Chapter XIV: Part 14

Many virulent pamphlets were published against the use of this shrub, from various motives. In 1670, a Dutch writer says it was ridiculed in Holland under the name of hay-water. "The progress of this famous plant," says an ingenious writer, "has been something like the progress of truth; suspected at first, though very palatable to those who had courage to taste it; resisted as it encroached; abused as its popularity seemed to spread; and establishing its triumph at last, in cheering the whole land from the palace to the cottage, only by the slow and resistless efforts of time and its own virtues."[183]

The history of the Tea-shrub, by Dr. Lettsom, usually referred to on this subject, I consider little more than a plagiarism on Dr. Short's learned and curious dissertation on Tea, 1730, 4to. Lettsom has superadded the solemn trifling of his moral and medical advice.

These now common beverages are all of recent origin in Europe; neither the ancients nor those of the middle ages tasted of this luxury. The first accounts we find of the use of this shrub are the casual notices of travellers, who seem to have tasted it, and sometimes not to have liked it: a Russian ambassador, in 1639, who resided at the court of the Mogul, declined accepting a large present of tea for the Czar, "as it would only encumber him with a commodity for which he had no use." The appearance of "a black water" and an acrid taste seems not to have recommended it to the German Olearius in 1633. Dr. Short has recorded an anecdote of a stratagem of the Dutch in their second voyage to China, by which they at first obtained their tea without disbursing money; they carried from home great store of dried sage, and bartered it with the Chinese for tea, and received three or four pounds of tea for one of sage: but at length the Dutch could not export sufficient quantities of sage to supply their demand. This fact, however, proves how deeply the imagination is concerned with our palate; for the Chinese, affected by the exotic novelty, considered our sage to be more precious than their tea.

The first introduction of tea into Europe is not ascertained; according to the common accounts it came into England from Holland, in 1666, when Lord Arlington and Lord Ossory brought over a small quantity: the custom of drinking tea became fashionable, and a pound weight sold then for sixty shillings. This account, however, is by no means satisfactory. I have heard of Oliver Cromwell's tea-pot in the possession of a collector, and this will derange the chronology of those writers who are perpetually copying the researches of others, without confirming or correcting them.[184]

Amidst the rival contests of the Dutch and the English East India Companies, the honour of introducing its use into Europe may be claimed by both. Dr. Short conjectures that tea might have been known in England as far back as the reign of James the First, for the first fleet set out in 1600; but had the use of the shrub been known, the novelty had been chronicled among our dramatic writers, whose works are the annals of our prevalent tastes and humours. It is rather extraordinary that our East India Company should not have discovered the use of this shrub in their early adventures; yet it certainly was not known in England so late as in 1641, for in a scarce "Treatise of Warm Beer," where the title indicates the author's design to recommend hot in preference to cold drinks, he refers to tea only by quoting the Jesuit Maffei's account, that "they of China do for the most part drink the strained liquor of an herb called _Chia_ hot." The word _Cha_ is the Portuguese term for tea retained to this day, which they borrowed from the Japanese; while our intercourse with the Chinese made us no doubt adopt their term _Theh_, now prevalent throughout Europe, with the exception of the Portuguese. The Chinese origin is still preserved in the term _Bohea_, tea which comes from the country of _Vouhi_; and that of _Hyson_ was the name of the most considerable Chinese then concerned in the trade.

The best account of the early use, and the prices of tea in England, appears in the handbill of one who may be called our first _Tea-maker_. This curious handbill bears no date, but as Hanway ascertained that the price was sixty shillings in 1660, his bill must have been dispersed about that period.

Thomas Garway, in Exchange-alley, tobacconist and coffee-man, was the first who sold and retailed tea, recommending it for the cure of all disorders. The following shop-bill is more curious than any historical account we have.

"Tea in England hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes for ten pounds the pound weight, and in respect of its former scarceness and dearness it has been only used as a regalia in high treatments and entertainments, and presents made thereof to princes and grandees till the year 1657. The said Garway did purchase a quantity thereof, and first publicly sold the said tea in _leaf_ or _drink_, made according to the directions of the most knowing merchants into those Eastern countries. On the knowledge of the said Garway's continued care and industry in obtaining the best tea, and making drink thereof, very many noblemen, physicians, merchants, &c., have ever since sent to him for the said leaf, and daily resort to his house to drink the drink thereof. He sells tea from 16s. to 50s. a pound."

Probably, tea was not in general use domestically so late as in 1687; for in the diary of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, he registers that "Père Couplet supped with me, and after supper we had tea, which he said was really as good as any he had drank in China." Had his lordship been in the general habit of drinking tea, he had not probably made it a subject for his diary.

While the honour of introducing tea may be disputed between the English and the Dutch, that of coffee remains between the English and the French. Yet an Italian intended to have occupied the place of honour: that admirable traveller Pietro della Valle, writing from Constantinople, 1615, to a Roman, his fellow-countryman, informing him that he should teach Europe in what manner the Turks took what he calls "_Cahué_," or as the word is written in an Arabic and English pamphlet, printed at Oxford, in 1659, on "the nature of the drink _Kauhi_ or Coffee." As this celebrated traveller lived to 1652, it may excite surprise that the first cup of coffee was not drank at Rome; this remains for the discovery of some member of the "Arcadian Society." Our own Sandys, at the time that Valle wrote, was also "a traveller," and well knew what was "_Coffa_," which "they drank as hot as they can endure it; it is as black as soot, and tastes not much unlike it; good they say for digestion and mirth."

It appears by Le Grand's "Vie privée des François," that the celebrated Thevenot, in 1658, gave coffee after dinner; but it was considered as the whim of a traveller; neither the thing itself, nor its appearance, was inviting: it was probably attributed by the gay to the humour of a vain philosophical traveller. But ten years afterwards a Turkish ambassador at Paris made the beverage highly fashionable. The elegance of the equipage recommended it to the eye, and charmed the women: the brilliant porcelain cups in which it was poured; the napkins fringed with gold, and the Turkish slaves on their knees presenting it to the ladies, seated on the ground on cushions, turned the heads of the Parisian dames. This elegant introduction made the exotic beverage a subject of conversation, and in 1672, an Armenian at Paris at the fair-time opened a coffee-house. But the custom still prevailed to sell beer and wine, and to smoke and mix with indifferent company in their first imperfect coffee-houses. A Florentine, one Procope, celebrated in his day as the arbiter of taste in this department, instructed by the error of the Armenian, invented a superior establishment, and introduced ices; he embellished his apartment, and those who had avoided the offensive coffee-houses repaired to Procope's; where literary men, artists, and wits resorted, to inhale the fresh and fragrant steam. Le Grand says that this establishment holds a distinguished place in the literary history of the times. It was at the coffee-house of Du Laurent that Saurin, La Motte, Danchet, Boindin, Rousseau, &c., met; but the mild streams of the aromatic berry could not mollify the acerbity of so many rivals, and the witty malignity of Rousseau gave birth to those famous couplets on all the coffee drinkers, which occasioned his misfortune and his banishment.

Such is the history of the first use of coffee and its houses at Paris. We, however, had the use before even the time of Thevenot; for an English Turkish merchant brought a Greek servant in 1652, who, knowing how to roast and make it, opened a house to sell it publicly. I have also discovered his hand-bill, in which he sets forth, "The vertue of the coffee-drink, first publiquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua Rosee, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, at the sign of his own head."[185]

For about twenty years after the introduction of coffee in this kingdom, we find a continued series of invectives against its adoption, both for medicinal and domestic purposes. The use of coffee, indeed, seems to have excited more notice, and to have had a greater influence on the manners of the people, than that of tea. It seems at first to have been more universally used, as it still is on the Continent; and its use is connected with a resort for the idle and the curious: the history of coffee-houses, ere the invention of clubs, was that of the manners, the morals, and the politics of a people. Even in its native country, the government discovered that extraordinary fact, and the use of the Arabian berry was more than once forbidden where it grows; for Ellis, in his "History of Coffee," 1774, refers to an Arabian MS., in the King of France's library, which shows that coffee-houses in Asia were sometimes suppressed. The same fate happened on its introduction into England.

Among a number of poetical satires against the use of coffee, I find a curious exhibition, according to the exaggerated notions of that day, in "A Cup of Coffee, or Coffee in its Colours," 1663. The writer, like others of his contemporaries, wonders at the odd taste which could make Coffee a substitute for Canary.

For men and Christians to turn Turks and think
To excuse the crime, because 'tis in their drink!
Pure English apes! ye may, for aught I know,
Would it but mode--learn to eat spiders too.[186]
Should any of your grandsires' ghosts appear
In your wax-candle circles, and but hear
The name of coffee so much called upon,
Then see it drank like scalding Phlegethon;
Would they not startle, think ye, all agreed
'Twas conjuration both in word and deed?
Or Catiline's conspirators, as they stood
Sealing their oaths in draughts of blackest blood,
The merriest ghost of all your sires would say,
Your wine's much worse since his last yesterday.
He'd wonder how the club had given a hop
O'er tavern-bars into a farrier's shop,
Where he'd suppose, both by the smoke and stench,
Each man a horse, and each horse at his drench.--
Sure you're no poets, nor their friends, for now,
Should Jonson's strenuous spirit, or the rare
Beaumont and Fletcher's, in your round appear,
They would not find the air perfumed with one
Castalian drop, nor dew of Helicon;
When they but men would speak as the gods do,
They drank pure nectar as the gods drink too,
Sublim'd with rich Canary--say, shall then
These less than coffee's self, these coffee-men;
These sons of nothing, that can hardly make
Their broth, for laughing how the jest does take,
Yet grin, and give ye for the vine's pure blood
A loathsome potion, not yet understood,
Syrop of soot, or essence of old shoes,
Dasht with diurnals and the books of news?

Other complaints arose from the mixture of the company in the first coffee-houses. In "A Broadside against Coffee, or the Marriage of the Turk," 1672, the writer indicates the growth of the fashion:--

Confusion huddles all into one scene,
Like Noah's ark, the clean and the unclean;
For now, alas! the drench has credit got,
And he's no gentleman who drinks it not.
That such a dwarf should rise to such a stature!
But custom is but a remove from nature.

In "The Women's Petition against Coffee," 1674, they complained that "it made men as unfruitful as the deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought; that the offspring of our mighty ancestors would dwindle into a succession of apes and pigmies; and on a domestic message, a husband would stop by the way to drink a couple of cups of coffee." It was now sold in convenient penny-worths; for in another poem in praise of a coffee-house, for the variety of information obtained there, it is called "a penny university."

Amidst these contests of popular prejudices, between the lovers of forsaken Canary, and the terrors of our females at the barrenness of an Arabian desert, which lasted for twenty years, at length the custom was universally established; nor were there wanting some reflecting minds desirous of introducing the use of this liquid among the labouring classes of society, to wean them from strong liquors. Howell, in noticing that curious philosophical traveller, Sir Henry Blount's "Organon Salutis," 1659, observed that "this coffa-drink hath caused a great sobriety among all nations: formerly apprentices, clerks, &c., used to take their morning draughts in ale, beer, or wine, which often made them unfit for business. Now they play the good-fellows in this wakeful and civil drink. The worthy gentleman, Sir James Muddiford, who introduced the practice hereof first in London, deserves much respect of the whole nation." Here it appears, what is most probable, that the use of this berry was introduced by other Turkish merchants, besides Edwards and his servant Pasqua. But the custom of drinking coffee among the labouring classes does not appear to have lasted; and when it was recently even the cheapest beverage, the popular prejudices prevailed against it, and ran in favour of tea. The contrary practice prevails on the continent, where beggars are viewed making their coffee in the street. I remember seeing the large body of shipwrights at Helvoetsluys summoned by a bell, to take their regular refreshment of coffee; and the fleets of Holland were not then built by arms less robust than the fleets of Britain.

The frequenting of coffee-houses is a custom which has declined within our recollection, since institutions of a higher character, and society itself, have so much improved within late years. These were, however, the common assemblies of all classes of society. The mercantile man, the man of letters, and the man of fashion, had their appropriate coffee-houses. The Tatler dates from either to convey a character of his subject. In the reign of Charles the Second, 1675, a proclamation for some time shut them all up, having become the rendezvous of the politicians of that day. Roger North has given, in his Examen, a full account of this bold stroke: it was not done without some apparent respect to the British constitution, the court affecting not to act against law, for the judges were summoned to a consultation, when, it seems, the five who met did not agree in opinion. But a decision was contrived that "the retailing of coffee and tea might be an innocent trade; but as it was said to nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalise great men, it might also be a common nuisance." A general discontent, in consequence, as North acknowledges, took place, and emboldened the merchants and retailers of coffee and tea to petition; and permission was soon granted to open the houses to a certain period, under a severe admonition, that the masters should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them; and hinder every person from spreading scandalous reports against the government. It must be confessed, all this must have frequently puzzled the coffee-house master to decide what was scandalous, what book was fit to be licensed to be read, and what political intelligence might be allowed to be communicated. The object of the government was, probably, to intimidate, rather than to persecute, at that moment.

Chocolate the Spaniards brought from Mexico, where it was denominated _Chocolati_; it was a coarse mixture of ground cacao and Indian corn with rocou; but the Spaniards, liking its nourishment, improved it into a richer compound, with sugar, vanilla, and other aromatics. The immoderate use of chocolate in the seventeenth century was considered as so violent an inflamer of the passions, that Joan. Fran. Rauch published a treatise against it, and enforced the necessity of forbidding the _monks_ to drink it; and adds, that if such an interdiction had existed, that scandal with which that holy order had been branded might have proved more groundless. This _Disputatio medico-diætetica de aëre et esculentis, necnon de potû_, Vienna, 1624, is a _rara avis_ among collectors. This attack on the monks, as well as on chocolate, is said to be the cause of its scarcity; for we are told that they were so diligent in suppressing this treatise, that it is supposed not a dozen copies exist. We had chocolate-houses in London long after coffee-houses; they seemed to have associated something more elegant and refined in their new term when the other had become common.[187] Roger North thus inveighs against them: "The use of coffee-houses seems much improved by a new invention, called chocolate-houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of quality, where gaming is added to all the rest, and the summons of W---- seldom fails; as if the devil had erected a new university, and those were the colleges of its professors, as well as his schools of discipline." Roger North, a high Tory, and Attorney-General to James the Second, observed, however, these rendezvous were often not entirely composed of those "factious gentry he so much dreaded;" for he says "This way of passing time might have been stopped at first, before people had possessed themselves of some convenience from them of meeting for short despatches, and passing evenings with small expenses." And old Aubrey, the small Boswell of his day, attributes his general acquaintance to "the modern advantage of coffee-houses in this great city, before which men knew not how to be acquainted, but with their own relations, and societies;" a curious statement, which proves the moral connexion with society of all sedentary recreations which induce the herding spirit.

CHARLES THE FIRST'S LOVE OF THE FINE ARTS.

Herbert, the faithful attendant of Charles the First during the two last years of the king's life, mentions "a diamond seal with the king's arms engraved on it." The history of this "diamond seal" is remarkable; and seems to have been recovered by the conjectural sagacity of Warburton, who never exercised his favourite talent with greater felicity. The curious passage I transcribe may be found in a manuscript letter to Dr. Birch.

"If you have read Herbert's account of the last days of Charles the First's life, you must remember he tells a story of a diamond seal, with the arms of England cut into it. This, King Charles ordered to be given, I think, to the prince. I suppose you don't know what became of this seal, but would be surprised to find it afterwards in the Court of Persia. Yet there Tavernier certainly carried it, and offered it for sale, as I certainly collect from these words of vol. i. p. 541.--'Me souvenant de ce qui etoit arrivé au Chevalier de Reville,' &c. He tells us he told the prime minister what was engraved on the diamond was the arms of a prince of Europe, but, says he, I would not be more particular, remembering the case of Reville. Reville's case was this: he came to seek employment under the Sophy, who asked him 'where he had served?' He said 'in England under Charles the First, and that he was a captain in his guards.'--'Why did you leave his service?' 'He was murdered by cruel rebels.'--'And how had you the impudence,' says the Sophy, 'to survive him?' And so disgraced him. Now Tavernier was afraid, if he had said the arms of England had been on the seal, that they would have occasioned the inquiry into the old story. You will ask how Tavernier got this seal? I suppose that the prince, in his necessities, sold it to Tavernier, who was at Paris when the English court was there. What made me recollect Herbert's account on reading this, was the singularity of an impress cut on the diamond, which Tavernier represents as a most extraordinary rarity. Charles the First was a great virtuoso, and delighted particularly in sculpture and painting."

This is an instance of conjectural evidence, where an historical fact seems established on no other authority than the ingenuity of a student, exercised in his library, on a private and secret event, a century after it had occurred. The diamond seal of Charles the First may yet be discovered in the treasures of the Persian sovereign.

Warburton, who had ranged with keen delight through the age of Charles the First, the noblest and the most humiliating in our own history, and in that of the world, perpetually instructive, has justly observed the king's passion for the fine arts. It was indeed such, that had the reign of Charles the First proved prosperous, that sovereign about 1640 would have anticipated those tastes, and even that enthusiasm, which are still almost foreign to the nation.

The mind of Charles the First was moulded by the Graces. His favourite Buckingham was probably a greater favourite for those congenial tastes, and the frequent exhibition of those splendid masques and entertainments, which combined all the picture of ballet dances with the voice of music; the charms of the verse of Jonson, the scenic machinery of Inigo Jones, and the variety of fanciful devices of Gerbier, the duke's architect, the bosom friend of Rubens.[188] There was a costly magnificence in the _fêtes_ at York House, the residence of Buckingham, of which few but curious researchers are aware: they eclipsed the splendour of the French Court; for Bassompiere, in one of his despatches, declares he had never witnessed a similar magnificence. He describes the vaulted apartments, the ballets at supper, which were proceeding between the services with various representations, theatrical changes, and those of the tables, and the music; the duke's own contrivance, to prevent the inconvenience of pressure, by having a turning door made like that of the monasteries, which admitted only one person at a time. The following extract from a manuscript letter of the time conveys a lively account of one of those _fêtes._

"Last Sunday, at night, the duke's grace entertained their majesties and the French ambassador at York House with great feasting and show, where all things came down in clouds; amongst which, one rare device was a representation of the French king, and the two queens, with their chiefest attendants, and so to the life, that the queen's majesty could name them. It was four o'clock in the morning before they parted, and then the king and queen, together with the French ambassador, lodged there. Some estimate this entertainment at five or six thousand pounds."[189] At another time, "the king and queen were entertained at supper at Gerbier the duke's painter's house, which could not stand him in less than a thousand pounds." Sir Symonds D'Ewes mentions banquets at five hundred pounds. The fullest account I have found of one of these entertainments, which at once show the curiosity of the scenical machinery and the fancy of the poet, the richness Of the crimson habits of the gentlemen, and the white dresses with white heron's plumes and jewelled head-dresses and ropes of pearls of the ladies, was in a manuscript letter of the times, with which I supplied the editor of "Jonson", who has preserved the narrative in his memoirs of that poet. "Such were the magnificent entertainments," says Mr. Gifford, "which, though modern refinement may affect to despise them, modern splendour never reached, even in thought." That the expenditure was costly, proves that the greater encouragement was offered to artists; nor should Buckingham be censured, as some will incline to, for this lavish expense; it was not unusual for the great nobility then; for the literary Duchess of Newcastle mentions that an entertainment of this sort, which the Duke gave to Charles the First, cost her lord between four and five thousand pounds. The ascetic puritan would indeed abhor these scenes; but their magnificence was also designed to infuse into the national character gentler feelings and more elegant tastes. They charmed even the fiercer republican spirits in their tender youth: Milton owes his Arcades and his delightful Comus to a masque at Ludlow Castle; and Whitelocke, who, was himself an actor and manager, in "a splendid royal masque of the four Inns of Courts joined together" to go to court about the time that Prynne published his Histriomastix, "to manifest the difference of their opinions from Mr. Prynne's new learning,"--seems, even at a later day, when drawing up his "Memorials of the English Affairs," and occupied by graver concerns, to have dwelt with all the fondness of reminiscence on the stately shows and masques of his more innocent age; and has devoted, in a chronicle, which contracts many an important event into a single paragraph, six folio columns to a minute and very curious description of "these dreams past, and these vanished pomps."

Charles the First, indeed, not only possessed a critical tact, but extensive knowledge in the fine arts, and the relics of antiquity. In his flight in 1642, the king stopped at the abode of the religious family of the Farrars at Gidding, who had there raised a singular monastic institution among themselves. One of their favorite amusements had been to form an illustrated Bible, the wonder and the talk of the country. In turning it over, the king would tell his companion the Palsgrave, whose curiosity in prints exceeded his knowledge, the various masters, and the character of their inventions. When Panzani, a secret agent of the Pope, was sent over to England to promote the Catholic cause, the subtle and elegant Catholic Barberini, called the protector of the English at Rome, introduced Panzani to the king's favour, by making him appear an agent rather for procuring him fine pictures, statues, and curiosities: and the earnest inquiries and orders given by Charles the First prove his perfect knowledge of the most beautiful existing remains of ancient art. "The statues go on prosperously," says Cardinal Barberini, in a letter to a Mazarin, "nor shall I hesitate to rob Rome of her most valuable ornaments, if in exchange we might be so happy as to have the King of England's name among those princes who submit to the Apostolic See." Charles the First was particularly urgent to procure a statue of Adonis in the Villa Ludovisia: every effort was made by the queen's confessor, Father Philips, and the vigilant cardinal at Rome; but the inexorable Duchess of Fiano would not suffer it to be separated from her rich collection of statues and paintings, even for the chance conversion of a whole kingdom of heretics."[190]

This monarch, who possessed "four-and-twenty palaces, all of them elegantly and completely furnished," had formed very considerable collections. "The value of pictures had doubled in Europe, by the emulation between our Charles and Philip the Fourth of Spain, who was touched with the same elegant passion." When the rulers of fanaticism began their reign, "all the king's furniture was put to sale; his pictures, disposed of at very low prices, enriched all the collections in Europe; the cartoons when complete were only appraised at £300, though the whole collection of the king's curiosities were sold at above £50,000.[191] Hume adds, "the very library and medals at St. James's were intended by the generals to be brought to auction, in order to pay the arrears of some regiments of cavalry; but Selden, apprehensive of this loss, engaged his friend Whitelocke, then lord-keeper of the Commonwealth, to apply for the office of librarian. This contrivance saved that valuable collection." This account is only partly correct: the love of books, which formed the passion of the two learned scholars whom Hume notices, fortunately intervened to save the royal collection from the intended scattering; but the pictures and medals were, perhaps, objects too slight in the eyes of the book-learned; they wore resigned to the singular fate of appraisement. After the Restoration very many books were missing; but scarcely a third part of the medals remained: of the strange manner in which these precious remains of ancient art and history were valued and disposed of, the following account may not be read without interest.

In March, 1648, the parliament ordered commissioners to be appointed, to inventory the goods and personal estate of the late king, queen, and prince, and appraise them for the use of the public. And in April, 1648, an act, adds Whitelocke, was committed for inventorying the late king's goods, &c.[192]

This very inventory I have examined. It forms a magnificent folio, of near a thousand pages, of an extraordinary dimension, bound in crimson velvet, and richly gilt, written in a fair large hand, but with little knowledge of the objects which the inventory writer describes. It is entitled "An Inventory of the Goods, Jewels, Plate, &c. belonging to King Charles the First, sold by order of the Council of State, from the year 1619 to 1652." So that from the decapitation of the king, a year was allowed to draw up the inventory; and the sale proceeded during three years.

From this manuscript catalogue[193] to give long extracts were useless; it has afforded, however, some remarkable observations. Every article was appraised, nothing was sold under the affixed price, but a slight competition sometimes seems to have raised the sum; and when the Council of State could not get the sum appraised, the gold and silver were sent to the Mint; and assuredly many fine works of art were valued by the ounce. The names of the purchasers appear; they are usually English, but probably many were the agents for foreign courts. The coins or medals were thrown promiscuously into drawers; one drawer having twenty-four medals, was valued at £2 10_s_.; another of twenty, at £1; another of twenty-four, at £1; and one drawer, containing forty-six silver coins with the box, was sold for £5. On the whole the medals seem not to have been valued at much more than a shilling a-piece. The appraiser was certainly no antiquary.

The king's curiosities in the Tower Jewel-house generally fetched above the price fixed; the toys of art could please the unlettered minds that had no conception of its works.

The Temple of Jerusalem, made of ebony and amber, fetched £25.

A fountain of silver, for perfumed waters, artificially made to play of itself, sold for £30.

A chess-board, said to be Queen Elizabeth's, inlaid with gold, silver, and pearls, £23.

A conjuring drum from Lapland, with an almanac cut on a piece of wood.

Several sections in silver of a Turkish galley, a Venetian gondola, an Indian canoe, and a first-rate man-of-war.

A Saxon king's mace used in war, with a ball full of spikes, and the handle covered with gold plates, and enamelled, sold for £37 8_s_.

A gorget of massy gold, chased with the manner of a battle, weighing thirty-one ounces, at £3 10_s_. per ounce, was sent to the Mint.

A Roman shield of buff leather, covered with a plate of gold, finely chased with a Gorgon's head, set round the rim with rubies, emeralds, turquoise stones, in number 137, £132 12_s_.

The pictures, taken from Whitehall, Windsor, Wimbledon, Greenwich, Hampton-Court, &c., exhibit, in number, an unparalleled collection. By what standard they were valued, it would perhaps be difficult to conjecture; from £50 to £100 seems to have been the limits of the appraiser's taste and imagination. Some whose price is whimsically low may have been thus rated from a political feeling respecting the portrait of the person; there are, however, in this singular appraised catalogue two pictures, which were rated at, and sold for, the remarkable sums of one and of two thousand pounds. The one was a sleeping Venus by Correggio, and the other a Madonna by Raphael. There was also a picture by Julio Romano, called "The great piece of the Nativity," at £500. "The little Madonna and Christ," by Raphael, at £800. "The great Venus and Parde," by Titian, at £600. These seem to have been the only pictures, in this immense collection, which reached a picture's prices. The inventory-writer had, probably, been instructed by the public voice of their value; which, however, would, in the present day, be considered much under a fourth. Rubens' "Woman taken in Adultery," described as a large picture, sold for £20; and his "Peace and Plenty, with many figures big as the life," for £100. Titian's pictures seem generally valued at £100.[194] "Venus dressed by the Graces," by Guido, reached to £200.

The Cartoons of Raphael, here called "The Acts of the Apostles," notwithstanding their subject was so congenial to the popular feelings, and only appraised at £300, could find no purchaser![195]

The following full-lengths of celebrated personages were rated at these whimsical prices:

Queen Elizabeth in her parliament robes, valued £1.

The Queen-mother in mourning habit, valued £3.

Buchanan's picture, valued £3 10s.

The King, when a youth in coats, valued £2.

The picture of the Queen when she was with child, sold for five shillings.

King Charles on horseback, by Sir Anthony Vandyke, was purchased by Sir Balthazar Gerbier, at the appraised price of £200.[196]

The greatest sums were produced by the tapestry and arras hangings, which were chiefly purchased for the service of the Protector. Their amount exceeds £30,000. I note a few.

At Hampton-Court, ten pieces of arras hangings of Abraham, containing 826 yards at £10 a yard, £8260.

Ten pieces of Julius Cæsar, 717 ells at £7, £5019.[197]

One of the cloth of estates is thus described:

"One rich cloth of estate of purple velvet, embroidered with gold, having the arms of England within a garter, with all the furniture suitable thereunto. The state containing these stones following: two cameos or agates, twelve chrysolites, twelve ballases or garnets, one sapphire seated in chases of gold, one long pearl pendant, and many large and small pearls, valued at £500 sold for £602 10s. to Mr. Oliver, 4 February, 1649."

Was plain Mr. Oliver, in 1649, who we see was one of the earlier purchasers, shortly after "the Lord Protector?" All the "cloth of estate" and "arras hangings" were afterwards purchased for the service of the Protector; and one may venture to conjecture, that when Mr. Oliver purchased this "rich cloth of estate," it was not without a latent motive of its service to the new owner.[198]

There is one circumstance remarkable in the feeling of Charles the First for the fine arts: it was a passion without ostentation or egotism; for although this monarch was inclined himself to participate in the pleasures of a creating artist, the king having handled the pencil and composed a poem, yet he never suffered his private dispositions to prevail over his more majestic duties. We do not discover in history that Charles the First was a painter and a poet. Accident and secret history only reveal this softening feature in his grave and king-like character. Charles sought no glory from, but only indulged his love for, art and the artists. There are three manuscripts on his art, by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Ambrosian library, which bear an inscription that a King of England, in 1639, offered one thousand guineas of gold for each. Charles, too, suggested to the two great painters of his age the subjects he considered worthy of their pencils; and had for his "closet-companions" those native poets for which he was censured in "evil times," and even by Milton!

In his imprisonment at Carisbrook Castle, the author of the "Eikon Basilike" solaced his royal woes by composing a poem, entitled in the very style of this memorable volume, "Majesty in Misery, or an Imploration to the King of kings;" a _title_ probably not his own, but like that volume, it contains stanzas fraught with the most tender and solemn feeling; such a subject, in the hands of such an author, was sure to produce poetry, although in the unpractised poet we may want the versifier. A few stanzas will illustrate this conception of part of his character:--

The fiercest furies that do daily tread
Upon my grief, my grey-discrowned head,
Are those that own my bounty for their bread.

With my own power my majesty they wound;
In the king's name, the king himself uncrowned;
So doth the dust destroy the diamond.

After a pathetic description of his queen "forced in pilgrimage to seek a tomb," and "Great Britain's heir forced into France," where,

Poor child, he weeps out his inheritance!

Charles continues:

They promise to erect my royal stem;
To make me great, to advance my diadem;
If I will first fall down and worship them!

But for refusal they devour my thrones,
Distress my children, and destroy my bones;
I fear they'll force me to make bread of stones.

And implores, with a martyr's piety, the Saviour's forgiveness for those who were more misled than criminal:

Such as thou know'st do not know what they do.[199]

As a poet and a painter, Charles is not popularly known; but this article was due, to preserve the memory of the royal votary's ardour and pure feelings for the love of the Fine Arts.[200]

SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST, AND HIS QUEEN HENRIETTA.

The secret history of Charles the First, and his queen Henrietta of France, opens a different scene from the one exhibited in the passionate drama of our history.

The king is accused of the most spiritless uxoriousness; and the chaste fondness of a husband is placed among his political errors. Even Hume conceives that his queen "precipitated him into hasty and imprudent counsels," and Bishop Kennet had alluded to "the influence of a stately queen over an affectionate husband." The uxoriousness of Charles is re-echoed by all the writers of a certain party. This is an odium which the king's enemies first threw out to make him contemptible; while his apologists imagined that, in perpetuating this accusation, they had discovered, in a weakness which has at least something amiable, some palliation for his own political misconduct. The factious, too, by this aspersion, promoted the alarm they spread in the nation, of the king's inclination to popery; yet, on the contrary, Charles was then making a determined stand, and at length triumphed over a Catholic faction, which was ruling his queen; and this at the risk and menace of a war with France. Yet this firmness too has been denied him, even by his apologist Hume: that historian, on his preconceived system, imagined that every action of Charles originated in the Duke of Buckingham, and that the duke pursued his personal quarrel with Richelieu, and taking advantage of these domestic quarrels, had persuaded Charles to dismiss the French attendants of the queen.[201]

There are, fortunately, two letters from Charles the First to Buckingham, preserved in the State-papers of Lord Hardwicke, which set this point at rest: these decisively prove that the whole matter originated with the king himself, and that Buckingham had tried every effort to persuade him to the contrary; for the king complains that he had been too long overcome by his persuasions, but that he was now "resolved it must be done, and that shortly!"[202]

It is remarkable, that the character of a queen, who is imagined to have performed so active a part in our history, scarcely ever appears in it; when abroad, and when she returned to England, in the midst of a winter storm, bringing all the aid she could to her unfortunate consort, those who witnessed this appearance of energy imagined that her character was equally powerful in the cabinet. Yet Henrietta, after all, was nothing more than a volatile woman; one who had never studied, never reflected, and whom nature had formed to be charming and haughty, but whose vivacity could not retain even a state-secret for an hour, and whose talents were quite opposite to those of deep political intrigue.

Henrietta viewed even the characters of great men with all the sensations of a woman. Describing the Earl of Strafford to a confidential friend, and having observed that he was a great man, she dwelt with far more interest on his person: "Though not handsome," said she, "he was agreeable enough, and he had the finest hands of any man in the world." Landing at Burlington-bay in Yorkshire, she lodged on the quay; the parliament's admiral barbarously pointed his cannon at the house; and several shots reaching it, her favourite, Jermyn, requested her to fly: she safely reached a cavern in the fields, but, recollecting that she had left a lap-dog asleep in its bed, she flew back, and amidst the cannon-shot returned with this other favourite. The queen related this incident of the lap-dog to her friend Madame Motteville; these ladies considered it as a complete woman's victory. It is in these memoirs we find, that when Charles went down to the house, to seize on the five leading members of the opposition, the queen could not restrain her lively temper, and impatiently babbled the plot; so that one of the ladies in attendance despatched a hasty note to the parties, who, as the king entered the house, had just time to leave it. Some have dated the ruin of his cause to the failure of that impolitic step, which alarmed every one zealous for that spirit of political freedom which had now grown up in the Commons. Incidents like these mark the feminine dispositions of Henrietta. But when at sea, in danger of being taken by a parliamentarian, the queen commanded the captain not to strike, but to prepare at the extremity to blow up the ship, resisting the shrieks of her females and domestics. We perceive how, on every trying occasion, Henrietta never forgot that she was the daughter of Henry the Fourth; that glorious affinity was inherited by her with all the sexual pride; and hence, at times, that energy in her actions which was so far above her intellectual capacity.

And, indeed, when the awful events she had witnessed were one by one registered in her melancholy mind, the sensibility of the woman subdued the natural haughtiness of her character; but, true woman! the feeling creature of circumstances, at the Restoration she resumed it, and when the new court of Charles the Second would not endure her obsolete haughtiness, the dowager-queen left it in all the full bitterness of her spirit. An habitual gloom, and the meagreness of grief, during the commonwealth, had changed a countenance once the most lively; and her eyes, whose dark and dazzling lustre was ever celebrated, then only shone in tears. When she told her physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, that she found her understanding was failing her, and seemed terrified lest it was approaching to madness, the court physician, hardly courtly to fallen majesty, replied, "Madam, fear not that; for you are already mad." Henrietta had lived to contemplate the awful changes of her reign, without comprehending them.

Waller, in the profusion of poetical decoration, makes Henrietta so beautiful, that her beauty would affect every lover "more than his private loves." She was "the whole world's mistress." A portrait in crayons of Henrietta at Hampton-court sadly reduces all his poetry, for the miraculous was only in the fancy of the court-poet. But there may be some truth in what he says of the eyes of Henrietta:--

Such eyes as yours, on Jove himself, had thrown
As bright and fierce a lightning as his own.

And in another poem there is one characteristic line:--

---- such radiant eyes,
Such lovely motion, and such sharp replies.

In a MS. letter of the times, the writer describes the queen as "nimble and quick, black-eyed, brown-haired, and a brave lady."[203] In the MS. journal of Sir Symonds D'Ewes, who saw the queen on her first arrival in London, cold and puritanic as was that antiquary, he notices with some warmth "the features of her face, which were much enlivened by her radiant and sparkling black eye."[204] She appears to have possessed French vivacity both in her manners and her conversation: in the history of a queen, an accurate conception of her person enters for something.

Her talents were not of that order which could influence the revolutions of a people. Her natural dispositions might have allowed her to become a politician of the toilet, and she might have practised those slighter artifices, which may be considered as so many political coquetries. But Machiavelian principles, and involved intrigues, of which she has been so freely accused, could never have entered into her character. At first she tried all the fertile inventions of a woman to persuade the king that she was his humblest creature, and the good people of England that she was quite in love with them. Now that we know that no female was ever more deeply tainted with Catholic bigotry, and that, haughty as she was, this princess suffered the most insulting superstitions, inflicted as penances by her priests, for this very marriage with a Protestant prince, the following new facts relating to her first arrival in England curiously contrast with the mortified feelings she must have endured by the violent suppression of her real ones.

We must first bring forward a remarkable and unnoticed document in the Embassies of Marshal Bassompierre.[205] It is nothing less than a most solemn obligation contracted with the Pope and her brother the King of France, to educate her children as Catholics, and only to choose Catholics to attend them. Had this been known either to Charles or to the English nation, Henrietta could never have been permitted to ascend the English throne. The fate of both her sons shows how faithfully she performed this treasonable contract. This piece of secret history opens the concealed cause of those deep impressions of that faith which both monarchs sucked in with their milk; that triumph of the cradle over the grave which most men experience; Charles the Second died a Catholic, James the Second lived as one.

When Henrietta was on her way to England, a legate from Rome arrested her at Amiens, requiring the princess to undergo a penance, which was to last sixteen days, for marrying Charles without the papal dispensation. The queen stopped her journey, and wrote to inform the king of the occasion. Charles, who was then waiting for her at Canterbury, replied, that if Henrietta did not instantly proceed, he would return alone to London. Henrietta doubtless sighed for the Pope and the penance, but she set off the day she received the king's letter. The king, either by his wisdom or his impatience, detected the aim of the Roman pontiff, who, had he been permitted to arrest the progress of a Queen of England for sixteen days in the face of all Europe, would thus have obtained a tacit supremacy over a British monarch.

When the king arrived at Canterbury, although not at the moment prepared to receive him, Henrietta flew to meet him, and with all her spontaneous grace and native vivacity, kneeling at his feet, she kissed his hand, while the king, bending over her, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her with many kisses. This royal and youthful pair, unusual with those of their rank, met with the eagerness of lovers, and the first words of Henrietta were those of devotion; _Sire! je suis venue en ce pays de votre majesté pour être usée et commandée de vous._[206] It had been rumoured that she was of a very short stature, but, reaching to the king's shoulder, his eyes were cast down to her feet, seemingly observing whether she used art to increase her height. Anticipating his thoughts, and playfully showing her feet, she declared, that "she stood upon her own feet, for thus high I am, and neither higher nor lower." After an hour's conversation in privacy, Henrietta took her dinner surrounded by the court; and the king, who had already dined, performing the office of her carver, cut a pheasant and some venison. By the side of the queen stood her ghostly confessor, solemnly reminding her that this was the eve of John the Baptist, and was to be fasted, exhorting her to be cautious that she set no scandalous example on her first arrival. But Charles and his court were now to be gained over, as well as John the Baptist. She affected to eat very heartily of the forbidden meat, which gave great comfort, it seems, to several of her new heretical subjects then present: but we may conceive the pangs of so confirmed a devotee. She carried her dissimulation so far, that being asked about this time whether she could abide a Huguenot? she replied, "Why not? was not my father one?" Her ready smiles, the graceful wave of her hand, the many "good signs of hope," as a contemporary in a manuscript letter expresses it, induced many of the English to believe that Henrietta might even become one of themselves! Sir Symonds D'Ewes, as appears by his manuscript diary, was struck by "her deportment to her women, and her looks to her servants, which were so sweet and humble!"[207] However, this was in the first days of her arrival, and these "sweet and humble looks" were not constant ones; for a courier at Whitehall, writing to a friend, observes that "the queen, however little of stature, yet is of a pleasing countenance, if she be pleased, otherwise full of spirit and vigour, and seems of more than ordinary resolution;" and he adds an incident of one of her "frowns." The room in which the queen was at dinner, being somewhat over-heated with the fire and company, "she drove us all out of the chamber. I suppose none but a queen could have cast such a scowl."[208] We may already detect the fair waxen mask melting away on the features it covered, even in one short month!

By the marriage-contract, Henrietta was to be allowed a household establishment, composed of her own people; and this had been contrived to be not less than a small French colony, exceeding three hundred persons. It composed, in fact, a French faction, and looks like a covert project of Richelieu's to further his intrigues here, by opening a perpetual correspondence with the discontented Catholics of England. In the instructions of Bassompierre, one of the alleged objects of the marriage is the general good of the Catholic religion, by affording some relief to those English who professed it. If, however, that great statesman ever entertained this political design, the simplicity and pride of the Roman priests here completely overturned it; for in their blind zeal they dared to extend their domestic tyranny over majesty itself.

The French party had not long resided here ere the mutual jealousies between the two nations broke out. All the English who were not Catholics were soon dismissed from their attendance on the queen, by herself; while Charles was compelled, by the popular cry, to forbid any English Catholics to serve the queen, or to be present at the celebration of her mass. The king was even obliged to employ pursuivants or king's messengers, to stand at the door of her chapel to seize on any of the English who entered there, while on these occasions the French would draw their swords to defend these concealed Catholics. "The queen and hers" became an odious distinction in the nation. Such were the indecent scenes exhibited in public; they were not less reserved in private. The following anecdote of saying a grace before the king, at his own table, in a most indecorous race run between the catholic priest and the king's chaplain, is given in a manuscript letter of the times.