern Frenchman in so
many respects what Cæsar found the Gaul; and preserves in the English
yeoman of the nineteenth century, much of the moral physiognomy of the
rude conquerors at Agincourt, and of the sturdy companions of Wat Tyler.
One cannot well conceive a Greenlander being nursed into a Horace, or a
negro into a Newton: one might as reasonably speculate on a potatoe being
cultivated into a pine-apple, or a mulberry being grafted to the size and
flavour of a melon.

The English temperament is too bilious, reflective, and abstracted, to
lend itself to the art of light and pleasant narration; its affections
are too deeply seated, its gaiety too fitful, its humour too cumbrous;
but with a Frenchman, it is a natural endowment; and every epoch of
the literary history of France can furnish its contingent of good
_raconteurs_. In the earlier ages, the gift was turned to a profession;
and its most eminent professors, under the denomination of _Conteurs_,
went from province to province, and from château to château, sure of a
brilliant reception, and a liberal recompense, in return for the story
they ingeniously invented, or the anecdote they pleasantly detailed.

    “Fableaus sont or moult en course,
    Mainte deniers en ont en bourse
    Cil qui les content.”

                    _Fab. MSS. du Roi._

In modern France this talent, which always obtained a vogue, occasionally
made a fortune. Every _salon_ was thrown open to the _raconteur_; and the
reputation commenced at the _petits soupers_ and _boudoirs_ of private
individuals, received its seal from the admiration of the court and the
favour of the monarch. The love of anecdote is a propensity, perhaps a
weakness, inherent in royalty: and a Buonaparte and a Bourbon were alike
indebted for some of their most agreeable moments to the most charming
_raconteur_ that perhaps even France has produced. Both, with royal
impatience, were wont to cut a proser short in his tedious tale; and,
the same habit of command dictating to either despot precisely the same
phrase, both would exclaim, “_Allons, Denon, contez-nous cela!_”

The talent which, by its animation, renders French society so agreeable,
has found its way into French literature. The “_j’ai oui dire_” of
Brantome is always the prelude to some quaint and curious detail; and the
delightful Montaigne owes his deathless reputation less to the learning
of which he was so proud, than to the art, which he himself contemned
as _bavardage_. Of the exquisite narrations of Madame de Sévigné it
is almost superfluous to speak. Her details are all pictures; and her
commonest incidents derive an intense interest from her happy manner
of narrating them. What a difference between the love adventures of
Madame de Montpensier and the Duc de Lauzun, as told in the ponderous
autobiography of the dull and dogged princess, and as sketched in the
pages of Madame de Sévigné! The modern dramatist, who has produced the
story of Pomenars on the French stage, has added nothing to the dramatic
effect of her exquisite narration.

Ninon de l’Enclos possessed the happy talent _de bien raconter_, in
such perfection, that when Molière read to her the first draft of his
Tartuffe, and she related to him an adventure, of which she had been
herself the _Elmire_, he declared, that if his piece had not been already
written, he would not have undertaken it: so much was her Tartuffe
superior to his own. (“_Tant il se seroit cru incapable de rien mettre
sur le théâtre d’aussi parfait, que le Tartuffe de Mademoiselle de
l’Enclos._”)

The immediate successor to these gifted women was Mademoiselle de
Launay (Madame de Staël). Her narrative of her first interview with her
patroness, the Duchesse de Ferté, is a brilliant illustration of the
peculiarity of the art: and her well known, “_Allons, Mademoiselle,
parlez un peu religion; vous direz en suite autre chose_;”[9] has passed
into a proverb. This fascinating talent is always notable for the _naïve_
simplicity of manner that accompanies it—for that spirited frankness,
which affectation (the quality of the false and the feeble) cannot,
in all its assumption, accomplish. The gift is rarely and somewhat
capriciously dispersed in society. It is sometimes possessed by persons,
not otherwise distinguished; and genius, even of the highest order,
is often wholly divested of it. I may be wrong; but I doubt if any
circumstance could have bestowed it on the late celebrated Madame de
Staël. The whole character and bent of her mind seems to have led another
way. Her temperament, and the structure of her intellect were too German,
too alembicated: while the school of Thomas and of Madame de Necker,
in which she was brought up, was too _précieuse_ not to have stifled
any predisposition she might have possessed, to the natural graces,
indispensable to a graphic narrator.

Mounted on the pedestal of her reputation, and twisting between her
finger and thumb the laurel branch, which she always wielded (a _tic_
or an emblem), Madame de Staël stood, like her own Corinne, in the
centre of her circle, as if waiting at once for her audience and her
inspiration: and when she was satisfied of the adequate proportion of
both, she gave out her metaphysical and political oracles in measured
phrases; exhibiting an eloquence, which, whether she explained the
doctrines of Kant, or opened the views of Necker, was more calculated to
command admiration, than to excite delight. This was all very fine,—very
intellectual; but it was not the thing desired in a good _raconteur_.
It is impossible to imagine such a Pythoness stepping down from her
tripod, huddling herself into her shawl and easy chair, putting her feet
on the fender, and carelessly and gaily giving herself up to “_raisonner
pantoufle_;” to arrest and charm the attention by that “sweet and voluble
discourse,” which pauses not to choose a theme, nor studies the art, by
which it unconsciously fascinates the hearer.

It was the want, perhaps, of this happy simplicity, that lost Madame
de Staël the suffrage of one, whose conquest was the sum of all her
ambition. Willing to be won, Buonaparte refused to be lectured: and
flying from the eloquent dictations of the daughter, as he had cut
short the tedious dissertations of the father, he denominated the
one a _phraseuse_,[10] and pronounced the other “_au-dessous de sa
célébrité_.”[11]

If was, I believe, much about the time when he thus fled from the
disserting financier, whose lengthiness, like his politics, were ill
adapted to the rapid “_en avant_” of modern military and legislative
manœuvres, that Buonaparte gave a willing audience to a pleasant
_raconteur_, whom chance threw in his way, in the person of an humble
minister of the Genevese church. Napoleon, with his unerring tact, soon
detected the talent which was latent beneath the unpretending simplicity
of his chance companion. The conversation turned upon Kant and his
philosophy. “Can you understand it?” asked the Emperor, in his _brusque_
way. “Not a word, Sire,” replied the Curé. “Nor I neither,” rejoined
Napoleon; “but Madame de Staël understands it all; (_Ni moi non plus;
cependant Madame de Staël entend tout cela_);” and he laughed, and shewed
his handsome teeth, delighted to find one clever man, at least, as dull
as himself upon that vague and unsatisfactory doctrine.

To relate well, requires a minute and clear perception of particulars;
which being strongly impressed on the mind, will be returned with all
the truth, force, and illuminated effect, necessary to impress the
auditor. Facts often appear too highly coloured, when they are but given
in the same deep tone in which they were witnessed. Some minds receive
their impressions of scenery, character, and incident, as an iron target
receives the point of an arrow, which scarcely leaves a trace behind it;
while others of more penetrable stuff, take the form of their objects
with a depth and sharpness, fully proportionate to the force that stamps
it. Between these two classes of intellects there is little sympathy; and
the possessor of the first will consider as exaggerations of truth and
nature, the narrative, which reflects the ideas of the latter in the full
vigour of their original conception.

Denon often told me that the best _raconteur_ he ever knew, except
Voltaire, was Voltaire’s disciple, the Marquis de Vilette, the husband
of _Belle et Bonne_. Ferney was a good school. Every one knows the
anecdote of D’Alembert, Huber, and others, telling stories of robbers,
_à qui mieux mieux_, and Voltaire, when called upon, beginning, in
the tone of a gossiping old woman—“_Messieurs, il y avait une fois un
fermier-général—Ma foi j’ai oublié le reste!_”[12] Denon told me his last
visit to Voltaire was in 1776. He had been detained late at Geneva, and
it was near midnight when he arrived at Ferney. He found the venerable
patriarch sitting up to receive him, in that _salon_ now so familiar to
every English traveller. He was in high health and spirits; and after
supper the two delightful _raconteurs_ began to narrate—mutually excited,
and mutually charmed. It was in vain that Madame Denis frequently came
from her bed-room, in night-cap and slippers, to endeavour to get her
uncle to bed. Voltaire, with the querulousness of a spoiled school-boy,
resisting the similar attempt on the part of his nurse, pushed her away,
with—“_Mais allez donc—qu’est-ce que ça fait, si je m’amuse?_”[13]

The influence which Denon himself obtained over time, and even sometimes
over nature, (for “he could murder sleep,” by the exercise of this
amusing gift,) was often exemplified upon ourselves, during our various
residences at Paris. Denon kept intolerably late hours—we intolerably
early ones. After a month of _bals-parés_—_soirées_—_réunions_—and
_opéras_, we were obliged to give in, and to stay one night at home;
and so issued orders accordingly, and sent the servants to bed.—When,
lo! as the last lamp was put out, the last ember fading, and we were
yawning our way to our bed-room, across the gloomy antechamber of our
old hotel in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, a loud ring was heard, the great
gate invisibly opening, creaked slowly on its hinges, and the wheels of
a cabriolet came rattling over the paved court. Back we ran—lest our
chamber lights should shine forth from the windows, and bring up the
unseasonable intruder—while _Pierre_ the _frotteur_, putting in his
melo-drama head, asked, interrogatively, “_Madame n’y est pas—n’est-ce
pas?_” and then flew to forbid the nocturnal visitor. But it was in
vain: he was already in the anti-room—and we heard the voice of Denon,
saying “Go to bed, my good fellow—there, that will do;”—and in he came
on the very tip-toe of excitation, humming “_On revient toujours_,” with
applicable emphasis. He was all star, ribbon, and the legion of honour;
in full dress, both in spirits and person. He had dined with one of the
ministers; and had not yet got rid of the fervour of an agreeable party,
where he had justified the partiality of Buonaparte, by charming even the
ultras themselves.

He came to bestow all his brilliancy upon us, as he was wont to do on
similar occasions; and we were as much bored at the delightful visit, as
if it had been all the tediousness of those who know so well how to be
tedious: so there we stood, yawning and smiling, with a sort of galvanic
contortion, at once to show our courtesy and drowsiness, with each a
chamber candlestick in hand, and reiterating “But we were going to bed,
my dear Denon.”—“I see it,” said Denon, and gently taking my candle,
he lighted the _bougies_ on the table—drew a chair for me near the
fire—threw a log on the hearth, and, with a petitioning air, solicited
“_encore un petit moment_.” “Our husband and ourself” exchanged looks
of mutual annoyance, and yawned ostentatiously our unwilling assent;
wondering at the influence of the miserable _physique_, or that any state
of exhaustion could reduce us to so low an ebb, as not to relish the
society of one we loved so well and admired so much.

Denon had that day made me a present of his superb work on Egypt (the
large edition), and the enormous volume lay upon the ponderous marble
table, in the centre of the room, which seemed by its strength to
have been built on purpose to receive it. We had been looking over the
plates, and Denon took out his pencil and wrote the names of some of the
eminent persons whose portraits they contain. Then drawing close to the
fire, he put on his _raconteur’s_ face, and gave us such curious and
animated details of his sojourn in Egypt with Buonaparte—of his intimacy
with Dessaix, and with others of the _notables_ of the expedition,
together with the various scenes and circumstances incidental to the
enterprise,—that insensibly we became as animated in our questions as he
was in his narration.

From Egypt we got to the funeral of Dessaix on Mount St. Bernard, (a
picture worthy of Poussin,) and thence to the German campaigns. He
described the entrance into Potsdam, etched to the life, like a proof
copy of one of his own engravings from Rembrandt or Paul Potter; not
a light, not a shade was wanting! and the tones and gestures of the
conqueror were given, as if he lived and moved before us. Their visit to
Sans Souci, and the flattering interest with which Buonaparte inspected
the apartments, where nothing had been changed since their occupation
by Frederick the Great, were not left to mere narrative; they were acted
to the life: and the plunder of the _armoires_ and _secrétaires_, were
represented in a most robber-like manner. The emperor had the sword
of Frederick for his share of the spoils; Denon’s booty was equally
characteristic—a MS. _brouillon_ of the king’s poetry, in his royal
autograph, with Voltaire’s corrections. Under some of the stanzas was
written “_digne des meilleurs poëtes Français_;”[14] and under others
the simple corrective criticism of “_fie donc!_” This was what Voltaire
called “washing the king’s linen.”

The sympathy of Napoleon for his wounded soldiers, and his personal
attention to them, have been often recorded. His anxious visits to the
field of battle after the contest was decided—his feeling the pulse and
wiping the wounds—his administering cordials with his own hands—are facts
well known, which won him the love of his army, no less than his prowess.
Denon had been with him in one of these pious visitations, and he was so
affected by the dreadful spectacle, that it became the nightmare of his
dream. He arose with the dawn and returned to the field, in the hope of
rescuing some still living beings from the heaps of dead that strewed
it. In the features of an officer, he thought he recognized a friend,
and on examining more minutely, he perceived some tokens of lingering
vitality. He endeavoured to extricate the body from the dead horse under
which it lay; but his strength failed him. There was not a moment to be
lost—looking round him for assistance, he observed two men taking their
station on an overthrown piece of artillery, coolly surveying the scene,
and writing in their tablets. They were easily recognised as the German
commissaries of interment. He flew to solicit their assistance; but both
replied in unison, “_Monsir, nous sommes ici pour enterrer les morts._”
“_Bon_,” said Denon, “but you will surely assist me in saving the
living.” Without pausing in their melancholy task, they again replied,
“_Nous sommes ici uniquement pour enterrer les morts._” Denon in vain had
recourse to persuasion, to bribes, to threats; nothing moved the phlegm
of the Germans: they heard him out patiently, and repeated for the third
time; “_Fous êtes ein bon Monsir, mais nous sommes ici pour enterrer les
morts._”[15] This writes flatly; but when told most dramatically, with
the impassibility of the German physiognomy, and the guttural German
accentuation, it was irresistible; and thus our delightful _raconteur_
went on “from grave to gay,” with equal pathos and humour, making us
laugh and cry, and winding us up and down at pleasure.

In the midst of a most interesting adventure—the scene Venice, the time
a moonlight evening, the place a balcony in the palace Benzoni, and the
heroine, the beautiful and well known “Biondina in Gondoletta,”—he paused
abruptly, with a hushing movement of his finger, marking emphatically the
deep swing of the clock in the Tuileries striking three. He arose all
confusion and apologies, for having led us into such unseasonable vigils,
and was hurrying off, when I detained him with, “but finish your story.”
“_Trois heures bien sonnés_,”[16] replied Denon, already at the door;
while I answered in the words of Voltaire, “_Mais qu’est-ce que ça fait,
si je m’amuse?_” “_A la bonne heure_,” said Denon, triumphantly, “I saw
on entering that I was a bore;[17] that you had taken your determination,
and I took mine; so good morning—I’ll finish my story another time:” and
with this trick of the tale-teller of the Arabian Nights, he tripped off
as _leste_ at seventy, as at seventeen—sprang into his cabriolet, and
rattled out, as he had rattled in, his horse and driver as much on the
alert as himself. The whole thing was French, exclusively French—the
_raconteur_, horse, driver, and cabriolet, included.

The Italians have never been celebrated as _raconteurs_; the
organization, which gives them their _improvisatori_, is perhaps in
precise opposition to the necessary qualifications of a _raconteur_. The
sure, rapid, deep, but careless touching-off, which gives colloquial
narration its charm and spirit, the imitative humour, inevitable mimicry,
appropriate gesticulations, changeful accent, and vivid conception, of
the fact or scene related, require quite another sort of _physique_
from that which forms the slow, solemn declaimer, and oracular
_improvisatore_—who looks all in the clouds, warming his fancy with
unearthly fires, and arranging his ready-made phrases and conventional
rhymes, with eyes up-raised, and glance of fanciful abstraction—apart,
and beyond all the graphic realities of life. Even in conversation,
the Italians are more impressive than agreeable—more passionate than
witty;—they talk in sentences _à longue haleine_, and forget that the
world was made in six days—the first and greatest lesson given by
Providence on the value of time, even within view of eternity!

The Italians complain of the disproportionate number of _seccatori_
(_Anglice_, bores) which creep into their circles; without accounting
for the circumstance. But men who by their religion and institutions,
are forbidden to think freely, or to discuss those great questions
which concern the main facts of life, must be tied down to matters of
minor importance. They are impelled to substitute words for deeds, and
are rendered feeble, in their intellectual intercourse, because they
are false in their political position. Still “their stars are more in
fault than they.” Boccaccio was no bad _raconteur_; Ariosto knew how to
relate; and from the _novellisti_ of the free states of Italy in her
glorious middle ages, Chaucer and Shakspeare borrowed their most humorous
details. Strong and stirring combinations will always produce striking
and graphic delineations.

But of all the _raconteurs_ in the world, (the French excepted)—they,
whose own story is so lamentable to relate, and so piteous to hear,—the
poor Irish are the most humorous and amusing. So many causes, physical
and political, have conspired to form and finish this talent in the
Irish, that it would be irrelevant to the lightness of the present theme
to enter on them. It is a curious fact, that Ireland, like France, had
her _conteurs_, from the earliest periods; who, by the significant name
of Dres-beartagh[18] (story-tellers), made a part of the establishment
of great families down to the latter end of the 16th century. “The great
men of their septs,” says Sir W. Temple, “among the many offices of their
establishment, which continued always in the same family, had not only
a physician and a poet, but a tale-teller. A very gallant gentleman of
the north has told me, of his own experience, that in his wolf-huntings
there, when he used to be in the mountains three or four days together,
and lay very ill at nights, so that he could not well sleep, they would
bring him one of these story-tellers, who, when he lay down, would begin
a tale of a king, or a giant, or a dwarf and a damsel, and such rambling
stuff; and continue it, all night long, in such an even tone, that one
heard it going on whenever one awaked.”

This is not precisely the effect that a modern _raconteur_ would like
to produce. But the talent, the gift, was there; and the whole scene
connected with it, the wolf-hunter, the mountains, and the story-teller,
are all curious and picturesque, and not a little illustrative of the
wild and primitive state of Ireland, even down to the times of Sir
William Temple, the patron and master of Swift.

One of the last Irish _conteurs_ by profession was still living about
thirty years ago, in the county of Galway, and the fame of Cormac Common
the _Fin-sgealaighthe_ or _Dres-beartagh_, the “man of talk,” has not
yet passed away in that province, which is still the repertory of all
that is most national in Ireland. Blind, poor, but gifted, Cormac early
adopted a profession consonant to his position and his endowments. The
tale he narrated, and the genealogical illustrations which he picked up
in his wanderings, and which he eloquently adorned, were his passports
alike to the mansions of the great, and to the cabin of the lonely—his
letter of credit on the festivities of the wake, and his billet on the
hospitality of the fair. He was a poet also, no less than a story-teller;
and we owe to him the oft-told and beautiful tale of Ellen na Roon,
which he threw into verse, and adapted to an air of his own composition.
More than one Italian Syren has owed the enthusiastic raptures she has
inspired in an Irish audience, to the notes of poor Cormac.

I remember telling Madame Catalani, when she was paying me a morning
visit in Dublin, that I did not like the manner in which she had the
night before jerked out the last notes in “Johnny Adair;”—that the air
was not Scotch, but Irish, (of which its smooth, flowing melody, in
regular progression, so characteristic of Irish music, was a proof). We
went to the piano-forte; and I gave our Irish way of singing the passage.
Madame Catalani tried it—liked it, but doubted that the air was Irish. To
satisfy her doubts, I gave her its history, with the birth, parentage,
and education of Cormac, its composer; and a sketch of the story of its
subject, pretty Ellen Kavanagh, into the bargain. Her charming _naïveté_
was instantly under arms; she would have the story in French; and when
I had done it, I was quite surprised to find how well the loves and
sorrows of Caroll O’Daly and Ellen O’Kavenah, with all the Irish idioms,
and grating gutturals, could be translated into the precise phrases
of “_Messieurs les quarante_.” True passion is translatable into all
languages; with conventional feelings it is quite the reverse.

Cormac Common told his stories in prose. His verses he recited to
a sweet, wild recitative, whose modulations are said to have been
diversified by cadences of peculiar beauty.

“In rehearsing any of Oisin (or Ossian), or any composition in verse,”
says one of the most accomplished of his surviving auditors, Sir William
Ouseley, “he chaunts them pretty much in the same manner as our
cathedral service.”

The national endowment, which once gave a rank, still exists in
Ireland in an eminent degree; though no longer, as of old, bestowing
an hereditary _grade_. It is chiefly confined, however, to the “mere
Irish,” whose temperament lends itself to receive impressions with
force, and to give them out with felicity. While the mixed race of
Cromwellian colonists and Scotch undertakers preserves the even tenor
of its way, “sober, steadfast, and demure,” and takes the route which
in Ireland “leads on to fortune,”—the more sensitive descendant of the
aborigines—alive to every external form, and colouring every fact with
the glowing medium of his mind—led more by fancy than by interest, and
satisfied with the social apotheosis produced by social endowments,—lives
too often for the amusement of others, rather than for his own
advancement. Who that remembers Edward Lysaght will not apply to him this
assertion, so applicable to his genius and to his fate?

It is certainly amongst the most Irish members of Irish society, that
the best _raconteurs_ are still to be found; and it is among the many
privations inflicted upon those English officials, who are sent to
administer our proconsular government, that they have been restricted
to the same dull round of office society, as had stupified their
predecessors,—a society into which the wit and humour of the natives are
so rarely permitted to penetrate. What yawnings might have been spared
to bored vice-roys, and to listless secretaries, had they been allowed
to throw open their _salons_ to that humour and colloquial vivacity,
so long proscribed by the ascendancy! However powerful at the bar, and
eloquent in the senate Irish intellect may appear, it is only under the
influence of social feelings that Irish spirit kindles into its brightest
lights. It is in the collision of social contact that it strikes out its
most sparkling emanations. In the sanctuary of private intercourse, its
reckless confidence and careless gaiety suspect no treachery and know no
restraint. Even penal laws are forgotten, under the sacred protection of
the law of hospitality; and those, disqualified by religion for the dull
routine of office, prove their claims by nature to the highest ranks in
the great commonwealth of wit.

Whoever has read those delightful Irish articles, which give such _éclat_
to the most fashionable and popular of British periodicals,—whoever has
laughed or wept over those pages of mingled pathos and humour, its Irish
sketches,—or has chatted with Canova and Cammucini on the arts of Rome,
in the same miscellany, would find those delineations cold and feeble,
could he witness the superior animation, with which I heard them given,
_vivâ voce_, at our own round table of ten. There, the narrators added
to the raciness of Irish humour, the high finish of dramatic mobility,
the tone, the look, the accent, which constitute the merit of a well-told
tale, but which will not print. To judge of this natural gift in all
its felicity, it were well to become the auditor of one, whom it is a
boast to know,[19]—who, whether he tells his humorous Irish story round
the festive board of his own paternal mansion in Kildare, or, in his
pretty hotel in the _Chaussée d’Antin_, relates his anecdote, in French,
rivalling the _purisme_ of Madame de Genlis, to the delight of listening
academicians, and the envy of professed _beaux esprits_, still most
happily illustrates that description of a _raconteur_, which he who has
left no subject untouched, and was himself the best of story-tellers, has
bequeathed to posterity—

                  “A merrier man,
    Within the limit of becoming mirth,
    I never spent an hour’s talk withal.
    His eye begets occasion for his wit,
    For every object that the one doth catch
    The other turns to a mirth-moving jest;
    Which his fair tongue (conceit’s expositor)
    Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
    That aged ears play truant to his tales,
    And younger hearings are quite ravished:
    So sweet and voluble is his discourse.”




ETERNITY.


A collection of the opinions and desires of individuals, respecting
eternity, would afford good food for meditation. The desire for existence
beyond the grave is an almost inevitable consequence of the organic
desire to live in the flesh; yet few would relish an eternity of the life
they now lead, or even consent to retrace the past. Horne Tooke was among
these few, and was so satisfied with his mortal career, as to wish its
repetition in a perpetually recurring series. One day at dinner, he said,
“A little Brentford election—a little trial for high treason (though, on
another occasion, he said he would plead guilty, rather than undergo a
second speech from the Attorney General)—a little contest with Junius—a
little everything, down to the hare upon the table.”

This, however, was the sentiment of a man refreshed by good cheer, and
enlivened by good wine; and the philosophy of the dinner-table is always
suspicious. One must appeal from “Philip drunk to Philip sober,” to come
at the real opinion of the individual.

    “L’esprit que tient du corps,
    En bien mangeant, remonte ses ressorts;”

but the tones of an overstrained instrument are always false; and the
proverb of ‘truth in wine’ fails in its application to the instance in
question. To judge with _sang-froid_ of existence, the party must be
neither full nor fasting.




HORNE TOOKE.


Horne Tooke used to tell a juvenile story to my husband, (who in his
boyhood occasionally partook of the ‘Diversions of Purley,’) very
illustrative of the narrator. Horne, when at Eton, was one day asked by
the master why a certain verb governed a particular case? he answered,
“I don’t know.” “That’s impossible!” said the master. “I know you are
not ignorant, but obstinate.” Horne, however, persisted, and the master
flogged. After punishment, the pedagogue quoted the rule of grammar which
bore on the subject, and Horne instantly replied, “I know that very well;
but you did not ask for the rule, you demanded the reason.” Here we have
the perspicuity of the mature dialectitian, and the dogged obstinacy
which would not yield a step to authority, and could purchase a victory
at any expense of suffering. Opinions may change, but the man, in his
leading characteristics, is at fifty what he is at fifteen.




RICHARD KIRWAN, ESQ.


There is scarcely a catholic family of gentility in Ireland, whose story,
if impartially told, would not illustrate the misrule by which the
prosperity of the country has been overthrown, and its genius nullified.
From the beginning to the end of the last century, to have been born
a catholic was a stigma, which no talent could efface, no patriotism
remove. To exhibit either, was, at one period, to ensure proscription,
or at least persecution; and the market opened for Irish abilities
abroad, was so much more profitable, honourable, and secure, that few of
the condemned faith remained in their native country, whose endowments
exceeded the quality demanded for home consumption.

While all Europe applauded the genius and hailed the scientific
researches of Richard Kirwan, (one of the most distinguished chemists
and philosophers of his time,) he was utterly unappreciated, and all but
unknown in his native land; and, but for an accident, he probably would
never have returned to the country, from which his religion had banished
him, to give to it the benefits of his knowledge and the glory of his
name.

Richard Kirwan, of Cregg Castle, in the county of Galway, was the
descendant of one of the most ancient and respectable families of
Connaught,[20] a province in which few families condescended to date
from a more modern epoch, than the flood. He was born in the year 1734,
a fearful time in Ireland. Being a younger son, he was (like all the
_cadets_ of his rank and class) sent to a foreign country to receive
the benefit of a liberal education; and he passed his boyhood and early
youth at the seminary of St. Omer, where, having completed his classical
studies, he gave himself up to natural science and philosophical
pursuits, with such enthusiasm and such brilliant success, as declared a
higher vocation, than he would have been permitted to follow in his own
country. The death of his elder brother, by calling him to the succession
of a noble estate, enabled him to follow with more effect the bent of his
intellect; and he continued to cultivate science with that persevering
diligence, and eager love of truth, which are ever the tests of the
highest order of genius. As a chemist, for many years he stood alone; and
if, afterwards, he was outstripped in the career of improvement, by more
youthful successors, he still led the way to some of their most important
discoveries. Living much abroad, where he was most known and esteemed, he
was elected a member of the academies of Stockholm, Berlin, Upsal, Jena,
and Philadelphia; as he was, afterwards, Fellow of the Royal Societies
of London and Edinburgh. It was not, I believe, till long after these
foreign honours were showered upon him, that he was elected President
of the Royal Irish Academy, and created a Doctor of Laws in the Irish
University. His unrivalled mineralogical attainments pointed him out also
to the government, as the fittest person to hold the office of Inspector
General of his Majesty’s mines in Ireland.

From that period, he resided chiefly in his native country—sometimes at
his mansion in Rutland-square, and occasionally, as long as his health
permitted, at his patrimonial castle of Cregg. The victim of a singular
affection of the throat, which prevented him from eating in company,
Mr. Kirwan retired from what is called “the world;” and, much more
celebrated than known, he lived only with the literary, the liberal, and
the scientific, (in Ireland, a very select and circumscribed circle;)
but he kept up a correspondence with all that was most distinguished
in Europe. Of his numerous works, those most known are his “Elements
of Mineralogy;” “Geological Essays;” “Analysis of Mineral Waters;”
“Logic, or an Essay on the Elements, Principles, and Different Modes of
Reasoning;” “Metaphysical Essays;” “Essay on Phlogiston;” and his work on
the “Temperature of Different Latitudes,” which was, I believe, his last.

I remember, when I was a child (_du temps du bon Roi Dagobert_), hearing
a great deal of Mr. Kirwan, and of chemistry: not that my family were
particularly given to that, or any other of the sciences, (good folks!)
though we had all a great calling to the arts. But the most eminent
chemist of the day was an Irishman—and, still more, a Connaught man—and,
more still, a Galway man—and, beyond all this, we were kin to the whole
Thirteen Tribes of Galway, of which the Kirwans were one; “aye, in
truth, dear, from Maoldal-hreock down,” as my father used to say: for
upon such Irish lore I was fed from the cradle. Thus the name of Kirwan
got associated in my infant mind, with that of Shakspeare, Handel, and
Carolan the Irish bard; the three _Dii majorum Gentium_ of our household
altars.

My father (as fine and genuine a specimen of the true Irish soil, as the
Irish wolf-dog) discovered in me an apt predisposition for all that was
Irish—for its music, its poetry, its wild and imaginative fables, and
local gossip; and “the genius of my country found me,” as the immortal
Robert Burns said, not indeed “_at the plough_,” but on my father’s knee,
listening, with open mouth, up-raised eyes, and tremulous attention, to
that species of “rambling stuff,” called in the language of the land, so
early my inspiration and my theme, _Shanaos_.

It was in enumerating the glories of his native province, the worthies
it had produced, and the antiquity and respectability of its Thirteen
Tribes, that my father was wont particularly to dilate on the
illustration thrown on the family of the Kirwans by some of its living
members: and having sketched off the genealogical distinction of the
Forts, or Fuentes, the Joyces, the Trenches, the Blakes, and Bodkins
(or the “_Buaidh Baudikin_,” as he called them), he always paused in
long digression on the family of the Kirwans—or, as he pronounced it the
O’quirivans, “for, my dear, the Kirwans, I am sorry to say, dropt _the
vowel_ in the troubles; like many others, who dared not exhibit the O
or the Mac;—(which was our own case, God help us!) and the Mac-owens,
_Anglice_ Owensons, and the O’quirivans, or _O’Kirwans_, remain stripped
of these family patronymics to this day. But they are, ever were, and
will be, a great family. It was one of the Kirwans of Castle Hacket who
first introduced glass windows into county Galway; and I have heard tell
that the first tea-pot seen in the province, was in the buffet of the
Kirwans of Blindacre. But the Castle Hackets have to boast of producing
that inspired preacher, Doctor Kirwan—the greatest pulpit orator, as
Father O’Leary assured me, since the time of Bossuet. Then there are the
Kirwans of Cregg, their chief, at this day, being the greatest chemist
and philosopher in Europe. I remember well, when Richard Kirwan first
returned from abroad to Cregg Castle, seeing him walk of a Sunday to the
Mass House, on the road-side, in a rich suit of embroidered clothes;
his _chapeau-bras_ under his arm, and picking his steps along the dirty
road, with brilliant stone buckles in his shoes. He was a tall, elegant,
comely young man then, and spoke good Irish, though somewhat too fond of
interlarding his discourse with foreign phrases. He was then, what is
called in Irish a ‘_chi shin_,’[21] and we little thought he would have
turned out the greatest philosopher and chemist of his age.” This was an
image; the true source of deep and indelible impressions: and there it
is, fresh as I received it—a proof copy, not a line worn out.

It was probably this graphic sketch, and the ideas, associated with it,
of the value of philosophy and the importance of chemistry, which, at a
very early period of my life, influenced my pursuits. For before I was
fourteen I had read Locke (which chance threw in my way in a parlour
window) with infinite delight; and I imbibed a very ardent, but very
short-lived passion for chemistry, not a little seduced by hearing a
great deal of the charms of Pauline Lavoisier, and reading some of her
experiments. My experiments, however, were cut short by my burning
my fingers severely with phosphorus, while fired by the ambition of
frightening my maid, by writing flaming letters on the walls of her
bed-room in a dark night. The danger I incurred of being burned to death,
and the fright my unlucky experiment caused to my family, checked my
“vaulting ambition;” and thus my love of philosophy fell a victim to my
love of fun. From that moment—

            “Fair Science, to you
    I then bid a long and careless adieu.”

The restless vivacity of intellectual youth, feeling its way to truth,
and impelled, by its own energies, to experiments upon all sorts of
knowledge, is frequently mistaken for a decided vocation to some one
subject, for which the student has neither will nor organization. Nature,
however, left free to act, soon finds her own level, and discovers her
own bent. It is the folly of parents to force or restrain her. She may
be assisted—she cannot be reorganized: and though it may be easier to
inculcate science, than to inspire a talent for the arts, yet mediocrity
in both must be the consequence of those forced marches of mind, which
enfeeble the victim, without attaining the end.

But though I gave up chemistry, I had not forgotten the chemist; and
I borrowed and read the works of Richard Kirwan—at least, as much of
them as I could understand; and perhaps a little more—for I dipped into
his Elements of Mineralogy, worked hard at his Essays, and picked up
just enough of his favourite doctrine of Phlogiston, to astonish the
vulgar and amuse the wise;—among whom I reckoned my governess, and my
writing-master. Truth, however, to tell, my ideas of the profound and
celebrated philosopher still remained mixed up and associated with my
father’s description of the tall, comely, elegant young man, picking his
steps through the mud of Connaught roads, with diamond buckles in his
shoes, and an opera hat under his arm.

In process of time when school was up, and “Alley Croaker made a mighty
noise”—when one “wild Irish girl” brought the other into notice—it became
the fashion to ask that other and her Irish harp to Dublin parties. This
(_par parenthèse_), not because she wrote novels, and was an honest,
pains-taking little person, leaving no calling for the idle trade, and
turning to account the _petit bout de talent_, given her, by Him, from
whom all is derived, to lighten the burden, which misfortune had heaped
on her family;—but because she was the _enfant gâté_ of a particular
circle, and lived with the Lady Harringtons, Asgills, and all sorts of
great official English ladies. As for the Irish Protestant Ascendancy
dames, the Mrs. Chief Baron this, and Mrs. Chief Justice that, Mrs.
Commissioner of wide streets, and Mrs. Secretary of the paving board,
she might have perished in the streets, in want or infamy, before one of
their ascendancyships would have stretched forth a finger to save her
from either. But, “let that pass,” as the Scotch novels say.

It happened, that shortly after the publication of the Wild Irish Girl,
as I sat making up one of those “tissues of woven air,” in which I then
clothed my heroines, and in which I intended to dress myself for a ball
at the Barracks, given that night by Lady Augusta Leith,—a plain, dark,
old-fashioned chariot drove to the door, and up came a card, thus
inscribed—“Mr. Kirwan, to pay his respects to the fair authoress of the
Wild Irish Girl.”—My stars! what a fuss! The great Richard Kirwan, the
philosopher! the chemist! the comely! the elegant! the celebrated! What
stowing away of breadths and gores (we had not come to _ruches_ and
_falbalas_)—what pushing of work baskets under the sofa, and ramming the
Sorrows of Werter into the bread basket!—for work, Werter, and bread and
butter, were then all in equal requisition.

I flew first to the harp, to get up an attitude, (like poor Mathurin),
and then back to the table to seize my pen like ‘Anna Matilda;’ and
when the door opened, I was placed in a thoughtful position, with the
contemplative look of a doctor of the Sorbonne, or of Lydia Languish;
but the apparition, which for a moment halted at the threshold, and then
moved on in solemn gait, actually made me start. A tall, gaunt figure,
wrapped from neck to heel in a dark roquelaure, with a large-leafed
hat flapped low over the face, presented the very picture of Guy Faux,
with nothing wanting but his dark lantern. The comely, the elegant
young man disappeared from my imagination; and the venerable, but very
singular-looking philosopher, “stood confessed.”

Mr. Kirwan, with all the grace of the old school, moved his hat, and
instantly replacing it on a full, old-fashioned peruke, pleaded the
necessity for covering his head, on account of some disorder, which
rendered it dangerous to do otherwise, even in a warm room. After a
few hems and haws on my part, and a fixed stare on his, we fell to
discourse, and the conversation soon became animated, and to me highly
interesting. It arose from his taking up a book that lay on the table,
and had replaced my Werter. This was unlucky: he threw down the book
with indignation, and cautioned me against what he called its “selfish
sophistry,” adding, “Young lady, you have too much imagination and too
much feeling, to give up your precious time to such works as this;” and
he then attacked the doctrines of Helvetius, with more feeling than
logic. His own philosophy being founded in his quick and almost morbid
sensibility, he would not allow self-love to be the _primum mobile_ of
all human action. Sympathy was his leading dogma; and the predominancy
of good his creed.

While we were talking, I perceived, from the window near which we were
seated, the wretched skeleton of a scarcely living horse, which had
been turned out to die on a piece of waste ground, not yet built on.
The bones had nearly pierced the skin, and it fell as we looked on it,
and died. “So much for the prevalence of good,” I said. “What must have
been the sufferings of that poor animal, since it first began to fail in
strength and utility, and was exposed to the brutality, ignorance, and
disappointed avarice of its owner, who has thus turned it forth to die
in agony and in want! Yet what had that poor beast done to merit such a
fate? For him no future compensation exists—no bright hereafter repays,
to all eternity, his sufferings on earth. But such is the lot of nearly
the whole brute creation; to serve and suffer,—to be incapable of crime,
and yet to feel its direst penalties.”

The countenance of Mr. Kirwan became gloomy and agitated; he turned away
from the window, and, seating himself by the fire, after a long silence,
he addressed me, in a solemn and impressive manner, that affected me
deeply, and left its influence fixed on my mind. He began by observing,
that the apparent sufferings of the animal who had died under our eyes,
had for a moment elicited the most painful and piteous sympathy; that the
idea of sufferings imposed without a cause on the part of the sufferer,
and which were to have no retribution, no recompense, was too painful an
idea to indulge in, and too derogatory to the wisdom and goodness of the
Supreme Being, to be credible; that he had therefore long been convinced,
that those signs of suffering manifested by brute animals, were but means
to cherish and promote the sympathies of men, and to check his natural
tendency to tyrannize and misuse power, whenever it was granted him.
In a word, that he was a sincere disciple and zealous advocate for the
doctrine of Gomez Pereira, (which was popularized by Descartes,) who
conceived that all appearances of sensibility manifested by animals are
fallacious; and that the brute species are mere machines, divested of all
feeling.

There is something so amiable in this horror of injustice, that it
is impossible not to pardon the inconsequence of the reasoning. In
what is the generally received notion of retributive vengeance, which
gratuitously inflicts pain, where neither amendment nor example can be
hoped, more consistent with the idea of infinite goodness, than that of
the temporal miseries of unoffending brutes? The difficulties surrounding
the admitted existence of evil in its simple relation to man, one would
think were sufficient, without bringing the brute race into question. It
is curious to remark, that the argument for the possible automatic nature
of the brute mechanism, is precisely that of the materialists against the
existence of the soul; all which is very good as it respects the animal,
but, applied to man, is “stark naught;”—a good specimen of the fairness
of theologians, which almost drives one on the mythology of Pope’s
Indian, and makes one wish to take our dog along with us into the regions
of immortality.

Father Bougeant, a jesuit, and too much of a jesuit not to see the
difficulties of either system, cut the Gordian knot, by stating that
brutes were animated by the souls of devils; and one might sometimes
be tempted to think so, when a horse will gib, and a “pig won’t go to
market”—when an ass proves as obdurate as Balaam’s, without the same
cause—and a crocodile “puts its hand into its breeches pocket and sheds
feigned tears,” after the manner of Sir Boyle’s illustration.

Speaking of an objection that lies against this opinion, drawn from the
pleasure men take in the society of animals, the jesuit says, “If I am
told that these poor devils are doomed to suffer eternal torments, I
admire God’s decrees, but I have no share in that dreadful sentence. I
leave the execution of it to the sovereign judge; and I live with my
little devils, as I do with a multitude of people, of whom religion tells
me that a great number must be lost.” In this good natured feeling,
Bougeant is not singular. Most people have a lurking notion, that they
themselves will escape reprobation; and as for their relations and
friends, if they will try their chance of going “the other way, the other
way,” as Mr. Moore delicately phrases it, why then, _sauve qui peut_.

In the charitable creed of Mr. Kirwan, I have often been tempted to
put faith—after the fashion of St. Augustine, even though it were
impossible—when I have seen the dreadful sufferings inflicted on
domestic animals (and in Ireland they are worse treated, than in any
other part of the world, in spite of our dear Dick Martin). On such
occasions Gomez Pereira, and even the Abbé Bougeant, are often necessary
to reconcile one to the spectacle.

From metaphysics and physics, the conversation turned to music. Mr.
Kirwan was a devoted amateur of the divine art, which he had studied
_con amore_, abroad. He had not, however, got a step further than the
“_Coin de la Reine_,” and was as furious against Gluck, and as enamoured
of Piccini and Sacchini, as when he assisted to hunt down the “_Titan
et l’Aurore_,” of Jean Joseph of Meudonville, in spite of Madame de
Pompadour’s patronage of French discords. I was at this time, with
respect to Italian music, what St. Preux was before Lord Bomston had
discovered the musical bump on his eye-brow, and gave him a new sense. I
was so enthusiastic in my passion for Irish music, and had obtained such
a pretty little success by playing the airs of Carolan on my Irish harp,
that I had actually engaged with Messrs. Power and Golding, of London, to
collect and arrange twelve Irish melodies, with words translated from
the Irish, which they brought out shortly afterwards, supplying the idea
to Mr. Moore of a similar, though immeasurably superior, publication.
I thought, therefore, I would say a little word in favour of my poor
_Gramachrees_, _Emunch-a-Knuics_, and other bardic strains, which had,
even in infancy, produced the most extraordinary effect on (what is
vulgarly called) my nerves. This was worse than Helvetius. Mr. Kirwan
called my taste barbarous, and became quite vehement in his expression of
abhorrence of Irish music.

“Madam,” he said, “I left Ireland at your age; and full, as you now are,
of all the vulgar errors of enthusiastic patriotism, I thought there was
no poetry like Irish poetry—no music like Irish music. When I returned, I
could not endure either. However, at Christmas and other great festivals,
I had the servants’ hall, at Cregg, thrown open to all comers, beggars,
bards, and story-tellers, after the old Connaught fashion; and at night
I took my place in the midst of them, round the blazing hearth, and made
my eleemosynary guests each tell a story, recite a poem, or sing a song,
in Irish; and it was amazing how few among them could not recite or sing:
and some of them did both right well. It was thus I came at various
fragments of Ossian, which Mr. M’Pherson has dressed up and changed
at pleasure, and assigned to the Scottish bard. But the music was not
endurable—at least it put my nerves to the torture. Madam, it was quite
too much for me—it almost threw me into convulsions.”

While he was speaking, I had drawn my harp forward, and begged permission
to sing to it the fine old cronan of _Emunch-a-Knuic_, or, “Ned of the
Hills,” which dates back to the time of Henry VIII. He bowed his head
in sullen assent; but before I had finished the first stanza, the tears
gushed from his eyes, and seizing my hands, he said with vehemence,
“Madam, I won’t hear you—’tis terrible—it goes to the very soul!—it
wrings every nerve in the body!”

“Then, Sir, I ask no more—the effect which Irish music produces on you is
the best proof of its excellence.”

“You may as well say that the howl of a dying dog, which would produce
much the same effect, is the proof of its excellence; my dear child,
give up your Irish harp and your Irish howl, and study Italian music—you
are worthy of knowing it! for you have a true musical organization, but
it is all perverted. You must take tea with me on Thursday next; it is my
shaving day. I only pay visits, or receive ladies, twice a-week, on my
shaving days. I have a good piano-forte, and a fine collection of Italian
music; you shall try both—my tea-table hour is half-past five!”

It happened that on the very evening for which Mr. Kirwan engaged me to
take tea at his house in Rutland Square, at half-past five, I had engaged
myself to take tea at half-past seven with another celebrated invalid,
Mrs. Henry Tighe, the charming Psyche of poetical fame, and my most dear
and early friend.

The notes which reminded me of my double and very interesting
engagements, lie at this moment before me; they are extremely
characteristic:—

    “Mr. Kirwan presents his best respects to Miss Owenson, and
    writes to remind her of her kind promise to take tea with
    him to-morrow evening, at half past five. She will meet Mr.
    Hamilton Rowan, and Professor Higgins. Mr. Kirwan will take
    the liberty to send his carriage for Miss O. at a quarter-past
    five.”

    “MY DEAR GLORVINA,

    “Lest, in your poetical flights, you should forget to-morrow
    evening, this is to request you will come early, and bring
    your best looks and best spirits with you; the beautiful Lady
    Charlemont is coming to meet you expressly. Lady Asgill brings
    Sir Arthur Wellesley,[22] and William Parnel joins us as soon
    as he can—so come. If you would like Harry to go for you, say
    so.—Your’s ever,

                                                         “M. TIGHE.”

The sober carriage of Mr. Kirwan was at my door to the moment; and, to
the moment, I was at his. My punctuality pleased him; for his own whole
useful and laborious life was governed by a sense of the value of time,
and of the virtue of punctuality. I was received by his man, Pope, who
seemed born and organized to be the servant of a philosopher—the perfect
image of Dumps, the servant of old Rueful, in “The Good Natured Man,”
pale, lank, solemn, and demure.

On entering the drawing room, the heat was so excessive, that I was
afraid I should never go through the _séance_. Although it was a fine
mild spring evening, an enormous fire blazed on the hearth; and a skreen,
of considerable dimensions, drawn closely round it, excluded every breath
of air. Within this enclosure, on a large cumbrous sofa, sat the advocate
of phlogiston. He was dressed in the same roquelaure and slouched hat,
in which he had visited me; with, however, the addition of a shawl wrapt
round his neck. On either side him, were placed two persons, who, in
their appearance, seemed to form the extreme links in the human chain.
The one was the good and simple Professor Higgins, with his _air de
prêtre_, the very _beau-idéal_ of a catholic curate, from his own wild
native district of Erris; the other a Roman tribune of Rome’s best day,
already indeed past the prime of life, but with the figure of an athlete,
and a bust of the antique mould: it was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had
then but lately returned from his long exile in America. The impression
made on me, by this now best and truest of old friends, has come forth,
after a long lapse of years, in my last work, the “O’Briens and the
O’Flahertys;” and some resemblance to what he then was may be found in
his fine picture by Hamilton.

Over the chimney-piece was a portrait of Catherine of Russia, “whom,”
said Mr. Kirwan, “I call Catherine the Great, in contradistinction to
Frederick the Infamous, her rival, and by far her inferior.”

Meantime, a conversation, of the most scientific nature, was resumed,
which my entrance had interrupted, and in which my ignorance and
timidity, at the learned society into which I had been so strangely
introduced, prevented me from taking a part.

As soon as Mr. Kirwan had settled the constitution of acids with
Professor Higgins, he turned to me, with an air of great gallantry, and
said, “Let us now revert to a sweeter subject.” Lord, how I fancied
myself Miss Helen Maria Williams, gallanted by Dr. Johnson! After some
very civil things, such as young ladies like to hear, even from old
gentlemen (at least I did), he drew up a _précis_ of the respective
merits of Miss Edgeworth’s admirable “Castle Rackrent,” and my “Wild
Irish Girl,” very flattering to both. On the exaggeration so unjustly
imputed to Miss Edgeworth’s most graphic work, he related the following
anecdote:—

“When I first returned to my native province, from abroad, I accepted an
invitation to a gentleman’s house. After a day’s sport on his estate, I
arrived late, and found that the house had been burned down the night
before.—I was only one of many guests. We had a joyous supper in the
roofless hall; and sheds and temporary sleeping places had been erected
for us in the barn, behind the ruined mansion. When we retired for
the night, I was led to my pavilion, accompanied by my two favourite
dogs, like one of Ossian’s hunters. Extremely tired, and, perhaps, not
particularly sober, I threw myself on the bed prepared for me, from which
I had a distinct view of the stars, through the crevices of the roof.
However, I slept soundly, though not uninterruptedly; for, the middle
of the night, I was roused by extraordinary sounds of groaning, and
grunting, and squeakings, and squallings, mingled with the sharp bark
of one dog, and the low growl of the other, as if in deadly contest with
some unwelcome intruder. All that I had then heard of the atrocities of
the disturbed state of Ireland rushed to my mind. I started on my legs
in search of my fowling piece, but fell over a huge bleeding body, which
seemed to give out its last groan under my pressure; my fierce dog, as I
supposed, still clinging to the wretch’s throat. I called for help—again
got upon my legs; and staggering to the entrance, and opening the door,
found that I had indeed been attacked, and by the swinish multitude. The
fact was, that I had been lodged in the pig-sty, to which the lawful,
but extruded proprietors had, by a natural instinct, made their way back
in the night; and my faithful dogs, who had in vain striven to repel the
invaders, had laid at my feet the mother sow, ‘with all her pretty little
ones,’ bleeding and vanquished. The scene lay near Ballinoshe; the time
was, literally, ‘the day after the fair.’”

While this conversation was passing, Pope made tea behind the screen,
and served it with a most characteristic formality. The scene was a
picture; and though I afterwards drank tea with Mr. Kirwan fifty
times, this first impression was the strongest, and the most lasting.
At eight precisely, the party broke up; and Pope conducted me back to
the carriage. Before, however, I drove off, he was already employed in
unscrewing the knocker:[23] for, from that hour, the mansion of the
philosopher was hermetically sealed against all intrusion.

The manners, the habits, the accent of Mr. Kirwan, were marked by
all those distinctive peculiarities which belonged to his creed, his
education, and the country and times in which he flourished. Born in an
epoch of Irish story, the most marked, the most heart-rending, under that
_régime_ of terror, when the worst penal statutes against the catholics
were first imposed;—born too, and receiving his first and deepest
impressions in a province, poetically and historically the most Irish, he
preserved, from the early part of the last century to the commencement
of the present, the high and formal courtesy, the gallant bearing, and
chivalrous point of honour, the broad guttural accent and the idiomatic
phraseology, with which the brave officers who survived the siege of
Limerick went forth into voluntary exile, to fight and perish in foreign
lands for foreign interests.

His opinions were as singular as his appearance and his manners.
Abhorring the atrocities of the fatal re-action, which retarded the
benefits and stained the cause of the French Revolution, he was frank
and loud in his reprobation of that ruinous continental war by which
the British empire was drained and demoralised, to revive pernicious
institutions, and restore a race, the antitypes of the unfortunate family
which England had herself spurned and dethroned. It was curious to hear
him calculate the expenses of this war, and the disbursement which would
have been required to build a causeway or pier that should extend across
the channel.—“Works,” he said, “of almost equal magnitude had been
completed by the ancients, with less aid from science than could now be
had. Bonaparte,” he would add, “would effect works as useful and as
sublime, if the old dynasties would let him alone.”

Starting with his favourite maxim, that—“with labour and money nothing is
impossible,” he was wont to bring all his wonderful geological knowledge
to bear upon this favourite scheme. He tumbled the mountains of Wicklow
into St. George’s Channel—played with Bray-head and the Sugar-loaf, as
if they were jack-stones,—finished by walking dryshod from Howth to
Holyhead, and reckoning his way, not by knots, but by milestones.

His opinion on the antiquity of knowledge was as original as his belief
in the mechanism of the brute creation. He asserted that we borrowed
much of our astronomical lights from the antediluvians, and that Adam
spoke Greek with a purity that might have elicited the applause of the
Portico. In his religious opinions he was equally paradoxical; and he
remained unsettled upon some leading dogmas to the last, though it has
been said of him, “that he died _ferme catholique_, as he had lived
_preux chevalier_.” He was extremely fond of female society, and not only
invited ladies of all ages to his early tea-parties, but went to theirs;
always stipulating for leave to _bring_ and _make_ his own tea, and to
come and go at his own hours.

The last time I ever saw him was at a tea-party made expressly for
himself at my sister’s, Lady Clarke’s, a few months before his death; and
the company which he upon that occasion drew round him, formed a curious
contrast with the grave and learned philosopher who was its centre.
It is the misfortune of all the high officials who come to Ireland,
that they are, instantly on their arrival, surrounded by a certain
heir-loom circle, whose interest it is to keep aloof from the lords of
the ascendant the genuine talent and true and independent gentry of the
country. Whoever takes the trouble to read the court circular of the
Irish dignitaries, will find, that precisely the same persons dine with
his excellency Lord B., who dined with his excellency Lord A.; and so on
through the vice-regal alphabet: while commanders-in-chief, and chief
commanders, run the same gauntlet, and “go by the scrip,” just as their
military predecessors did before them.

At a moment when Mr. Kirwan’s name and works were familiar to all Europe,
and when he was a fellow of nearly all its learned societies, the
fact was utterly unknown to the English officials, military and civil,
who then held the _dessus du pavé_, that Dublin was distinguished by
the constant residence of one, who did such honour to its literary and
scientific annals. Having to plead as an excuse to Sir Charles and Lady
Asgill, for a late attendance at their dinner-party, that if I were
served up with the game of the second course, it would be because I was
first to assist at a tea-party given to Mr. Kirwan, they expressed not
only surprise at his residence in Dublin, but an anxious curiosity to be
of the tea-party.

Not to take the philosopher by surprise, the proposition was made to
him by Lady C—— and myself—and I remember his answer was, “Madam, I am
always pleased to mingle with people of the world. I never knew one,
even the lightest and most frivolous, from whom something was not to be
learned, that threw a light upon the follies and virtues of society. I
once lived much in the world of fashion myself; and was as foolish and as
vain as the worst. But I stipulate for my own hours, my own _tay_, and
my own _tay-pot_.”—This being agreed, the party assembled in Lady C.’s
drawing-room, at the usual fashionable hour for morning visits. Under the
pretence of bringing his staff, Sir Charles Asgill was accompanied by his
amiable nephew and A. D. C., Captain Bouverie, and several other young
officers; and Lady Asgill smuggled in General and Lady Augusta Leith. In
short, the whole 8 o’clock dinner-party of Merrion-square were seated at
my sister’s tea-table before six.

The contrast of the gay and gallant _militaires_, with two or three
learned professors who had been invited to meet Mr. Kirwan, and above all
with the strange costume and erect posture of the philosopher himself,
formed a pleasant picture. It was very evident, that there was a previous
inclination on the part of the fashionables towards mystification; and
that a very active system of quizzing had been organized by the two
_grandes dames de par le monde_, in which every beau present was to
have played his part—(within, however, be it acknowledged, the bounds
of perfect good breeding,—a virtue never transgressed with impunity
in the society of the polished and courteous Sir Charles Asgill). It
happened, however, in this instance, (as I have known it happen in a
hundred others, when genuine talent is brought to stand the brunt of
that frivolous _persiflage_, in which fashion delights and exults,)
that those who came to scoff, remained—to admire. Unconsciously led on
to talk, by the insidious propositions of the mystifiers, to whom his
charming, unadulterated brogue was a feast, he gradually dilated into the
most communicative pleasantry. His ever anecdotic mine was opened to its
richest abundance; and so full of interest, novelty, and information, was
his discourse, that even appetite stood in check while he spoke; and Mr.
Kirwan, (whose tea was his supper,) was the first to give notice to his
delighted listeners, that it was time for them to go to dinner.

Like all people of eminent talent, Mr. Kirwan was extremely _naïve_; and,
where his feelings gave the impulse, he seldom “stood on the order” of
form, or of cold discretion. At that deplorable period which preceded
the rebellion, when a gentleman of the highest respectability, of large
fortune and of ancient family, was imprisoned, tried, and condemned, for
a libel on the nefarious government of those times, it entered into the
littleness of the Irish Secretary of State to refine upon the severity
of punishment, by adding to it the indelible stain of disgrace:—in a
word, it was intended to place a member of a noble family, a man of the
highest character, in the pillory. When the intelligence was communicated
to Mr. Kirwan, his emotion is said to have been extreme; and ordering
his carriage, he instantly drove to the castle—pushed by the familiars
who filled the ante-room of the Secretary of State’s office, and bolting
into the presence of the arbitrator of a nation’s fate, demanded if
what he had heard was true? A placid and rather affirmative smile,
was the equivocal and somewhat contemptuous answer. After a moment’s
indignant pause, Mr. Kirwan, drawing up his figure to its full height,
in his broadest brogue and deepest tones, said—“Sir, if this unfortunate
gentleman is guilty of high treason, bring him to the scaffold; if of a
libel against your government, fine and confine him: but if you send such
a personage to the pillory, you will revolt the whole order of gentlemen
throughout Europe against you.”—The _order_ of _gentlemen_ was, in Mr.
Kirwan’s estimation, the first order in the world; and none better
illustrated its pervading spirit than himself.

The long and truly paternal kindness, with which Mr. Kirwan honoured me,
from the moment of our first acquaintance till his death, I consider
as among the proudest circumstances of my life. When the first attack
was made on me, in the first number of the Quarterly, he was nearly as
indignant as when Mr. —— was threatened with the pillory—not more through
his partiality to me, than through the disgrace it might inflict on the
“_order of gentlemen_,” should any one suppose a gentleman capable of so
unmeasured an attack upon a young and defenceless woman.

He was extremely desirous, at that epoch, that I should write a prize
essay for a premium, offered by the Dublin University, for the best essay
on Literary Fiction. I wrote my essay—but it was not a _prize_ one. It
was my first and last attempt at writing “to order,” and was undertaken,
against my taste and will, merely to please him. Having found it some
years back, I gave it to Mr. Colburn for the “Literary Gazette,” at that
time under his direction.

The last letter which I had the honour to receive from Mr. Kirwan, a
short time before his death, is extremely characteristic of that high
tone of courtesy which he always assumed with women; and it is remarkable
for the perfect intellect it displayed, even when its gifted writer was
dropping into the grave:—

    “DEAR MADAM,

    “I received your letter about three weeks ago; and your
    present, which does me so much honour, about a week ago:
    but I cannot say that your letter gave me any pleasure, as
    it announced your intention of speedily departing from this
    country.

    “Allowing you to do so, is indeed an accumulated proof how
    little it is worthy of the praises you bestowed upon it.
    Sentiments corresponding with your own, are now to be found
    only among those of genuine Irish origin, who now, alas!
    constitute the lowest class in the wretched population of the
    western coast of Connaught—despised and persecuted for nearly
    three centuries; though you will probably be rendered much more
    happy, by absence from a scene which would daily afflict a
    heart of such exquisite sensibility as your own—a sensibility
    which, I must say, among your numerous accomplishments, forms
    the essence of your character.

    “It will, I hope, if report says true, be engrossed by a
    person worthy of its selection, who in return will derive his
    happiness from repaying it by equal constancy and intensity.

    “This is the ardent hope of your faithful friend, and most
    affectionate humble servant,

                                                         “R. KIRWAN.

    “_Dublin, January 25th, 1812_”




TRÈS-DISTINGUÉ.


Who would think that this prevailing term in the nomenclature of modern
fashionable jargon is as old as the time of Ninon de l’Enclos, for whom
it was invented? Love had already taken shelter in her wrinkles,[24] and
intrenched himself behind her spectacles; and there was still found
about her a charm for which there was no name, which the old triumphed
to observe, and the young could neither resist nor define. They at
last called it something _distingué_. In one of her clever letters to
St. Evremont, speaking of a young friend he had presented to her, she
says:—“_J’ai lu devant lui votre lettre, avec des lunettes; mais elles
ne me siéent pas mal; j’ai toujours eu la mine grave. S’il est amoureux
du mérite qu’on appelle ici distingué, peut-être que votre souhait sera
accompli: car tous les jours on vient me consoler de mes pertes par ce
beau mot._”[25]




AUX PETITS SOINS.


_Petits soins! Alte là_, my dear little women, coquettes, prudes, and
platonists; and you who are none of these, but have just philosophy
enough at the ends of your rosy fingers, to prefer that pleasant series
of intellectual sensations, which come of the _petits soins_ of an
agreeable and clever man, with all their imaginative enjoyments, which
are followed neither by satiety nor remorse, but are yet far removed from
a “cool suspense from pleasure and from pain.”

French women understand this gracious era in the progress of a
“_sentiment_,” much better than the English. They have the prudence to
put off the evil day, when it shall be no more, as long as they can; and
they have the wit and information to fill up the interval between growing
prepossession, and unequivocal passion. They have a still more precious
art—that of inspiring _les petits soins_, when _les grands_ have passed
for ever. In England, indifference treads closely on the steps of
love—in France, the most lasting and tender friendship is made up of the
fragments of an old passion.




RAPIDITY.


    “You sleep so slow, Father.”

                                    _Young Rapid—Cure for the Heart Ache._

I cannot get on with Mr. ——: not but he is a sensible and a clever man;
but then, in thought, delivery, and enunciation, he is so slow!—We start
together fairly from the same point, and gain the same end; but he goes
by the heavy Birmingham, and I am booked by the mail. One of the great
characteristics of modern times is rapidity. A slow development, is in
all things, either an evidence of the timidity of ignorance, or a proof
of inefficiency and feebleness. This is particularly illustrated in the
science of music. The earliest musical compositions which have reached
us, are dragging, drawling, monotonous chaunts. Even the “_Charmante
Gabrielle_” of _Henri Quatre_, and the cavatinas by Salvator Rosa,
resemble a modern psalmody.

From Sacchini to Rossini, (no very great interval, by the by) the
successive changes in music are all characterized by increasing rapidity.
Rossini condenses into a single bar musical ideas, which the masters
of the last century would have extended through many phrases. The
reiteration, which occurs in the grounds of Purcel, Corelli, &c. &c.,
is a result of the same cause: one idea in these compositions makes
the whole _frais_ of the piece, and is husbanded and worked like a
geometrical problem. The compositions of Rossini form an epoch in the
history of the most delicious of arts. Rossini is the Voltaire of music.
He has given it an impulsion, which the world was ready to receive, but
which no preceding composer had the genius or the courage to propose.
Paesiello, his predecessor, was the Rousseau of his art. Full of
sentiment and eloquence, he was deficient in that force of truth, that
energetic vigour of conception, which irresistibly masters the passions
of the auditor. We sleep with soft dreams in listening to Paesiello; but
we are awakened by Rossini.

People must have spoken more slowly in the time of Queen Elizabeth, than
they do now. The cumbrous construction of phrases in the written style of
that day, obliges one to read the page of an old author much slower than
a modern one. It must have been the same in conversation: there being
then fewer ideas in general circulation, the speaker had further to seek
for subject matter: the words did not “come skipping rank and file.”
There was no ready money of mind in the market, although there were
immense masses of unworked ingot, lying in the great bank of the national
intellect. There was not then, as now, a ready-made set of conventional
phrases, which served to dress up every man’s thoughts, and often to
supply the place of thinking; every man was then his own thinker. A
rapid speaker, in such a state of things, must have outstripped his
hearers. “In all kinds of speech,” (says Lord Bacon) “either pleasant,
grave, severe, or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely, and
rather drawlingly, than hastily; because hasty speech confounds the
memory, and oftentimes, beside the unseemliness, draws a man either to
stammering, a nonplus, or harping on that which should follow; whereas a
slow speech confirmeth the memory, and addeth a conceit of wisdom to the
hearers,—besides a seemliness of speech and countenance.” Here then was
the _beau-idéal_ of a good speaker in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

One of the most satisfactory evidences of improvement in the details of
civilized life, is the increased rapidity of all its movements. Rapidity
is power—omnipotence goes at once to its object, and reaches it. To
be slow is to be feeble—to measure human action against time, and to
overtake it, is to double existence. To live fast (properly understood)
is not to wear out life briefly, but to multiply the sensations which
extend it. The more thought, action, intellect, and sensation, can be
crammed into this “petty space,” the longer we live: for it is not years,
but the consciousness of living, that gives the true longevity.

    “Mourir, sans avoir vécu,”

is therefore the fate of the whole tortoise tribe, whether in or out of
their shell.

The events of the American and French revolutions have quadrupled the
existence of the generation which witnessed them. More has been done in
the last century, than in any three centuries which preceded it.

By rapidity, however, is not intended that description of haste, which is
proverbially said to make the worst speed. That which is done imperfectly
will require more time to mend, than, if properly bestowed, would have
been consumed in its original completion; and as imperfect objects are
objects not adapted to their end, to employ them in that state, occasions
an equal waste of time in the business of life. The merit of the rapidity
of civilization is, that it is combined with a greater perfection in the
arts and sciences.

We travel over Macadamized roads, and sail in steam vessels, not only
quicker, but safer and more comfortably. The modern speaker is not only
more rapid, but clearer, and less exposed to fallacy. Society begins its
progress, like life, feebly and slowly; the human intellect develops
itself in ponderous poems, of a thousand and one cantos, essays in
folios, and “hints,” in quarto. Journeys, in the infancy of society,
are made in moving houses, over trackless mountains and “crack-skull
commons,” at the rate of ten miles per day.

“Slow and sure,” was a maxim of the wisdom of our ancestors; and (to end
with the pleasant farce whence I took the motto for the head of this
rapid rhapsody) “keep moving,” should be the epigraph of ours. The “_en
avant_” of Bonaparte set all the old dynasties in a bustle; and but for
the whip and the spur, and the “_allez, allez_” of the French Revolution,
we should have their absolutisms still moving their “_minuet de la
Lorraine_.” They have been taught to dance in quicker time, since that
important _pas grave_ nearly caused a war in which half Europe was to
have taken a part.




MY FIRST ROUT IN LONDON.


Of all metaphysical mysteries, there is nothing more difficult to get at
than the mystery of memory. Montaigne, complaining of his, observes, “_et
suis si excellente en oubliance, que mes escripts mêmes, je les oublie,
pas moins que les autres_.”[26] This is precisely my own case. I never
could remember any thing I wrote, beyond the moment when it was going
through the press. The other evening I found a book lying open on the
piano-forte, which somebody had just laid down, on being called to take
a part in the _Preghiera_ in the opera of the _Mosé_, and I chanced to
light upon a high-flown and rather nonsensical passage, of which I could
make nothing. This induced me to look at the title-page. It was “the Wild
Irish Girl,” seventh edition. I had not seen it for years. I was amused,
and a little surprised.

In _diebus illis_, it was with my style, pretty much as with the oaths
of Frère Jean de l’Entommoures—“_Comment, vous jurez, Frère Jean?_” “_Ce
n’est (dit le moine) que pour orner mon langage: ces sont couleurs de
rhétorique Cicéronienne._”[27] All, that literary counsel, acquirement,
and instruction give to literary composition, was, in my early career of
authorship, utterly denied me. The imagination, or feeling, or whatever
it was, that carried the “Wild Irish Girl” through seven editions in less
than two years, was wholly unsupported by any of the advantages which
reading, the world, society, or the judgment and taste they bring with
them, could confer. I began to write almost as soon as I could read; and
the premature development of imagination, which enabled me to combine
and invent, was inevitably destitute of that command of language, which
books and reflection only give. Hurried on by the “thick-coming fancies”
of a fervid but uncultivated mind, I did not always pause to secure the
best and most precise expression by which they could be conveyed; and
except when I had to give utterance to some strong feeling, (for feeling
always finds its own language,) I was often, as the sportsman’s phrase
is, “at fault.” Conscious of the poverty of my vocabulary, I frequently
borrowed a word, or adopted a phrase, as Frère Jean did an oath, not for
its precise application or intrinsic meaning, but simply “_pour orner mon
langage_.”

I remember once making this humble and plenary confession under very
singular circumstances, and with a most propitiating effect. It was on
the occasion of my first appearance at a great London rout, and at the
moment when the uncalculated success of the juvenile work alluded to,
had given me that sort of vogue which learned pigs, and learned ladies,
and other things more valuable for their singularity than their utility,
enjoy in common.

A few days after my arrival in London, and while my little book was
running rapidly through successive editions, I was presented to the
Countess Dowager of C——k, and invited to a rout at her fantastic and
pretty mansion in New Burlington-street. Oh, how her Irish historical
name tingled on my ears, and seized on my imagination; as that of her
great ancestor, “the father of chemistry, and uncle to Lord Cork,” did on
the mind of my old friend, Professor Higgens. I was freshly launched from
the bogs of the barony of Tireragh, in the province of Connaught, and had
dropped at once into the very sanctuary of English _ton_, without time
to go through the necessary course of training in manners or millinery,
for such an awful transition: so, with no _chaperon_ but my incipient
notoriety, and actually no toilet but the frock and the flower in which,
not many days before, I had danced a jig, on an earthen floor, with an
O’Rourke, prince of Brefney, in the county of Leitrim, I stepped into my
job-carriage at the hour of ten, and, “all alone by myself”—as the Irish
song says—

    “To Eden took my solitary way.”

What added to my fears, and doubts, and hopes, and embarrassments, was a
note from my noble hostess, received at the moment of departure, which
ran thus:—

    “Every body has been invited expressly to meet the Wild Irish
    Girl: so she must bring her Irish harp.

                                                          “M. C. O.”

I arrived at New Burlington-street without my Irish harp, and with a
beating heart; and I heard the high-sounding titles of princes and
ambassadors, and dukes and duchesses, announced, long before my own poor
plebeian Hibernian name puzzled the porter, and was bandied from footman
to footman, as all names are bandied, which are not written down in the
red-book of Fashion, nor rendered familiar to the lips of her insolent
menials. How I wished myself back in Tireragh with my own princes, the
O’s and Macs; and yet this position was among the items of my highest
ambition! To be sought after by the great, not for any accidental
circumstance of birth, rank, or fortune, but simply “_pour les beaux yeux
de mon mérite_,” was a principal item in the utopia of my youthful fancy.
I endeavoured to recall the fact to mind; but it would not do: and as I
ascended the marble stairs, with their gilt balustrade, I was agitated
by emotions, similar to those which drew from my countryman, Maurice
Quill,[28] his frank exclamation in the heat of the battle of Vittoria,
“Oh, Jasus, I wish some one of my greatest enemies was kicking me down
Dame-street!”

Lady C——k met me at the door of that suite of apartments which opens with
a brilliant boudoir, and terminates with a sombre conservatory, where
eternal twilights fall upon fountains of rose-water which never dry,
and on beds of flowers which never fade,—where singing birds are always
silent, and butterflies are for once at rest.

“What, no harp, Glorvina?” said her ladyship.

“Oh, Lady C——!”

“Oh, Lady Fiddlestick!—you are a fool, child; you don’t know your own
interests. Here, James, William, Thomas, send one of the chairmen to
Stanhope-street, for Miss Owenson’s harp.”

Led on by Doctor Johnson’s celebrated “little Dunce,” and Boswell’s
“_divine Maria_,” who kindly and protectingly drew my arm through hers,
I was at once merged into that mob of _élégantes_ and _élégants_, who
always prefer narrow door-ways for incipient flirtations, to the clear
stage and fair play of the centre of a salon. As we stood wedged on
the threshold of fashion, my dazzled eyes rested for a moment, on a
strikingly sullen-looking handsome creature, whose boyish person was
distinguished by an air of singularity, which seemed to vibrate between
hauteur and shyness. He stood with his arms crossed, and alone, occupying
a corner near the door; and though in the brilliant bustling crowd, was
“not of it.”

“How do, Lord Byron?” said a pretty sprite of fashion, as she glided her
spirituality through a space, which might have proved too narrow for one
of Leslie Forster’s demi-semi souls to pass through.

Lord Byron! All “_les braves Birons_” of French and English chivalry
rushed to my mind, at the sound of the historical name! But I was then
ignorant, that its young and beautiful inheritor was to give it greater
claims on the admiration of posterity, than the valiant _preux_ of
France, or the loyal cavaliers of England, had yet bestowed on it. For
fame travels slowly in our Barony of Tireragh; and though Lord Byron had
already made his first step in that career which ended in the triumph of
his brilliant and powerful genius over all his cotemporaries, _I_ had got
no further in the article Byron, than the “_pends-toi, brave Biron_,” of
_Henri Quatre_.

After a stand and a stare of some seconds, I was pushed on—and, on
reaching the centre of the conservatory, I found myself suddenly pounced
upon a sort of rustic seat by Lady C——k, whose effort to detain me on
this very uneasy preeminence, resembled Lingo’s remonstrance of “keep
your temper, great Rusty-fusty;” for I too was treated _en princesse_,
(the Princess of _Coolavin_), and denied the civilized privileges of
sofa or chair, which were not in character with the habits of a “Wild
Irish Girl.” So, there I sat, “_patience per force with wilful choler
meeting_,” the lioness of the night! exhibited and shewn off like “the
beautiful hyena that never was tamed,” of Exeter Change,—looking almost
as wild, and feeling quite as savage!

Lady C——k, whose parties are the pleasantest in London, because they are
exempt from the monotony which broods like an incubus over the circles
of English fashion, has been accused of an inordinate passion for lions.
In my own respect I have only to say, that this _engouement_, indulged,
in the first instance, perhaps, a little too much at my expense, has been
followed up by nearly twenty years of unswerving friendship, kindness,
and hospitality.

I shall never forget the cordiality with which, upon this memorable
occasion, she presented me to all that was then most illustrious for
rank and talent in England; even though the manner savoured, perhaps,
something too much of the Duchess de la Ferté’s style of protection,
on a similar occasion, “_Allons, Mademoiselle, parlez—vous allez voir
comme elle parle_;” for if the manner was not exactly conformable to the
dignity of the Princess of _Coolavin_, the motive rendered all excusable;
and I felt with the charming _protégée_ of the French duchess, that “so
many whimsical efforts proceeded merely from an immoderate desire to
bring me forward.”

Presenting me to each and all of the splendid crowd, which an idle
curiosity, easily excited, and as soon satisfied, had gathered round us,
she prefaced every introduction with a little exordium, which seemed to
amuse every one but its subject. “Lord Erskine, this is the ‘Wild Irish
Girl,’ whom you were so anxious to know. I assure you, she talks quite
as well as she writes. Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine some of
those Irish stories, you told us the other evening at Lord C——ville’s.
Fancy yourself _en petit comité_, and take off the Irish brogue. Mrs.
Abington says you would make a famous actress, she does indeed! You must
play the short-armed orator with her; she will be here by and by. This is
the Duchess of St. A——, she has your ‘Wild Irish Girl’ by heart. Where
is Sheridan? Do, my dear Mr. T——; (this is Mr. T——, my dear—Geniuses
should know each other)—do, my dear Mr. T——, find me Mr. Sheridan. Oh!
here he is! what! you know each other already; _tant mieux_. This is Lord
Carysfort. Mr. Lewis, do come forward; that is Monk Lewis, my dear, of
whom you have heard so much—but you must not read his works, they are
very naughty. But here is one, whose works I know you have read. What,
you know him too!” It was the Hon. William Spenser, whose “Year of
Sorrow” was then drawing tears from all the brightest eyes in England;
while his wit and his pleasantry cheered every circle he distinguished by
his presence.

Lewis, who stood staring at me through his eye-glass, backed out at
this exhibition, and disappeared. “Here are two ladies,” continued her
ladyship, “whose wish to know you is very flattering, for they are wits
themselves, _l’esprit de Mortemar_, true N——’s. You don’t know the value
of this introduction. You know Mr. Gell, so I need not present you. He
calls you the Irish Corinne. Your friend Mr. Moore will be here by and
by. I have collected ‘all the talents’ for you. Do see, somebody, if Mr.
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons are come yet; and find me Lady Hamilton. Now pray
tell us the scene at the Irish baronet’s, in the rebellion, that you told
to the ladies of Llangollen; and then give us your blue stocking dinner,
at Sir Richard Phillips’s; and describe us the Irish priests. Here is
your countryman, Lord L——k, he will be your bottle holder.”

Lord L——k volunteered his services. The circle now began to widen—wits,
warriors, peers, and ministers of state. The harp was brought forward,
and I attempted to play; but my howl was funereal; I was ready to cry in
character, but endeavoured to laugh, and to cover out my real timidity
by an affected ease, which was both awkward and impolitic. The best
coquetry of the young and inexperienced is a frank exhibition of its own
unsophisticated feelings—but this is a secret learned too late.

A ball at Mrs. Hope’s drew off my auditory, and towards midnight, the
ring was thinned to a select few, some fifty particular friends, who
had been previously asked to stay supper. It was my good fortune to be
placed at table between Lords Erskine and Carysfort, who had both been
particularly kind to me during my perilous probation; and now, no longer
“the observed of all observers,” I had leisure to observe for myself, and
to be amused in my turn.

I had got into a very delightful conversation with my veteran beaux,
when Mr. Kemble was announced. Lady C——k reproached him as “the late Mr.
Kemble;” and then, looking significantly at me, told him who I was.
Kemble, to whom I had been already presented by Mrs. Lefanu, acknowledged
me by a kindly nod; but the intense stare which succeeded, was not one
of mere recognition. It was the glazed, fixed look, so common to those
who have been making libations to altars which rarely qualify them for
ladies’ society. Mr. Kemble was evidently much pre-occupied, and a little
exalted; and he appeared actuated by some intention, which he had the
will, but not the power, to execute. He was seated _vis-à-vis_, and had
repeatedly raised his arm, and stretched it across the table, for the
purpose, as I supposed, of helping himself to some boar’s-head in jelly.
Alas, no!—the _bore_ was, that my head happened to be the object which
fixed his tenacious attention; and which being a true Irish _cathah_
head, dark, cropped, and curly, struck him as a particularly well
organized Brutus, and better than any in his _répertoire_ of theatrical
perukes. Succeeding at last in his feline and fixed purpose, he actually
struck his claws in my locks, and addressing me in the deepest sepulchral
tones, asked—“Little girl, where did you buy your wig?”

Lord Erskine “came to the rescue,” and liberated my head.

Lord Carysfort exclaimed, to retrieve the awkwardness of the scene, “_les
serpents de l’envie ont sifflés dans son cœur_;” on every side—

          “Some did laugh,
    And some did say, God bless us;”

—while I, like Macbeth—

    “Could not say, Amen.”

Meantime Kemble, peevish, as half tipsy people generally are, and ill
brooking the interference of the two peers, drew back, muttering and
fumbling in his coat-pocket, evidently with some dire intent lowering in
his eyes. To the amusement of all, and to my increased consternation, he
drew forth a volume of the “Wild Irish Girl,” (which he had brought to
return to Lady C——k) and, reading, with his deep, emphatic voice, one of
the most high-flown of its passages, he paused, and patting the page with
his fore-finger, with the look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said,
“Little girl, why did you write such nonsense? and where did you get all
these d——d hard words?”

Thus taken by surprise, and “smarting with my wounds” of mortified
authorship, I answered, unwittingly and witlessly, the truth: “Sir, I
wrote as well as I could, and I got the hard words out of Johnson’s
dictionary.”

The eloquence of Erskine himself would have pleaded my cause with less
effect; and the “_J’y allois_” of _La Fontaine_ was not quoted with more
approbation in the circles of Paris, than the _naïveté_ of my equally
veracious and spontaneous reply. The triumph of my simplicity did not
increase Kemble’s good humour; and, shortly after, Mr. Spenser carried
him off in his carriage, to prevent any further attacks on my unfortunate
head—inside or out.

Talking over this scene, not long since, at Lady C——k’s, with a lady who
had been present, it came back with all its circumstances to my memory,
and with a keen recollection of the pains and penalties incidental to
inexperienced and unprotected female youth, when forced by necessity to
step across the threshold of domestic privacy, and to carry to the mart
of public suffrage the feeling and fancy, intended by nature for home
consumption. Between my first and my last appearance in the elegant and
hospitable salons of New Burlington-street, what a difference!—in person,
feeling, sensations, intellect,—the all that should make identity, yet
does not! I cannot trace the least similitude between Mr. Kemble’s
“little girl,” and the proscribed of emperors and the excommunicated of
popes. There is more philosophy in the little woman who went “to market
her eggs for to sell,” than the world is aware of: and I have been
tempted to quote her “Lord have mercy on me! _sure this is none of I?_”
as often as my illustrious countryman Daniel O’Connell has applied to his
own Ireland his favourite quotation of

                “Great, glorious, and free,
    First flow’r of the ocean, first gem of the sea.”

I have repeated it, when telling a droll Irish story to the minister who
had set his seal to Ireland’s ruin; in the Tuileries, when I stood face
to face, “bandying compliments with majesty;” in the Quirinal, when in
_tête-à-tête_ with a cardinal secretary, amid scenes that belonged to
the middle ages; in the Palace Borghese with the family of Napoleon
Bonaparte; on the Pontine Marshes, when receiving the confessions of a
Carmelite monk, on his pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Peter; and in the
vice-regal circles of Dublin Castle, when a liberal Lord Lieutenant shook
my right hand, at the same moment that a grand master of an orange lodge
shook my left!

I remember relating my _début_ at Lady C——k’s, and my scene with Mr.
Kemble, to the late Marquess of A——, as something more true than
possible. He told me that he had known him to do things more eccentric,
when under the influence of that _one_ glass too much; and he quoted an
anecdote which occurred at the ——. “Kemble was seated between the two
Scotch Dukes of H——, and of A——; the conversation turned on genealogy,
and the two peers grew warm upon the relative antiquity of their houses.
Kemble, who had not drunk pending the argument, and who saw with despair
the bottle in abeyance between their graces, after muttering his
impatience for some time, broke out on a sudden with, ‘D—— both your
bloods, send round the wine!’ Nobody,” added Lord A——, “appeals to Kemble
sober against Kemble tipsy—he is such an excellent fellow, and such a
perfect gentleman.”

Perhaps no actor of any age or country (Garrick excepted) lived upon
such intimate and equal terms with the great, as Kemble. There was such
a natural patent of gentility about him, that the highest nobility of
the land gave way to it. He and Talma were the last of their class and
caste. Not but that there are now as perfect gentlemen on the stage as
ever: but the heroic age of the theatre is over. For me, as long as
Potier and Perlet, and Liston, remain, _je ne demande pas mieux_. I
would rather laugh with Falstaff, than shudder with Macbeth; and with
respect to French tragedy and French declamation, I am just where I was,
when I wrote “France.” Notwithstanding all the “_Lettres adressés à Mi
Ladi Morgan_,” to prove that she is a blockhead and knows nothing of the
matter, she at least knows what amuses and what bores her—and all she has
done, is to say so.

To observe of any gentleman, now, that he drank, would be to utter a
disgraceful reproach. Yet, up to the last quarter of the century, the
male nobility and even royalty of Great Britain, gave themselves up
to inebriety; so that to be “as drunk as a lord,” was, in reality, a
patrician distinction. Charles the Second was frequently seen reeling to
his home in Whitehall, through the streets of London, in the midst of his
brawling riotous courtiers, with “the fiddles” in his van, to serenade
the Duchess of Portsmouth, on his return from “poor Nelly’s” lodgings.

In more recent and refined times, modern Falstaffs, and Heirs Apparent,
have had their “Boar’s Heads,” as favourite resorts, though not in
Cheapside. Hereditary legislators and representatives of the people,
have staggered home together in the neighbourhood of St. Stephen’s—and
the representative of majesty itself, lying under his own dinner-table,
has given rise to the Catholic witticism of a great law officer, who
observed, that “the _Host_ wanted elevation.” Even in times still fresh
in the memories of many, sobriety was deemed a suspicious virtue, as
well as a vulgar one; and to be a seven-bottle-man, was to qualify for
the highest society. But where, now, is the nobleman or gentleman, who
would not shrink from such a reputation? School of the sticklers for the
good old times, and for the wisdom of our ancestors—you, who place the
excesses of intemperance among the social virtues—what say you to the
sobriety of the present generation?




LORD ERSKINE.


Poor Lord Erskine! how the memory of the first odd and pleasant evening
which introduced me to the distinction of his notice, refreshes all my
after remembrance of his unchanging kindness, from the moment that we met
in Lady C——k’s conservatory, until within a few weeks of his death. Among
the brightest, and often falsest illusions of our youth, are the ideas we
conceive of eminent persons, of whom we have long read and heard. I could
write volumes on the impressions which I received in my early and obscure
youth, of the eminent and the celebrated, whose names had danced before
my eyes, or tingled in my ears, in books and news-papers, in rumours and
reports; and of the disappointment which followed, when my own notoriety
brought me within their sphere. The first time I read of Lord Erskine
was in Miss Seward’s works. What a splendid picture of humanity, for one
whose imagination, like the style of the fair author whose pages she
gloated over, was all exaggeration and effervescence! Oh! how very much
in love I then was with the _idea_ of Lord Erskine!

A little further on in life, I met with an old pamphlet, in the parlour
window of a country house, and found it was the famous trial of Horne
Tooke. The speech of Lord Erskine revived my early and warm impressions
of that splendid person; and he of whom it had been said that “he had
spoken on that momentous occasion like a man inspired, and at once
redeemed the honour of his profession, and established the safety of his
country,” was to me just that sort of person, whom to behold but for a
moment, I would have made a pilgrimage barefooted from Tipperary (where I
then was) to any given spot which he inhabited.

I met Lord Erskine, therefore, under these exaggerated notions of his
genius and character; and was a little disappointed to find that he
spoke like other persons—was a thin, middle-aged gentleman, and wore a
brown wig. This was not exactly the impersonation of my _beau-idéal_!
Genius was then with me a mode of being, splendid in its form as in its
spirit. Already a little disabused, I yet could not reconcile myself to
inspiration in a bob wig. Still it was a great epoch in my life, when I
found myself seated by one of the gods of my idolatry—for I then had a
great many; and worshipped a sort of polytheism of prepossession, which
kept me in a constant alternation of hope and disappointment:—my gods
being too frequently false gods, and my golden idols, images of clay. It
was a still more flattering distinction, when his lordship called on me,
the day after our introduction, at Lady C——’s.

From that time, till his death, we met frequently, and corresponded
occasionally; just seeing enough of each other, to become intimate with
nothing but our respective good qualities. He was always delightful,
always amusing, frequently incoherent—and, I thought, sometimes
affectedly wild, at least paradoxical. Of this, an instance occurs to me,
connected with an important epoch, and with some amusing scenes, _que
voilà_.

It was during that grand political æra—the very hegira of ratting—when
the Prince of Wales, becoming regent, left it a moment in doubt whether
the old ministry would join the whig sovereign, or the whig sovereign
adopt the sentiments of the tory ministers. I was then enjoying my
brilliant existence, at that Alhambra of fashion, and of ministerial
politics, the P—— at St——re. The noble owner of that hospitable mansion
was an aristocrat in feeling and a tory in principle. The blood of the
Stuarts ran in his veins; the beauty of the Darnley and the hauteur of
the Bothwell were the characteristics of his distinguished person. He was
so organized to be the man he was, that no education nor example could
have made him otherwise. Had he occupied the throne of his ancestors, he
would have been the justest despot that ever reigned; for though he loved
power much, he loved truth more;—and truth is—justice. Lord A—— was a
frank, aboveboard, and uncompromising politician. His pride, with which
he was reproached as a vice, was his virtue. It rendered him untractable
to the meanness of manœuvre, intrigue, and corruption. His opinions
were in such perfect coincidence with his interest, that his marquisate
and blue ribbon were not the rewards of a purchased conformity, but
testimonials of ministerial good will, for voluntary and independent
services, conscientiously rendered; and much as he was said to have loved
such distinctions, I am sure he would rather have resigned the title and
the garter, than have changed sides, or given up any cause he deemed to
be based in justice.

From Saturday till Monday, (the weekly interval of public business,)
was always a carnival at the P——, when the upper and lower houses
seemed to send their most distinguished members to recreate in its
elegant _salons_. The first Saturday after the appointment of the Regent
brought down a multitude of visitors, the _élite_ of the statesmen and
stateswomen of both parties. Among these were Lord Erskine and the
Duchess of G——. It was my good fortune to be seated on a sofa with Lord
Erskine, when the duchess did us the honour to make a third in our
conversation. “Oh, my lord,” she said, “you ha’ got the Wild Irish Girl
all to yourself. Weel, she’s a clever creature, but I’ve a great fault
to find with her. She has no more sentiment than a London Missy! The
first time I met her was at the Irish chancellor’s. Jannie M—— and I had
been living among the heaths and the roses of Glengarry, and had been
gloating on her ‘Wild Irish Girl’ and ‘Novice;’ and when I arrived in
Dublin I was longing to know her. Weel, Lord M—— made a dinner expressly.
But, what was my disappointment when she said, ‘Oh! Lord M——, think
how unlucky I am. The very day I left B—— C——, a whole jaunting car of
officers were expected from Strabane.’ Eh! gude God, there was sentiment
with a vengeance.”

This brought on the chapter of romance, national peculiarities, fetches,
second-sights, &c. &c.; in the latter of which, both Lord E. and the
duchess acknowledged their belief. I could not avoid expressing some
surprise that such persons should give way to the influence of such
irrational superstition. The duchess was displeased, and said, “I don’t
like to see young ladies setting themselves above their superiors, and
giving in to free thinking. I never knew any one cry down what is called
superstition, but those who have no religion.”

It was in vain that “I rose to explain.” Prostration of intellect,
and profound obedience in the young and inexperienced, were the order
of the day; and her grace related a very curious and romantic tale of
second-sight in her own family, which amused, if it did not convert
me—while the affecting manner in which it was told, left no doubt as to
the sincerity of the relator.

“I also,” said Lord Erskine, “believe in second-sight, because I have
been its subject. When I was a very young man, I had been for some time
absent from Scotland. On the morning of my arrival in Edinburgh, as I
was descending the steps of a close, on coming out from a bookseller’s
shop, I met our old family butler. He looked greatly changed, pale,
wan, and shadowy, as a ghost. ‘Eh! old boy,’ I said, ‘what brings you
here?’ He replied, ‘To meet your honour, and solicit your interference
with my lord, to recover a sum, due to me, which the steward at our last
settlement did not pay.’ Struck by his looks and manner, I bade him
follow me to the bookseller’s, into whose shop I stepped back; but when
I turned round to speak to him, he had vanished.

“I remembered that his wife carried on some little trade in the old town.
I remembered even the house and the flat she occupied, which I had often
visited in my boyhood. Having made it out, I found the old woman in
widow’s mourning. Her husband had been dead for some months; and had told
her on her death-bed, that my father’s steward had wronged him of some
money, but that when Master Tom returned, he would see her righted. This
I promised to do, and shortly after, fulfilled my promise. The impression
was indelible; and I am extremely cautious how I deny the possibility
of such ‘supernatural visitings’ as those which your grace has just
instanced in your own family.”

Either Lord Erskine did, or did not, believe this strange story; if
he did, what a strange aberration of intellect!—if he did not, what a
stranger aberration from truth! My opinion is, that he _did_ believe
it. I had not, however, then learned upon what trifling points human
credulity turns, how little even our opinions are our own, and how far
the strongest minds are inconsistent with themselves, and obstinately
retain the dog’s-ears and folds of early impression.

Notwithstanding my heresy in the matter of second-sight, I continued
to receive marks of friendship from Lord E.; and for years after my
marriage, he sent me any thing he produced in a literary way. The
following note, which was written a few months before his death, closed
our correspondence; it was accompanied by his pamphlet on the Greeks.
It is worth citing, as a testimony to prove that years do not make age,
and that freshness of feeling, and youthful ardour in a great cause, may
survive the corporeal decay, which time never spares, even to protracted
sensibility:—

    “DEAR LADY MORGAN,

    “A long time ago, in one of your works (all of which I have
    read with great satisfaction), I remember your having expressed
    your approbation of my style of writing, and a wish that I
    would lose no occasion of rendering it useful. I wish I could
    agree with your ladyship in your kind and partial opinion; but
    as there never was an occasion in which it can be more useful
    to excite popular feeling than in the cause of the Greeks, I
    send your ladyship a copy of the second edition [of my work],
    published a few days ago.

    “I have the honour to be,

         “With regard and esteem,

                “Your ladyship’s faithful humble servant,

                                                          “ERSKINE.”

    “_No. 13, Arabella Row, Pimlico, London, October 11, 1822._”

    “_Lady Morgan, Dublin._”

The pamphlet which accompanied this note, abundantly proved, that
neither the talent nor the feelings of this singularly gifted writer had
abandoned him; yet circumstances had occurred, and become notorious,
which implied that age had, in some respects, made sad havoc with his
powerful intellect. There is nothing more curious in the history of the
human mind, than the manner in which it falls to ruin; and in which
splendid and magnificent fragments can subsist, in all their pristine
beauty, amidst the total decay of the rest of the intellectual fabric.




LORD CASTLEREAGH.


To go back once more to the P——. How often have I seen Whigs and Tories
united round its splendid hearths in the great drawing-room, innocently
playing their “small games,” after having played, through the preceding
week, their great game, on the opposite sides of the two houses. How
often have I seen the ministerial red box, (“big with the fate of Cato
and of Rome,” bearing the busy tale of some of Napoleon’s unwelcome
victories, or welcome defeats, or, haply stuffed with the materials
of some green-bag disclosure,) scarcely deposited in the hands of its
diplomatic owner, before it was suddenly jerked up into the air by the
playful ingenuity of a romping peeress, and its mysterious contents
scattered on the floor, while the laughing contriver of the overthrow
exclaimed—“_Autant en emporte le vent!_” How often have I seen presidents
of the council and lords comptrollers of royal households, taking
lessons, there, in waltzing, at that time a novelty, fresh imported from
D—— House: while “many a saint and many a hero,” who were then sinners
and subalterns, trod upon those Persian carpets, which covered the paved
cloisters and knee-worn cells of the ancient monks of St——e.

It was during the time passed in this delightful retreat (which was
no retreat), that I had frequently _the pleasure_ of meeting Lord
Castlereagh. I say the pleasure, for (I take him here in his social
phases only) he was one of those cheerful, liveable, give-and-take
persons, in private, who are so invaluable in villa-life, where pleasure
and repose are the object and the end. His implacable placidity, his
cloudless smile, his mildness of demeanour, his love of music, his
untunable voice, and passion for singing all the songs of the Beggar’s
Opera,[29] (in which I had always the honour of accompanying him,
because nobody else would), his expertness at small plays, and the
unalterable good humour with which he stood the brunt of the frequent
practical jokes played off at his expense, rendered him most welcome
in all the circles which he frequented, in the pauses of his arduous
avocations.

I had then no acquaintance with European politics; but I was a furious
little Irishwoman; and Lord Castlereagh used frequently to say, “no one
cares for Ireland, but Miss O. and I.” I took this for sober earnest;
and, in the pride of my ignorance and credulity, would repeat poor
Louis the Sixteenth’s “_il n’y a que moi et Monsieur Turgot qui aime le
peuple!_”

It is the recollection of that liberal and urbane spirit, which brought
men of the most opposite opinions in public life, thus to mingle in the
harmony of social confidence,—men who, in the high and courteous breeding
of their elevated station, never suffered the acrimony of party to shed
its venom on the graces of the private circle,—it is this recollection
that has so often made me turn in disgust from the vulgar and brutal
party feeling, which has prevailed among the ascendancy faction in
Ireland, making political differences the ground for anti-social
insolence, and carrying into the club and the drawing-room, the virulence
and uncharitableness of public hostility.

Between social complaisance and political compliance there is no
necessary connexion; and a stern adherence to principle is not
incompatible with a good-humoured forbearance to opponents. Lord A——, as
I have said, was a warm, and a sincere politician: and, much as he lived
with both parties, he would have been the last to forgive or tolerate an
act of baseness in his own. On the morning of the day which decided the
turn of affairs, on the Prince’s assumption of the Regency, I remember
his saying to me, “Lord Castlereagh dines with us to-day; if he goes
with the tide, if he rats, it will be for the last time—there is an end
of our friendship for ever.” Lord Castlereagh, however, did not rat, and
we enjoyed his society at frequent intervals through the rest of the
season, with that of his always joyous, pleasure-stirring Lady.

The last time I saw Lord Castlereagh was at Paris, in the year 1818, at
the opening of the session by Louis the Eighteenth—a memorable epoch,
and a most striking scene! I shall never forget the impression made on
that occasion by the appearance of General La Fayette;—it was at the
moment when the king, seated on his throne, (the princes of his family on
either side, and his “_beloved peers_” and faithful commons around him,)
received the oath of fidelity from all. Each individual, in his turn,
on being called out by name, stretched forth his hand and pronounced
“_Je jure_.” The emphasis, the petulance (so peculiar to French people
in speaking), with which many eagerly and anxiously called out “_Je
jure_,” who had made the same vow to every form of power which had
successively followed, was finely contrasted by the calm, and dignified
air, and slowly articulated enunciation of La Fayette,—who, of all that
vast assemblage, was the one who had never uttered his “_Je jure_,” nor
pledged himself to the power that was not based in the rights of the
people.

The moment his name was announced, and he stood forth, the type of all
that was purest and best in the greatest revolution that had ever shaken
the empires of the earth, a simultaneous murmur burst forth from all
parties—proceeding, indeed, from various emotions, but all indicative
of the intense interest his striking and venerable appearance excited.
As he stood face to face with the king, and, stretching forth his hand,
pronounced his vow of fealty to the first constitutional monarch France
had ever seen upon the throne, what a sweep of recollections passed over
the minds of the spectators! It was at this moment, I perceived the fine
head, and pale, impassable countenance of Lord Castlereagh, bearing
forward from the diplomatic tribune, in deep observation of the scene. In
the scale of humanity, never was there a more striking contrast, than was
at this moment exhibited in the persons of the founders of the National
Army of France, and the perpetrator of the Union in Ireland.




MEDDLERS.


L’Abbe Gagliani says “that mankind are born with a disposition to meddle
with other people’s affairs; and that liberty consists in nothing else
but the power of indulging the propensity.” As a sneer against popular
governments, this may be an excellent joke, but it is directly the
contrary of truth. The propensity to which men are really predisposed, is
that of enjoying the fruits of other men’s industry, and of directing the
actions of the public towards their own private advantage. The utility
of liberty is, that it puts some restraint upon the indulgence of this
inclination. The affairs of the nation are the affairs of every one of
its members; and tyrants and oligarchs are the real interlopers in their
_gestion_, whose interference is impossible, when the guarantees of
liberty are perfect.

It is, however, quite true, that in free states the citizens are
disposed to resent any abridgment of another’s rights, and to interfere
in the concerns of the oppressed, so far as to procure him redress. But
every one, thus employed, is really acting for himself, and with the
perfect consciousness that he is fighting his own battle. Few of Wilkes’s
cotemporaries either loved or respected him, personally; but when his
rights were attacked by the government, he represented the people of
England; and the people had the sense and the spirit to force the
ministry to desist from their violence.




PHILOSOPHY OF GRAMMAR.


I asked the question, should I say “every body is gone out only _I_,”
or, “only _me_?” and was answered “only I,” because “only _I_” means “I
alone”—“remain,” being understood.

Had I used the conjunction “but” instead of “only,” the proper
construction would have been the same, because “but” means “be out,” or,
in more modern phrase, “I being out of the question.” The modern “but,”
said my informant, represents two distinct words, both imperatives. When
it stands for “be out,” it is the precise equivalent of “except,” derived
from the Latin. Sometimes it is used for the imperative of an obsolete
verb, signifying to add, which is now retained only in the infinitive—“to
boot.” Let us look for an instance:—here is one in Sir Charles Grandison,
which lies open before me. Harriet Byron writes, after some preliminary
reflections—“But, why should I torment myself? what must be, will.” The
interpretation of the passage is this;—to what I have already said,
_boot_ (or, in modern English, _add_,) this second thought, that what
must be, will; and, therefore, why should I torment myself? These two
are the only real meanings of that Proteus-like conjunction; and one
or other will explain all Johnson’s hundred instances, scarcely one of
which he understood properly. Johnson’s industry was unwearied, but his
research trifling. Authority, and not analysis, was its object. Authority
belonged to his day, inquiry to ours: so adieu to learning—and hey! for
knowledge:—_à bas les savans! et vive le savoir!_

Alas! it makes one’s head ache to look over this grammatical jargon—I
wrote my first twenty volumes without much troubling my head on the
subject. But now “the school-master is abroad,” that is, he is at
home—with _me_—and my march of intellect goes on without ever budging
from the fire-side. “_Mon voyage autour de ma cheminée_,” would not be
the least intellectual book I ever wrote. And yet, my dear Mr. Colburn
would not give me £20 for all the grammar that I may write for the rest
of my life; though I rivalled in etymological philosophy “_The Diversions
of Purley_.”

Before I drop grammar,—What a droll pun is that of the grammarian
presenting his book to the Académie, after the Duke de —— had advanced
his pretensions to be elected one of the _quarante_, on the score of his
illustrious ancestors. “_Je suis ici pour mon grand-père_,” said the
duke. “_Je suis ici pour ma GRAMMAIRE_,” said his ignoble philological
competitor.

By the by, grammar is the last thing that should be placed in the
hands of children, as containing the most abstract and metaphysical
propositions, utterly beyond their powers of comprehension; putting them
to unnecessary torture; giving them the habit of taking words for things,
and exercising their memory at the expense of their judgment. But this is
the original sin of education, in all its branches.




MY VISITING BOOK.


    “Ce seroit une belle chose que je ne susse vivre qu’avec les
    gens qui me sont agréables.”

                                                    MAD. DE SÉVIGNÉ.

To-day I looked over my visiting book, to clear out for the new year,
and to eliminate some of the false and the foolish, who creep into every
circle, however exclusive or small: for every body, from a duchess to a
dairy-maid, may be exclusive in her own way. Not that I meant to carry my
proscription to any great extent; for if I were to admit only the honest
and the clever, I might as well shut up shop altogether. There are,
however, degrees in all things; and there are some, so falsely false,
and so foolishly dull, that principle and patience alike revolt, and so,
out they go. But what is to be done with whole incursions from remote
provinces,—large families from Bally, courts and castles, when one has
a small house?—as, for example, Mrs. Botherum of Castle Botherum, Miss
Botherum, Miss Anna Maria Botherum, Miss Jemima Matilda Botherum, Miss
Honoria, and Miss Frances Botherum! Col. Botherum (of the yeomanry),
Mr. Walter York Botherum, Mr. Ernest Augustus, and the Rev. Mortimer
Botherum! Shem, Ham, and Japhet, “a terrible sight;”—and all this, when
one has only a reception room, of which the divine Pasta said, the last
time she did me the honour to sing in it, “_On pourra aussi bien chanter
dans un fiacre_,” and a boudoir which might be placed on the show-table
of a moderately sized London drawing-room: and this, too, with a passion
for light as great as the Duchess de C——,[30] and with lamps that would
light up Erebus, and shew the slightest blot in the escutcheon of the
toilette, where every body comes labelled for something.

No, this is beyond the acmé of human friendship! “_Ainsi cuit, on aurait
mangé son père_,” says La Reynière of his favourite dish; and there
are ridicules in dress, manner, and bearing, which might excuse one’s
_cutting_, if not “_eating_” one’s mother. The want of birth, rank,
or fortune, are such mere, such inevitable accidents, such universal
liabilities, that nothing above the lowest order of intellect, or the
most degrading toadyism to the great of all sorts, could stoop to exclude
from their society those who, with the exception of such accidental
distinctions, possessed every other. But dress and address are within the
attainment of every body; and the man who visits you in the morning in a
milk-white waistcoat,[31] or the woman, who, in the evening, when she is
announced, stops to make a curtesy at the door of your drawing-room, must
be wholly beyond the pale of social redemption.

Such anomalies are always indicative of _mauvais ton_; and _mauvais
ton_ is the want of good sense or good company. If, however, the white
waistcoat is held out as a flag of singularity by a marked man, why then
it becomes a _grade_ in itself, like Jerningham’s blue stockings, which
founded a sect in literature. But since curtesies went out with hoops
and all other grotesque things, the woman who curtesies is lost. She is
inaccessible to all improvements, and will bring up her children to hate
Catholic emancipation, gas, steam, and M’Adamised roads; her sons will
stick fast by 1688, and her daughters will propagate the family curtesy
to endless generations.

In this respect, we residents are better off than the country ladies
who come to their own mansions in the squares, and the “rows,” and the
“places,” for the season, and who have the whole country rising _en
masse_ to follow, and fill their drawing-rooms, just as they occupy the
castle in the country, on the strength of electioneering interests or
county politics and jobs. This reconciles one amazingly to the fee-simple
proprietorship of a few flower pots in the balcony—the only _terre_ I
could ever call my own.

What, however, particularly amused me to-day, was, not my “mere Irish,”
nor my “English of the Pale” visitors; but that, in looking over my list,
for the few last years, I found an absolute congress from all parts of
the known world; and that representatives of the four quarters of the
earth had passed through my little _taudis_ in Kildare-street. There
was Major St. J—— B——, from Madras; Mr. B——, from Boston; Captain I——,
from Calcutta; Col. T——, from Canada; Sir C. G——n, from the icebergs of
Greenland, and Col. D——y, from the Kiosks of Ispahan; with many more
droppers-in from the Ganges, and morning callers from the Ohio. There
were, too, the _Neri_ and _Bianchi_, from Florence; Imperialists and
Nationalists from Lombardy, and Guelphs, Ghibelines, and carbonari, with
romanticists and classicists, from all parts of Italy.

How prettily these historico-poetical names write down among the O’s and
the Macs of my “native troops!” the Strozzi, and Frangipani, and Pucci,
and Piasasco, and Ugoni and Pozzo, and Cimetelli, and Castiglione, and
Pepe—all connected with struggles for liberty, and with illustrations
in letters, both in modern and ancient times. Then comes my quota from
Spain, canonicos of cathedrals in Madrid, members of the Cortes, deputies
to the Pope, and ex-ministers of the constitutional régime; then follow
the charming French _voltigeurs_,—_voltigeurs_ of nature and the good
new times, with their revolutionary names and imperial titles, my Dukes
of D——a and M——llo, and the clever Du V——r and P——y, and Tha——rs; and my
German professors, “truants from Gottingen,” who come to geologize, and
to see Ireland and Dr. Macartney,[32] and talk of Werner, and Kant, and
Goëthe——.

Here, after all, lies the great compensation for the ills which
authorship is heir to. It is the delightful privilege of literary
notoriety to live in intelligence and communion with those whom, as
Humboldt once said to me, “make the fifth part of the world so well worth
the other four,” the feeling and the thinking. This order constitutes
the free-masonry of nature, which she has organized to explore her great
truths, and to feed the lamp, which, though veiled and shadowed by a
succession of errors, still burns, and will continue to burn, eternal as
the cause for which it was created. It is the consciousness of a remote
reciprocity and silent communion with such gifted individuals that gives
the moral courage, even to a female author, to tell those bold truths,
which the base, the sordid, and the corrupt, are interested to deny. The
tone of mind and talent of a woman especially fits her to enter into this
mystic communion with kindred thinkers spread over the whole world. It
belongs to her _finesse_ and spirituality, to the feeling and the fancy
that breathe over all she writes, thus to open a private intercourse,
through the medium of the public press, to waft a sentiment to the pole,
and speed a thought to the line—to revive a fading prepossession across
the steep Atlantic, and to waken a latent association beyond the Alps;
to direct a sally to Calcutta; to billet a _mot d’énigme_ on New York;
and with the air of writing for the world, or the ambition of composing
for posterity, to feel only the inspiration of an individual influence,
and to _clear out_ a cargo of odd and pleasant things by the good ship
Sympathy, certain of its reaching the destined port and of being deeply
prized by the correspondent to whom they are consigned. How many pilgrims
has “Julie” brought to Lausanne, and “Corinne” to Copet, who in this
marching age have directed their movements to our “_Ultima Irelande_,”
to visit its natural wonders; and who have made a _station_ on their
route, to drop a bead, and tell an _ave_, at the cell of one, whose
zeal (if not her works) has entitled her to some consideration from the
liberal and the free. When so many delightful spirits are _abroad_,
who would not be always “_at home_,” to receive them? Alas, for the
home!—the native home, that owes its charm, not to compatriot sympathy,
or liberality, or genius, but to those

    “Posters by the sea and land,”

who bring the intellect of Europe along with them, to shame our insular
ignorance and bigotted prejudices.

If I had not taken this glance at my little visiting book, I should have
had a solace the less to console me for the privations and sacrifices,
which all who live in Ireland, from motives of private affection or
public principle, must endure. There, the peaceable enjoyments and
courtesies of life, its distinctions and its honours, are for a _caste_;
while, for all others, are reserved proscription or persecution!—the
calumnies of a ribald press; and the contemptuous neglect, or (what
is worse) the supercilious notice of that antinational class, which
is alike insensible to genius and suspicious of patriotism. Among the
great, the incalculable benefits to be conferred on Ireland by Catholic
Emancipation, that of bettering the condition of private society, will
not be the least valuable. Great rights and advantages come remotely
and at intervals, to brighten, benefit, and improve the land to which
they are granted; not so, the days, and hours, and minutes, that go to
make up that existence, upon which a “_long account of hate_” between
the oppressor and the oppressed has shed its bitter venom! What minute
details of persecution!—what petty guerilla warfare, carried on from
house to house, and street to street, in which no sex is spared—no
virtues are a defence!—no talent forms a claim to compatriot respect!
yet such has been the state of society in the most social of all
countries for more than half a century! Should that act of common justice
and common sense ever pass into a law—the act for removing Catholic
disabilities, Ireland may still become one of the most _liveable_ places
in the empire. For there are still to be found in the native land of
Swift, Goldsmith, Sterne, Sheridan, Burke, Grattan, Canning, and Moore,
all the elements which tend to brighten and illuminate the happiest
circles. The temperament of the nation is essentially mercurial, prone to
social enjoyment, affectionate, humorous, and pleasure-loving: and when
the removal of those atrocious distinctions, which have so long spread
dissension, and occupied the national mind with national grievances,
shall leave the genius of the people to its fair and rational play, it
may be prophecied that the capital of Ireland will become one of the most
agreeable, if not the most important, of European cities.

Under such auspices, how delightful to open a visiting book, in which
the names of all who are now divided into parties, sects, and factions,
shall be found, without recalling one unpleasant association—and when
(no longer indebted for all social, all intellectual enjoyments to the
foreign visitor from happier and more enlightened lands), we shall feel
and own,

    “Our first, best country, ever is at home.”




FOREIGN VISITORS.


    “Point de rose sans épine.”

Oh!—_par exemple_,—here comes a pretty commentary on the above text—a
paragraph from some of the ribald journals which it would be pollution
to name. It has just been sent me enclosed in an anonymous letter; for
I have always some “good-natured friend,” (as Sir Peter Teazle says)
who furnishes me with abuse of myself, from those news-papers which I
should deem it an act of the highest immorality to let into my house. I
never, by the bye, could understand the logic of those, who, professing
to detest calumny, and to abhor slander, still think it no delinquency to
read and to purchase the journals which exist but by their propagation.
To add to the revenue of such a speculation, is to become a participator
in its criminality; for if every one who disdains to be himself guilty
of falsehood, would refrain from buying it, ready-made to his hand,
such disgraces to the free press of the empire would be abolished more
effectually than by all the restrictive laws and prosecutions for libels
in the world.

Here is the paragraph alluded to:—

                    “LADY MORGAN AND THE AMERICANS.

    “The following anecdote, in every way good, is quoted by the
    Yankee from the Boston Literary Gazette:—

    “It was about two o’clock, P. M. when I stopped at the door of
    Sir Charles Morgan, Kildare Street, Dublin. I inquired for Lady
    M., to whom I had a letter of introduction. I was shown by the
    servant into a library, and while waiting for her ladyship,
    had an opportunity to survey the apartment. The upper regions
    displayed rich rows of books, in all the modern languages, and
    among them several of Lady Morgan’s works, in French, Italian,
    and German. The lower parts of the room exhibited a piano, a
    harp, and a Spanish guitar, with a profusion of songs scattered
    up and down. There were two writing-tables, a small cabinet of
    minerals in a glass case, and a collection of beautiful shells,
    also in a glass case. Several small pictures occupied the
    spaces on the wall, and cameos, intaglios, medals, and other
    curiosities, adorned the mantel-piece. There was an air of
    negligence about the room, but it seemed to declare that the
    inhabitant of it had made every department of nature and art
    tributary to her pleasure.”

                              “But ’tis my design
    To note the chamber—I will write all down—
    Such, and such, pictures—there the window!” &c.

                                        _Cymbeline._

Oh! that the inventory had stopped there!—For the furniture, pass!
(though I deny the glass case—I have a total antipathy to glass cases);
but the coming to personals, as in the following _catalogue raisonnée_
of beauties wanting, of charms “_absent without leave_”—this is really
“too bad.” But the Yankee goes on, and so here I am, (not in kit-kat) as
sketched “at 2 o’clock, P. M.” by my American visitor—who, after “noting
the chamber,” thus writes down—its mistress, unconscious as was Imogen of
her midnight visitor, and as little suspecting to what sort of a limner
she was sitting for her portrait, when she received this “Yankee from
Boston:”

“At length Lady Morgan entered. She was short, with a broad face, blue,
inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a thing may be named, about forty
years of age. Her personal appearance is far from handsome—it is not even
striking. There was an evident affectation of Parisian taste in her dress
and manner.”

I appeal!—I appeal from this _Caravaggio_ of Boston to the Titian of his
age and country—I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence!—would you have
painted a short, squat, broad-faced, inexpressive, affected, Frenchified,
_Greenland-seal-like_ lady of any age? Would any money have tempted you
to profane your immortal pencil, consecrated by nature to the Graces,
by devoting its magic to such a model as this described by the Yankee
artist of the “Boston Literary?” And yet you did paint the picture of
this Lapland Venus—this impersonation of a Dublin Bay cod-fish—this
_pendant_ to Hogarth’s _Poissarde_ at the gates of Calais, who bears so
striking a resemblance to the maiden ray she exhibits for sale. What
is more, you painted it of your own free will and choice—gratuitously,
and that too when rival Duchesses were contending for the honour of
reaching posterity, through your agency, with the beauties of Vandyke and
the belles of Lely, all ready and willing to remunerate, with princely
munificence, the talent, “whose price is beyond rubies.”

Well, I appeal from the portrait drawn by the Yankee to yours; “_et
je m’en trouverai bien_.” Gladly do I “sweeten my imagination” by the
recollection of those times of youth, and gaiety, and splendour, in
which, associated under the same roof, I sat for, and you sketched that
picture, thus by contrast recalled to my recollection! I remember a
minister of state cracking jokes on one side of the table on which you
were drawing, a royal princess[33] suggesting hints, on the other, the
Roscius of the age stalking up and down the room with the strides of
Macbeth, and the look of Coriolanus, and half the beauties of future
galleries and collections, fluttering round the exclusive patent-giver of
eternal loveliness. Alas! no one could have said that I was “forty” then;
and “this is the cruellest cut of all!”—Woman, the most enduring of
created beings, will bear any thing but that. Had it been thirty-nine, or
fifty!—thirty-nine is still under the mark, and fifty so far beyond it,
so hopeless, such a “_lasciar speranze voi che intrate_;”—but FORTY!—

            “Take any form but that,
    And my firm nerves will never tremble”—

the critical age—the Rubicon—I cannot, will not dwell on it. But oh!
America!—land of my devotion and my idolatry—is it from you the blow has
come? Let Quarterlys and Blackwoods libel—but the “Boston Literary!”—“_Et
tu Brute!_”

My visitor from Boston “2 o’clock, P. M.” proceeds to give an account
of my conversation, as accurately and minutely as he did the details of
my house, person, and age. Having made the general remark, that “it was
full of spirit and frankness,” he goes on to betray to the public the
confidential communications I made to him on the occasion of this his
first and last visit. These amounted simply to my abusing America and
Washington Irving without measure, and it appears without motive, except
to please my Boston visitor, who agreed with me in both instances. This
was being ‘frank and spirited’ with a vengeance!

Now, I here openly, frankly, and spiritedly publish my protocol to
the city of Boston, requiring of the Bostonians, that they give me up
this morning visitor, “at 2 o’clock, P. M.”—this Iachimo of literary
_salons_—this positive denunciator of the _certain age_ of ladies who
wish their age to remain uncertain—this portrait painter en large, who
calls little ‘short’ and round, ‘broad,’ and who

    “Ne’er can any lustre see
    In eyes that do not smile on _me_”—

—himself—this violator of confidences made on the occasion of a first
visit!—this Zoilus of the toilette and Yankee ‘_courier des dames_;’
I require the Bostonians, by their gallantry and their liberalism,
their love of liberty and of the ladies, that they first catch me this
backwoodsman, and then leave me to dress him!—But ’tis a threat thrown
away—I do not, I will not believe that an American could thus violate all
principle of courtesy, gallantry, hospitality, and truth. I have received
persons from all parts of the United States within the last eight years.
I find on my visiting list the names of two gentlemen from Boston, who
have frequented my house within the last two years, neither of whom could
have committed such an act. I have not been wanting in the rites of
hospitality to any one who has borne the name of an American. I honour
the great cause of liberty, in the persons of those to whose fathers the
world stands indebted for the greatest rally that ever was made round her
standard; and “I guess” that if there is one recreant American (American
by the accident of birth) capable of such conduct as my Bostonian visitor
“at 2 o’clock, P. M.” has exhibited, the “whole order of gentlemen in
America” would disown this Arnold of private society, as they did the
political traitor, who dishonoured the region of freedom, by claiming it
as his country.[34]




IRISH UNION.


Twenty thousand pounds defeated the opposition to the Scotch union—a sum
barely sufficient to stop the eloquent patriotism of a single voter, when
Lord Castlereagh sold Ireland, “wholesale, retail, and for exportation.”
Who will say that the Irish are not a civilized people?




HUMAN MACHINERY.


Dugald Stewart, in reference to the limited circle of jests, fables, and
tales, which occur in the literature of all nations, is “almost tempted
to suppose, that human invention is limited, like a barrel organ, to
a specific number of tunes.”[35] The number of our wants and desires,
and consequently of the modes of social relation, being fixed, the
combinations of thought to which they give rise, must be fixed also. The
number of these elements being small, the primary combinations of idea
to which they give rise, must be nearly alike in all nations. The fact
is indisputable; and it leads to very serious consequences against the
doctrine of free-will.




SUICIDE.


The love of life is the strongest of all human passions. To what end
then, do we question the lawfulness of suicide? Where a law has no
penal sanction, it is a dead letter: and he who dares to die, is beyond
the reach of all penal influence. Suicide may be matter for religious
discussion, but it is no subject for jurisprudence.




EXTERNAL EXISTENCE.


There never was so egregious a piece of pedantic nonsense, as the dispute
against the reality of the external world. We cannot, it is said, prove
the fact; but to prove a proposition means, to render it evident to the
senses—nothing more. The last appeal in all disputes is to sensation.
Even the abstract truths of numbers depend on simple facts, cognizable
by the eye and the touch. It is, therefore, a gross misapplication
of language to attempt the further proof of what is already felt. No
sophism, however difficult of detection, can supersede the sensible
conviction of external reality; and Berkeley himself did not run his head
against a post.

The theory of this divine, adopted for the purposes of religious theory,
leads at once to atheism. We believe in God, as the necessary creator
of the world; but the idealist has no ground for believing any other
existence than his own mind. Such metaphysics are the boast of the
class, who while they refuse education to the people, have the hardihood
to deny the capability of the poor man to understand his own affairs.
When did the most barbarous ignorance ever fall into such mistakes, as
this product of misapplied learning?




ECLECTICS.


Eclectics, in philosophy, are for the most part _les demi-esprits_, who
are incapable of viewing facts in their wholeness; just as the eclectics
in politics are they who want the honesty to be quite pure, and the
courage to be quite rogues. Such persons make systems from inconsistent
scraps, taken from discordant philosophy, with the same taste as the
architects of the middle ages erected barbarous edifices with the
beautiful fragments of antiquity.




ATTITUDES OF GRIEF.


Mr. Shandy’s observation, that grief always seeks a horizontal position,
passes for a good joke; it happens, however, to be good philosophy.
Grief, by exhausting the vital powers, renders an upright position
irksome and painful. Who that has left or lost the object he loves, but
has felt the necessity of a drooping head upon folded arms; or the solace
of a total prostration of form?

Under the terrible inflictions of all master griefs, the physical and
moral forces go together. For who can dissolve that mysterious union, of
which so much is said, so little known, and on which for saying anything,
so many have been ridiculed as spiritualists, or burnt as materialists?
Man is not to be led to inquiry, with impunity. Those who so liberally
reward the impostor, never fail to persecute the teacher; and while
they swallow every falsehood and fable, most injurious to their true
interests and well being, with undoubting confidence, they oppose and
impede every noble enterprise, and every beneficial discovery in the
range of moral and physical science.

It probably arises from the acute, though not very durable sensibility
of southern countries, that on the occasions of heavy suffering, the
afflicted sink at once into the utter helplessness of a prostrate
attitude. That which nature inspired as a relief, pride soon converted
into a ceremony. As soon as the death of a near friend occurred, in any
of the royal, noble, or even gentle-blooded families of the continent,
the nearest relative, in former times, went to bed. There he remained,
or was supposed to remain, a certain number of weeks, days, or hours,
according to the rank of the person lamented, until the visits of
condolence were over, and grief, regulated by etiquette, was permitted
to pause, or throw off “its weight of woe.” From the fifteenth to the
seventeenth century, every item in the chambers and _toilette_ of
royal affliction, was prescribed by authority. One of the most curious
pictures extant of this red-book sensibility of our ancestors, which
seems upon a par with their “wisdom,” is to be found in a very old and
amusing French work, “_Les Honneurs de la Cour_,” written by Alienor
de Poitiers, Viscountesse de Furnes, a lady of the Court of the Duc de
Bourgogne, in 1469. In her chapter upon royal mourning, or (in her own
charming old French,) “_Sur le deuil que touttes les princesses et autres
devoient porter pour leurs maris, pères, mères, et parens_,” observes,
that a queen of France must remain one year in the chamber, where she
first receives the news of her husband’s death; and every body knows,
“_chaquin doibt scavoir_,” that the chambers, halls, &c., of the widowed
queen must be hung and covered with a black cloth. A picture is always
well worth a dozen descriptions, and the picture of the mourning of the
Princess de Charolois, for her father, the Duke de Bourbon, is well worth
transcribing.

“Son père éstoit trépassé: incontinent qu’elle sceut la mort, elle
demeura en sa chambre six semaines, est éstoit toujours couchée sur un
lict couvert de drap blancq de toille, et appuyée d’oreillers: mais elle
avait mit _sa barbette_, son manteau, et chapperon lesquels estoient
fourrez de _menuvair_, et avait le dit manteau une longue queue, aux
bords devant le chapperon une paulme de large, le menuvair (c’est à
scavoir le gris) estoit crespé dehors. La chambre éstoit toutte tendue
de drap noir, et en bas, un grand drap noir, en lieu de tapis velu, et
devant la dicte chambre où Madame se tenoit y avoit une autre grand
chambre ou salle pareillement tendue de drap noir. Quand Madame estoit
en son particulier, elle n’estoit point toujours couchée, ni en une
chambre.”[36]

While, however, princesses were obliged to weep for six weeks in black
rooms, on state beds, the banneresses (or peeresses) were only required
to shed their obedient tears and lie in bed for nine days—a very fair
proportion of sensibility, between the ranks of the parties. But though
it was not required that they should lie on their bed of sorrow as long
as royal mourners, it was ordained that they should sit in front of their
beds, for the remnant of their six weeks, “upon a piece of black cloth.”

“Les banneresses ne doibvent estre que nœuf jours sur le lict, pour père
ou mère; et le surplus des six semaines, assises devant leur lict, sur un
grand drap noir, mais, pour maris, elle doibvent coucher six semaines.”

A strict observance of pompous ceremonies, in nations as in individuals,
is a proof of stagnant intellect. None but the vain, the idle, and
the useless, can afford the leisure necessary to enact such pageants.
The great, therefore, have always been the grand conservators of such
abuses of time, taste, and good sense. In England, the old Duchess of
Northumberland,—in Ireland, the grandmother of the present Marquis of
Ormond,—were the last ladies of quality who appeared with a running
footman.

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, the French people,
energized by the civil dissensions of the League and the Fronde, had made
a considerable progress in intellect and literature. It was the middle
class which produced nearly all the genius that has given to the gorgeous
reign of Louis XIV. the character of an Augustan age. Corneille, Racine,
Molière, La Bruyère, La Fontaine, Boileau, &c. &c., were all men of the
people.

But while the middle class, unimpeded by forms, and unoccupied by
ceremonies, were directing the national intellect towards science,
literature, and the arts, the court and the aristocracy, stopping short
with the past age, remained devoted to the observances of all the idle
forms indissolubly mixed up with their exclusive privileges; and,
ignorant of books, they were still deeply “studied in sad ostent,” in
court calendars of ancient ceremonies “authorized by their grandams.”

The barbarous forms, ceremonies, and observances of the fifteenth century
were in full operation in the court of Louis XIV, and are recorded with
the same unction by Dangeau, as by the Dame Alienor of Poictiers.

In a work, which says more for the necessity of the French Revolution,
and its inevitability, than all that Jacobinism ever preached from the
tribune, or fulminated from the press,—he relates circumstantially all
the ceremonies observed on the death of the Dauphin, and the prescribed
forms of grief strictly adhered to by the royal widow. Even the
Princesses of the blood, it appears, were still obliged to grieve in bed.
“_Madame la Duchesse_ (says Dangeau) _reçut les complimens sur la mort de
M. le Duc; elle était sur son lit et en chaperon, qui est un habillement
des princesses du sang, quand elle recevoient en cérémonie les complimens
sur la mort de leurs maris_.”[37]

What a charming picture Madame de Sévigné has left on record of the
manner in which the Duchesse de Longueville received “_les visites de
doléances_,” on the death of her gallant son the Count de St. Pol.—One
is absolutely seated within the _Ruelle_, and gazing on those beautiful
eyes, steeped in tears of maternal despondency, which once nearly brought
the Duc de la Rochefoucauld to the scaffold. Even that anti-sentimental
Princess, _La grande Mademoiselle_, takes her despair to heart on the
loss of her lord, and receives the visits of condolence paid her by her
friends, on the king’s breaking off her marriage with De Lauzun, as she
must have received them had she become his widow.

The origin of the form lies in nature—its absurdities are peculiar to
despotic governments, where all is form, and where kings themselves,
as the Spanish ambassador said, “are but ceremonies.” The governments
that belong to constitutional institutions are not thrown upon the
conservation of such barbarous etiquettes; and if English queens and
princesses are not obliged to weep for their near relations in bed for
six weeks, for the amusement of a crowded and idle court, they probably
owe to _Magna Charta_ the liberty of mourning how they please, as long as
they please—or of not weeping at all, if they please not to weep.

At the epoch of the French Revolution, the forms of the court of France
were virtually as barbarous as those of the court of the Duc de Bourgogne
in the fifteenth century; and the description left on record by Madame
Campan of the queen’s receiving the “_chemise_,” is infinitely more
indecent, and quite as barbarous, as any thing recited by Dame Alienor
de Poictiers, of her “_princesses, comtesses, et autres grandes dames_,”
or by Dangeau in his punctilious record of the ceremonious absurdities of
Versailles and the Tuileries in the time of Louis the XIVth, and the Père
de la Chaise.

By the bye, I have a whole chapter to write upon beds, sofas, _canapés_,
_ruelles_, _tabourets_, _lits de répos_, &c. &c. &c. &c.—and a most
philosophical chapter it will be.




RELIGIOUS DIABOLISM.


Le Comte de Ségur observes, “_Si Dieu a fait l’homme à son image, l’homme
le lui a bien rendu_.” Reason leads to the discovery of the divine
attributes as pure abstractions; but as no man can rise to the conception
of higher principles of action, than those of which he is himself
conscious, when fools or impostors throw the divinity into action, they
necessarily impart to their idea something of their own weakness and
infirmities. Let the creed of any sect be as pure and as elevated as it
may, the mass of bigots, hypocrites, and mal-organized beings among its
professors, inevitably end in worshipping a demon. They may continue
to call the idol of this fabrication, the reflection of their own vices
and follies, “most wise, or most merciful,” &c., &c. but they attribute
to their fearful phantom, their own hateful passions and narrow views:
and the result is a being, just so much worse than themselves, as he is
more powerful and more uncontrolled. Such is the origin of religious
diabolism—for an illustration of which see the self-tormenting sects
of India, who preach a doctrine of perpetual suffering and bodily
anguish, as being most pleasing to the God of all good. See, too, the
gloomy Calvinists, and long-faced sectarians, and the dark preachers of
sacrifice all over the world. Between the religion of love and fear,
what a difference! It is that beautiful traditional picture of the human
divinity, the _Ecce Homo_ of Carlo Dolce, opposed to the grim and gaunt
idol of the pagodas of the unhappy Hindoos.




FÊTES, PARTIES, AND SOIRÉES.


What a terrible thing it is to give a party in Dublin!

    “Double, double, toil and trouble,
    Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

It is no joke even in London, where every thing is to be hired, from the
chairs to the company; where “society to let,” has been a sign set up
by more than one leader of _ton_, ready to fill the house of any Mrs.
Thompson, or Mrs. Johnson, upon the understood terms of no meddling on
the part of the hostess, and no obligation to make a due return on the
part of the guests. What is strange in all this toil of pleasure is, that
not only the good sort of people have a great deal to do, in getting up
a party, but that the great themselves, (such of the great as do not
live in the “houses,” modelled on a French hotel,) have nearly as much
trouble to make “ample room and verge enough” to suffocate their friends
commodiously, as the twaddles in Bloomsbury, the tabbies of Finsbury, or
the dwellers in any other _terra-incognita_ of Mr. Croker’s topographical
map of fashion.

I once caught a certain “bonnie duchess,” up to her eyes in lamps and
loungers, garlands and wax lights, and the rest of the _matériel_ for a
party, an hour before the throwing open of her rooms to that “world,”
which her talent and pleasantry so long governed and cheered. As I was
a _Missy_, her good-natured grace had bid me come very early, that she
might see how I was dressed: for she took a kind interest in me, for no
other reason, that I know of, except that I stood in need of it. Early,
therefore, I went, but so early, that all the behind-the-scenes bustle
was still in its fullest activity.

The Duchess of —— then resided in Lord A—st’s house, which afforded
quarters much too circumscribed to hold her legions of fashion; and
all her ingenuity was applied, in order to make crushing room for five
hundred particular friends. What a hurry-scurry! footmen, still in
their jackets, running about with lights to place and replace, like
the clerical scene shifters in _Santa Maria Maggiore_ at Rome, on a
Christmas-eve,—the porter, half-liveried, the page half bedizened, and
the French _femme-de-chambre_, with her hands in the pocket of her silk
apron, chattering to every body, and helping nobody!

All this was very striking, but very comfortless; so I sauntered out of
one room into another, and had just drawn near to the only fire I met
with in the _suite_, when a loud hammering behind me induced me to look
back; and there, mounted on a step-ladder, stood a bulky, elderly lady,
in a dimity wrapper, and a round-eared cap, knocking up a garland of
laurel over the picture of some great captain of that day, military or
political, (I forget which,) while an argand lamp burned brightly before
it,—a votive offering to the idol of the moment!

As I took the elderly lady for a housekeeper, I asked her if the duchess
was still in her dressing-room? “No, child,” said the elderly lady, “the
duchess is here, _telle que vous la voyez_, doing that which she can get
none of her awkward squad to do for her:” and down sprang the active lady
of seventy, with a deep inspiration of fatigue, ejaculating, “Gude God,
but this pleasure is a toilsome thing.”

So saying, she bustled off, and in less time than could be imagined,
re-appeared in the brightest spirits and the brightest diamonds,—I had
almost said the brightest looks that illumined her own brilliant circle.
Hers was what Horace Walpole calls “the true huckaback of human nature;”
and to the last it showed the strength and beauty of the web.

This party turned out one of the most agreeable I ever was at in my life.
I spent the evening, seated on the second flight of stairs, between Lady
C—— L—— and Monk Lewis. The beautiful Lady Oxford sat a few steps above
us, the Aspasia of the Pericles who lay at her feet, wooing in Greek, in
spite of Johnson’s denunciation against learning in love; while Payne
Knight looked on, with “eyes malign, askance.” On the landing-place
beneath, squeezed, sauntered, or halted, many a (_now_ dowager) dandy
and top-sawyer of fashion, who received our grape-shot, or gave us a
_batterie d’enfilade_ in return, as they crushed on. At two in the
morning, Lady C—— L—— proposed that we should go and sup snugly at M——
house, and return to waltz, when her grace’s rooms should thin;—and so we
did,—for

    “Such were the joys of my dancing days.”

But to return to those who “to a party give up what was meant for
mankind.” A most interesting book might be made on the philosophy of
parties, which would include a brief abstract of the times in which
they were given, and throw a glaring light on the manners, habits, and
tastes of nations, in all parts of the world, and at all epochs; from the
_soirées_ of Aspasia, to my own little _soirée_ last night in Kildare
Street. What were the Duchess of G——on’s or Lady C——k’s party-giving
talents, great as they were, to those of Cleopatra, to her aquatic party
down the Cydnus?—What to this, were the white-bait excursions, or even
the Marquis of Hertford’s festivities, on the Thames?

The most splendid fête of modern times was that given by the grand Condé
to his cousin Louis the Fourteenth, at Chantilly—memorable for the heroic
death of that _preux_ and martyr of the kitchen, Vatel, which forms so
amusing a page in that breviary of all that is pleasant, the letters
of Madame de Sévigné. The story is told in a hundred other accounts of
the _fasti_ of those gorgeous days; but who can relate like her?—No
man that ever wrote, not even Horace Walpole, the first of all English
_raconteurs_—nor, except Madame de Staël,[38] any woman either.

The most sumptuous private party of our days was the Boyle Farm
entertainment. The relays of shoes were, at least, a novel idea: but
pleasure is the end of all social assemblies, (as, under a variety of
pompous names, it is of life itself,) and I doubt whether all the shoes
in Borsley’s shop would excite one pleasurable sensation except in the
possessor of some _joli petit pied de Cendrillon_. However meritorious,
therefore, for its originality, it was, for the rest, altogether English.
It encouraged trade, and provided comfort. But the great, the true merit
of this _partie des notables_, was, that to qualify for an invitation,
neither genealogical trees, though deeper rooted than that of the
Croys,[39] nor all the wealth of all the Rothschilds, sufficed singly
and alone, if nature refused to counter-sign the passport of admission.
Countesses rejected—Duchesses passed over—and the sovereigns of Almack’s,
the absolute queens themselves forgotten, or forbidden, made way for the
_bel air_ of nature. Youth, beauty, talent, wit, grace, and agreeability
(provided they dressed well) found no exclusion from the extreme
exclusionists of all besides. This trait of fashion forms a good augury
of times, in which the intrinsic is in all things about to take the lead
of the extrinsic. The last touch of perfection in civilization, is a just
appreciation of the value of nature.

Parties, as the term is applied throughout Great Britain, to private
assemblies, were unknown on the continent, till the late swarming of the
English abroad, who carry their own habits with them every where. In
France, before the revolution, there was nothing that resembled a London
rout. No _bals parés_, nor fêtes of any kind, were given in Louis the
Fourteenth’s time, except to the royal family, by the _haute noblesse_,
or the ministers. Next to the fête at Chantilly, the most sumptuous on
record, was the entertainment given at Vaux by the unfortunate intendant,
Fouquet, to the King, Queen Dowager, and Madame de la Vallière.

It was a redeeming point in all such festivities, that talent and
intellect entered for something. Plays, masques, and interludes were
written for the occasion; and it was for Fouquet’s fête, that Molière
wrote his delightful comedy of “_Les Fâcheux_,” an admirable subject
for a royal auditory, exposed as all princes are to the tiresomeness of
eternal sycophancy.

This fête is also remarkable as an illustration of the falseness, vanity,
and feebleness of him for whom it was given, and of the vice of the whole
system which prevailed in France, up to the time of the revolution. The
king, who had forgiven his minister his exactions from the famishing
people, his depredations on the provinces, and his wasteful prodigality
of the public money, could not brook the superiority of Vaux over St.
Germain, the splendour of a party exceeding anything given at the
Louvre or Fontainbleau, and the impression it might make on the heart
of his mistress. The ruin of Fouquet, long remotely meditated, was now
determined on; and the good taste of his courtiers alone prevented the
royal guest from arresting his host, in the very midst of the gaieties
got up for his own pleasure and amusement. This party was given on the
twentieth of August, and the _bienséance_ of the court put off the arrest
of the party giver till the seventh of September.

Opposed to such royal fêtes, a delightful contrast is presented in
the private society of Paris, always distinguished as _la ville_, in
opposition to _la cour_. What charming pictures remain to us of the
little _côteries_ of the Hôtel Carnavalet, the suppers at Ninon’s,
the _soirées_ of the Hôtels de la Rochefoucauld and Coulange, and the
_Mercuriali_, or Wednesday evenings, of Menage. The circle seldom
included more than eight or ten persons, who met to laugh with Molière
and Boileau, at the vices of the court, or the absurdities of the Hôtel
Rambouillet (the blue-stocking rendez-vous of that day). “Monsieur de
Rochefoucauld,” says Madame de Sévigné, “wished me to go to him this
evening to hear the reading of a comedy by Molière, ‘_Les Précieuses_.’
After a joyous supper on a pigeon pie, at Madame de Coulange’s,” (whose
own wit was said to be _une dignité_) “we amused ourselves by going
at midnight to fetch Madame de Scarron _du fin-fond du Fauxbourg St.
Germain_, beyond Madame La Fayette’s, and almost at Vaugirard, in the
country.” This topographical sketch is worth something, independently of
the frolic of the gay grandmother, taken, at midnight, to Vaugirard, from
the Marais, where her own hotel stood, and still stands.

Towards the conclusion of Louis the Fourteenth’s reign, from the time
when Madame de Maintenon, (no longer the Madame de Scarron of Vaugirard,)
brought religious hypocrisy into fashion, the private society of France
degenerated, and intellect lost ground. “I hate people that reason,” said
the king, sharply, in answer to some clever observation of the son of the
Duc de la Rochefoucauld.

La Bruyère describes the _décadence_ of society at this period, with
his usual talent for exquisite observation; and in doing so, he has
left the following beautiful picture of the style of good company,
which prevailed in the private circles of Paris, after the stirring
times of the Fronde. “_Les conversations légères, les circles, la fine
plaisanterie, les lettres enjouées et familières, où l’on étoit admis
seulement avec de l’esprit, tout a disparu._”[40] “The women of our
days,” he continues, “are either devotees, or coquettes, gamblers,
or _ambitieuses_; some of them are all these at once. The rage for
favouritism, play, gallantry, and confessors, has got possession of the
fortress, and defends it against the intellectual and the witty.” Still
there was always in France a little band of the faithful, to tend the
altar and trim the lamp of the true worship; and if, as La Bruyère says,
“Voiture and Sarrasin were born for their age, and for the Rambouillets
and the Longuevilles, parties as intellectual, and as agreeable,
were presided in after times, by D’Alembert, Diderot, De Boufflers,
and Guibert, in the drawing-rooms of Mesdames Tencin, Du Deffand,
L’Espinasse, and Montmorenci.”

While private society was thus making its progress upon the true
principles of ease, pleasure, and intelligence, the descendants of Louis
the Fourteenth, and his circle, were kept as close to the precedents
established at Versailles and Chantilly, as the age would permit; and the
fêtes given at L’Ile Adam, Chantilly, and the Palais Royal, immediately
before the revolution, were still directed by _un auteur bel esprit_,
who made as much a part of the household, as the cook or maître d’hôtel.
Collé suited his poetry _de circonstance_ to the taste of the Palais
Royal; Laujon was the Pastor Fido of the muses and graces of Chantilly;
and Pont de Vesle, the egotistical intimate of the egotistical Du
Deffand, was the _bel esprit_ of the Prince de Conti, with the title of
reader and _Sécretaire des commandemens_. The poor _bel esprit_ held a
most mortifying position between a menial and confidential friend. His
privileges were to have a room in the palace, to follow his prince to the
country, and to be allowed to come in with the dessert after dinner, and
eat ices, standing behind the chairs of his patrons, for three quarters
of an hour. These privileges, which were privations, were as mortifying
as they were _bien constatés_!

In England, from Mrs. Masham’s dull political assemblies, to the good
routes of modern times, nothing resembling the French _soirée_ existed,
if the blue-stocking parties of Mrs. Montague, and the brilliant and
refined _réunions_ of Devonshire House are excepted. Bonaparte, who
feared the _salons_ of Paris more than the Aulic Council, or the cabinet
of St. James’s, discouraged private parties; and taking exception to
those of Madame de Staël, sent her to give her little senate laws at
Copet. On the return of the Bourbons, the exigencies of the times
congregated into small and intimate parties the followers of the
different factions: and all Paris was broken up into coteries. In 1818,
when things were more firmly established, _on avoit changé cela_, the
English magnates had set the fashion of English routes, and French ladies
went about saying, “Only imagine, ten cooks and thirty-two decorators are
employed for the rout of my Lady H——.” Great assemblies were affected
by all the English, which, generally speaking, consisted of just such
English and Irish as nobody in London and Dublin cares to have, with the
addition of some of the old emigrant noblesse, provided by certain female
purveyors, whose early residence in Paris had exchanged their English
obscurity for foreign importance.

As I was perfectly independent of these officious _fournisseurs_, and
knew all that was best worth knowing in France, living, as I should wish
to do everywhere, with the fifth part of the world, instead of going to
an English rout, I determined on giving French _soirées_ myself.

“Take a day,” said Denon, “and your rooms will never be empty;” and
in the confidence of this prophecy, I took my day; nor would I have
exchanged some of my Wednesday evenings for all the evenings that
dignified the _Mercuriali_ of Menage. With such men, as Denon, Humboldt,
La Fayette, Langlés, Ségur, B. Constant, Manuel, De la Rochefoucauld, De
Staël, Jay, Jouy, Dupaty, Talma, with half the _côté gauche_ to boot,
at my parties, it is little to be wondered at if admissions to them
were canvassed as a distinction, particularly by strangers: and many
even of the ribboned members of the ultra noblesse, wedged in between a
_doctrinaire_ and a _modéré_, like an anchovy in a sandwich, ventured
now and then to peep in, for the purpose of seeing, once in a way, _les
hommes marquans du siècle_—to hear Talma recite, and Jouy read.

On these occasions, one of the great attractions was La Fayette. The
moment he appeared (and his erect and noble figure, and lofty air,
distinguished him above the rest), a crowd of young men, who had watched
for his arrival, followed and surrounded him, and their ardent, upturned
faces, and sparkling eyes, formed a striking contrast to the benign
serenity of his calm and venerable countenance; while their rapid and
eager questions were equally opposed to the measured and emphatic
enunciation with which he replied.

It was extremely pleasant on these occasions to see the “_avant,
pendant, et après_” of the revolution united, and forming one piquant
and instructive _tableau_. The presence also of the Marquise de Vilette,
with some few of her cotemporaries who still lingered on the surface of
society, was always a striking circumstance in the picture: and some
little traces of the _toilette_ of 1776 (the epoch when she was by the
side of Voltaire, to replace the crown he declined, or to assist him to
the _fauteuil_, the throne of his triumph) were still visible in her
dress, along with the miniature of her adopted father, which she always
wore, as her order of merit.

In looking over the early pages of my “log-book,” I find the following
entry, dated Rue de Helder, Jan. 1819. It is just legible to myself, so I
will clear it out, and enter it here as an _à propos_.

A charming and crowded _soirée_, not however “_pour les beaux yeux de
mon mérite_,” but because it was known that Talma was to give a scene
from Macbeth, and Madame Duchenois to read an act of Jouy’s new tragedy,
suppressed by the minister of police. What a congress of talent! The
Count de Ségur, Denon, B. Constant, and Langlés in one group; General La
Fayette, with the Duc de Broglie, Auguste de Staël, the Marquis Capponi,
and the brave Colonel Favier in another; General Berthier in the centre
of a circle of pretty women, among whom was the Princesse Jablonowska,
whom Napoleon pronounced to be one of the most charming persons of her
country, where all the women are charming; and the Comtesse de la
Rochefoucauld, with her “_grâce, plus belle que la beauté même_,” and the
Beauveaux, that splendid family which would have been the inspiration
of a Titian, and given him brighter models of loveliness than the
Famiglia of Cornaro. There was my dear friend the Laird of Bara, in full
regimentals, from the _réception_ of the Duc d’Orleans, and a knot of
young Americans, with the agreeable members of their embassy. And then,
for my Irish quota, there was he of whom it may be said, that he was “_né
pour tous les siècles et avec tous les talens_,”—the last best specimen
of Irish wit, and Irish humour, who, whether he talks Greek with Porson,
Irish with O’Leary, or French with B. Constant, leaves it in doubt to
what age or country he belongs—the delightful P. L——. Then there were my
two most distinguished countrywomen, Ladies——, chatting with Lydia White,
who always says the best thing that is said in whatever language she
speaks; and the Duchess of D——; with her sibyl look drawing off Denon,
to talk of those arts she loved so sincerely and protected so liberally.
Dupaty also was there, who promised to read us some of his _délateurs_,
and would not; and Jay, and Etienne, and the heart and soul of the
Minerve and the Constitutionnel, and Charles Pougens, (as I was told,)
for I could not make my way to the anti-room, where, among La Fayette’s
_belle jeunesse de France_, stood the friend of D’Alembert and Diderot,
the most agreeable blind man of this or any other country.

Just as Mademoiselle Duchenois and Talma had sat down to the reading
table, and began the tragedy which was a censure on its censurers, the
Kaimachan of Wallachia came in, all cachemires and turban, embroidery and
brilliants. What a sensation among the Parisian _petites maîtresses_!
Here were shawls that might have purchased the whole extreme _droit_,
and sold France back to its old master. What added to the sensation was,
that my servant Le Clair announced him as the Persian ambassador,—‘_mon
illustre confrère_,’ in the Freemasons’ Lodge of _Belle et Bonne_, who
had been expected. So it was some minutes before we could get back from
the Arabian Nights to our own, which terminated splendidly with Talma’s
acting the scene of Macbeth and the witches, thrown into a dream (by
Ducis) which Macbeth relates to his wife—a most cold conception, but
most wonderfully represented. How much of Talma’s genius was lost,
by his being only seen and heard in the immensity of the _François_!
What struck me most was the graphic splendour of Shakspeare’s genius,
piercing through the still medium of French declamation—the picturesque
vitality of his fine dramatic action, coming out through the tameness of
narrative, which, however freely given, (and it was given with a force
inconceivable to those who have not seen Talma act in private), is always
a tame vehicle when compared with dialogue.

A ball at a banker’s carried off the _bel air_ of my party before
midnight: and so Denon, Talma, Langlés, and Madame La Vilette, with some
half a dozen others, remained round the fire, to chat. Talma took down
from the mantel-piece a book, which had just come in. It was Madame de
Genlis’ “Extraits du Dangeau.” “This, at least,” I said, “will bring her
into fashion with the Bourbons.” “Not a bit,” said Denon: “they know each
other too well.” Talma fell upon the anecdote of the two actors, who
were dismissed from the theatre and ruined, because they had displeased
the Dauphine _par deux sots placets_. At this act of littleness, Madame
de Genlis cannot restrain her admiration. “If,” she said, “Louis the
Eighteenth should dismiss two great actors for want of respect, there
would be a general insurrection in society. Yet this event made no
sensation in Louis the Fourteenth’s time.”

“_Il est passé le bons vieux temps_,” sung Talma, from a vaudeville,
which Carbonel had been singing. “I remember,” said Madame de Vilette,
“when young Vestris sprained his ancle, and could not move, the queen,
who had her brother, the Emperor Joseph, in her box, sent behind the
scenes to insist on his dancing: ‘_Ne fut ce qu’un entré_.’ The thing
was impossible, and the minister Breteuil immediately signed an order to
arrest Vestris, who was sent to La Force.”

Talma shuddered; and Denon told the anecdote of the old _Dieu de la
Danse_ on this occasion, “_C’est la première brouillerie de notre maison
avec la famille des Bourbons_.”

I think it was Langlés who said, that the nick-name of _La Mère de
l’Eglise_, by which Madame de Genlis is distinguished among the wicked
wits of Paris, is not a modern malice. It was given her on occasion of
her publishing “_La Religion Considérée_,” &c., a deep theological work,
written when she was the platonic friend of Egalité. This Christian work
was a most unchristian attack on the philosophers, whom she hated, as
mothers of the church alone know how to hate.

“The actor’s privilege, however,” said Talma, “of being insolent, did not
compensate the degradation of the caste, whose liberty and life were at
the mercy of every court favorite, from the prince of the blood to his
_valet de chambre_.”

“Still,” I said, “the actors had a fine time of it under Louis the
Fourteenth. It was an allusion to the wealth and consequence of La
Dancour, that La Bruyère has said, that the actor, lolling in his
carriage, casts its mud in the face of Corneille, who goes on foot.”

“Yes,” said Talma, “but La Bruyère has also said, that we in France think
of the actors like the Romans, and live with them like the Greeks.”

“The favour of the great,” said M., “unaccompanied by their esteem, is
not a distinction, but a disgrace.”

The conversation reverted to Dangeau, Madame de Genlis, and Demontey’s
amusing extracts from the same work, which form the most humorous comment
that could be given on Madame de Genlis. Madame de Sévigné had long
since made hers, when describing a day at Versailles, “_On parle sans
cesse, et rien ne demeure sur le cœur; et Dangeau est ravit de tout ce
caquet_.”[41] What a motto for his book!




DOCTRINE OF CAUSATION.


Only think of my giving myself the air of talking metaphysics this
morning, and throwing in a word on the _Doctrine of Causation_, merely
to shew off before the Prince C——li, Count del P——o, and L—— B——, who
were breakfasting with us. A look from “my master” convinced me, that
like _Cathon_, “I had got _furieusement dans l’énigme_;” and with the
distressed Irish gentlewoman, whose necessities obliged her to cry “hot
mutton pies,” and who always added, “_I hope nobody hears me_,” I too
hoped my observation had escaped the ears for which it was intended;
and so I began to recommend the beauties of the county of Wicklow to
my guests, and made “pure description hold the place of sense,” or
_non_-sense. When they were gone, we fell to talk upon the subject, and
here was the result.

The idea of cause is a consequence of our consciousness of the force we
exert in subjecting externals to the changes dictated by our volition.
From this we deduce the presence of a force, which is the _sine qua non_
of those other changes in matter, in which we have no part. It is this
association of ideas which predisposes the savage to impute intelligence
and volition to the unknown causes of natural phenomena. Experience,
shewing the constant concurrence of certain antecedents with certain
consequences, while it dispels the error of the savage concerning
voluntary agents, strengthens the notion of natural causes into a
principle. The human mind cannot conceive a cause which is not necessary;
because the same experience, which proves that it is a cause, proves the
universality of its antecedence to the effect, with which it stands in
relation.




THE COUNTESS D’ALBANY.


Talking of the accidents, incidents, and odd conjunctions of travelling,
it happened, one fine autumnal morning, at Florence—(and oh, for the
Tuscan autumn! with its “Tuscan grapes,” fresh olives, and autumnal
flowers, which give the Tuscan capital its pretty name)—it happened
that my illustrious countryman, Mr. Moore, my husband, and myself, were
seated on a sofa in our old palace in the _Borgo Santa Croce_, looking
at the cloud-capt Apennines, which seemed walking in at the windows,—and
talking of Lord Byron, (from whose villa on the Brenta, Mr. Moore
had just arrived,) when our Italian servant, Pasquali, announced “The
Countess D’Albany.” Here was an honour which none but a Florentine could
appreciate! (for all personal consequence is so local!) Madame D’Albany
never paid visits to private individuals, never left her palace on
the Arno, except for the English ambassador’s, or the Grand Duke’s. I
had just time to whisper Mr. Moore, “The widow of the Pretender! your
legitimate queen!—and the love of your brother poet, Alfieri;” and then
came my turn to present my celebrated compatriot, with all his much
more durable titles of illustration: so down we all sat, and “_fell to
discourse_.”

I observe that great people, who have been long before the public, and
feel, or fancy, they belong to posterity, generally make themselves
agreeable to popular writers; and they are right; for what are the
suffrages of a titled _coterie_, which can “bear but the breath and
suppliance of an hour,” to the good opinion of those, whose privilege
it is to confer a distinction, to awaken an interest that vibrates
to the remotest corner of the known world. Kings may give patents of
nobility—genius only confers patents of celebrity. One line from an
eminent writer will confer a more lasting dignity, than all the grand and
arch dukes, that ever reigned from Russia to Florence, can bestow.

Madame D’Albany, already forgotten as the wife of the last of the royal
Stuarts, will live as long as the language of Dante lasts, in the lines
of Alfieri.

The Countess D’Albany could be the most agreeable woman in the world; and
upon the occasion of this flattering visit, she was so. She could also
be the most disagreeable; for, like most great ladies, her temper was
uncertain; and her natural hauteur, when not subdued by her brilliant
bursts of good humour, was occasionally extremely revolting. Still she
loved what is vulgarly called fun; and no wit, or sally of humour, could
offend her.

We had received very early letters from London, with the account of the
king’s death, (George the Third:) I was stepping into the carriage, to
pay Madame D’Albany a morning visit, when they arrived—and I had them
still in my hand, on entering her library on the _rez-de-chaussée_, where
I found her alone, and writing, when I suddenly exclaimed, with a French
theatrical air,

    “Grande Princesse, dont les torts tout un peuple déplore,
    Je viens vous l’annoncer, l’_Usurpateur_ est mort.”

“What usurper!” asked Madame D’Albany, a little surprised, and not a
little amused.

“Madame, _l’Electeur d’Hanovre cesse de vivre_!” The _mauvaise
plaisanterie_ was taken in good part; for, truth to tell, though the
Countess D’Albany always spoke in terms of respect and gratitude of the
royal family, and felt (or affected) an absolute passion for his present
Majesty, whose picture she had, she was always well pleased that others
should consider her claims to the rank of queen as legitimate, of which
she herself entertained no doubts. She, however, affected no respect for
a husband, whom, living, she had despised for his vices, and hated for
his cruelty.




IRISH RELIQUARIES.


One of the most curious Irish reliquaries extant is the Caah of the
O’Donnels, still in the possession of that ancient family. I gave a
description of it in my novel of ‘O’Donnel,’ which brought me, for the
first and only time in my life, within the walls of a court of justice.
The circumstance is illustrative of Irish manners and opinions, and
is therefore worth relating. It should seem that a tradition had been
handed down from the old times, forbidding, under some terrible ‘Blue
Beard’ penalty, the indulgence of an unhallowed curiosity respecting the
contents of the Caah; and that, in the memory of man, it had never been
opened. When it was placed, with other family documents, in the custody
of the Ulster king at arms, that gentleman, it was alleged, had, with the
natural curiosity, the birth-right of the children of Eve, (who are all
more or less Prys or Pandoras,) indulged himself with a peep into the
Caah; for, else, how could Lady Morgan describe it? It so happened that,
though the lineal descendants of the O’Donnels have for some generations
been Protestants, the eldest of its female members, and the immediate
proprietress of the relic, still retained a fanciful and sentimental,
if not a religious superstition on the subject; and if the king at arms
really looked into the box, he found at the bottom, not hope, but its
antipodes—a law-suit! The lady brought her action for the lost services
of the mystery; and I, who had received my information from the kindness
(and general knowledge of such antiquities) of the defendant, was
subpœnaed to prove that he was better acquainted with “such secrets in
this farthel and box, which none must know,” than he could be, from a
mere external inspection.[42] Fortunately for all the parties concerned,
just as the cause was about to be called on, the good taste and timely
intervention of the other and younger members of this most respectable
and excellent family, prevailed with the plaintiff to abate something
of her resentment, and the dispute was settled _l’aimable_. The Caah
contained only a mouldering piece of vellum, in all probability a copy of
one of the gospels.

Another celebrated relic was the Caah or Corpnua of the O’Briens. These
portable shrines were devoted to the preservation of the holy volume,
copies of which were formerly so precious and so rare in Ireland,
that none but religious societies, or wealthy and noble families,
could obtain them. Not only the gospels were difficult to be had,
but persons sufficiently skilful in penmanship to copy them, could
scarcely be found for any recompense. A learned clerk (Fra Dominick)
engaged for this purpose by St. Cronan, refused to write longer than
one day, from sun-rise to sun-set. In all times “_les grands talens se
font prier_.”[43] St. Cronan, who “was Yorkshire too,” closed with the
agreement, having previously made a clandestine arrangement with the sun
to shine uninterruptedly for forty days; and the copyist, out-witted by
the saint, was obliged to hold by his bargain. This, I believe, is the
identical missal sent, in the superb Caah, as a donation to the Irish
monastery at Ratisbon, by Tirdellagh O’Brien, King of Munster.

The gospel, thus sumptuously enshrined, was first inclosed in a case of
the most durable wood, generally of yew or oak, which, in time, became
as sacred as the holy deposit. It was then placed in a box of copper
(the Caah) plated with silver or gold, embossed with precious stones and
crystals, and covered with effigies of saints, angels, and scriptural
devices. They were also marked with some inscription, such as that on
the Caah of the O’Briens, which, as well as I remember, ran thus:—“Thady
O’Brien caused me to be gilt; the Prince of Hy——, coadjutor of the
Bishop, lately restored me; and Shaneen, the artist, decorated me.”

The relics of antique times are always precious. They are the monuments
of the barbarity, ignorance, and dupery, from which knowledge, by its
powerful agent, the printing-press, is slowly redeeming us. Philosophy,
no less than antiquarian research, is deeply interested in their
conservation.




THE CADENAS.


As a set-off against my barbarous Irish reliquary, the French _cadenas_,
used at the royal table, in the Tuileries, upon occasions of grand
ceremony, is worth quoting. It is the _couvert_ reserved expressly for
the king, containing his salt-seller, cruets, plates, glasses, &c. &c.,
locked up under a _cadenas_, or padlock. Having had the honour to be
present at the wedding-dinner (or supper) of the Duke de Berri, I made
some inquiries, of an ultra friend who sat near me, as to this coffer,
which was carried to the head of the table. “’Tis an old custom,” she
said, “and, in its origin, a precaution against poison.” “What, in the
good old times?” I said. She shrugged, and replied by the unanswerable
“_Que voulez-vous? les méchans sont de tous les tems!_”[44]




TOFINO.


I was one day walking on the Piazza del Duomo, at Milan, with the Abbate
Breme,[45] when, passing near one of the lateral gates of the vice-regal
palace, on our way to the post-office, he stopped, and patted a little
dog on the head, which lay basking in the sun beside the sentry-box of
the guard. He said, “You must know Tofino—his story is a romance—

    “_Credo che il senta ogni gentil persona._”

While the Abbate was speaking and caressing Tofino, who seemed to know
him, and returned his caresses, several passengers, as they hurried on,
either gave their _buon giorno_ to the dog, or added a sympathizing
_buona bestia!—povera bestia!_ and some flung him a biscuit or other
eatable. All noticed him.

“Tofino,” said Signor Breme, “is the most popular personage in all
Lombardy. His merit is the only point upon which we all agree.
Classicists and romanticists, liberals and illiberals, alike accord their
suffrages, and contribute their quota to the comforts of this _ancien
militaire_. Tofino has made the terrible campaign of Russia, with equal
honour to himself and fidelity to his master. He is a miracle of canine
affection and intelligence!

“A dragoon in the Italian army, having reared him from a puppy, and
taught him many ingenious tricks, was called off with his regiment to
Spain. The dragoon had a dear friend, a sergeant in the _guardia reale_;
and, in the _pressentiment_ that he should never return, he bequeathed
Tofino, with the old proverb, which is to be found in all languages—‘As
you love me, love my dog!’

“The guardsman took the bequest, as a matter of sentiment, became
attached to the dog, and, in return, inspired Tofino with the most
intelligent attachment: he went on his messages, kept sentry with him
at the palace gate, and gave his possessor a sort of celebrity as _il
padrone di Tofino_. The moment arrived when the Imperial Guard, with
the Prince Eugene at its head, were called to join the fatal expedition
to Russia. The sergeant and Tofino marched off together from the sunny
plains of their native Lombardy, for the snowy deserts of Moscow.
Tofino weathered out all the fatigues and dangers of that most fearful
campaign—still beside his master in the march, in the battle, swimming
with him across the icy fords, or following him through the smoking ruins
of burnt villages. Tofino’s master at last fell a victim, with nearly the
whole of that splendid and gallant Italian legion, to whose valour and
fidelity Buonaparte gave his testimony to the last hour of his life. The
sergeant of the Imperial Guard, in the awful retreat from Moscow, was
seen, for the last time, by one of his comrades and townsmen, sinking,
after the passage of the Niemen, near a frozen torrent, which he had
passed with his dog. There he was left expiring; and as he was never
heard of afterwards, there he probably died, with none to watch over his
last agonies—but Tofino!

“Long after the campaign of Russia was terminated, the neighbours of
the _Piazza del Duomo_, when speaking of that disastrous event, which
left the bones of so many of their gallant compatriots to whiten on the
Russian soil, would still recal the fidelity of Tofino, whose last act of
affection had been related by a surviving spectator.

“One day, however, a wretched little animal was seen prowling about the
_Palazzo Reale_, whose moans attracted general attention, and who, at
last, laid himself down before the sentry-box at the lateral gate, to
the left of the palace, from which to this period (now five years) he
has never stirred. It was Tofino!—and neither force, nor caresses, nor
the inclemency of the most inclement season, have proved sufficient to
induce him to quit the spot where his master last did duty before the
expedition, and where the sympathy of his master’s military brethren,
and of the inhabitants of the quarter of the _Piazza del Duomo_, have
raised him this little _casino_, and daily provide for his wants and his
comforts. The Milanese come from all parts to pay an occasional visit to
Tofino, and to honour, in this faithful animal, that virtuous instinct
of _elective affection_ which Nature reproduces, under so many forms,
throughout her system of universal love and beneficence!”




RELIGIONS.


Any fool, who will attack a false religion, by opposing to it another as
absurd as itself, will make converts and establish a sect. But he who
opposes superstition by the demonstration of its contradictions, will
excite universal abhorrence, and will hardly escape stoning.

Lucian, in his life of Alexander, the false prophet, relates that this
mountebank prophesied at once against the Christians and against the
Epicureans of Pontus, as being in a common hostility against himself
and his pretensions. In a similar spirit, certain writers of our own
times accuse the reformed religion of atheism, or a tendency towards it.
Gifford called every one atheist, in his _Quarterly Review_, whom he
wanted to bring into disrepute. If, therefore, I were to define atheism,
I should call it, the state of differing from any received mode of
thinking in matters of religion, or in any thing else, where money or
money’s worth is concerned. The Epicureans and Christians of Pontus must
have been a good deal surprised to find themselves in the same category;
and so, too, would many of Mr. Gifford’s atheists.




TOWER OF BABEL.


Those who have a taste for allegorizing the Bible, may probably consider
the builders of Babel as a set of disputatious metaphysicians, scaling
Heaven by their inquiries into matter and spirit. Their punishment gives
consistence to the fancy; since nothing could foil them so much as a
confusion of language: as is proved by their descendants, who have been
squabbling about words (mistaken for things) even down to the present day.




MATHEMATICAL LADIES.


I can perfectly understand Lord Byron’s antipathy to mathematical ladies.
There is nothing in the study of numbers analogous to female intellect,
which is essentially imaginative. Female mathematicians are seldom what
the French call _aimables_. In the middle of the last century, Newton’s
sublime discoveries rendered mathematics fashionable; and fashion will
reconcile a French lady even to the mathematics. “_La belle Emilie_” of
Voltaire, and Madame Ferrand, the friend and mistress of Condillac, are
two of the most notable instances. The former translated and commented
on Newton in the intervals of the gaming-table and the toilet; and the
latter wrote a considerable part of the “_Traité des Sensations_,”
the well-known work of her philosophical lover. These, however, were
exceptions, produced by the influence of the times. The exact sciences
are not made for woman. Her feelings are too petulant for cool, temperate
calculation, in which fancy and sensibility go for nothing at all. When
Nature, in her caprice, produces a Bolognese doctoress, really learned in
such matters, the woman is sure to suffer by it.

The cleverest women are accused (and with some reason) of inaccuracy in
their thoughts; but the defect does not arise (as some have imagined)
from the want of the discipline of a course of mathematics. Madame de
Staël was sometimes inconsequential in her reasoning; but neither she,
nor many other female and non-mathematical writers of less power, have
fallen into such “bald and disjointed” twaddle as is to be found in
the pamphlets of some of our university polemics and politicians. “The
high men,” as I am told they are called at Cambridge and Oxford, do not
usually become the most distinguished statesmen and philosophers.

I suspect, therefore, that the current admiration for the mathematics, as
an instrument of mental discipline, arises much more from the _safety_
of such pursuits, and their disconnexion with moral and political
interests, than from the rigor and exactness of their methods of
argumentation. At the end of a five years’ college course, the student
is not more likely to question established abuses, than if he had spent
the time in playing shuttle-cock. His moral faculties have been kept
perfectly quiescent. Indignation at public and private wrong, contempt
for falsehood and dishonesty, the kindling glow of approbation at
patriotic self-sacrifice, have remained unawakened and cold. The pursuit
of abstractions has shut out all interest or feeling for realities; and
the university whippers-in have trained the young hound quite away from
the pursuit of forbidden truths.

A mere mathematician is the fittest raw material for manufacturing
a passive-obedience parson, or an all-confiding country gentleman.
Placed in the foreground of the world’s great scene of action, the most
accomplished of the class is but on a par with a mere land-surveyor:
he can estimate quantities, and nothing more. With the sole exception
of the inventors, (who, as in the other branches of knowledge, must
be superior persons,) the greatest proficients in the mathematics are
often the dullest and least apprehensive of men; and as they mistake
the superiority of their scientific methods, for their own aptitude to
discover truth, they are the most presumptuous. These are the persons who
sneer at lady writers, and imagine that there is no road to common sense
and common observation, but over the Ass’s Bridge.

Of mathematics, as a means to an end, as the hand-maid to the natural
sciences, it would be absurd to speak slightingly; but as a mere
discipline, I fancy I am not singular in doubting their efficacy; and I
am certain that, for the female mind in particular, they can do little
beyond encouraging pedantry; while they blunt that rapid intuition which
serves a woman better than reason, and gives to superior females the
influence they have so often possessed on public affairs. In literature,
more especially, it is this intuition, this promptitude to feel, rather
than to analyze the truth, that has given not only their charm, but, I
will add, their utility, to female writers. If they were more exact,
they would be less striking. Their especial service is to keep alive the
fervour of enthusiasm, and to avert the calculating selfishness which
is the besetting sin of advanced civilization. One day, complaining to a
celebrated Irish wit of the faults of my early works, he replied, “Let
them alone, child; it is to your faults you owe your success.”




CARDINAL GONSALVI.


    “Le joli rendez-vous qu’il m’a donné.”

                     MADAME DE MAINTENON.

_Mais! quel rendez-vous!_ Doctrine of possibilities,—whoever should have
predicted to me such an appointment some years back, when I was paddling
about the bogs, and knocks, and slieus of the barony of Tireragh, and
thinking Father Flyn, of Colooney (the Father John, _par parenthèse_,
of my “Wild Irish Girl”), the greatest hierarch of the Catholic church
extant—whoever, “_then_ and _there_,” should have predicted to me that I
should have given _rendez-vous_ to an _eminenza_—a cardinal secretary—“a
prince of the Roman church,”—one who governed _him_, whose predecessors
governed the world—I should have believed the prediction just as much,
as the Brewer’s Tub-woman, who married Lawyer Hyde, would have believed
the man who might have prophesied her becoming the mother of a Duchess
of York, and the grandmother of two queens of England! And where did I
give this notable _rendez-vous_?—“_Je vous le donne en une—je vous le
donne en quatre_,” as Madame de Sévigné says, in setting her daughter
to guess who Mademoiselle was going to marry.—Why, in the church of the
Quirinal, at Rome, and at the Cardinal’s request! _Pardi_, my cardinal
was none of your ordinary cardinals—none of your Cardinals, who “come
with a whoop and come with a call,” and take a cover at your table, and
fill your little anti-room with _la famiglia_,[46] in tarnished liveries
and coloured cotton neck-kerchiefs, smelling of the ends of candles,
which smoke out of their fusty coat-pockets, and giving, very literally,
a _mauvais odeur_ to the whole apartment.

The Cardinal, _par excellence_, the Cardinal Gonsalvi, was of another
_étoffe_! Sunday after Sunday I had been gazing in awe on his terrible
eyes, as they flashed on the whole Conclave, at the head of which he
sat in the Pope’s Chapel. There was something superhuman in those
eyes!—something

    “That o’er-informed their tenement of clay.”

They are now beaming full on me from his most singular portrait, which,
among a collection of singular portraits, and placed, as it is, between
the original pictures of Alfieri and Byron, extinguishes all that
surround it. They would do equally well in a personification of love
or murder. Their master-expression was intense passion; but passion
directed, not subdued, by craft.

I had heard a great deal of Gonsalvi in France, where he had resided
much, and was well known. Talking him over with Denon, the night
before we left Paris for Italy, he sketched off his character with his
usual _finesse_ of touch and accuracy of drawing—“_Grand politique,
et un peu libertin; d’ailleurs, homme très-aimable, et tant soit peu
dangereux_.”[47] Like all men of the temperament which goes to the
highest order of genius, the Cardinal Gonsalvi was essentially liberal.
What is called liberality is so purely the power of seeing clearly, and
judging sagaciously, concerning the actual state of society—its wants,
and its means—that able men must be liberal men, sooner or later. The
ablest will not wait for the pressure of exigencies. There is something
in the nerve, and sinew, and circulation of a man of genius, that forces
him on with the age, and leaves him no power of election. Whenever the
impulse is crossed or diverted by some private interest, some personal
ambition, or individual view, his great career is checked. The “_En
avant!_” of General Buonaparte was the true star of his glory—the return,
the retrogradation to old systems and old forms, was the destruction of
the emperor! His alliance with the Gothic fabric of Hapsburg was the
fatal conjunction that mouldered his new-raised fortunes to the dust.
It was the baneful influence of the same _incubus_ of illiberality and
despotism which turned Gonsalvi from _his_ high destiny, and made him a
dependant, when he should have been a leader. Still, before he caught
a view of the papal throne, through the power of Austrian agency, he
was so open, so bold in his expression of liberal opinions, not only in
temporal but spiritual concerns, that he was suspected of being a member
of some of those secret societies which (like the secret tribunal of
old,) made even power tremble in its strongest fortress. By some, he was
called the _Cardinal Carbonaro_; and _il giacobino_ and _il radicale_
were names publicly bestowed on one who soon silenced all imputations, by
permitting the dungeons of the Papal State to be filled with the victims
of that terrible political re-action, which followed close upon the
_restoration_ effected by the Holy Alliance.

Gonsalvi was, however, eminently superior to the time and persons under
whose influence and power he acted; and his private agency and personal
feelings were in perpetual opposition to the public part which, as
first minister to Pope Pius the Seventh, he was obliged to act. Had
he flourished in remoter times, he would have made a splendid Pope!—a
something between Leo the Tenth and Ganganelli—showy, sumptuous and
gallant as the first—lettered, liberal, and astute as the latter. As
it was, he was chained to the fortunes of his friend, the reigning
pontiff—involved in a sort of inevitable dependence upon the dull
despotism of Austria, and always _en butte_ to the intrigues of the
illiberal, and to the bigotry of the Conclave. Thus circumstanced, he
had a part of infinite difficulty to perform. Had he been honest, he
would have thrown it up; but he was a churchman, and, in his spiritual
ambition, _prêtre avant tout_. Still, so little did Gonsalvi participate
in the _cagoterie_ of his class or order—so little was he bound by
prejudice or predilection to the ordinances of the church, that (like the
archbishop of Taranto) he was opposed to the celibacy of the priesthood;
and he suggested to Buonaparte, that, should the French government demand
the liberty of marriage for the ministers of the Gallican church, the
court of Rome would not make any objection. “_Parce que_” (to use his
own words) “_ce n’était qu’un point de discipline_.”[48] Buonaparte
agreed with him on the advantage of such an innovation; and said that
if he did not urge the point, it was simply because he would not give
the _collets-montés_ of the Faubourg St. Germain a pretence for calling
the pope an heretic. The proposition and the rejoinder were curious and
characteristic. Here, then, was a cardinal out of the “common roll” of
cardinals; and I went to Rome, desirous, but hopeless, of knowing him:
for it was reported that he had ceased to hold assemblies, or to go to
them, and that he was living in official retirement. So I consoled myself
with Cardinal Fesch, who was all good humour and good nature; and who
allowed me to rummage about his most interesting palace, and admire his
gallery and his pontifical toilette—his pictures by Raphael, and his
point-laces, enough to make the mouths of Empresses water.

One fine Roman winter morning—(they very much resemble a summer’s day in
Ireland)—the Duchess of Devonshire called on me, and, _sans préambule_,
announced the Cardinal Gonsalvi’s desire to make my acquaintance: but,
though the duchess did not say as much, I saw there was some little
difficulty about the where and the how of this introduction. The
cardinal was a minister of state, and I was (“audacious little worm!”)
the author of “France!” It was, therefore, rather a delicate matter
for him to give me _rendez-vous_ any where on this side the Styx. The
Duchess, however, said she would let me know on the following day; and
I received the following note, in answer to one I had sent with an
inscription on a Roman brick, which I found in the well-known excavation,
made by her grace round the column Phocas:—

    “MY DEAR MADAM,

    “I am not an Irishwoman; but I admire Irish talent and
    imagination, and we are certainly indebted to you for enabling
    us to judge of them. I return the stone, or brick, with all
    the rights that I might have to it, and am flattered by the
    inscription.[49] I also send you the edition of the Fifth
    Satire of Horace, and am truly gratified by your praise of it.
    If you will go to the Quirinal chapel on Thursday, I shall have
    an opportunity of presenting you to Cardinal Gonsalvi. I shall
    go about eleven.

    “Pray believe me very much yours,

                                             “ELIZABETH DEVONSHIRE.”

    “If you wish to go to the chapel to-morrow, (Thursday,) I will
    call for you a little before eleven, and for Sir Charles also.
    If the Cardinal stops to speak to me, I shall present you, &c.
    &c.”

I forget what was the _grande cérémonie_ celebrated on the abovementioned
day at the Quirinal; but it was one of singular magnificence. The Duchess
of Devonshire had the privilege of places devoted to the families of
the Cardinals, and we commanded a full view of that splendid church,
which, like the Temple of the Sun, whose site it occupies, was all
light, lustre, and effulgence. The central nave was thronged with
the dignitaries of the church, in grand costume, abbots, priors, and
monsignori—

    “Black spirits and white, blue spirits and grey.”

The tribunes were filled with representatives of the beauty and fashion
of Europe, from the Niemen to the Thames. The pope was on his throne;
the conclave sat beneath him, in vestments of eastern amplitude and
splendour; while at their feet were ranged their humble _caudatori_.
The pope pontificated; and when the censers had flung their odours on
the air, and the loud hosannas had ceased to peal, a procession began,
which was one of the most imposing I ever beheld. The pope, borne aloft
on his moveable throne, and on the necks of his servants, appeared like
some idol of pagan worship. The members of the conclave, two by two,
followed; their trains of violet velvet, held up by the _caudatori_. The
whole spectacle passed on, and, half way down the great vestibule which
precedes the chapel, disappeared among its lofty and massive columns. The
Cardinal Secretary then broke off from the line of march, and joined us,
as we stood under the shadow of a pillar.

The presentation was as unceremonious, as the conversation which ensued
was pleasant, easy, and _spirituel_. We talked of France, and the persons
we mutually knew there; and I saw that there was a playful attempt to
draw me out on the subject of Rome and the actual order of things in
Italy, more flattering than fair, and which I parried as well as I
could. Before we parted, he proposed, with great politeness, calling
on us the following day; but, as we were lodged (as were many of our
betters) _au vingt-cinquième_, I declined the honor till after our return
from Naples.

Cardinal Gonsalvi conversed in French like a Parisian, and his phrases
were epigrammatic and well turned. As we stood in the partial shadow of
one of the great columns, with some streaks of bright light falling from
a high window on the rich robes and diamond buckles of his eminence, I
was struck by the oddity of the group. The fine figure and countenance,
and magnificent costume of the Roman Cardinal,—the sybil air and look of
the British peeress, whose tall, slight form, wrapt in a black velvet
mantle, surmounted by a black hat, and one sweeping feather, such as
Rubens would have delighted to copy,—and my own “Little Red-riding-hood”
appearance (as Irish as if I had never left the banks of the Liffey)—and
again, the true impersonation of all that is most English in physiognomy
and _tournure_ in my English husband—it was a picture to fill the canvas
of a Callot or a Caravaggio! What was most odd in all this, was the
conjunction of personages so apparently incongruous. This could not
have happened fifty years back. What effected it now? The “march of
intellect!” with its seven-league boots, like those of the Marquis of
Carabas! Ochone! a little wild Irish woman to march from the banks of
the Bog of Allan, to hold a colloquy sublime on the banks of the Tiber,
on the _Mons Quirinalis_, with a Roman Cardinal.—That is a march with a
vengeance!




FRENCH POETRY.


“Every body,” says sturdy Johnson, “has a right to say what he likes,
and every body has a right to knock him down for it;”—a canon of
criticism, of which the disputants of our days have not been slow to
avail themselves. As far, at least, as a virtual and constructive
knock-down blow is concerned, it is the favourite syllogism of reviewers,
pamphleteers, and parliamentary orators. For my own part, I have always
said what I liked, and I have been knocked down for it pretty often, from
Pontius to Pilate; that is, from Gifford to Croly. I am rather popular,
I flatter myself, in France; and yet the French have never pardoned my
scepticism with respect to the unrivalled poetical merits of Racine; and
they have not always sparred with the gloves on, in their application of
the Johnsonian maxim to my case. Still I say, that Racine is no poet,
according to our northern ideas of poetry. The French are too apt to
mistake rhymes and rhetoric for poetry. A French gentleman, in speaking
of a young Parisian Sappho, said to me, the other day, “_Elle fait des
vers comme un ange!_”[50] Making verses, however, is not writing poetry;
and the very phraseology demonstrates a rooted difference in the ideas of
the two nations on the subject.

Generally speaking, French poetry is but metrical prose. Stripped of its
rhymes, and released from the ties of measure, there is little in it of
that imagery, in which we imagine poetry to consist. I should say, in my
ignorance, that Beranger is the truest living poet of his country. His
writings are in character with the genius, and language, and temperament
of his nation, which is essentially witty, intellectual, full of
philosophy and thought; and I would rather have written one verse of one
of his delightful patriotic songs, than a whole volume of _Henriades_ and
_Jardins_.

It is no bad compliment to a nation, to say that it is not poetical. The
finest poets have flourished in the most barbarous times. When the people
know nothing, they are thrown upon the exaggerations of fancy; and the
poverty of a language is among the most pregnant occasions of poetical
diction. Homer, Hesiod, David, Ossian, Dante, Chaucer, are among the
greatest poets extant; yet, in what times did they write! The structure
of the French language, also, with its mute vowels, surrounds the mere
fabric of verse with such difficulties, as are only to be conquered by
a laborious study. The nation, therefore, is more struck by the merit
of style, than of matter; and the habits of the Parisians are so alien
from all acquaintance with nature—so tied down to conventional notions
and feelings, that a Schiller or a Shakspeare would not be understood
by them. Above all, the dread of ridicule, the predominant vice of the
French _morale_, effectually prevents an indulgence in those _élans_
of sentiment, without which genuine poetry, in the English sense of the
word, cannot exist. The fact is, that the standard of excellence is not
the same in London and Paris; and international criticism is pretty much
the dispute of the two knights, respecting the colour of the shield, of
which they did not see the same side.




IDLENESS OF GENIUS.


I said, not long since, to Mr. ——, “Nobody tolerates, or even likes, a
thorough-going, genuine, conscious coxcomb, more than I do—one who has
taken up the profession coolly and deliberately, like the Brummels, &c.
&c. of old. But I cannot stand your friend: he is such a dull dandy, and
nothing but a dandy.”

“No, I assure you,” was the reply; “he is by no means deficient. He has,
on the contrary, considerable talent; but he is so indolent. How often do
you see great talents rendered inefficient by indolence!”

“Yes, you do,” I said; “it is a pity.” But, suddenly struck with the
absurdity, I observed, “What nonsense we are talking. One goes on for
ever repeating common places, without reflection. You know, as well as
I do, that great talents and indolence are physically incompatible.
Vitality, or all-aliveness—energy, activity, are the great elements of
what we call talents.”

The idleness of genius is a mere _platitude_. Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton,
Voltaire, Newton, all who have enlightened and benefitted the world, have
been no less remarkable for their labour, than for their genius. Physical
activity may exist without mind; but the man of talent cannot be idle,
even though he desire it; he is mastered by his moral energy, and pushed
into activity, whether he will or not. I know not a better instance of
the industry and energy of talent, than my friend Shiel. A leader of
the great national army of the disqualified, and obliged to a perpetual
study and practice of the tactics of defence and offence—a lawyer of
considerable business—an orator, standing alone, not only in his own
country, where so many are eloquent, but in his age and in Europe—a
dramatic writer, long ranked among the first of his day,—he adds to these
sources of occupation, which are not sufficient to exhaust his unwearied
industry, his frequent contributions to the New Monthly Magazine—those
brilliant and fanciful sketches, which, though thrown out in moments of
relaxation, are, for graphic delineation and picturesque colouring, equal
to the best pages, which have made the reputation of Sir W. Scott.

Then again, there is O’Connell, the head and front of all agitation,
moral, political, social, and legal. When we read in the papers those
eloquent and powerful speeches, in which the spectres of Ireland’s
oppression are called up from the depths of history, with a perfect
knowledge of all that has concerned the country from its earliest
records, and in which unnumbered “modern instances” of misrule, in all
its shades of ignorance and venality, are collected from the storehouse
of his capacious memory,—those speeches in which, amidst the fiery
explosions of long nurtured indignation, (the petulant outpourings of
constitutional impatience,) arguments of logical conviction, and facts
of curious detail, come forth, as from an exhaustless fountain,—who but
would suppose that the life of the patriot, demagogue, and agitator,
was occupied exclusively in the one great and absorbing cause? It is,
however, on his way home from the courts, and after legal labours,
that have occupied him from the dawn of light, that, (as if to escape
from the homage which haunts his steps,) he turns into the Catholic
Association—it is after having set a jury-box in a roar by his humour,
made “butchers weep” by his pathos, driven a witness to the last shift of
Irish evasion, and puzzled a judge by some point of law, not dreamed of
in his philosophy, that, all weary and exhausted as he must be, he mounts
the rostrum of the Corn Exchange, the _Jupiter Tonans_ of the Catholic
senate; and, by those thunderbolts of eloquence, so much more effective
to hear than to read, kindles the lambent light of patriotism to its
fiercest glow, and with “fear of change perplexes” Brunswick clubs and
Orange lodges.[51]

Again, this boldest of demagogues, this mildest of men, “from Dan to
Beersheba,” appears in the patriarchal light of the happy father of a
happy family, practising all the social duties, and nourishing all the
social affections. It is remarkable, that Mr. O’Connell is not only
governed by the same sense of the value of time as influenced Sir Edward
Coke, but literally obeys his injunctions for its partition, which forms
the creed more than the practice of rising young lawyers. It is this
intense and laborious diligence in his profession, that has won him the
public confidence. Where his abilities as a lawyer may be serviceable,
party yields to self-interest; and many an inveterate ascendancy man
leaves his friends, the Orange barristers, to hawk their empty bags
through the courts, while he contributes his official gains indirectly
to the Catholic rent, by assigning to Catholic talent the cause which
Catholic eloquence can best defend.

Then, as we are on the subject of the association, there is another
of its distinguished members, Thomas Wyse, an antiquarian, linguist,
traveller, artist, scholar, painter, and author, no less than an orator
and a politician. What industry, what application, what energy must
have gone to make up all this acquirement! In a careless and desultory
conversation, Mr. Wyse will throw out as much, and as varied knowledge,
as would qualify some noble pedant for the chair of what Horace Walpole
calls “the old ladies’ society.” Without the aptitude for labour, nothing
great ever was or ever will be produced. Poets talk of inspiration; but
their finest passages are uniformly the result of the deepest study. Even
Sheridan, the man of eminence most quoted for his idleness, has left
proofs behind him of the intensity of the effort by which his inimitable
comedies were elaborated; and his biographer and countryman might bear
his own personal evidence to the great truth, that not even the slightest
and most sparkling effusions of the muse, are emancipated from this great
governing law of excellence. The supposition of amazing talents, latent
in the capabilities of indolent triflers, is like the theory of those
elaborate and ingenious machines for producing perpetual motion, which
are extremely surprising and admirable, but which labour under a small
practical disadvantage, that—they do not perform.




FRANKNESS.


Nothing wins on the affections more than that frank and generous
disposition which, ever ready to risk itself for others, may excite the
derision of the crafty and designing, but has an unfailing advocate in
the self-love of society. The manœuvrer, male or female, may deceive for
a time—obtain admirers by a plausible exterior, make dupes, and secure
dependants; but such persons win no friends, excite no confidence. The
cold and crafty Octavius, with all his power, had no devoted intimates
of the heart; while Cæsar, with all his crimes, and Anthony, with all
his vices, won, by their generous and unreserved dispositions, the
affections of all who approached them. He who in his patriotism had said,
that “he could neither be false to the republic nor survive it,”[52] was
yet devoted to Cæsar, whose captivating affability and generous temper
were irresistible; and many a stern republican relaxing his severity,
and, surrendering his feelings to Anthony, suffered the sophistry of the
affections to master the graver impressions of patriotism.

    “Mark Anthony I served, who best was worthy
    Best to be served: whilst he stood up and spoke,
    He was my master, and I wore a life
    To spend upon his hater.”

The two great captains of antiquity seem to have possessed singular arts
of fascination; while of the two great captains of modern times, one only
excelled in that species of _bonhommie_, which lays contributions on the
hearts of the multitude, often dangerous to their rights and happiness.
Napoleon Buonaparte—stern at the Tuileries, where he was surrounded
by those whom he knew to be despicable, and whom he had proved to be
corrupt—when in the midst of his soldiers, gave a full, free scope to his
frank and _brusque_ cordiality. The idol of his troops, had he trusted
to their affection and their fealty, he would not have fallen a victim
to the treachery of that false _grade_, which he himself had the folly
to create, and which contributed as mainly to his destruction, as the
diplomacy of foreign cabinets, and the force of foreign bayonets.

The craft of the manœuvrer lies essentially in the narrowness of his
faculties. It is rarely that a cold and selfish heart is accompanied by
extensive views, and an enlarged intellect. The manœuvrer, engrossed by
the cunning of detail, has no thought for the wisdom of the complex; his
scope is a succession of paltry temporary objects, each of which, in its
turn, absorbs his whole attention, and is pursued without reference to
its relative importance, or to the influence which the means employed
in its attainment may have on the future. He sacrifices character to
win some dishonest trifle, and parts with a friend on the slightest
expediency. Conscious, too, of the artifice of his combinations, and
the falsehood of his pretences, he cannot inspire a conviction that he
does not feel; and the caution and circumspection which attend all his
movements, becoming infectious, inspire an instinctive suspicion in the
minds on which he operates.

For this reason, the mere diplomatist makes the worst of ministers. The
“finessing and trick,” which are the soul of his enterprizes, serve but
to isolate him, and never carry the public along with them. Whereas the
bold, the generous, the uncalculating, and, it may be, the imprudent
statesman, communicates the fire of his own volition to those around him,
and seizes with an irresistible impulse, the sympathies of the people.

By the simple enchantment of a constitutional frankness, and an innate
veracity, the Marquis of Anglesea, in eight short months, unmarked by any
decided ministerial measure, unconsciously captivated a nation’s love.
With

    “A soul as sure to charm as seen,”

which

    “Boldly steps forth, nor keeps a thought within,”

he impressed upon public opinion a conviction, which nothing could shake,
of the honesty of his purpose. His word, like truth, carried its evidence
along with it. The fiercest passions were calmed at his bidding; and the
swelling waters of political agitation subsided, even while the winds
were yet raging that had lashed them into fury.




MANŒUVRERS.


On the subject of a _female manœuvrer_ whole volumes might be written,
for woman goes so much more into detail than man. One or two samples
present themselves at this moment, in the list of my own acquaintance,
which leave even Miss Edgeworth’s admirable portrait far behind. These
creatures, not only in their most trivial actions, “_pèsent l’apparent,
le douteux, et le possible_,” but, by the very depth and intricacy of
their calculations, their “_politiques aux choux et aux raves_,” defeat
the purpose they wish to effect, by the means they take to accomplish
it. I have one of these _manœuvriers_ at present before me;—here she
goes!—But, here is a bill of fare to write, and though character will
keep cool—cooks won’t. So “_revenons à notre mouton_.” It is quite
horrible how housekeeping crosses authorship. What fame may I not have
forfeited, by getting up a dinner instead of a book!




WONDERFUL CHILDREN, AND GOOD MOTHERS.


    “So wise, so young, they say do ne’er live long.”

                                       _Richard III._

It is a curious fact, that in the present times we have none of those
precose prodigies, so numerous in the olden time. It seems to have been
one of the peculiar privileges of the wisdom of our ancestors, to produce
those infant miracles of learning and science, the “admirable Crichtons”
of the nursery, who studied in cradles, and lectured from go-carts. “I
was not” (says the quaint, but most amusing Mr. Evelyn,) “initiated into
any rudiments, _till_ I was _four_ years old; and then, one Friar taught
us, at the church door of Wotton!” This “_’till I was four years old_,”
marks his conviction of his own backwardness, in comparing himself with
other children of his age, and times; but it was more particularly in
reference to the superior wit, talent, and learning of his own son, at
that early period of his brief existence, who was, to use his afflicted
father’s words, a “prodigy for wit and understanding.” A prodigy, indeed!
for, “at two years and a half old, he could perfectly read any of the
English, French, Latin, and gothic characters, pronouncing the three
first languages exactly,” &c. &c.

The termination of this most short, splendid, and unnatural career is
worth marking:—“He died,” (says Evelyn) “at five years, after six fits
of quartan ague, with which it pleased God to visit him; though, in
my opinion, he was suffocated by the women and maids who tended him,
and covered him too hot with blankets, as he lay in a cradle, near
an _excessive hot fire_, (in a quartan fever!)—I suffered him to be
opened, when they found he was what is vulgarly called, livergrown!”
What a picture!—what a history of the times, the state of science, and
the wisdom of our ancestors! In the first instance, the attributing
an infliction to the divine visitation, which was at the same time
assignable to vulgar nursery maids, and hot blankets. In the next, the
vain father not perceiving that the genius of his child was but disease,
and his supernatural intelligence only the unnatural development of
faculties, most probably produced by mal-organization, which the style
of his rearing and education was so calculated to confirm. “Before his
fifth year, he had not only skill to read most written hands, but to
decline all nouns, conjugate the verbs, regular and irregular, learned
out ‘Puerilis,’ got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and
French primitives, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin,
construe and prove what he had read, knew the government and use of
relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes,
and made a considerable progress in Comonius’s ‘Janua,’ and had a strong
passion for Greek.”

This is too frightful—it makes one shudder to transcribe it. Such,
however, was the education, by which an accomplished and really knowing
parent, (knowing for the age in which he lived,) hesitated not to hurry
his wonderful child to an untimely grave.

Such, however, were the times, when learning was dearly prized, and
knowledge little diffused; when monastic universities, founded by the
church, through the influence of its royal and noble dependants, were
the sole depositaries of the little that was known, worth the labour of
acquiring; and when the most learned of the community had less solid
practical information, than the operative mechanics of the present day.
Such were the times when plague, pestilence, and famine, were events of
ordinary occurrence; when corruption in morals, and baseness in politics
flourished, even to the extent of surrounding a king at the altar of his
God, with the ministers of his vices; and converting the “brightest,” and
the “wisest,” into the worst and meanest of mankind. These were the times
of the most brutal ignorance in the people, and the greatest profligacy
in the nobility; and, these were the times that produced such learned
little prodigies as young Evelyn, under a system of education calculated
to make such prodigies; but not to form citizens for a free state, nor
legislators for a great nation.

Whatever may have been the natural abilities of this poor child, to
have made such a progress in the learned languages, at five years old,
he must have been the object and victim of a very laborious system of
study, all applied to the exercise of his memory. He must therefore have
submitted to close confinement in warm rooms, to the privation of air and
exercise, and to a sedentary and cramped position; and he was probably
much injured by the gross habit of eating, and the want of personal
purity, so remarkable in an age, when meat was devoured three or four
times a day, even by the most dainty, and when general ablutions were
resorted to, more as a remedy than a daily habit.

The overworking of the brain at the expense of all the other functions,
must also have had a fatal effect even on children of robust
temperaments; and the Indian practice of flinging their offspring
into the sea, to sink or swim, as strength or feebleness decided, was
humanity and civilization, to the system pursued in times quoted with
such approbation—a system by which infant intelligence was tortured
into intellectual precocity, and hurried to an early tomb, under the
precipitating concurrences of “maids, women, hot blankets, and excessive
hot fires.”

What is most notable in all this is, that Mr. Evelyn, the father of the
unfortunate infant, was one of the cleverest and most advanced men of his
time, and much celebrated for his translation of, and his essay prefixed
to, the “_Golden Book_” of St. Chrysostom, “_concerning the Education of
Children_.”

But if Mr. Evelyn was misled by “all the vulgar errors of the wise,”
where was the mother’s instinct? Alas, where a mother’s instincts often
are, in her vanity and her weakness. Mrs. Evelyn was one of the most
accomplished women of the Court of Charles the Second; and one of the
few virtuous women who frequented it. She was a celebrated linguist and
artist, and her works in oil and miniature are frequently quoted with
pride by her husband. Yet she permitted disease to creep insidiously on
the infancy of her child, while he was learning the Latin and Gothic
characters, and giving to studies beyond his strength those hours which
should have gone to air, exercise, and timely repose. Finally, she
consigned him to the superintendence of her maids and women; and, worse
than all, hurried on his death by surrounding him with circumstances
calculated to produce it,—because that rational information necessary
to all mothers, was not on the category of her acquirements. How many
mothers, even in these march of intellect times, have stopped short with
Mrs. Evelyn; whose judgment should take the lead of the gratification
of feeling and vanity?—and be it observed, that mothers in general
mistake their own indulgence for their children’s; and have quite as
much pleasure in stuffing pounds of plum cake down the throats of their
over-fed masters Gobbleton Mowbray, as the masters Gobbleton enjoy in its
deglutition.

“The Temple of Nature is the heart of a mother,” says Kotzebue, in his
sentimental jargon; but there are various temples; and Nature is a very
capricious deity. What was she in the heart of Lady Macclesfield, and in
a thousand other mothers, who have abandoned their children to want or
infamy, or to neglect, and the influence of their own bad examples, whose
results pursue their offspring through life?

The more or less powerful instinct of maternity is an affair of
temperament, nurtured or modified by other instincts or passions, and by
circumstances favourable or unfavourable to its existence. The bird that
flies at the invader of its nest—the tigress that gathers its young under
it, and darts its murderous glance at all who attempt to interfere with
the objects of its affections, is more respectable than any one of these
mothers “upon instinct,” who are only that. It is not the instinct, or
feeling, but the judgment that directs it, which is laudable. Maternity
is no abstraction; and when people say, “such a one is injudicious, or
ignorant, or feeble, or shallow, but she is a good mother,” they talk
nonsense. That which the woman is, the mother will be; and her personal
qualities will direct and govern her maternal instinct, as her taste will
influence her appetite. If she be prejudiced and ignorant, the _good
mother_ will mismanage her children; and if she be violent in temper and
vehement in opinion, the good mother will be petulant and unjust towards
them: if she be inconsistent and capricious, she will alternate between
fits of severity and bursts of indulgence, equally fatal: if she be vain,
and coquettish, and selfish, she may be fond of her children through
her pride, but she will always be ready to sacrifice their enjoyments,
and even their interests, to the triumphs of her own vanity, or the
gratification of her egotism.

The perfection of motherhood lies, therefore, in the harmonious blending
of a happy instinct, with those qualities which make the good member of
general society—with good sense and information—with subdued or regulated
passions, and that abnegation, which lays every selfish consideration at
the feet of duty. To make a good mother, it is not sufficient to seek
the happiness of the child, but to seek it with foresight and effect.
Her actions must be regulated by long-sighted views, and steadily and
perseveringly directed to that health of the body and of the mind,
which can alone enable the objects of her solicitude to meet the shocks
and rubs of life with firmness, and to maintain that independence,
in practice and principle, which sets the vicissitudes of fortune at
defiance, fitting its possessor to fill the various stations, whether of
wealth or poverty, of honour or obscurity, to which chance may conduct
him.

This is my idea of the duties of maternity, and of the perfection of
that most perfect creature, a good mother. I know it is not everybody’s
idea, and that there is another _beau idéal_ of maternity, which is much
more prevalent.

There is the good mother, that spends half her life in hugging,
flattering, and stuffing her child, till, like the little Dalai Lama
of Thibet, he thinks he has come into the world for no other purpose
than to be adored like a god, and crammed like a capon. This is the
good mother, who, in her fondness, is seen watching anxiously, after a
long late dinner, for the entrance of the little victim which she has
dressed up for sacrifice, and whose vigils are prolonged beyond its
natural strength, that it may partake of the poisonous luxuries in the
last service of the feast of ceremony, till the fever of over excitement
mounts to its cheek, sparkles in the eye, and gives incoherency to its
voluble nonsense; an excitement to be followed not by the deep and
dreamless sleep of infancy, but by the restless slumbers and fearful
visions of indigestion. Alas for the mother and for the child! and alas
for the guests called upon for their quota of admiration upon such
melancholy occasions, such terrible exhibitions of human vanity and
human weakness, counteracting the finest instincts of human nature!

Clever and truth-telling Miss Edgeworth—you who have written such
rational and charming books for children—why have you not written some
_easy lessons_ for their mothers? Why have you not composed a manual
for their use, to teach them a few elementary facts in physics and in
morals; and, above all, to teach them that nature, in all things, is the
sole basis of right thinking and right acting, under all circumstances,
and in all times? Did mothers know and feel this, what sorrows and
disappointments might be spared to their hearts and their hopes, to their
affections and their ambition; what time, now given to acquire arts, for
which nature has refused the requisite organization, might be dedicated
to health, and what lives might be spared, whose loss, (attributed
sacrilegiously to “the will of God,”) has only been a sacrifice to
“maids, women, hot blankets, excessive hot fires,” and the ignorance, and
prejudices, and selfish fondness of the “best of mothers.”




TOYS AND TRINKETS.


    “Parfaits dans le petit—sublimes en bijoux—
    Grands inventeurs de riens, nous faisons des jaloux.”

                                       _Voyage à Berlin._

I should like to know if the march of intellect has any thing to do with
the indifference which the children of our day shew for toys. The Mrs.
Chenevixes, and the _petits Dunkerques_ of modern times would be ruined
and undone, if it were not for the papas and mammas, whose _boudoirs_ and
dressing-rooms are the only baby-houses to be found in modern mansions.

The witty, the gallant Marquis de Sévigné was called by his mother “_le
roi des bagatelles_,” from his love of _bijouterie_; and Lord —— might
be called the emperor. His pipes and snuff-boxes alone might entitle him
to the imperial grade in the sovereignty of trifles: while Lady —— is
the very Catherine of Russia of trinkets, and autocrat of the toy-shop.
There is not a useless utility, a superfluous superfluity, that ingenuity
can devise for the amusement of idleness, which may not now be found on
the tables of the great, and the imitators of their present rage for
toys:—gold scissors that do not cut; silver needles that do not sew;
pearl pen-knives that mend no pens; and work-boxes that hold no work save
clock-work; _fagots_ that never burn; and _allumettes_ that are never to
be lighted: with a hundred devices in gems and jewels, which it must have
taken some poetical talent, and more poetical fancy than goes to half the
sonnets and “_lines_” that we read, or at least pay for, to invent.

All this seems very frivolous; but then these “trifles light as air” are
sometimes important enough in their results: for, if such fairy favours
are occasionally bestowed by tributary friends, they are sometimes
the insidious offerings of concealed admirers; who tell in toys, what
words dare not utter; and give the history of a passion in a series of
trinkets, which, if hearts of turquoise, and seals of emeralds could
speak, would be found more than circumstantial evidences in Doctors’
Commons.

That _petites-maîtres_, and _petites-maîtresses_ should thus “trifle life
away,” and occupy their time and money like children, may not appear so
very extraordinary; but that literary women—intellectual women—women who
affect to think, and presume to write—and publish too, and make head
against such organs of opinion as Quarterly Reviews, and the like—that
_they_ should give themselves the airs of fashionable frivolity, and
endeavour to reconcile “_les goûts d’un grand seigneur, et les revenus
d’un poëte_,” is really “too bad.” It is, however, a fair example of
the incongruities of character, and the influence of vogue. What would
the Scuderies, and the Daciers, and the Carters, and the Montagus say
to the toy-shop house of a certain forty-volume-power female writer of
the present day, who, if she has not written as well, has written as
much, as those three voluminous ladies combined? What a disappointment
to blue-stocking visitors, who expect to find her in the midst of that
charming literary litter, intellectual disorder, and elegant neglect of
all the elegancies of ordinary life, which marked the _ménages_ of the
_femmes-savantes_ of the late and preceding centuries!—the broken tea-cup
(substituted for a wine-glass) of Mary Wolstonecraft! or the Scotch mull
and brown pocket-handkerchief of Catherine Macauley!! What a shock to
hear this quarto authoress talk of _esprit de rose_ instead of _l’esprit
des lois_; to find the atmosphere of her drawing-room perfumed by a
_jardin_ of fresh flowers, whose odour, she pretends, has the same effect
on her brain as sherries had upon Falstaff’s, “driving thence all the
dull and crudy vapours, which environ it!”

How their literary Fustinesses of former times would turn up their
intellectual noses at the frivolous tastes of this new-light _Armande_,
could they see her, as I see her at this moment, writing at a rose-wood
_secrétaire_, accommodating and pliant as any _secrétaire_ on the list
of diplomacy, and “seizing,” literally, not figuratively, (like Anna
Matilda) her “golden quill.” There she sits, surrounded by the inspiring
semblances of deathless wits and immortal beauties, shining from enamels
durable as their fame—by bookcases, that glitter in gilt vellum and
rosy russian—with Dante illustrated on Sevre vases, and the loves of
Petrarch and Laura told on tea-cups. Which of the coronetted muses of the
present _saturnalia_ of Parnassus, where cooks and countesses jostle for
precedency, does this sketch pourtray? Which of the Lady Charlottes and
the Honourable Annas, who affect new patents of distinction, and think
more of the honour bestowed by their publisher, than their pedigree, does
this cap fit? Not one; for this literary _petite-maîtresse_—this amateur
of frivolities, and inditer of philosophy—this collector of French toys,
and collator of Irish chronicles—this trifler by taste, and author by
necessity,

    “Cet homme-là, Sire—c’est moi!”[53]

I don’t defend this passion for trifles—I only expose it, as an
illustrative item in the history of female authorship, which is so often
reproached with a slovenly neglect of all that is feminine and frivolous.

When somebody presented the celebrated Mademoiselle Scuderie with a bunch
of pretty seals, she refused them, deeming them derogatory to the dignity
of a “_Fille Savante_,” as she is called by Menage—so she sent them back
with a couplet, observing,

    “Car enfin des jolis cachets
    Demandent des jolis secrets,
    Ou du moins des jolis billets.”

It is odd enough that I should be thus blamed for my love of trifles
and of truth—and for pursuing both, in my public and private life, with
an earnestness, which at least attests my sincerity, if it does not
prove my judgment. “_On ne saurait avoir trop de fantaisies, musquées
ou non musquées_,” says Madame de Sévigné. This is also my creed: for
I hold, that whatever cheers us on in the arduous path of life, and
flings a flower over its dreariness—whatever innocently employs and
safely recreates—whatever gives an object, or an amusement, “soberly,”
(as Lady Grace has it,) is worth cultivating, even although it be but
a taste for toys. When, therefore, one cannot command a box at the
opera, it is well to be able to command a box from Bautte![54] When one
cannot enjoy Rossini in full orchestra, it is a privilege to hear his
best symphonies played on one’s writing-desk or work-table—and when
denied the enchantments of Pasta and Pisaroni, it is pleasant still to
hang upon tones, which, like theirs, seem to proceed from no “_mortal
mixture of earth’s mould_”—fairy strains, played, as it were, by fairy
fingers, on fairy instruments, made and moulded “_par quelque araignée du
voisinage_.” Sensible women, I know, laugh at all this. Still, a woman
should be “_femme avant tout_;” and she who is not so, more or less, is
not a fair and perfect specimen of her sex.

The great always love toys. Even heroes are not above them. That gallant
Centaur, Prince Potemkin, had the finest collection of _joujoux_ of any
grown gentleman on record; and Catherine the Great was wont to reward his
devotion and his services, alternately, by trinkets and principalities,
or to appease his jealousy by a government or a toy—

    “Pleurez, pleurez, petit enfant—
    Vous aurez votre moulin-à-vent.”

The Russian “_petit enfant_” was often found seated before a mountain of
baby-things, in his military pavilion, by the Prince de Ligne, who has
left such a pleasant description of the scene, and so wittily recorded
the fact.

By far the prettiest toy I ever read or heard of, and the most
appropriate for the baby-house of a literary lady, was one invented by
Madame de Théanges, the sister of Madame de Montespan; and presented
by that beautiful and _mondaine_ Abbess, to the Duc de Maine, as an
_étrenne_, in 1675.

This exquisite toy represented one of the royal apartments of Versailles,
richly gilt and decorated—a state-bed occupied an alcove, and was
surrounded by a gilt balustrade. In a _grand fauteuil_, within the
precincts, sat the young prince, shewing a copy of adulatory verses to
the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, who stood beside him; while behind his chair
was placed the celebrated Bossuet, and the Prince de Marsiliac. Two
ladies, who had also the privilege of the _ruelle_, sat reading within
the alcove. These were the charming Madame de la Fayette, and Madame de
Théanges, whose beauty was set off by her religious habit, as Abbess
de Fontrevault. Immediately without the balustrade stood Racine and
Boileau—the former beckoning in the modest La Fontaine, who stood timidly
at the door—the latter, with a pitch-fork, humorously affecting to keep
off a crowd of bad poets, who were forcing their way to the presence and
patronage of the young prince.

The merit and the value of this superb toy was, that all these figures
were accurate portraits, exquisitely done in wax, and presented by the
illustrious originals themselves to Madame de Théanges, for her classical
and ingenious _étrenne_.




FAUTEUIL—BERGÈRE—ARM-CHAIR—EPISCOPAL SEAT.


    “Inutile a chi non reposa.”

                   _Book of Emblems—Device, a Chair._

Last night we were playing a _charade en action_. As Madame Catalani, and
her clever son, with some other foreigners, were of the party, we played
it in French. I personated an antiquated ultra _baronne_, restored to her
_donjon_ in Normandy, and receiving a visit from an old _châtelain_ of
the neighbourhood, who came to congratulate her on the restoration of
all old things. The scene we made of giving _les honneurs du fauteuil_
to my neighbour, my horror at the indignity of offering a _chaise de
paille_ to an _ancien noble_ of seven quarters; and the overthrow of the
whole party, chairs and all, in the struggle of ceremony, occasioned a
good deal of laughing. I borrowed the trait from a scene I had witnessed
in the Faubourg, on my first arrival in Paris, when a great effort was
making to restore the _fauteuil_ to its ancient honours.

The history of arm-chairs would make an amusing volume, if given from
antique times to the present, from the _fauteuil_ of the middle ages,
when it had reached its highest political importance, down to the modern
_dormeuse_, in which, at this moment, I am scribbling, _ex cathedra_!
What a specimen of the progress of society it would embrace—what state
secrets it would reveal—what sanguinary wars—what treaties of peace, what
family ties dissolved—what courses of true love turned aside—all owing to
the important _fauteuil_!

“Armed-chairs—chairs with a back—the stool of honour—the right hand
and the left,” says Voltaire, “have, for many ages, been the important
objects of diplomacy, and the subjects of illustrious quarrels.”
Buonaparte, whose weakness it was to adopt the worn-out _étiquettes_
of an order of things directly opposed to his own existence, raised
the _fauteuil_ along with the altar and the throne; and it is said,
that, when Madame Letitia Buonaparte made her visit of ceremony, on
the _accouchement_ of her imperial daughter-in-law, the arm-chair was
removed from the room, lest she (being, as she was, _roturière_, though
the mother of an emperor, four kings, and two or three princesses) might
presume to usurp its honours in the presence of the daughter of the
Cæsars, the descendant of the Hapsbourgs!

Alas, for the vicissitudes of human grandeur! There are those living,
more _roturière_ than the excellent Madame Buonaparte, who have since
seated themselves on whatever chair they pleased, in the presence of
the ex-Empress of France, the now obscure Duchess of Parma; who herself
sat, confounded with other ladies, in the _salon_ of an English peeress,
obtaining no distinction, save what was conferred by the attention and
courtesy of an English ambassadress. Oh! if the great would, or could,
but feel how little they owe of the world’s homage to themselves, and
how much to their position,—before some dreadful reverses teach them
the sad truth, that they are but the signs of that power, which lies in
principles, and not in persons.

The curule chair of the Romans had a certain respect attached to it,
as being the seat of magistracy—very different, however, from the awe
which is inspired by the sight of a throne in the hearts of the loyal
idolaters of modern absolutism. The luxurious Romans, who, when not in
activity, lay extended, even at their meals, on couches, seem not to have
considered a mere seat in connexion with rank and power. The Fabiuses and
Catos borrowed no distinction from the privilege of sitting in an arm
chair. The form of the curule chair is preserved in the sculptured marble
of some of the noble statues of antiquity, which are designed in the
seated attitude. The ease of their position seems rather to result from
the grace of the individuals represented, than from the commodity of the
chair, which is low-backed and simple in form. Its substance, however,
was ivory, richly carved—a curious fact in the history of the arts.

It was with the barbarous lower ages that the arm-chair first acquired
its modern consequence, and it continued to increase in political
importance down to the French revolution. The code of etiquettes
concerning the _fauteuil_ in old France, was a consecrated volume. To
claim _les honneurs du fauteuil_, or to give them, determined the most
knotty points of precedence which agitated dynasties, and disturbed the
peace of kingdoms. The origin of this distinction lay very probably
in the rarity of the object—in the rude unaccommodated and dreary
stone towers, in which the ancestors of families of many quarters then
sheltered their heads. The easy chair was reserved for the elder or
chief of the family, who, in those patriarchal times, ruled with an iron
despotism over his timid, but often unnatural offspring; for the son,
who was not permitted to sit in the presence of his father, frequently
usurped his dominions, and hurried him from his _fauteuil_ to his grave.
The filial history of the respectful and royal sons of Spain and Russia,
is the epitome of the story of those times, when the _fauteuil_ was the
domestic throne of every tyrant _châtelain_, and the exclusive privilege
of the great.

To know the full consequence attached to sitting in an arm-chair, the
French memoirs must be deeply studied; particularly those, written in the
simplicity of their hearts, by Dangeau and Mademoiselle Montpensier. The
life of the “_grande Mademoiselle_” was one continued agony of quarrels
on the subject of the _fauteuil_ and the _chaise à dos_; and half the
diplomacy of Europe in her time was occupied with discussions on similar
subjects. Cardinal Richelieu, having refused to walk three steps beyond
the door of his apartment—(he was willing to walk two)—to meet the
English ambassador, who came to treat of the marriage of Charles the
First with Henrietta of France, that marriage, of such importance to both
crowns, was nearly broken off. The cardinal, however, affected sickness,
and receiving the English duke in a _chaise longue_, thus avoided the odd
step, without breaking off the alliance.

Louis the Thirteenth, desiring to hold a private council with his
minister and master, Richelieu, was obliged to visit him in his bed-room,
where he lay dangerously ill. But as a subject, though dying, could not
be permitted to receive the king in bed, except the king was lying in
bed also, Louis was wheeled in, on a _chaise longue_, and they both thus
lay in state to discuss the affairs of the nation. Louis the Fourteenth
observed the same form, when he went to visit the wounded hero Turenne.

In the olden times the easy chair, or _chaise de doléance_, was reserved
for invalids, in the houses of the middle ranks of England and Germany;
but the chair of “_le roi Dagobert_”[55] if in existence, would have a
chance of being discarded, even by the most zealous _voltigeur_, in
favour of a modern _dormeuse_, with its easy fall, cushioned back, and
pillows of iron, softer than down,—now at the disposition of every member
of the family. In all that respects the comforts and commodity of life,
the wisdom of our ancestors was confessedly at fault.

The two most interesting arm-chairs in existence, are the Shakspeare
chair, late in the possession of Mrs. Garrick, and Voltaire’s chair,
which stood beside the fire-place in the Hôtel de Vilette, Rue Vaugirard,
when I last saw it, in 1820. The inauguration chairs of the O’Neals, the
O’Donnels, and the O’Briens would form long items of antiquarian research
in the chapter of arm-chairs, too long probably for the patience of the
general reader.

So much for the social arm-chair,—the _chaise à dos_, and _fauteuil_
of the court—the _bergère_ and _chaise à bras_ of the château. But the
history of the chair of the church—the episcopal chair—with all its
sedentary rites, connected with the divine offices and high privileges
of its incumbent, is of far more importance. The _where_, and the _how_,
the princes of the church should sit enthroned above their prostrate
flock, became an object of ecclesiastical attention in the early ages of
christianity; and scarcely had the primitive christians issued from the
caves and obscure places whence so many divine things were given out,
than councils were held, and canons established the sites, and positions,
and materials of the easy seats of the bishops and clergy. Then came the
_absis_, and the _faldistorium_, or chair of state, used for pontifical
duties; and then the episcopal thrones and patriarchal and papal chairs
of Rome, all symbols of worldly power and spiritual pride, alike the
objects of ambition and contest, and claimed, and struggled, and fought
for, like the poor mondaine _fauteuil_, by prince bishops, who, in the
early ages, were proud of a _wooden seat_, but who in process of time
occupied chairs elevated and gorgeous as regal thrones.

The ruins of the old episcopal throne in the famous cathedral of Rouen,
which has flourished from the fourth century, are now forsaken for a
magnificent and luxurious chair, or _faldistorium_. The history of the
origin and progress of the bishop’s seat, as fixed in his church or
cathedral, from the first Bishop of Canterbury, who humbly took his
_sedes lignea_, to the last whom divine grace has called to fill its
sumptuous throne,[56] would in itself throw a strong light upon the
history of the church of England. “_Que de choses dans un menuet!_”
exclaimed a French dancing-master in an ecstacy at the mysteries he was
teaching a royal pupil. _Que de choses dans un fauteuil!_ One may write
upon a fiddle-stick, doggedly, if not learnedly. One of the best things
Swift ever did write, was on a broom-stick.




THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.


The tendency in human affairs to proceed by impulses, is a curious
fact in the history of the species. At certain indefinite epochs,
and often without any very manifest cause, mankind are seized with
some sudden passion, and are hurried with an almost universal fervor
towards some particular object, which takes possession of the general
imagination. The enthusiasm thus kindled, pervades all ranks, and
masters all dispositions, giving a common tone and character to whole
generations—until, exhausted by its own efforts, it gradually subsides,
and gives place to other and newer caprices. This it is which constitutes
the spirit of the age—an important matter of consideration for the
young adventurer, at his outset in life. The passion for monkery, for
crusading, for reformation in religion, for philosophy, for political
economy, &c. &c., are cases in point, sufficiently notorious; not to
dwell upon the many minor movements of nations—such as the South Sea
bubble, the tulip mania, mesmerism, craniology, &c., each of which, in
its day, has turned the heads of the community, and formed, as it were,
an episode in the history of man.

Notwithstanding some occasional absurdities into which this sympathetic
susceptibility of our nature may have hurried particular societies, it is
the great mainspring of improvement—the countervailing power to authority
and precedent. Without such sudden _engouemens_, the world would not be
driven from the beaten track; and the public intellect would lapse for
ever into a state of stagnation, like that which has reigned among the
Turks since the subsidence of their military and religious enthusiasm.
As the impulse of a ship gives its power to the rudder, so the spirit of
the age gives efficacy to genius. Scarcely an individual can be quoted
as eminent, who did not flourish in an age of considerable excitement;
for when the great mass of mankind are at rest, talent, clogged by the
general sluggishness, in vain exerts it powers. Its excessive activity
is _à charge_—its labours are not understood; and if not persecuted,
are received with a chilling and paralyzing indifference. Between the
accession of the House of Hanover and the American war, there was a
manifest stagnation of the public mind in England; and the minor stars
of Dodsley’s galaxy shone forth, uneclipsed by the splendour of any
first-rate luminary. During the struggles of the French revolution, on
the contrary, a succession of geniuses of the highest order, in every
department of literature, science, the arts, military and political
affairs, &c. &c., added new honours to the British name, and hurried
forward civilization with astonishing rapidity.

Those who have had the misfortune to be tied down to the uncongenial
society of a _coterie_, to whose feelings and interests they were
strangers, may have some notion of what it is to run counter to the
spirit of the age, and to set up one’s own systems against the mania
of the public. Much as a man may be convinced of the truth of his
own opinions, and satisfied as he may be of the error of the world’s
opposition, still it were well to be convinced of his own self-denial
and forbearance, before he embarks in an open warfare with received
notions. To act with sufficient ability to attract notice, is to become
at once the marked victim of antiquated error and interested prejudice;
and to maintain such a position requires irreproachable character, and
a firmness that is not to be shaken by disappointment, nor turned aside
by sarcasm or reproach. They, on the contrary, who have the good luck to
stumble on a coincidence of feeling and opinion with the society in which
they are merged, will find that the cards play themselves; and, without
any extraordinary exertion of industry, talent, or virtue, they will
easily win the whole game.

It is not very long since the class of reformers embraced but a few
individuals; and many must recollect the unmeasured obloquy incurred
by certain individuals for the promulgation of truths, which were so
unpalatable when first broached, but which soon became familiar, and then
ceased to bestow notoriety, or to draw down persecution. Even in these
times of free discussion, it is both easier and pleasanter to promote the
cause of liberality under the shelter of whiggism, than to make an open
avowal of the whole extent of the principle of reform, at which so many
still start in apprehension of danger to their own personal interests.

The opinions of the world are usually a mixture of small portions of
truth, with an overwhelming mass of error. From amongst an infinite
variety of shades, is formed a sort of average doctrine, which
constitutes the opinion of the greatest number. Around this centre are
accumulated the various extremes which represent the prejudices and
interests of the smaller corps and categories in society. To belong to
any of these corps ensures toleration, in proportion to their numbers
and respectability; and the same truth may be advanced, with different
success, accordingly as it is promulgated under the sanction of a
powerful, or an inefficient name. The Unitarians are permitted openly
to impugn the divinity of our Saviour; and the Quakers are allowed to
reject all interference of priests; while those, who are vulgarly and
quaintly called Free-thinkers, are punished for an idle jest against the
established church. The former, existing in considerable bodies, are
enabled to master opinion; while the latter, having few to sympathise
with them, are opposed by all the prejudices and all the passions of
society.

It is seldom that opinions are received purely and absolutely by the
public; but most frequently they are modified by local and accidental
coincidents. There is more toleration, for example, among Englishmen for
Mahometanism in India, than for simple dissent at home. So, likewise, the
party which would roast a papist alive in Ireland, looks with complacency
on the re-establishment of the Pope on the throne of Italy. Whence is it
that the same man should be contented that his co-religionist should be
reviled and persecuted by our “ancient ally” at Constantinople, while he
resents the slightest deviation from the established creed in England?
Merely because one of these facts stands co-ordinated with his habits and
his interests, and the other exists in violation of them.

It is not, then, so much the intrinsic opinion to be attacked, which
is matter for consideration, as the point of view in which it may be
presented, and the manner of effecting its separation from the interests
in which it is involved. The attack upon established error should
resemble that game which children play, by casting a bundle of small
sticks into a confused heap; and then endeavouring to pick them out, one
by one, without disturbing the rest. We should begin by casting about for
the detached and isolated points, and next remove those which have the
fewest connexions—leaving untouched the pieces in which there are the
greatest implications—till at last perhaps they will fall by their own
weight.

Much also depends upon times and seasons. When the current of opinion
runs strong, an expert swimmer will not directly breast it, but take
advantage of back-waters and of sheltering prominences: but when the tide
is on the turn, and the force of the stream is nearly spent, he dashes
boldly into the middle of the waters, and gains his point by the shortest
possible cut.

It is by inattention to this fact, that effect is often mistaken for
cause. Preachers and orators lay the French revolution to the charge
of Voltaire and the philosophers, who were but the creatures of the
revolutionary movement. They would neither have shewn themselves so
boldly, nor obtained so much sympathy, if the spirit of the age had not
been preeminently coincident with, and favourable to, their efforts.
Had Bacon lived in the twelfth century, and had he, by a miracle,
possessed the knowledge which he afterwards displayed, he would have
either been brought to the stake, or his books, through the neglect of
his cotemporaries, would have been consigned to the dust of libraries,
to have awaited a more congenial and spirit-stirring epoch. Wickliff
was as bold and as clear-sighted a reformer, as Luther; but he was more
in advance of his age: and his want of success was the penalty of the
discrepancy.

In combating error, it is a golden rule to leave unnoticed whatever is
indifferent to the point at issue. In converting a Jew, it is unwise to
begin by ostentatiously eating pork. Leave the Quaker in the undisturbed
possession of his hat, and the Catholic in the quiet enjoyment of his red
herring. In the same spirit, it is good to back truth by authority and
precedent: for though mere reason is better argument, yet authority, by
chiming in with the prejudices of the hearer, will in all probability be
the more availing. There are thousands who would reject the doctrine of
philosophical necessity, nakedly proposed, who would willingly embrace
it, if disguised under the mask of grace and predestination; simply
because a few grave names may be cited in favour of the latter opinion.

The interests and passions of those who may be hostile to a given
reformation, are not all involved in an equal degree. There are thousands
and tens of thousands who will accept of a principle, up to a certain
point, where it begins to operate on themselves. With a few exceptions,
all the world is beginning to be reconciled with free trade in every
branch of industry,—but their own. It is therefore dangerous to push
a principle at once to its utmost extreme. The further it is carried,
the more persons are alarmed, and the less is the shame attendant upon
brutish opposition. The moderate, moreover, in all disputes, collect
around them the half thinkers and half feelers—a powerful faction,
embracing those who are too indolent to inquire, or too corrupt to desire
a practical improvement to the fullest extent. For such personages
a middle term is a convenient retreat; and by neutralizing their
opposition, you gain time and a clearer stage. This may not always be
very candid: but if the “_così al egro_” system be allowable in oratory,
it is no less justifiable where the grave interests of the species are at
issue. The number of those who see questions in their wholeness, is very
small; the mass are more moved by especial instances and examples.

In knowledge, nothing is isolated; and the establishment of one truth
is the dethronement of many errors. With these, it is best to deal in
detail; and await the gradual development of a growing spirit, before
venturing upon points in which the age is not prepared to follow. Every
body admits that the Deity is wise and good: but he who should deduce all
the necessary consequences of this abstract verity, would expose such a
mass of inconsistencies and absurdities, as would bring the whole force
of the many to bear against him; and would ensure for himself the palm of
martyrdom, without advancing public opinion one iota. Proceed, therefore,
like the snail, with your feelers before you; and reserve to yourself, by
a timely halt, the privilege of never combating with more opponents at
once than you feel able to overthrow. Disgraceful retreats are pregnant
with fearful delays: for a _coup manqué_ is followed by a revulsion of
sentiment which may require the lapse of a generation to recover.

A point of prudence, equally commendable, is to avoid taking in hand
too many simultaneous reforms. In this respect Voltaire was wiser than
Rousseau, who levelled his attacks at once against the abuses of church
and state. By respecting the nobility, while he attacked the clergy,
Voltaire even now exercises a beneficial influence on French affairs. The
Jesuits have at this moment many opponents among the old noblesse, who
have derived their opinions on church government from that writer, simply
because he spared the pretensions of their own class. In the field of
argument, as in the field of battle, an undue extension of the line is
accompanied by a corresponding weakness in all its points.

There is, however, one case in which a contrary method is more availing;
namely, when the public spirit is not carried very powerfully in any
certain direction, and when opinion stagnates. In such moments, the more
startling and extravagant the novelty, the more likely it is to produce
an impression. Authority and precedent are beaten down and trodden upon
by a shock which unsettles all habitual notions: and an enthusiasm is
unexpectedly engendered, which commences a new epoch in the history of
nations. It was thus that the American revolution found its age; and
that the political works of Thomas Paine produced an effect, which a
writer of less daring and intensity could never have achieved. Under all
circumstances, extreme opinions have the merit of setting the thinking
part of the public to work: but when they are scattered _mal à propos_,
it is with the certain shipwreck of the propounders; and often with a
flux and reflux of sentiment, that eventually consumes more time and
means, than are necessary to arrive at the proposed end, by a gentler and
more undermining method.

These remarks will explain the partial successes of writers, who have
taken in one age and country more than in others. Newton and Locke were
admired in England, long before they made their way on the Continent; but
latterly Locke has been more popular abroad than at home: because the
spirit of the age, moving in contrary directions, has led the English
back towards despotism in politics and mysticism in religion; whereas,
abroad, it flowed in a full tide towards reason and liberality. It is
now fashionable to question Locke’s fundamental principle, not because
an innate idea can be brought in evidence against him, but on account
of certain supposed consequences to which his principle is said to
lead—and this happens in the nineteenth century! So, likewise, Beccaria,
Filangieri, and other writers of the same cast, have never attained the
same popularity in England, as with their own countrymen; while Bentham,
who at home is an object of sarcasm and suspicion, is admired on the
Continent as the very prophet of legislation. A change in the spirit
of the age is at this moment (1821) working a corresponding alteration
in the reputation of the writers of the French Augustan epoch; who are
losing much of their former popularity, or rather idolatry, among their
countrymen; and are giving place to authors, whose ideas and manners are
more consonant to the existing state of public feeling and opinion.

Knaves and hypocrites are perfectly aware of these truths; unless,
indeed, it is the blind instinct of cupidity, which leads them so
directly to their corrupt ends. But reformers in general, either are
ignorant of them, or disregard them. The enthusiasm which leads forward
the advanced guard of opinion, but rarely allows an observance of what
is merely prudential; and the high-minded votarist of truth, shrinks
from whatever assumes the aspect of compromise, as from a degradation.
The first promulgators of useful innovations are therefore usually the
victims of their zeal. They gain the honour of the day with posterity;
but in the mean time they are cast down, and form with their bodies the
bridge over which the more calculating spirits of a future day pass in
triumph to their end. Thus Romilly spent a life of disappointment and
vexation, that Mr. Peel might reap the fruits of his labours; and thus
the Archbishop of Canterbury enjoys a splendid income, for preaching the
doctrines which brought Latimer and Ridley to the stake.




THE KEY OF THE BOOK CASE.


    “Casa mia, casa mia,
    Piccolina che sia,
    Tu sei sempre casa mia.”[57]

Where did the Italians get these homely lines? they who have no “_casa
piccolina_,” and whose home is an opera box. Now I have just such a
_casa_ as this domestic maxim implies; and I love it beyond measure.
Though often glad to leave it behind me, I always return to it with
satisfaction. I never knew any, but the foolish and the worthless of my
own sex, who did not feel a real pleasure in the performance of domestic
duties; and though one may be sometimes inclined to leave behind, “_tous
ses maris et tous ses enfans_,” as Madame de Coulanges has it, still a
true woman always comes back with pride and delight to the fuss, and
rummage, and self-importance of domestic legislation. The great must
know less of this, than those whose fortunes are at odds with their
tastes and position; and the blue stockings, of all ranks, affect to have
souls above saucepans. But we of the trade, who have taken our places as
candidates for the emoluments and honours of authorship, are not forced
upon such affectation.

“One of the advantages of being a wit,” says Swift, “is the license it
gives to play the fool;” and one of the privileges of a female writer
who has no longer a name to make, is, that she may make her own—pudding,
if she likes it. For myself, I am a heaven-born cook: but of this, more
hereafter. Still, what I miss most, when I leave my own house, is not my
_batterie de cuisine_, but my library. Not that it is as large as the
Alexandrian, nor as curious as the Vatican; but that it is just that sort
of library in which, as Madame de Sévigné says, “you cannot lay your hand
on a volume without a desire to read it through.”

_Madonna mia!_ how well I know the smell of a country-house library!
Being, by divine indignation, an author, people think I do nothing but
read and write books, “eat paper, and drink ink,” as Sir Nathaniel says;
and are pleased to consider that which is but the episode, as the history
of my life. It frequently happens that, before I have made acquaintance
with half the rose trees, smelled the geraniums, or swallowed a draught
of the delicious air I left town expressly to breathe, I am presented
with the key of the book-case—[I would as soon lock up my bells as my
books, since the great merit of both is to be always at hand]—So I go
twisting and turning the said key into its rusty lock; and, _ouf!_ the
fust and the must, when the book-case is opened! Then, what a search for
something one can read through in less than a twelvemonth. Out of every
hundred volumes, there are scarcely more than six or seven works; for
country-house libraries are made up of folios, quartos, or large octavos,
_pour le moins_; except that here and there is a sort of thick, short,
squat volume, that belongs to no class of form; and every work runs from
ten to fifteen volumes. The reason is, that country-house libraries
are generally heir-looms, originally collected as a mark of gentility
by the wisdom of the country-house ancestors. They consist of what are
called standard books—books that would let the world stand still to the
end of time!—composed and collected when knowledge, instead of being
given, as now, in quintessential drops, was weighed out by the stone,
or measured by the yard. Concentration, in all things—the throwing off
the rubbish, and getting at the element—is the true proof of excellence;
and it is now, in literature, as in medicine; instead of being choked
with a pint of bark mud, (all port wine as it may be,) we swallow a few
pellucid drops of _quinine_, without wry faces or deep inspirations! It
formerly took a life to write a book, and half a one to read it. Oh, the
“Rollin’s Histories,” and “Voyages round the World,” and the “Clelias and
Cassandras,” and the poems in fifty-nine cantos—the folio “Thoughts upon
Nothing,” and the seven-volume ponderosity of “Sir Charles Grandison!”

Denon—whose own work on Egypt, hit off, as it is, with his own
peculiar _finesse_ and spirit, (_touche fine et spirituelle_,)—is a
fair illustration of the genuine style of modern writing—Denon was the
most impatient person under the infliction of voluminous works (myself
excepted) that I ever knew. It was a constant theme of abuse and
laughter between us. One night I was leaning on his arm, at a _soirée_,
at the Prince de Beauveau’s, when the excellent and estimable Monsieur
S——, in passing close by us, trod on his foot: he turned to me, with an
expression of pain, and said, “_Ah! ma chère petite, les dix-huit volumes
m’ont tombé sur le pied!_”[58] And yet, after all, I, too, have appeared
pranked out in two quarto volumes, heavier than myself, and quite as
tall: but of this presumptuous magnitude, I stood as guiltless as of the
Talmud. Three small, compact, lady-like octavos were ever the utmost
boundary of my authorical ambition. For all beyond this, my publishers
were more in fault than I.

One exception I must make: I originally wrote my “Novice of St. Dominick”
in ten goodly, stout volumes, which, with much humility, as I thought,
I cut down to seven. With these seven—by far the heaviest part of
my luggage—I arrived in London, and presented myself to Sir Richard
Phillips, who advised me, to take back my manuscript, like a good girl,
and reduce it to five. “Insatiate monster, would not one suffice!” But
down went the volumes; and when I took the remaining sibyl leaves to
Sir Richard, he again begged they might be reduced to four. This was
too much; though I verily believe, at this moment, that the publisher’s
good-natured consideration of my _amour propre_ alone prevented him from
stinting my exuberance to two volumes, which, perhaps, he ought to have
done. The work, however, succeeded, in spite of its bulk, and still
maintains a preference over my lighter and better productions, in the
estimation at least of my cotemporaries, the ladies of a certain age, who
first read its multitudinous pages, when they were as young as the author
who wrote them; and who still mistake their own first, warm impressions
for the merits of a work, which, truth to tell, had not too many to boast
of.

Extreme youth, like extreme age, is naturally verbose. If the aged speak
from the fulness of memory, the young are loquacious from the novelty
and strength of their sensations. Youth, likewise, suspects not its
own tritisms and plagiarisms; nor thinks it is telling what every body
knows, and nobody cares for. The secret, the grand secret, that “_l’art
d’ennuyer est l’art de tout dire_”[59]—that to exhaust a subject is not
to illustrate it—is unknown to the young, who know so little, and who
feel so much.

When I wrote “The Novice,” two volumes or ten were alike to me. But I
must keep the history of my authorship for another time. It would make a
cat laugh: alas! it has often made me cry!




APOTHECARIES.


À propos to _quinine_, that pretty, elegant medicine, that looks like
distilled diamonds, or the rill that runs between the ornamented banks
of my dear Kilfane. This getting at quintessences is rather injurious to
the craft and mystery of compounding. When people cease to take medicine
by the pint, adieu to _Messieurs les Apothicaires_! This was confessed,
with much _naïveté_, lately, by one of the profession, who left it, to
undertake an extensive brewery. Being asked the motive of this change, he
said, “The public will now swallow my drugs by the quart, instead of the
phial.”

How many professions depend upon the ignorance of the age in which they
flourish. In the middle ages, the apothecaries were general shopkeepers,
and, in England, for a long time, the exclusive dealers in wine. In
Italy, where so many traces of the middle ages still subsist unchanged,
the apothecary is called, to this day, _speziale_, or spice-dealer.
When we resided at Como, we purchased our tea, sugar, wax-lights, oils,
and medicines, all at the same shop. Up to the time of James the First,
the apothecaries of London were not a distinct body, but belonged to the
Grocers’ Company. The probability is, that humanity gained little by the
change; for a trade, when turned into a mystery, is but better fitted to
play upon the innate gullibility of man. The _hocus-pocus_ of pouring one
bottle into another, lost nothing in the hands of persons, who assumed
the right of administering, by gallons, their own compositions.

_Rabelais_, by-the-by, was the son of an apothecary, who was Seigneur de
la Devinière. Could this feudal lord of lands have been an apothecary, in
the modern sense of the word?—or was he not rather a wholesale general
merchant?

The Chinese, in their dull wisdom, have a curious custom in their great
towns—a substitute for our dispensaries. A stone, of many cubits high, is
erected in some public place, with the names and prices of every medicine
inscribed; and when the poor want physic, they apply to the treasury,
and get the price of the drug required. This speaks volumes for the
probity of the people. If, in Ireland, the treasury was authorized thus
to advance the purchase-money of medicines to the poor, instead of their
applying to the Medical-Hall, I fear their steps would more probably
wander to the whisky-shop. This public pricing of drugs bespeaks also
great and general ignorance among the people, who are not considered
capable of purchasing the outlandish commodity. How different from the
modern American, who buys not only his physic, but his theology, where
and how he pleases!

In our own times, there has been a vast revolution in apothecaries. As
to the mere outward man, what a difference between the formal proprietor
of a Dalmahoy-wig, and a snuff-coloured or crimson suit of dittoes, an
amber-headed cane, and scarlet _roquelaure_, (who phlebotomized our
fathers, with the solemn air of his own Galen’s-head,) and the spruce,
dapper incumbent of a cabriolet, who now bounds up to your knocker with
a hop-step-and-a-jump! But the “march of intellect” has done much more
still for the interior. Every professional man must, in these days, know
something of his business; and the apothecary, whose mental stock in
trade is not as much improved as his _matériel_, will have poor chance of
employment.—The dealers in physic first began as conjurors; then figured
as priests; next sunk into retailers of hard words; and finally have
become almost as reasonable and intelligible mortals, as the patients to
whom they administer. What will this jacobinical age come to next?




MAXIMS—PORTRAITS.


Nobody writes maxims now. Maxims do not belong to the state of intellect
and literature of the present age. In times when knowledge was the
exclusive property of a particular class, and when mankind leaned upon
the opinions of the learned, they were more apt to refer their conduct
to a well established rule, than to govern it by their own reflections.
These were the times for “wise saws and modern instances.” Men now
think for themselves, and do not require recipes for thinking. It is
remarkable, that the most celebrated maxim-mongers of modern times were
men of quality; and that their aphorisms are chiefly applicable to
the exigencies, vices, and virtues of a court, of which the flower of
maxim-mongers has said, “It does not render us happy, while it prevents
the search of happiness in other directions.”

Towards the middle of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, maxims became
a rage in France. Their terseness, point, and epigrammatic turn,
particularly adapted them to _l’esprit du siècle_, and to a language
made up of phrases—All the coteries of the Hôtels La Rochefoucauld,
Carnavalet, D’Albret, &c. &c., including all the genuine wit and taste
of the day, as opposed to the Hôtel Rambouillet and other “_bureaux
d’esprit_,” dealt largely in maxims. The Duc de Rochefoucauld published
his, and distanced all competitors. The philosophy of more enlightened
times owed much to this breviary of practical and worldly experience.
Helvetius borrowed from it his leading doctrine; and Hume, without
acknowledging the obligation, stood deeply indebted to its dogmas for his
opinions.

What a sensation the “Maxims” must have made at Versailles, when they
first came out, and

    “Each cried, ‘that is levelled at me.’”

Mesdames de La Fayette, Sévigné, Coulange, Cornuel, and others of the
female wits who surrounded the gouty chair of the once brilliant cavalier
of the beautiful De Longueville, saw the work in MS. long before it
was published, and probably helped the illustrious author to some of
the poignant maxims, to which female _finesse_ seems to have lent its
delicacy and its bitterness. It was from this very MS. that a splendid
edition of the work was published, some years back, by the Rochefoucauld
family, and edited by Mons. Suard, the late perpetual Secretary of the
Academy; who assured me, not only that the work was printed from this
precious morsel of autography, but that he was further assisted in his
editorial capacity by a copy of the first printed edition, which was
marked all over with the duke’s own corrections, erasures, and marginal
notes.

One morning, in Paris, (1818) as I sat reading a letter of Madame de
Sévigné, dated from the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld, the Count G—— de
la R—— was announced. I was so deep in the _coterie_ of Le Faubourg,
that I started, and expected to find the coadjutor along with him. “I
have brought you,” said my noble visitor, “a little _étrenne_;” and
he presented me with the works of his illustrious ancestor—_Me voilà
donc_ a link in the chain with times and persons who so early got
possession of my mind and imagination, through the accidents of my
miscellaneous and unguided studies. There is a magic in an historical
name, that no democracy of opinion or principle can resist, except in
the dull and unlettered; and it is to the glory of some of the greatest
families of France, that they were illustrated by some highly-gifted and
highly-spirited member, who enhanced the advantages of descent and birth,
and redeemed their class from the popular odium which the vices and
meanness of its majority incurred.

Before the fashion of maxim-making went out, the fashion of
portrait-making came in: every body wrote every body’s portrait. Two of
the best portraits extant are those of Cardinal de Retz, by his old enemy
and late friend, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and that of Madame de
Sévigné, by Madame de la Fayette. “_La grande princesse_,” Mademoiselle
de Montpensier, in her coarse, vulgar, but natural way, has given a
number of cotemporary portraits, through her amusing memoirs. All her
sketches of Charles II., in his youthful days, when he was paying his
addresses to her, are admirable; though very unlike the frank, generous,
and devoted cavalier who figures as the royal hero in one of Sir W.
Scott’s novels. His utter ignorance of his own affairs—his passion for
dogs and horses, and his spending all his time in learning to dance the
_triolet_[60]—which, with his declining a dish of ortolans, and throwing
himself on a piece of beef and a shoulder of mutton,[61] finally decided
her to refuse him—are admirable touches both of character and manner,
and make up a more faithful portrait of the worthless, profligate, and
“mutton-eating king,” than any on record. The reason is, that it was
drawn from the life, without any reference to party or posterity.

In the reign of the Regent Orleans, a work, called _Galerie des
Peintres_, collected all the “portraits” of the time, without any mercy
to the originals, and consequently had a considerable vogue. One of the
prettiest and best-natured works of this description I know, is still,
I believe, in MS. It is by the celebrated Madame Albrizzi, of Venice,
whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making at Padua, and who speaks
in pictures, and may well write them—a charming and rare art! The
Albrizzi Gallery is enriched with the most eminent characters of the last
half century. Her friend, and once devoted admirer, Denon, has found a
conspicuous place in it, _bien encadré_. He, in return, has engraved a
picture of Madame Albrizzi, extremely like, and worthy of its fair model.
He sent me a copy, a few weeks before his death, with one of his own.

Lady C. L—— was accused of painting the portrait of Lord Byron in
Glenarvon, though not _en beau_. One day, at a dinner party at Copet,
Madame de Staël, addressing Lord Byron across the table, asked, in her
_sans façon_ way, “Is it true, my lord, that you are the original of
Glenarvon?” “It may be so,” he replied, “but I never sat for it.”

Every body, who writes novels, now labours under the imputation of
putting forth their friends and enemies “in their books.” No “kindred or
propinquity” excludes the suspicion. No one is thus accused more than I
am; and no one is more innocent of the charge. Except in the instances
of a few public characters, which are fair game, all my sketches have
been of the species or genus, and never of the individual. Still I
think I could draw a character from the life, if I should set about it.
_Voyons_—“My dear friend Mrs. —— is one of those who—” But no; I’ll keep
my dear friend as sportsmen keep bag foxes; to let her loose on a future
and more favourable occasion for shewing sport.




HUMAN ANIMALITY.


    “His intellect is not replenished—he is only an animal, only
    sensible in the duller parts.”

                                                         SHAKSPEARE.

The chances of my visiting list brought to my boudoir this morning two
such pretty creatures, male and female, so brilliant and so bird-like,
that I thought they had escaped from a group of tropical specimens that
stood in a corner of the room, and which they very much resembled. There
was the bill, and the beak, and the bright plumage, and elegant form;
and not one sound of melody in their discordant voices—not one idea in
their vacant heads: and so they chirped, and chattered, without ceasing,
with all the emulative noise and volubility of bores and birds. They had
neither of them met before; and, mutually excited and mutually pleased,
they so ruffled and fluttered their feathers at each other, that I really
longed to catch both, to shut them up together in the same cage, and add
them to my collection of curiosities, natural, and unnatural.

These two creatures can never have any conduct, for they are evidently
and organically deficient in their judgment; those bird-shaped heads,
with their disproportioned beaks, and falling-in of the lower part of
the facial structure, always produce self willed folly—the obstinacy
which arises from the inability to receive an impression. One of my
pretty visitors has recently and strongly evinced this species of
imperturbability. Persons who resemble brute animals, are generally
deficient in intellect. Men who have the low shallow forehead of the
bull-dog will prefer Mendoza to Coke upon Littleton; and send them as you
may to the bar or to the pulpit, they will live and die prize-fighters—if
not in the ring at Hockley, at least in the circle of their friends and
acquaintance, to whom their pugnacity will be a perpetual annoyance.

Men who resemble monkeys (and I know several who do), who have small
close meeting eyes, are generally rogues, or at least extremely cunning;
but it is the cunning which is without wisdom—precisely the species
of intelligence ascribed to the amusing animal they resemble. Men, who
resemble horses, may succeed by force of volition in particular careers,
where will is more requisite, than development of intellect; but the
horse-faced gentleman could never truly answer in the affirmative to
poor Maturin’s habitual question, on a first introduction—“_Are you
intellectual?_”

I believe it is an allowed fact in physics, that the extreme facial
development, which goes to the physiognomy of our horse-faced friends,
is always at the expense of the brain; for the horse is a most stupid
animal, thorough-breed him as you may. Confide in your dog, your cat,
your mule, your ass, (a most misrepresented animal, by the by,) but
beware of your horse! Train, break, educate, and harness him, he is never
to be trusted. If I had the task allotted me of selecting those to whom
the destiny of a nation was to be committed, I should never choose men
who bore an obvious resemblance to any of the race of brute animals: they
must be morally defective somehow or other. The head of a bird is not
only a moral defect, but a positive animal deformity. A horse’s head
is not a deformity, but it is evidently a very inferior organization.
Before the representatives of the people are chosen by the people, who
themselves have been likened, by a great statesman and philosopher,
to pigs, and called a swinish multitude, I would have them examined
by the suffrages of a committee of eminent physiologists, anatomists,
physicians, and surgeons.

Well, all this may be nonsense; but it is _my sense_: _tale, quale_, I
give it as I have it. “A homely thing, Sir, but a thing of my own,” as
Touchstone says; and so, there it is!




MY REVIEWERS.


    “Tout ce qui s’attache à la peau des malheureux gens de
    lettres.”

                                                             FIGARO.

There is nothing so droll as the way in which reviews are sometimes got
up—the manner in which “the charge is prepared,” and sentence of death
pronounced, by the awful “we’s,” against poor authors, like myself, who
have had their little success, not only without the “metaphysical aid” of
reviewers, but in absolute defiance of their fulminations.

The review of “Salvator Rosa” was perpetrated after this fashion. The
great well-known of a great review, in distributing work to the little
unknowns who write under him, transmitted a copy of mine to be cut up
by a certain cockney liberal, the Lycurgus of Bow-bells, and the Solon
of the Poultry. The book, thus marked for cutting by the top-sawyer,
fell into the hands of one who mentioned it to the author. _Pardi!_ it
was “cut and come again!”—all scored, underlined, and marginally-noted
with square and rule canons of criticism—as a guide to the London
journeyman, who knew as much of “Salvator” and the arts, as he did of
the interior of Devonshire-house or the Vatican. But no matter: “_puis
donc qu’il suffisoit en ce tems-là d’avoir la figure d’homme pour
se mêler de critiquer_”—he applied himself to the job, and a long,
inflated, bitter article was done, as per order, full of mis-statements
and misrepresentations; when “one sad doubt arose,” of a much less
conclusive tendency than that of Parnell’s “Hermit,” but on a point of
more immediate personal interest. The reviewer, _à commandement_, was not
only a journeyman sawyer of the great Edinburgh pit, but he was also on
Mr. Colburn’s list of “my authors;” and as the authoress of “Salvator”
was the queen-bee of that gentleman’s authorical hive, there was no
knowing how the matter might be taken, or how far it might offend Mr.
Colburn to attack his queen-bee, and stop the sale of a work upon which
he had expended a considerable price. To set his mind at ease, then, the
_exécuteur des hautes œuvres_ of the literary justiciary of Edinburgh
took his review to New Burlington-street, for inspection: but, just as he
was in the act of shewing his MS., the subject of its vituperations was
announced; who, having _les petites entrées_ of the publisher’s study,
followed the servant sufficiently closely, to catch a glimpse of the long
leg and _ci-devant_ white stocking of the reviewer, in his escape by
another door.

“Who have I frightened away?” asked “the lively little lady,” as the
Quarterly calls her, when it does not call her an “odious worm!”

“Only the reviewer of ‘Salvator Rosa’ in the forthcoming Edinburgh,”
replied the bibliopolist.

“And what does he say?”

“Why, it is, on the whole, rather bitter—it is indeed!”

“May I look at it? for there it lies, I know upon instinct.”

“I think you had better not. Besides, it is a point of honour—indeed it
is out of the question.”

“Oh! honour among thieves! Will you let him publish it? for I take it for
granted he is one of your Johnny Raws.”

“Why, indeed—that is, I do not think it can do any harm. The attack on
‘France’ sold two editions, you know.”

“Oh! if it is to serve _your_ sale, _laissez faire_!”

“The book has already done its business; but if your ladyship object—”

“I! Oh dear, no; let the man earn his money. By the by, who is he?”

“Who is he? Oh, I cannot—that is—upon my honour, I cannot tell you.
Clever man, though—a popular author—he is indeed!”

“You won’t tell me his name?”

“I cannot, indeed—it is quite out of the question, Lady M——.”

“Well, I’ll tell you!”

_Le fermier de mon talent_ opened his eyes! “Indeed, Lady M——, you cannot
even guess who it is. Besides, you really—that is, I should not tell you,
if you did.”

“It is Mr. ——!” and I announced the name of my Zoilus.

“Dear me!—well, now, really, you are so odd; but you are mistaken—you
are, indeed!”

I was not mistaken; nor do I know any just cause or impediment why
I should not denounce my critical executioner, who has shewn me so
little mercy, so little justice! There is something so revolting in
hired misrepresentation—something so mutually degrading, in a task thus
given, and thus performed—it belongs so peculiarly to the _canaille_
of literature, who stab for pay, like bolder (and honester) assassins,
that the soul sickens when talent, and supposed liberality, desert
the standard of independent opinion, to enlist in the _bande noire_
of organized vituperators, or enrol in the troop of well paid puffers
and party panegyrists! It is, therefore, perhaps, for the interests of
literature and morality that an exposure of such literary _girouettism_
should be made; and yet I cannot seriously denounce even a public enemy.
Though I may have “stirred up with a long pole”[62] the deathless
vengeance of the Literary Gazette, or have _rompu la paille_ with the
higher powers of the Quarterly, in return for the seven deadly sins, for
which they have excommunicated me in their Index Expurgatorius, still
I have always rather fenced with my foes in fun, than sparred with
them in spite—I have never been the first to announce, nor denounce,
the names of the calumniators who have endeavoured to blacken and to
slander mine; and even now, leaving my Bow-bell Reviewer to public
detection, as I have done others of my critical assailants, whom I have
trotted out for public amusement (nor failed in the intention,) I thus
give my wrongs to the wind, and his name, in a whisper, to the safe
ears of our mutual publisher. For his article on Salvator, I leave it
untouched and unanswered, to mark an epoch of _décadence_ in that great
periodical, which, in the better energy of its pristine vigour, was wont
to consecrate its severity by the general justice of its attacks, and the
brilliant talent with which they were executed.

And now, instead of gratifying my revenge, I will do what is so much more
gracious, and so much more consonant to my sex, character, and country—I
will gratify my vanity, by recording the opinion of one on the subject
of Salvator Rosa, in every way qualified to judge of all in which the
arts are concerned; of one who has, in his own exquisite works, left
proofs of a finer tact in literature, than all the critical acumen from
Aristotle to the Aristarchus of Modern Athens included—I mean the author
of Egypt, the _Directeur du Musée Français_, the Baron Denon. I have the
less scruple in recording the opinions of this illustrious writer and
artist, on the subject of my Life of Salvator, because it is the very
reverse of indiscriminate approbation.

Salvator Rosa, considered as the rival of Poussin, (“the god” of Denon’s
idolatry,) was not viewed with any favourable prepossession by the proud
compatriot of “the Poet of Painters:” for Denon, though long standing at
the head of the cognoscenti of Europe, and revered as their Coryphæus,
had the heroic weakness of nationality, the foible of the patriotic;
and the comparative merits of the two great cotemporaries of THE PINCIO
were too often brought in contrast by the _Romanticists_ of the day, not
to embitter a little the feelings of the elegant classicist, whose love
of the arts, as they existed in the antique world, was confirmed among
the ruins of Rome, and in the gallery of the capitol, where, both as a
minister and an exile, the deepest of his impressions were taken, and the
happiest of his days passed.

_Au reste_—to account for the rather odd appellations of “_Drôle de
corps_,” and “_Vol au vent_,” used in these letters, they were mutually
given and accepted in the gaiety and intimacy of a friendship, by which
I was so much and so long distinguished—the mutual _sobriquets_ passed
into our correspondence, which continued till within a few weeks of his
death. It is from that correspondence, that I now, for the benefit of the
arts, and the gratification of their lovers, as much as in my own defence
against an unjust, misrepresenting, and hired criticism, select and
transcribe two letters[63] on the subject of my publication of the “Life
and Times of Salvator Rosa.”

    “_To Lady Morgan, Dublin._

    “MON CHER DRÔLE DE CORPS,

    “Je viens d’apprendre que la traduction de Salvator Rosa
    paroissoit depuis quelques jours. Le premier qui m’en a parlé,
    est Monsieur de Ségur,[64] qui m’a dit, qu’il l’avoit dévoré;
    que non seulement c’étoit un ouvrage charmant, mais qu’il
    étoit d’un mérit très-distingué. D’autres m’en ont parlé avec
    enthousiasme. Ces rapports m’ont fait sentir combien je vous
    aime; car j’étois tenté de remercier ces messieurs du plaisir
    qu’ils avoient eu. J’ai vite envoyé chercher l’ouvrage; et je
    vais tâcher de lire avec reflexion, avant de vous en parler.

    “J’espère que vous allez de suite vous mettre à écrire le roman
    de Drôle de corps et de Vol au vent. N’attendez pas pour le
    dénouement, que vous mourriez de douleur de la perte que vous
    viendrez à faire de moi. Je crois qu’il vaut mieux que je vous
    enlève, que le chevalier furieux cherche nos traces, pour nous
    poignarder, et se tuer après, et que nous nous perdions tous
    trois dans le désert de Zara. En attendant, je vous envoye mon
    portrait, qu’il faut tâcher de dérober à la jalouse fureur du
    Chevalier, qui aura, sans doute, anéanti une autre épreuve, que
    je vous avois envoyé, et dont vous ne me parlez pas. Dites-lui,
    cependant quelques tendresses; car malgré les horreurs qu’il
    doit faire dans le roman, je me sens pour lui un sentiment que
    je ne saurois définir.

    “Notre pauvre Mad. —— est véritablement malade depuis six
    mois, et cependant n’est pas changée. Elle veut vous écrire:
    mais si je voulois l’attendre, peut-être ma lettre ne vous
    arriveroit-elle jamais.

    “Monsieur E. vous remettra une notice que je viens de faire,
    dont il n’y a que cinquante épreuves, pour lui donner de
    la préciosité. Un petit portrait improvisé par le meilleur
    lithographe, auquel j’ai ajouté celui du dit lithographe nommé
    Mauresse, et ma portière,—celle qui vous introduisoit, à qui
    j’avois défendu de dormir, pendant que vous étiez ici, et qui
    se repose après votre départ.

    “Vous ne savez peut-être pas, cher Drôle de corps, que votre
    Vol au vent a eu l’honneur d’être admis comme membre de votre
    académie de Dublin. Je joins ici une lettre de remercîmens à
    l’académie, que je vous prie de remettre à Mr. le Président;
    je vous prie aussi de renouveler à Monsieur Davis (qui a bien
    voulu me donner la première nouvelle de mon admission) toutes
    mes actions de grâce. Je lui ai déjà écrit; mais il est fort
    possible qu’il n’ait pas reçu ma lettre, attendu que tout ce
    que j’écris en Angleterre et en Irlande est régulièrement
    retenu;—sans doute, pour le faire imprimer, lorsqu’il y en aura
    assez pour former un volume.

    “Je vous dirai que votre portrait m’a fait grand plaisir,
    quoique le nez soit trop gros. Mais il est gravé avec finesse
    et délicatesse; et l’aspect général m’est agréable.

    “Je suis bien de votre avis relativement à nos compatriotes.
    Cependant il y en a peut-être encore jusqu’à quatre qu’il faut
    distinguer de la tourbe regnante.

    “Adieu, cher Drôle de corps; je vous aime bien, et suis bien
    aise de vous aimer.

                           “Votre Vol au vent,

                                                            “DENON.”

    “_Le 19 Mars, 1824._”

    “Voici un petit portrait de Salvator Rosa, qu’autrefois j’ai
    gravé à la hâte; je vous en envoyerai un autre, sur une boîte,
    par la première occasion.”

    “_To Lady Morgan, Dublin._

    “CHER DRÔLE DE CORPS,

    “Je lis avec un plaisir extrême votre Salvator Rosa.
    L’introduction est une superbe chose. Ensuite il faut que
    vous me permettrez de vous observer, que vous prenez trop
    parti dans la guerre des artistes. S. Rosa avoit bec et ongles
    pour se défendre, et il en usoit même la plus part du temps
    offensivement; c’étoit un habile homme, mais fort mauvais
    coucheur. On pouvoit l’admirer, se plaire avec lui; mais il
    devoit être très-difficile de l’aimer. Vous le peignez comme
    libéral, et vous le laissez voir plus que glorieux, farouche,
    fastueux, hautain, despote s’il avoit pu: furieux pendant
    toute sa vie d’être regardé comme un peintre de genre, tandis
    qu’il n’auroit été que cela, si dans les dernières années de
    sa vie, il ne se fut avisé de faire quatre ou cinq tableaux
    d’histoire. Après cela, mon cher Drôle de corps, vous l’avez
    trop loué comme graveur. Dans ces planches il a écrit ses
    compositions, la fougue de ses pensées; mais sa pointe est
    lâche et vagabonde: et dans ce genre, il à été ni dessinateur
    ni coloriste. Enfin je vais peut-être vous faire sauter en
    l’air, quand je vous dirai que la moindre graveur de Rembrandt
    est préférable à la plus belle de Salvator Rosa. Du reste,
    cher Drôle de corps, vous avez atteint le but principal de
    votre ouvrage, qui est de faire connoître le siècle, que vous
    avez peint jusqu’à l’illusion, tellement qu’en le lisant je me
    croyois de la société de tous ces gens-là.

    “Quand vous ferez une seconde édition, souvenez-vous, chère
    amie, de mieux traiter le portrait du Poussin, qui étoit
    aussi modeste qu’il étoit grand. A la vérité, il ne savoit ni
    chanter, ni jouer de farces dans la rue, mais comme peintre
    d’histoire, votre enragé petit maître n’est qu’un nain près
    de ce Colosse. Quand on vent louer ses amis, il faut bien
    se garder de certains rapprochements, et de réveiller des
    comparaisons qu’ils ne peuvent soutenir. Songez que le Poussin
    fut le créateur du paysage historique, et le maître de son
    gendre le Gouaspe; et que les seuls tableaux du Déluge, et
    Diogène brisant la tasse, surpassent tout ce que le Salvator
    Rosa a fait en paysage, pour la pensée, pour la poësie, et
    même pour la couleur. Quant à la composition, à la gravité,
    et à la philosophie de l’histoire, le Poussin est peut-être
    le premier de tous les peintres. Il faut donc vous dire, mon
    cher Drôle de corps, que dans la promenade des deux sociétés
    qui se rencontrent, j’étois dans celle de Poussin; et que vous
    m’offensez en tournant en ridicule mon patron, et ma juste
    admiration pour lui.

    “_Fidatevi di me_, qui vous parle de sang froid comme ami,
    charmé que vous ayez fait un ouvrage qui vous fera à tout
    jamais beaucoup d’honneur, et que j’ai lu avec cet intérêt, qui
    rende le succès de l’amitié si doux à partager.

    “Mille tendres amitiés bien sincères.”

    “_Le 14 Avril._”




EXCLAMATIONS.


Cold-blooded nations deal but little in exclamations; they belong to
the petulance of strong impulses, and to ardent temperaments, national
and individual. The Laplanders neither invoke, exclaim, nor imprecate;
the French and Italians are continually doing all three. Quakers, whose
education teaches them to “set a pulse and preach their blood to reason,”
scarcely ever resort to exclamations, to express their feelings. The
English are not exclaimers; their forms for this purpose are few and
foolish; and when they go beyond the _niaiserie_ of “dear me!” “bless
me!” “my stars!” they fall into downright imprecation. The Irish, the
petulant Irish, are great exclaimers. Like the Italians, they borrow
their exclamations from their creed; and when under strong excitement,
pronounce in piety, that which, to the Calvinistical severity of English
protestant ears, would sound very like profanation!

The Italians borrow their exclamations alike from their religion and
the antique faith of their great progenitors; and Per Bacco! Cospetto!
“Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,” come with equal and frequent facility to their
lips. They invoke, exclaim, and apostrophise, upon all occasions, trivial
or important. A fishwoman in the piazza of the Pantheon, will resort
to every vow and invocation of the ancient or modern faith of Rome, to
dispose of her stale fish on the evening of a fast day; and will express
her surprise or indignation at an undervaluing chapman, who rejects her
eels, or resists her turbot, by a volley of “_Madonna Mia’s!_” “_Sacro
Sacramento’s_,” and “_Madre di Dio’s!_” The French have a number of
charming exclamations and apostrophes; they have also many that are
quaint and simple, and extremely effective in low comedy. Molière abounds
in them; and the humour and the à propos of his _ouf!_ and _ouais!_
is quite indefinable. Denon and I got into the habit of ouf-ing and
ouais-ing at each other, until, with me, it became a _tic_, putting my
native Irish “ahs!” and “ochs!” in abeyance; and it is as much as I can
do to resist my interjectory oufs! and ouais! even on paper, and in the
regular way of professed authorship!




IRISH JUDGES.


It is extremely difficult to get the Irish to be grave upon grave
subjects. With a few exceptions in favour of absolute dulness and
mediocrity, all our judges are _drôles de corps_, and the highest the
drollest of any. What was Joe Miller to Judge Norbury, who kept the bar
in a roar for nearly half a century, and rarely passed sentence of death
without making some of his auditors die laughing?

“Here is a fellow, my lord,” (said an attorney, the other day, to one of
our legal chiefs,) “accused of stealing turnips; under what act can he be
attacked?”

“I really don’t know,” said the judge, without taking his eyes from the
paper on which he was writing.

“You don’t know, my lord?”

“No, not immediately, Mr. ——.”

“What does your lordship think of the _timber_ act?”

“Probably—that is, if the turnips were _sticky_!”




AT THE HEAD OF HIS PROFESSION.


Doctor ——, now so celebrated and so wealthy, served a hard probation to
success. I knew him in his obscurity, and thought him then a better and
an abler man, than I think him now. I saw him struggling, through all the
hopeless drudgery of his profession, up to his present eminence: haunting
hospitals, and bowing to Nurse Tenders. For years, he read, wrote, and
lectured, and did every thing but get on—still he laughed, and talked,
and was agreeable: at last he looked solemn, wore black silk stockings
and creaking shoes, walked on tip-toe, and turned methodist: his success
was rapid and complete; and he is now what is called—_at the head of his
profession!_—“_Le savoir faire vaut bien le savoir!_”




THE CHARITABLE BAZAARS OF DUBLIN.


It has been said by a classic authority, that force without judgment is
overthrown by its own impetus; and the proposition is equally true of
virtue. To do good to mankind is less facile than moralists suppose.
It requires something more than a mere animal impulse; and there is
much ground for doubting whether the world (at least the British world)
does not suffer more from the impertinent interference of mistaken
benevolence, than from the direct attacks of selfishness and malice on
its order and happiness. Charity, more especially, (though, in a well
ordered state, a duty whose exercise is limited within a narrow and
comprehensible sphere,) becomes, under a government replete with abuses
and fertile in factitious misery, a science requiring as much patient
research, and as large a grasp of intellect, as any other department of
politics. To be charitable on an extensive scale, is to legislate for
the poor; and man, in his domestic capacity, (whatever may be thought of
him as a citizen or a subject) is an animal made to think and to act for
himself.

In the British empire, where every class of society is more or less
dislocated, where the rewards of industry are subject to frequent
revolutions, and where life is sustained by the most painful efforts,
errors in the direction or energy of the charitable are doubly fatal.
They are not only a waste of the scanty and insufficient resources of
the multitudinous poor, a destruction of so much of the materials of
happiness, but they are a direct and positive evil, deranging the economy
of the lower orders, harassing them by needless and galling dictation,
and destroying in their bosoms the principle of independence, without
which there can be no virtue.

An high estimate of pecuniary charity in the scale of virtues is the
result of incivilization, and a testimony of the barbarity of the
governments where it prevails. Where the people are well governed and
prosperous, the field for the exercise of this virtue is necessarily
limited; but wherever great and terrible inequalities in human condition
subsist, charity is a necessary supplement to the defective institutions,
out of which they arise. In the christian world, where pecuniary
liberality is dignified as a theological virtue, charity stands in the
place of many more serviceable and important duties; and much of that
energy which should be given to the improvement of the political and
statistic condition of the country, is wasted in a vain attempt to
bolster up bad systems, and to avert by eleemosynary efforts the miseries
and vices accumulated by misrule. The high and influential classes are
especially prone to fall into this error. Too moral and too religious
to be satisfied with the wretchedness by which they are surrounded, yet
too selfish, perverse, or indolent to attempt a thorough removal of its
causes, they satisfy their consciences by attempting to relieve in detail
the sufferings, which their privileges and pretensions produce in the
gross; and when they have bestowed a small per centage of their overgrown
fortunes upon the wretches whom their monopoly of power has impoverished
and wronged, they flatter themselves that they have done all which human
sympathy or divine injunction requires at their hands.

This description of charity has been well described by a popular writer,
as “other-worldly-mindedness;” and no where is it more sensitive and
alive than among the aristocracy of Ireland,—a country where mendicity
is national, and where religious Quixotism is carried to the fever point
of exaltation and excess. Unfortunately this fiery and rampant zeal is
utterly deficient in knowledge; and there is more waste of money in
the city of Dublin, more direct provocation of misery by ill-contrived
attempts to relieve distress, more misdirected energy, than would,
if properly applied, remove, ten times over, all the pauperism of a
wholesomely constituted society of the same bulk.

In a country so teeming with an unemployed population as Ireland, it
certainly is not an easy matter to give a proper direction to public
feeling, and to avoid falling into dangerous errors; and though it is
necessary to signalize the more flagrant and mischievous abuses, and to
ridicule an all pervading folly, by which society suffers so deeply, yet
it must be confessed that the individuals who come under the lash are not
without some excuse. If their presumption and self-conceit are absurd and
baneful, their intentions at least are often the purest and the best.

The sphere of charity, its productive power of good, being closely
confined to the relief of those fortuitous evils to which the lower
classes must ever be exposed, even in the best regulated societies, the
moment it is applied to large categories of persons, as a remedy for
permanent abuses, it becomes an unmanageable and equivocal agent of
happiness, interfering with independent labour, disturbing its market,
and rendering occupation precarious, and its reward fluctuating. The
means which a nation possesses of employing its population are definite;
and charity, in giving them a new direction, does not increase the sum:
on the contrary, in as far as the process is forced and unnatural, it
tends to diminish that sum by waste and mismanagement. Most of the
charitable efforts which daily succeed each other for the employing
the poor of Ireland, are but the pouring money out of one pocket, to
place it in another; and if certain individuals are put to work in a new
direction by the process, an equal number are inevitably thrown out of
employment in some unobserved department.

This evil attaches with particular severity and mischievous effect to
those associations of good and pious ladies, who either work themselves
for the benefit of the poor, or find employment for them in charitable
asylums, where they are enabled to under-sell and drive out of the market
all competitors who are thrown upon their own resources. The money which
is collected by the sale of needle and fancy work thus performed, is
a direct robbery of the sempstresses, who, in garrets and in cellars,
strive to exist by unwearied labour. The cheap repositories that vend
articles of taste, fabricated in Magdalen asylums and receptacles for
the destitute, not only severely injure the shopkeeper, who pays rent
and taxes for the service of the public, but, through him, strikes
despair into the bosom of a large class of helpless females, who avail
themselves of accomplishments, acquired in happier circumstances, to
support themselves in independence, by the only means which the perverse
exclusion of women from their natural employments has left open to them.
It is no justification of such establishments, that they sell only
inutilities, calculated to catch a certain portion of loose cash, which
otherwise would be lost to benevolence. The manufacture of inutilities,
no less than that of articles of prime necessity, is the property of the
working poor,—a property with which the public cannot tamper, without
producing a certain evil, that is never compensated by the uncertain and
delusive good expected from the process.

Among the many idle, delusive, and extravagant amusements, invented by
that model of Grand Caliphs, Louis the XIVth, not the least remarkable
were the shops opened in the saloons of Versailles, and kept by the
king’s mistresses, or the princesses of the blood, attended by cavaliers,
who, though officiating as shop-boys, were chosen according to their rank
and office. In these magazines, toys, trinkets, and jewels of immense
value, were distributed at counters, attended by the greatest beauties
and most distinguished personages at the court; and if the cupidity
of the courtiers found its account in this prodigality, coquetry lost
nothing by the assumption of a character which added the _naïveté_ of the
_bonne bourgeoisie_ to the graces of dignity and refinement. Madame de
Maintenon dwells with emphasis on the fascinations of these illustrious
shopkeepers, and the elegance which presided over their counters.

The bazaars, called charitable, which, for some successive seasons have
been opened in Dublin, have in their details been modelled somewhat
after the manner of these _comptoirs_ of Versailles. The market is
generally held in some very public place; either at the Rotunda, (a room
consecrated to all public purposes,) or in an hotel or tavern. The stalls
are raised on either side; the shops are kept by ladies of the highest
rank in the Irish world of fashion and charity. The work disposed of is
their own; their customers are the public at large, who are admitted on
paying a shilling. The profits of the sale, of course, go to charity,
sometimes at home—too often foreign,—the conversion of Jews, or the
gathering of the stray sheep of Otaheite or Hindostan. The articles
produced to extort the benevolence of the customer, address themselves
rather to his charity than to his taste. They are multifarious; and
if variety could compensate for want of ingenuity and of skill, there
would be nothing to wish for in the bazaars of the charitable ladies of
Dublin:—worsted stockings, to fit Irish giants,—bead purses, threaded by
fairy fingers,—frizettes for the head, woven of horse-hair,—and slippers
of hemp for the feet, as fatiguing as the tread-mill,—hearth-rugs
as rugged “as a Russian bear,”—and pillows of lavender, not much
smoother,—old jelly and stale cakes, which have figured at more than
one tea and tract _soirée_,—and ornaments in every form, that can be
produced by paste and paper, and daubed by paint,—from a pagoda to a
pincushion,—of just that description which a woman of taste consigns to
her housekeeper’s room, and the housekeeper, in turn, bestows on the
still room, as fit for nothing but to preserve dust, and afford lurking
places for spiders.

Meantime, if criticism looks on with her “eye malign askance,” in its
lounge up the long line opened between the repositories of trash, there
are many whose susceptibility supplies the place at once of taste and of
charity, and the bazaar is the great resort of all the _désœuvrés_ of one
sex, and of all the saints of the other. Among the most distinguished of
the first, are the military elegants of the garrison; among the latter,
are some of the highest and prettiest of the aristocracy. Placed behind
piles of pincushions, each having a moral in minikins stuck on its silken
surface, or behind an outwork of paper screens, consecrated by the Lord’s
prayer and the commandments, stands the fair trader, with a look, “sober,
steadfast, and demure,” and an air of gentle solicitation, like that of
the venders of royal effigies at the gate of the Tuileries, who cry,
from morning till night, “_Voyez, Messieurs, voyez la famille royale de
France, et la Princesse Caroline, tous pour deux sous._”[65]

I was one day much amused by observing a little scene of this sort. The
finest eyes I ever saw, were doing the honours of a charitable counter,
to the very best of their ability. “_A bonnes enseignes, bon vin._” A
young and gallant hussar, whose attention had wandered from stall to
stall, with undefined charity, was at last attracted by the “_voyez,
messieurs_,” of the eyes alluded to. The _petit commerce_ once begun, it
was difficult to say which party threw most enterprize and speculation
into the transaction. Fly-traps were shut and opened, with suitable
comments on flies and traps; tablets were displayed, whose inscriptions
were only to be breathed upon, to become, like good impressions,
ineffacable; Adam and Eve, with the tempter in the tree, worked on a
footstool in tent stitch, were not without allusion and edification; and
the history of “Theresa Tidy” was recommended as a _souvenir_ for absent
sisters, with an air which proved that saints, as well as hussars, can
be good disciplinarians. The choice was at length made. It fell upon a
bunch of violets, reared by the fair hands of the vender for charitable
purposes. The young hussar drew it from its vase, “all dripping with
dew,” breathed its essence, looked full in the eyes of the _belle
jardinière_, paid his sigh and his sovereign, and—was elbowed on by a new
chapman, whose aid-de-camp’s uniform gave him superior claims on the
attention of the charitable bazaarist.

As I left the door of Morrison’s tavern, where the scene passed, the
young hussar stood waiting for his cab. A naked, shivering little girl,
with a bunch of wallflowers (stuffed with grass “to make a show,”) in her
dirty hands, came “between the wind and his nobility;” and with the usual
supplicatory drawl of Irish mendicity, solicited his attention, according
to its most approved formulary: “The Lord powr (pour) a blessing on your
beautiful honour, Sir, and buy them iligant wallflowers for an half-penny
from a fatherless orphant, that hasn’t broke her fast this day, God help
her.” His “beautiful honour” heard her not, or valued not the liquid
blessing of Heaven at the price the supplicant put upon it. He held his
violets to his nose. His thoughts were behind the counter of the bazaar,
and his foot on the step of his cab. After a moment’s hesitation, he
returned to the bazaar, and the half-penny worth of wallflowers fell to
my lot.

While ignorant benevolence, and mistaken charity, fancy they are serving
the great cause of humanity, by promoting institutions which are, in
fact, directly opposed to their laudable intentions, low cunning and
self-love take advantage of the circumstance, by joining in a work
which produces a temporary intimacy and equality between the little
and the great. Many, who have no other means of getting on in society,
find, in the charitable repositories, bazaars, and poor-shops, a means
of introduction to its autocrats, (for even poor Dublin has its _bel
air_) of acquaintance with the Countess of this, and the Marchioness
of the other, the long desired object of all their struggles, hopes,
and desires. Among a people essentially vain and ambitious, this sort
of connexion draws in a vast number of subscribers, contributors, and
labourers, to all schemes of mistaken benevolence, or quackish meddling;
and the peculiar notions of the catholics, on the necessity of a constant
practice of charity, complete the sums requisite for their mischievous
success.

On the privations and sufferings inflicted on the respectable and
laborious poor, by such interference with the branch of industry upon
which they almost exclusively rely, it would be easy to say some
eloquent things; for it is difficult to enter deeply and warmly into
any subject, and not to treat of it effectually. There is no muse
like being in earnest. But here is a little document, worth all that
practised authorship could give on the subject, however deeply felt,
or well studied. It is a letter from some poor sufferer, written in
all the simplicity and integrity of conscious injury. I give it, with
the too flattering letter in which it was inclosed, and which, (having
received it this morning, March 29th, 1829,) directed my thoughts to the
composition of this brief article. Having allied myself, from my earliest
youth, to the oppressed party of my country, I have never enjoyed there
but one distinction. The suffering and the unfortunate of all creeds have
honoured me, by claims on my sympathy, which, alas! is frequently all I
have to bestow; and I have, for many years back, been in the habit of
receiving applications from the wretched, (a painful preeminence) which
have included the details of almost every species of misery which flesh
is heir to, from the despair of the condemned convict, who has written to
me from his cell, to the indignant repinings of neglected genius, and
the eloquent recital of “all the wrongs, which patient merit from the
unworthy takes.”

But to the letter, and the simple statement of the distressed female,
suffering from the ladies’ charitable bazaar, which I give exactly as I
received it:—

    “_To Lady Morgan, Kildare-street, Dublin._

    “Without presuming the Irish heart of your ladyship to be at
    all concerned in the pernicious custom!—the enclosed alludes
    to, it is very humbly submitted to your kind consideration—as
    one looked up to—as well in national pride—as the kindness of
    your disposition towards every individual of your country—and
    as it appears the _press_ (the best medium of rectifying
    publick evils) will not receive it—your general opinion—of
    the mischief it records—may go far in serving—a class of poor
    individuals (_your countrywomen_) labouring under the hardship
    it details—and layd before your ladyship—by _one_ of the
    oppressed sufferers—who has the honour to be,

              “Your Ladyship’s

                     “Most obedient humble Servant,

                                              “A DISTRESSED FEMALE.”

    “_Dublin, March 28th, 1829._”

    “_To the Ladies of the late Bazaar, and those generally of
    Dublin._

    “LADIES:

    “However painful in laying before you in this public manner
    evils brought on a numerous class of persons—through
    inadvertency and want of consideration (as hunger will break
    through stone walls) it is necessary, in addition to many
    hints you have already had laid before you, to now enter into
    a more particular detail of the misfortune visited on many,
    by your establishing bazaars and other shops, to be met with
    in many parts of Dublin, for the sale of _ladies’ works_; nor
    are you to suppose in doing so, it is intended to convey any
    idea of your not laudably working for yourselves or families,
    or contributing to such charities as you may desire to be
    interested in; but in doing so, permit me to say, you should
    put your hands in _your pockets_, and by no means interfere
    with the bread of others, as you manifestedly have done. You
    will please to recollect that besides the more common and
    industrious classes of society, there are many respectable,
    well educated females, reduced, from _misfortune_, and not
    _fault_, to the necessity of earning their bread by the work of
    their hands; inferior in taste, ingenuity, and acquirements,
    to none of their countrywomen! now thrown on the world for
    want of a usual emporium for the sale of their labour; wrought
    probably in filial piety for the humane and dutiful purposes of
    assisting an aged father or mother perishing in silent misery.
    For your bazaars, and from the glut of work they accumulate,
    prevent even shopkeepers from taking any off their hands,
    from the impossibility of disposing of it, as well as others
    purchasing those articles of taste and ingenuity, these unhappy
    people were wont to earn subsistence by. And really, ladies,
    where females are concerned, I would put it to your kind
    consideration, if it is consonant to the generous feelings of
    our soil, to thus open the floodgates of vice, as a probable
    mode of preventing starvation, encreasing female crime, and
    multiplying mendicity, in the current of misery and want.

    “Our unfortunate country labours under the severe oppression
    of considerable absenteeism; but how despairingly must it
    indeed be felt, if those our _residents_, blessed with rank and
    fortune, lend their aid to increase distress in any part of the
    community, for the benefit of a good name; let the object be
    what it may, nothing can be called charity, that uncharitably
    takes bread from the mouths of many.

    “And although excuses may be made for ladies of high
    consideration not being sufficiently acquainted, either with
    the nature of the trading world, or desperate state of the
    poor, none can, for _those_ (some now holding titles) who
    have been indebted in a great measure for their present good
    fortune, to the benefit of fair trade, and support of the
    poor; swallowing Læthean drafts and standing behind a bazaar
    table, inflicting in the articles they sell, misery and want on
    several poor creatures, their countrywomen.

    “Your last bazaar, it is understood, not only netted a
    considerable sum of money by what it sold, but has left a great
    quantity of ladies’ work yet to be disposed of; and which,
    notwithstanding the _piety_ and _charity_ of the worthy females
    concerned, is now at _their desire_, to be got rid of by a
    LOTTERY; as well in the teeth of the acts of the legislature,
    as truly encouraging a species of gambling; as destructive
    a vice as ever (in its avaricious propensities) seized on
    the human heart; and this being under the description of
    _little-go’s_, becomes subject to magisterial interference. All
    this shews the quantity of work you ladies have set up against
    the poor and industrious fair trader, whose hands _is his_ or
    _her support_, and which, evidently, you are not borne out in
    any interference with for any object whatsoever; or to lay the
    foundation of your _charities_, at the expense of the poor.

    “And it is presumed, from the non-attendance of our gracious
    vice-queen at your bazaar, that though a stranger to our
    country, she has had that consideration in the benevolence of
    her heart, which, either through inadvertency or the fashion
    of the day, appears to have escaped yours. And believe the
    want of emporium for sale of female works, has occasioned much
    trouble to her grace, by many of those starving creatures who
    have had no other hope of trying to get their productions off
    their hands, has led them to seek that commiseration from
    the stranger, which they have failed to receive at home. So
    contrary is all this to the natural goodness of heart, so
    wound up in our national female character, that it is indeed
    with pain it is adverted to, and is only attributed to the
    immediate desire of doing good; having in the impulse of the
    moment, banished that more general, reflecting, and feeling
    consideration. Your hearts, when thus strongly appealed to,
    will, I am convinced, receive in the charity and benevolence,
    so characteristic in the fair daughters of Erin.

                      “Whose obedient servant I am,

                                                       “PENELOPE,

    “Out of work.”

    “_Dublin, 23d March._

    “_Editor_,” _&c. &c. &c._

END OF VOL. I.




FOOTNOTES


[1] Having mentioned how this trifling Work came to be written, a word
may be said on how it came to be published. While the fourth volume of
the “O’Briens” was going through the press, Mr. Colburn was sufficiently
pleased with the subscription (as it is called in the trade) to the first
edition, to desire a new work from the author. I was just setting off for
Ireland, the horses literally putting to—when Mr. Colburn arrived with
his flattering proposition. I could not enter into any future engagement;
and Mr. C., taking up a scrubby MS. volume, which the servant was about
to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, asked “What was that?” I said
it was “one of many volumes of odds and ends, _de omnibus rebus_;” and I
read him the last entry I had made the night before, on my return from
the Opera. “This is the very thing,” said the European publisher; and if
the public is of the same opinion, I shall have nothing to regret in thus
coming, though somewhat in _déshabillé_, before its tribunal.

[2] “With a skip and a jump.”

[3] “We love so much to talk of ourselves.”

[4] Whoever has read the History of the Campaign in Russia, by General
Count Ségur, must feel the force of this observation.

[5] “That he was but the half of a great man.”

[6] “At night they sung an ode in praise of the king at Madame de
Maintenon’s. It was by the Abbé Genest, the music by La Lande; and the
king found it so excellent, that when it was finished he caused it to be
repeated.”

[7] “I have always before my eyes the expression on the countenances of
the men, as they looked on the Emperor with a torch in his hand, himself
casting a light on the reiterated blows with which he opened the rocks.”

[8] Raconteur—a narrator.

[9] “Come, Mademoiselle, talk to us a little about religion; and
afterwards speak on something else.”

[10] “A maker of phrases.”

[11] “Beneath his reputation.” This occurred in his interview with M.
Necker, at Geneva.

[12] “Gentlemen, there was once upon a time a fermier-général—I have
forgotten the rest.”

[13] “There, there—go away—what does it signify if I am amused?”

[14] “Worthy of the best poets of France.”

[15] “You are a good gentleman, but our business here is to bury the
dead.”

[16] “It has struck three.”

[17] Un fâcheux.

[18] Dres means, literally, “news.”

[19] P. L——n, Esq. of M——, in the county of Kildare.

[20] The Kirwans are the only aboriginal family who were admitted into
the Thirteen Tribes of Galway.—“As proud as a Kirwan,” is a Galway
proverb.

[21] A person of remarkable appearance.

[22] The Duke of Wellington was then Secretary of State for Ireland.

[23] To Mr. Kirwan is attributed the story of electrifying his
knocker; an excellent hint to persons whose notoriety exposes them
to self-interested intruders, who have no claim upon their time and
attention.

[24] “L’amour,” said the Abbé Chaulieu, “s’étoit retiré jusque dans les
rides de son front.”

[25] “I read your letter before him, and in spectacles; but they become
me pretty well. I have always had a grave look. If he is in love with
that merit which is here called _distingué_, your wish may perhaps be
accomplished. Every day I am consoled for my lost attractions by this
fine phrase.”

[26] “And I am myself so excellent at forgetfulness, that I forget my own
works as much as those of other persons.”

[27] “You swear, Friar? It is only for ornament. These are the colours of
Ciceronian rhetoric.”

[28] Maurice Quill, the Sir John Falstaff of the Irish troops, during
the Peninsular war, who assigned as a reason for entering into the 71st
regiment (I believe) his desire to be near his brother, who was in the
72d. His personal circumspection was said to be merely assumed, as a
medium for his humour.

[29] One evening, while thus engaged, to the utter abstraction from all
surrounding circumstances, we had arrived at “Hark, I hear the toll of
the bell,” when a sudden crash of all dissonant sounds produced as sudden
a suspension of our own somewhat heteroclite harmonies. Tambourines,
triangles, pokers, tongs, and shovels, were all pressed into the service.
The ladies of the party, thus armed for discord, had encircled us; and
they added a general chorus of inextinguishable laughter, _ad libitum_,
to the instrumental accompaniment they volunteered to Lord C.’s vocal
performances. At the head of the band was Lady Castlereagh herself.

[30] Les Veillées du Château.

[31] I do not mean to say that in the progress of things it may not
become perfectly justifiable to wear a white waistcoat in the morning;
or that certain developments of mind, or combinations of circumstance,
may not render it imperative to do so. I go but with my age; and I appeal
to Lord A——y, or to my old friend Lord A——n, whether, _de nos jours_, a
man who pays a morning visit in a virgin-white Marseilles waistcoat, is
admissible within the pale of civilized society.

[32] Dr. Macartney, professor of anatomy in Trinity College, Dublin,
one more celebrated abroad than known at home—the common fate of
super-eminent talent every where. Dr. Macartney’s classes are attended by
students from all parts of Europe and America.

[33] Her late Majesty Queen Caroline.

[34] Having received the proof sheet of the above little entry, (made in
mere _gaieté de cœur_ into my ledger,) at a moment when I am surrounded
by an absolute congress of the United States, presented to me by my
illustrious friend, General La Fayette, I take the opportunity to say,
that they deny all knowledge of the journal in question, further than
such a publication had lived and died within a few weeks, and was edited
by a person bearing an _Irish name_, a writer for Blackwood’s Magazine.

[35] First Dissertation to the Encyclopedia.

[36] “Her father was dead; and as soon as she heard the news, she shut
herself up in her chamber for six weeks, remaining constantly upon a bed
covered with white linen, and resting on pillows. She wore her stomacher,
her cloak, and hood, which were lined with minever, and the said cloak
had a long train; and at the borders, and before the hood, for the
breadth of a palm, the minever was curled outwards. The chamber was hung
with black cloth in the place of tapestry, and before this chamber was
another great chamber, or hall, likewise hung with black. While Madame
was alone, she did not remain on the bed, or confined to one room.”

[37] “The duchess received compliments of condolence on the death of the
Duke. She was on a bed, and in her hood, which is the dress of princesses
of the blood, when they receive in state the compliments on the death of
their husbands.”

[38] Mademoiselle Delaunay.

[39] The family of the Duke de Croy is, I believe, one of the oldest
in France. The entreaty of one of the duke’s ancestors to _Noah_, of
“_Sauvez les papiers des Croys_,” is well known.

[40] “The easy conversations, the circles, the delicate pleasantry, the
familiar and playful letters, to which wit and intellect alone gave
access—all have disappeared.”

[41] “They talk there without ceasing, but nothing remains in the heart
of all they say; and Dangeau is ravished with this gossip.”

[42] Sir W. Betham is so learned in all that concerns Irish antiquities,
that there could have been no difficulty whatever on his part, in
guessing the contents of the Caah: such reliquaries were destined only to
the one pious purpose.

[43] “Great talents require pressing.”

[44] “What would you have? There are scoundrels in all times.”

[45] Monseigneur Luize de Breme, ex-grand almoner of Italy, and son to
the minister of the interior (of Sardinia), was one of those European
characters whom to name, is to recal to the memory of all the most
distinguished strangers who visited Milan. Eminently amiable and
accomplished, he was a liberal patron of Italian literature, in all its
branches; and he was at the head of the school of romanticism in Milan.
He was the dear friend of Madame de Staël and her family, and of Monti,
the poet, and he was intimately known to Lord Byron, Ugo Foscolo, and to
most of the celebrated persons of Europe, whose opinions and writings
favoured his peculiar sect in literature.

[46] The household of the great families and cardinals of Rome are called
_la famiglia_, or the family. A cardinal never drives or walks out, or
pays a visit, without a train of liveried servants.

[47] “A great politician, and something of a libertine,—for the rest, an
amiable man, but perhaps a little dangerous.”

[48] “Because it was but a point of discipline.”

[49] A few lines written by the author, who had supposed the daughter of
the Bishop of Derry to have been an Irishwoman.

[50] “She makes verses like an angel.”

[51]

    Insigne mœstis præsidium reis,
    Et consulenti, Pollio, curiæ.

               HORAT. l. 2, Ode 1.

[52] “Nam neque deesse, neque superesse reipublicæ volo.”

[53] Opposed to this frivolous picture, take the picture of a celebrated
German authoress, as described by a recent traveller:—

“DESCRIPTION OF A GERMAN LITERARY LADY.—Never shall I forget the first
appearance, to me, of Madame de B. She was sitting, or rather reclining,
in the most unaffected posture, with her legs crossed, and her hands
clasped behind her head, on a large sofa—one old, indeed, and crazy, but
doubtless endeared to her by some association, perhaps with the days of
her childhood; for, from its colour, and dilapidations, and fashion, it
could scarcely be more modern. Behind her, and on each side, extended a
floor, or rather ocean of books, rising in volumes, like wave upon wave,
tossing and tumbling, and some, as it were, foaming open, and revealing
their white margins. In the midst of these, like an island, stood a large
old-fashioned mahogany table, covered with various articles, which I
might forbear to enumerate, if it were not interesting to the sensible
mind to learn even the most trifling attributes of genius. Such persons
will readily forgive me that I mention a large black tea-pot, tea-cup
of antique China, an ink-stand, with the owner’s cipher, apparently
scratched on the metal; a pair of saucers, of divers patterns; a large
phial labelled ‘laudanum;’ a tortoise-shell watch-case, a small plate of
bread crusts, and a long hair comb, a tall wine-glass half filled with
sugar of the brown description, a snuff-box, a pair of snuffers, a small
miniature, a few twisted fragments of brown and blue paper, two slender
candles, some small pieces of copper coin, and a single stocking, marked
D.R.A.B.”

[54] Mons. Bautte, the celebrated bijoutier of Geneva.

[55] The chair of the good King Dagobert is, perhaps, one of the oldest
and most curious articles of furniture of the Christian era. In form, it
resembles the curule chair of the Romans. The legs are more ancient, and
of better workmanship, than the upper part; but tradition assigns its
fabrication to the holy hands of St. Eloi. It was preserved for centuries
in the treasury of the Abbey of St. Denis, and was regilt in the time of
the Abbot Suger. In August, 1804, it was transported to Boulogne, for the
distribution of the crosses of the Legion of Honour; and a medal, struck
on that occasion, represents the modern Charlemagne, seated in this relic
of _le bon Roi Dagobert_. It now takes its place, with other antiquities,
in _la Bibliothèque du Roi_, at Paris.

[56] See Somner’s History of Canterbury, Appendix, Scriptura, xvj.

[57]

    “My home, my home, though small it be,
    Yet still that home is dear to me.”

[58] “The whole weight of his eighteen volumes was in his step.”

[59] The art of being tiresome consists in leaving nothing unsaid.

[60] “Je vous vois ici avec douleur dansant le triolet, et vous divertir
lorsque vous devriez être en lieu, où vous vous fissiez casser la tête,
ou vous remettre la couronne sur la tête.”

[61] “Je conçus de lui une fort mauvaise opinion d’être roi à son âge,
et n’avoir aucune connaissance des affaires: ce n’est pas que je n’eusse
par là dû reconnaître mon sang. Les Bourbons sont gens fort appliqués aux
bagatelles, et peu solides. Il ne mangea point d’ortolons, il se jeta sur
une pièce de bœuf, et sur une épaule de mouton, comme s’il n’y eut que
cela.”

[62] See letter to the Reviewers of Italy, prefixed to the third edition
of that work.

[63] Although this first letter does not more than allude to the
immediate subject before me, the public, I think, will not be sorry
to possess, in its integrity, so good a specimen of the grace and
playfulness of Mons. Denon’s turn of mind, which, in one of his advanced
age, is peculiar to the climate and temperament of France.

[64] The celebrated Comte de Ségur, the ambassador to Catherine of
Russia, and one of the most distinguished authors which modern France has
produced. His own memoirs, lately published, have added a brilliant gem
to the bright galaxy of French autobiography.

[65] “Here, gentlemen, here is the whole royal family of France and the
Princess Caroline, all for a penny.”




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