Chapter XL: An Old Lady's Apology (2)

From such a title and such an epigraph one might expect the most incendiary sentiments in the pages which follow, and that Sophia had nothing less in view than to overthrow the usurper; but this she disclaims: she has no intention, she avers, "to stir up any of my own sex to revolt against the _men_, or to invert the present order of things with regard to _government_ and _authority_" Her sole object appears to be to bring men to a proper sense of their deficiencies and the emptiness of their pretensions. But she is a person of admirable dignity and discretion: it is not until the conclusion, when she has not left them a leg to stand upon, that she magnanimously waives all the advantages to accrue from their humiliation, and merely bids them in future to know their true place. The composition is in every way worthy of these elevated sentiments. Sophia need not have announced herself a person of quality: there is evidence of it on every leaf of her book. One recognizes the accomplished gentlewoman of a hundred years ago, with her solid reading, her strong common sense, her sober religious convictions, her household science. No doubt she loved fine lace and old china; there are recondite internal proofs that she was pretty; and on closing the book a far-off rustle of her brocade reaches us as she makes her spreading curtsey. But we will let her speak for herself a little. Her first position is certainly a strong one: "If this haughty sex would have us believe they have a natural right of superiority over us, why don't they prove their charter from Nature by making use of reason to subdue themselves?... Were we to see _men_ everywhere and at all times masters of themselves, and their animal appetites in perfect subordination to their rational faculties, we should have some color to think that Nature designed them as masters to us." The doctrine of female inferiority she considers "a vulgar though ancient error," observing that until very recent ages the sun was believed to revolve round the earth, and the notion of the antipodes was "a heresy in philosophy"--that to assert the equality of the sexes now was no greater paradox than to advocate either of those theories but a short time ago. "But," she continues, "who shall the matter be tried by?" and here we suspect she has reached the root of the difficulty. Both men and women, she admits, are too much interested to be impartial judges; therefore she appeals to "rectified reason" as umpire. She considers in order the various claims to predominance which men have put forward, and confutes them one by one. "Man concludes that all other creatures were made for him because he was not created until all were in readiness for him:" even granting that to be unanswerable, she says it only proves that men were made for women, and not _vice versâ_: "they are our natural drudges.... Men are magnified because they succeed in taming a tiger, an elephant or such like animals;" therefore what rank must belong to woman, "who spends years in training that _fiercer animal_, MAN?" She instances a journeyman tailor she once saw belabor his wife with a neck of mutton, "to make her know, as he said, her _sovereign lord and master_. And this is perhaps as strong an argument as their sex is able to produce, though conveyed, in a greasy light.... To stoop to regard for the strutting things is not enough; to humor them more than we could children with any tolerable decency is too little; they must be served, forsooth!" It is grievous injustice to Sophia, but one almost fancies one hears Madame George Sand. She allows that to please man ought to be part of the sex's business if it were likely to succeed; "but such is the fanatical composition of their natures that the more pains is taken in endeavoring to please them, the less generally is the labor successful; ... and surely _women_ were created by Heaven for some better end than to labor in vain their whole life long." The supercilious commendations of men are gall and wormwood to her: "Some, more condescending, are gracious enough to confess that many _women_ have wit and conduct; but yet they are of opinion that even such of us as are the most remarkable for either or both still betray something which speaks the imbecility of our sex." She makes an excellent plea forgiving women a thorough education, complaining that it is denied them, and then they are charged with being superficial: "True knowledge and solid learning cannot but make woman as well as man more humble; ... and it must be owned that if a little superficial knowledge has rendered some of our sex vain, it equally renders some of theirs insupportable." With all the sex's frivolity, she adds, women have not been found to spend their lives on mere _entia rationis_ splitting hairs and weighing motes like the Schoolmen. She concludes that men deprive women of education lest they should oust them "from those public offices which they fill so miserably." She handles her logic admirably, and exposes her adversaries for begging the question and reasoning in a circle. Of course she enforces her assertions by citing the women who have distinguished themselves in every position of responsibility, military, political and intellectual, and only refrains from multiplying instances because of their number. Not to quote those alone who have filled chairs of medicine with honor, she ingeniously remarks that the remedies classed as "an old woman's recipe" are those oftenest prescribed, to the glory of her sex, who by patience, humanity and observation have invented without the help of Galen and Hippocrates an infinity of reliefs for the sick which their adherents can neither improve nor disapprove. She makes her final point on the question of moral superiority. It is sometimes stated "that some _women_ have been more flagitious than any _men_, but that in nowise redounds to the dishonor of our sex in general. _The corruption of the best is ever the worst_: should we grant this, ... it must be owned their number would at least balance the account. I believe no one will deny but that at least upon the most moderate computation there are a thousand _bad men_ to one _bad woman_." She winds up by an appeal to her own sex in the very spirit of Miss F.P. Cobbe, the sum of which is to adjure women, for their own sakes, not to be silly.

How many contemporaries of George Selwyn had their eyes opened by this clear statement of their demerits there are no means of ascertaining. But Sophia raised up at least one furious antagonist, who replied by a pamphlet called "MAN _Superior to_ WOMAN, _or a Vindication of Man's Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman, containing a Plain Confutation of the Fallacious Arguments of_ SOPHIA. By a GENTLEMAN." The first thing to be noted is, that whereas Sophia said her say in about fifty pages, the masculine reply covers seventy-eight in smaller print. He opens by a "Dedication to the Ladies," beginning, "Lovely creatures"--an exordium which any woman of spirit would resent, the perfidy and disrepect of his intentions being obvious in those words alone; and he continues in the tone of flippancy which was to be expected. His arguments are weak in the extreme, and his satire is pointless. The only hit is his scheme for a female university, with Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Afra Behn in the chair of literature. His summary of woman's character and occupations was given earlier, with more brevity and wit, and no less truth, by Pope. To Sophia's historical illustrations he opposes female types named Tremula, Bellnina, Novilia, etc. But in truth the production is so excessively scurrilous that one needs to remember that those were the times of Congreve and Fielding to believe that the author could have the right to style himself "A GENTLEMAN." We shudder with pity for poor Sophia, who had such a mass of filth flung at her. But that decorous personage is not disconcerted: she does not lose her head or her temper, but opens her mouth with a freedom of speech which was the prerogative of an honest woman in those days, and rejoins with a second pamphlet: "_Woman's Superior Excellence over Man_" Her first thrust is to regret, in behalf of the other sex, that neither Achilles nor Hector appears as their champion, but Thersites. Either her adversary was silenced, or the publishers considered that what he said was not worthy of preservation, for no further words of his appear, so that in any case she had the best of it. Her first pamphlet had a second edition in the following year. Its memory was still alive in this century, for it was quoted with respect by the _Retrospective Review_ for 1824 in a learned article on the "Privileges of Woman," which deserves the attention of those interested in the subject.

S.B.W.

THE TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI.

I wish to chronicle in the pages of _Lippincott's Magazine_ the record of a scene that took place this spring in the Medicean chapel attached to the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. It was in itself a remarkable and memorable scene enough, but it was yet more important as regards certain interesting points of history on which it throws a very curious light, if it does not, as many persons will be inclined to think, settle them definitively.

The little square marble chapel itself, which no visitor to Florence will have forgotten, is admired as an architectural gem of Michael Angelo, and is yet more celebrated as the shrine of some of his finest works, especially the sitting statue of Lorenzo and the recumbent statues of _Twilight_ and _Dawn_ on the tomb of Lorenzo. These two grand figures, it will be remembered, repose on the arched canopy over the tomb in such a position that, if not retained in their places by some means adapted for that purpose, they would slide off the rounded arch by their own weight. Now, it had been lately observed that the statue of _Twilight_ was moving, and it was very reasonably judged to be necessary that this should be looked to. The statue was therefore carefully raised, and it was discovered that when the tomb of Lorenzo had been opened to place in it the body of the murdered Alexander, his (putative) son, the metal stanchion or peg by means of which Michael Angelo had secured his statue in its place had been replaced by a wooden one. This, in the course of the centuries which have since elapsed had become decayed, and the statue might have fallen any day. This being the case, it was thought well to raise the other statue, that of the _Dawn_ also. But that was found to be as secure in its place as the great artist had left it. But these superincumbent statues having been thus lifted from off the sepulchre, it was suggested that the opportunity should be taken to examine the contents of the tomb.

There were several reasons which rendered such an examination historically interesting and curious. A certain degree of doubt has been cast--mainly by Grimm--on the question whether the tomb be in fact that of Lorenzo, the father of Catherine de' Medici, the celebrated queen of France--whether it be not rather that of Giuliano, his uncle. For my part, I had always thought that there was little or no foundation for the doubt. The main features of the story of Alexander will probably be in the memory of the reader. The Florentine republic and liberty were destroyed in 1527 by the united forces of the traitor pope, the Medicean Clement VII., and Charles V., with the understanding that this Alexander should marry Margaret, the emperor's illegitimate daughter, and that Florence should become a dukedom to dower the young couple withal. Who and what this Alexander was has always been one of the puzzles of history. He was, tradition says, very swarthy, and was generally believed to be the son of a Moorish slave-mother. He was certainly illegitimate; and the question, Who was his father? was always a doubtful one, though he has generally been called the son of Lorenzo. I have elsewhere given at length reasons for believing rather that whispered bit of scandal of the time which declared the pope, Clement VII., to be his father. When Florence fell he became duke, and reigned over the unhappy city for seven years, in such sort that the murder of him in 1537 by his kinsman Lorenzino, traitorously and cowardly done as the deed was, was deemed the act of a patriot. The story of such a deed, done at midnight in a private chamber, and never made the subject of legal investigation, of course reaches subsequent generations enveloped in more or less of uncertainty. Now, it was likely enough that the careful examination of the remains in the tomb in question might throw light on sundry points of Alexander's story.

In the first place, the identity of the tomb is now fixed beyond the possibility of a doubt. It was known that the body of the murdered Alexander was placed in the tomb of his putative father, Lorenzo. If, therefore, the body of Alexander should be found in this sepulchre, the tomb is proved to have been that of Lorenzo. When the lid of the sarcophagus was raised, there accordingly were the two bodies visible--one dressed in white, the other in black. It has been assumed--and I think the assumption is abundantly justified, as will presently be seen--that the skeleton in black is that of Lorenzo, and the skeleton in white that of Alexander. The relative position of the bodies was very singular. The heads were at opposite ends of the sarcophagus, and the bodies were placed, not side by side, but each between the legs of the other. One of the bodies, that of Lorenzo, seemed when the lid of the sarcophagus was raised to be headless, but on examination the skull was found under the breast of the black tunic that covered the body. There can be little doubt that it became detached when the body was moved for the purpose of placing that of Alexander in the tomb. The white garment that clad the skeleton of Alexander was an embroidered shirt ornamented with lace: the legs were covered with white leggings. The skull of this skeleton had all the teeth perfect when the sarcophagus was opened; but should the curiosity of any future generation tempt the men of that day to peer into this receptacle of the dust of tyrants, the skull of the murdered Alexander will be found to be toothless. And all sorts of suppositions and theories may be based on this singular fact, and credited, until some antiquary of the period discovers in an ancient magazine published at the period of a former examination of the sepulchre this record, in which I am obliged to declare--with a blush for the decency of the Florentines--that the teeth were all stolen by persons who were permitted to be present at the opening of the tomb. A certain special historical interest is attached to those teeth of the murdered man. The story goes that when Lorenzino stabbed him as he slept on a bed in Lorenzino's own house, to which he had been inveigled in the hope of meeting there a certain lady, the wife of a Ginori of the time, Alexander started up, and, seizing the thumb of the murderer between his teeth, held him so firmly that he could not have escaped had not a bravo whom he had hired to aid him come to his assistance. These, then, were the teeth that held so well in the death-grip of their owner! Some Florentine historically-minded virtuoso (!) appreciated the significance of the fact, and stole them from the head some three centuries and a half after that last bite of theirs. There were several gaps in the range of teeth still remaining in the skull of Alexander, which has appeared strange to some who remember that he was only twenty-seven when he died. But I think that any medical man, taking into consideration; the manner of his death, would find nothing strange in the circumstance, but on the contrary a confirmation of the truth of the facts which the chroniclers of the time have preserved for us.

Perhaps, however, the most curious and interesting fact which the opening of this tomb has ascertained is that testified to by the hair still remaining on the skull which was that of Alexander. It is a black curly hair of a coarse quality, such as a man of mixed black blood may be supposed to have had. It is recorded that one of the wounds given by the bravo Scoronconcolo, whom Lorenzino had hired to assist him in the murder, and who ran up to complete the job when his master was disabled by being fast held by the teeth of Alexander, was a stab in the face. And of the truth of this tradition also the skull of the murdered man still affords evidence; for on the left-hand side of the face, a little below the socket of the eye, there is a mark in the bone beneath the cheek which must have been made by the point of the sword or dagger that inflicted the wound, and which shows that the bravo Scoronconcolo's thrust must have been a shrewd one.

It will readily be supposed that the scene at the opening of the sepulchre must have been a very impressive one. There, in that solemn chapel of white and black marble which the genius of Michael Angelo prepared for the repose of his sovereigns and patrons, with his lifelike and immortal presentations of the forms of the dead who have filled all story with their names, looking down on the deed with sad and solemn faces, who would not, while thus forcing the prison-house of the tomb to render up its terrible and long-concealed secrets, have been deeply sensible of a feeling of awe and reverence? Even putting aside all such sentiments as the contemplation of such a _memento mori_ is usually found to inspire in most men, the purely scientific historical inquirer must have felt the importance of the occasion, and the great desirability of making the most in an historical point of view of so rare an opportunity. I am sorry to be obliged to record that the Florentines, so far as could be judged from their conduct and bearing, felt nothing of all this. No one who knows them as well as I do would have expected reverence from them under any possible or imaginable circumstances; but one might have expected such due care and decency of proceeding as would have sufficed to render the examination of the remains as historically instructive as possible, and to preserve the record for a future generation. But this was very far from being the case. A learned professor of anatomy indeed attended at the opening of the tomb, but instead of touching the remains himself, or utilizing his science by handling them as they ought to have been handled, he called a workman, and by him the bodies were torn out from their resting-place in fragments. The clothes were of course torn to pieces in the operation; the lace from the shirt of Alexander was permitted to be stolen; and the same fate, as has been stated, overtook his teeth. No sort of preparation had been made for any possible examination of the remains to any good purpose. They were laid out anyhow, as the phrase is, on a little marble bench in the chapel. Those who remember the place will not need to be told how perfect a sham any pretence of examination must have been under such circumstances. When this pretence had been gone through, the bones were cast back again into the marble sarcophagus by the workman, "like"--as one eye-witness of the scene describes it--"the bones of dogs." And when the same person looked into the sarcophagus after this tossing back had been effected, he saw a mere confused heap of the scattered bones of two skeletons undistinguishably mixed together. "I cannot help," writes the same eye-witness, "expressing my sense of the barbaric acts which I witnessed. Historic skeletons--the father of Catherine de' Medici, the son-in-law of Charles V.; Florentine nobles--one a duke of Florence, the other of Urbino--both bad enough fellows, no doubt, but could any Communists have acted worse? Besides, Communist mobs assert principles, and do these things in hot blood. But this most monstrous outrage was committed coolly by pure stupidity and the carelessness which cannot be moved by any consideration to take any trouble that can by any possibility be avoided. Had they turned up a quantity of the bones of animals to examine them, they could not have done worse." It is fair to add that _some_ of the organs of the Florentine press stigmatized the proceedings upon this occasion as they deserved to be stigmatized.

T.A.T.

T.W. ROBERTSON.

The qualifications needed by the novelist and by the dramatist are at once alike and unlike. Differing in manner rather than in matter, they are rarely found united in one man. Scott, from whose novels many stirring plays have been taken, was incapable of writing one himself; Thackeray, even after he was the well-known author of _Vanity Fair_, could not find a manager willing to produce his comedy; and Thackeray's great master, Fielding, comparatively failed as a dramatist, though Joseph Surface is Blifil and Charles Surface is Tom Jones, and from the same work Colman derived his comedy of the _Jealous Wife_, which holds the stage to this day. By dint of hard work a man might make himself a novelist, but the dramatist, like the poet, must be born. He who possesses the power of writing successfully for the stage will surely show it in his first work. This theory accounts for the signal success of the _Cantab_, a slight farce played in 1861 at the London Strand Theatre. The material was weak and worn-out, but the fun was not forced: it flowed naturally from the situations. There was a freshness and a firmness about the little piece which showed the hand of a young author capable of better things. Three years later, Mr. Sothern, desiring a part diametrically the opposite of Lord Dundreary, produced _David Garrick_, and in 1865 _Society_ made its first appearance on the stage of the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Then T. W. Robertson stepped to the front rank of living English dramatists.

The author had found his audience and his actors. The Prince of Wales's Theatre was directed by a burlesque actress, and devoted to light comedy and extravaganza: after that it gave up burlesque, merely heightening the effect of the comedy and prolonging the programme by a quiet farce. The company was small and strong, the theatre was well managed, and plays were handsomely mounted. After the success of _Society_ until Robertson's death its main reliance was upon his pen. In 1866 _Ours_ was first produced, followed in 1867 by _Caste_. The pieces of other authors, although carefully played and well mounted, were uniform failures. Mr. Edmund Yates's _Tame Cats_, and Mr. Dion Boucicault's _How She Loves Him!_ were each withdrawn after a run of a very few nights, whereas _School Play_, an _M.P._ succeeded each other with undisputed success. At the Haymarket Theatre _David Garrick_ was followed by _Home_ and _Birth_.

The day was won, and the successful author could afford to rest on his laurels. But he was ambitious and a hard worker; so he continued to write and adapt. To counterbalance the good-fortune of _David Garrick_ and _Home_ at the Haymarket, and the series of six at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, there was a list of failures--_Birth, Progress, Dreams_ and _War_. But his comedies were far more successful than his heavier plays: his belief in his power to construct good acting dramas must have been sadly shaken by the total failure of _For Love_, the _Shadow-Tree Shaft_ and the _Nightingale_. There can be no better proof of their want of success than the fact that at a time when American managers were eager for his comedies, not one of his dramas was ever produced in the United States. But in spite of the comparative failure of his later works, his death was felt to be the loss of a dramatic author of some performance and of greater promise,

We have a way of nicknaming a new writer after one of his most celebrated predecessors whom we imagine him to resemble, and then we find fault with him for not having all the qualities of an author whom he probably has no desire to imitate. False friends of T.W. Robertson called him the "modern Sheridan." Few writers are more dissimilar. Robertson in his dialogue and construction imitated the modern French dramatists; Sheridan, the old English, Congreve, Farquhar and Wycherley. Robertson especially delighted in love-scenes--there are generally two at least in each of his comedies: I cannot remember one in any of Sheridan's. The dialogue of the author of the _School for Scandal_ is artificial and glittering--that of the author of _School_ is generally more natural, and always less brilliant. They have, however, one point in common: they both practiced Molière's maxim, _Je prends mon bien où je le trouve_. They both unhesitatingly plagiarized. Robertson in particular easily assimilated foreign matter. He turned _Le Dégel_ and _Les Ganaches_ of M. Sardou into _A Rapid Thaw_ and _Progress_. _David Garrick_ was taken from _Dr. Robin_, a French play, itself imitated from the German. _Home_ closely follows _L'Aventurière_ of M. Émile Augier. Madame de Girardin's _La Joie fait peur_, previously translated by Mr. G.H. Lewes as _Sunshine through the Clouds_, gave Robertson the situation of the last act of _War_: Mr. Dion Boucicault has since deftly adapted the same delightful little piece under the name of _Kerry, or Night and Morning_. The Cinderella-like plot of _School_ is taken from the _Aschenbrödel_ of Roderick Benedix: the school examination was suggested by a French vaudeville, _En classe, mesdemoiselles!_ The part of Beau Farintosh is a weak revival of Garrick's Lord Chalkstone and Colman and Garrick's Lord Ogleby; and the strong situation in the fourth act is imitated from _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré_ of George Sand.

But Robertson is decidedly strongest when he walks without crutches. His own original plays, _Society, Caste, Ours_, are by far his best. A foreign support made him limp. Of all his adaptations, _home_ alone is really good: most of the others failed. Although that cosmopolitan mosaic _School_ has been the most successful of his pieces in London--it has passed its five hundredth night--it is by no means the best. Success is not necessarily a test of real merit. Evidently, _School_ has the elements of popularity, although it is a very weak piece, although it is full of foreign matter, and although it violates that most necessary rule of dramatic art, declaring no play should contain an effect, a line, a scene or an act which does not bear on the end in view by developing either the characters or the action. The entire second act, containing the farcical examination-scene, is useless. Robertson again sinned in this way in the _Nightingale_: although it had no effect on the plot, although it was entirely unnecessary, he introduced a pretty tableau representing the heroine, a lovely prima-donna, singing under the silver moonbeams in a boat rocked to and fro by the waves.

I have before spoken of Robertson's fondness for love-scenes. There are almost as many of them in one of his comedies as in one of Mr. Anthony Trollope's novels. And they are generally very good. What can be more delicious than the "spooning" in _Home_, if it is not the billing and cooing in _Ours_? But what can be more commonplace or more objectionable than the frequent remarks about love and Cupid scattered through his plays? Tom Stylus says in _Society_, "Love is an awful swindler--always drawing upon Hope, who never honors his drafts--a sort of whining beggar, continually moved on by the maternal police. But 'tis a weakness to which the wisest of us are subject--a kind of manly measles which this flesh is heir to, particularly when the flesh is heir to nothing else. Even I have felt the divine damnation--I mean emanation. But the lady united herself to another, which was a very good thing for me, and anything but a misfortune for her." This is altogether false: no man could ever say such things seriously--at least no man of sense would, and Tom Stylus is a man of sense. See, too, this bit of dialogue in _Play_:

"AMANDA. You are a good girl, and will be rewarded some day with a good man's love for this.

"ROSIE. I don't want it. I don't want anything to do with love. Love's a nasty, naughty, wicked boy, and the sooner he's put in convict-clothes and refused a ticket-of-leave, the better."

That is false too: the affected smartness of the wit does not suit the situation; or, rather, as a writer in the _Athenaeum_ has said of a similar speech, "it suits any occasion."

In this same _Play_, Mrs. Kin peck soliloquizes thus: "I fell into a most unquiet sleep. I thought I saw Cliqueteaux, the old croupier, who died of love for me--of that and a complication of other disorders. A man that was a genius, with a wart on his nose. It was hereditary--the genius, not the wart," etc. Now this may be "funny," but it is not dramatic. It reminds one of the most forced passages of Artemas Ward's generally fresh and unforced humor. But perhaps the worst instance in all Robertson's play of this pitiful sacrifice of situation and character to a petty "joke" is found in _Caste_. Sam Gerridge, a gas-fitter and plumber, desiring to marry Polly, the daughter of Eccles, a drunken old brute, tells him so, casually mentioning that to prove his affection he will do anything he can in "the way of spirituous liquor or tobacco." This captivates the heart of old Eccles, who joins the hands of the young couple, saying with a drunken leer, "Samuel Gerridge, she is thine. Samuel Gerridge, you shall be 'er 'usband! I don't know a gas_fitter_ man!" (The italics are in the original).

These are but minor errors, however. The great fault in Robertson's comedies is the lack of strong dramatic interest. There is no human passion. There is no exhibition of human strength and human weakness. There is little of that clash of character against character from which results true comedy. But even if his characters are mere empty-headed automata, even if his plays have not the literary value of Mr. W.S. Gilbert's, even if his pieces have not the situations of Sardou or the wit of Sheridan, he has a simple sweetness all his own. And perhaps, after all, the greatest objection to him is the weakness of his imitators. Success is always a schoolmaster. But it is not just to hold Robertson responsible for the faults of Alberry or the failings of the tea-cup-and-saucer school of comedy-writers.

J.B.M.

THE LETTERS OF A PRINCESS.

It is the fashion to decry French memoirs of court-life, and, considering the quaint freedom of style which characterizes much of this voluminous literature, it is not strange. Many of these memoirs, original letters, etc. are exceedingly interesting, because of their merciless unmasking of some of the sublime figure-heads of history; notably the letters of Madame Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, widow of Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIV. She always hated the French manners, and longed for her native _sauer-kraut_ and sausages, which to her taste were finer than all the luxuries and dainties of the French cuisine. She was counted a severe moralist, and her tongue was more dreaded than a bayonet-charge. To be sure, her enemies more than hinted that her extraordinary virtue was trebly guarded by her ugliness. On the latter subject she says herself, "I must be cruelly ugly: I never had a passable feature. My eyes are little, my nose short and big, my lips long and flat, my cheeks hanging, my face long, my waist and my legs large, my stature short: sum-total, a little old fright." But she was intelligent and witty, and that, in France at least, goes a long way with a woman. She was also loyal and truthful. No one doubted her word when once she had spoken. This makes her testimony valuable, though many incidents circumspectly narrated by her seem incredible. Of the young duchesse de Bourgogne, second daughter of Louis XIV., she says: One of her amusements was to make her lackeys drag her over the floor by her feet. It is to be presumed that the duchess was a _very_ young person at this time.

Madame Charlotte's portrait of Marie Thérèse, queen of _Le Grand Monarque_, is not very flattering: "Her teeth were black and broken, and she ate immoderately of garlic and chocolate. She was very fond of basset, but she never won, for she could never learn to play any game. She ate long and very slowly, taking mouthfuls for a canary." The diagnosis of the disease of which the queen died displays the popular pathological lore of those times. Madame says: "She died of an abscess on the arm, for which Fagon bled her. The humor entered and fell on the heart: he then gave her an emetic to remove the humor, and this suffocated her." La Valière, according to Madame Charlotte, was the only woman who ever really loved the king. She limped a little, had lovely eyes, irregular teeth, and was very neat in her person, while Madame de Montespan was just the reverse.

Of Cardinal Richelieu we have a glimpse in madame's letters which his biographers, generally at least, omit. She tells us that he used to have violent fits of insanity, during which he would imagine that he was a horse, jump over a billiard-table, kick his servants, neigh, and make a fearful noise for an hour. His domestics would then get him into bed, and after much sweating he would wake without the least memory of what had passed. As "jumping over a billiard-table" might appear an incredible feat, at least for an aged cardinal, it is proper to remark that the billiard-tables of those times bore about the same relation in size to our modern billiard-tables that the ancient spinnet did to a grand pianoforte.

JAPANESE ART.

Some of our young ladies have a pretty art of constructing miniature landscapes out of pebbles and mosses, strips of glistening paper for brooks, little fuzzy pine sticks painted green for trees, and animals and Swiss cottages from the toy-shop. Could these amateur artists once see how the Japanese do this thing, they would abandon their mosses and pebbles in despair. A late traveler in Japan says of one of these: "It was a fairy-like landscape seen through a spy-glass reversed." Some of the details were real trees dwarfed to pigmies by the art of the Oriental florist. There were limpid lakes peopled with gold-fish; grottos and summer-houses of exquisite finish draped with growing verdure and large enough to shelter a small company of rabbits: lovely walks winding through groves, lawns and by miniature parterres of flowers, and finally, liliputian canals, spanned by elegant bridges wide enough for the passage of a large rat.

* * * * *

Among the "Notes" in the New York _Nation_ of May 6th is the following:

"In the new edition of Prescott's complete works (Lippincott) we have remarked that the introduction to _Charles V._, so admirable for the time when it was written, is left untouched by the editor, not even the notes giving any intimation of the great progress made in the knowledge of the Middle Ages within the last hundred years. The editor may have chosen to regard the work as a literary monument to be preserved as it stands, and certainly it would require very extensive if not entire recasting."

There would seem to be some misapprehension at the bottom of these statements. No one, we believe, has ever undertaken to edit Robertson's _History of Charles the Fifth_. Prescott appended to it a long "Account of the Emperor's Life after his Abdication," and for that reason it has been included in all subsequent editions of his works. But no intimation has ever been given that the editor of Prescott's histories had assumed the same office for Robertson. If any one be engaged in editing _Charles the Fifth_, we can only wish him joy of the task. We trust, however, he will not proceed on the plan suggested by the _Nation_, of "recasting" the work in whole or in part. Such a process could hardly be considered as proper treatment of any literary production, which, whatever its demerits, should at least be subjected to no worse perversions than those of dishonest or incompetent criticism.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Macready's Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and Letters. Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., one of his Executors. New York: Macmillan & Co.

It is probable that this book will excite a degree of disappointment in many readers, who, knowing Macready's position outside his profession, may naturally have expected to find in the record of his life ample and interesting details of his intercourse, often amounting to intimacy, with a great number of notable persons. This expectation would without doubt have been gratified had the autobiography, which occupies a third of the volume and covers about the same proportion of the writer's theatrical career, been carried to its close. Macready was not one of those men who spring to eminence at a bound: his powers were gradually and slowly developed, and owing partly to this fact, but partly also to unfavorable circumstances, the recognition of them was tardy and grudging. For many years after his _début_ on the London boards he, who at a later period was almost disparaged as a pre-eminently intellectual actor, owed his chief successes to his performance of melodramatic parts like Rob Roy and William Tell, for which his mental as well as physical endowments were considered especially to qualify him. When at length he had reached his full maturity, he stood without a living rival as the representative of leading Shakespearian characters; and maintaining this supremacy down to his retirement from the stage, closed the line of great tragedians and left a place which after the lapse of a quarter of a century still remains unfilled. His high personal worth and his efforts to exalt and purify the drama won him golden opinions from all sorts of men; and, with the exception of Garrick, no actor probably ever mingled as largely or came into as close relations with persons distinguished in other and alien walks of life. Mere fashionable society he seems never to have frequented, and his labors were too pressing and onerous to allow of that continuous companionship with a chosen circle in which men of letters or of science, however industrious, are generally able to find relaxation. But he came in contact, at one time or another, with most of the celebrated people of his day on both sides of the Atlantic, his friendship was sought and prized by many of them, and the occasional glimpses we get of them in his _Diaries_ are of a kind to deepen our regret that the _Reminiscences_, in which the power of skillfully elaborating his material is sufficiently evidenced, should close abruptly just when the sources of its interest were becoming wider and fuller.

But any loss from this cause of amusing anecdotes or graphic descriptions of persons or scenes is more than made good by the far higher value and stronger attraction of the book as the portraiture of a striking character and a remarkable career. In this view the _Diaries_ are not inferior in interest to the expanded narrative that precedes them. Indeed, terse and concise as they generally are, they have the advantage of presenting freshly and vividly the impressions and reflections of the moment, and thus exhibiting the writer's mind both in its habitual and exceptional states without reservation or deliberate purpose. They do not, however, reveal any different image from that which is presented in the autobiography: on the contrary, they confirm the truthfulness and frank fidelity of the more conscious self-delineation which is there attempted. There breathes, indeed, through the whole book a tone of unaffected sincerity, the charm of which cannot be overrated. Not only does every statement bear the stamp of veracity, but there is an utter absence of artifice, of any design, so to speak, upon the reader, which is as rare as it is beautiful. Admiration and sympathy were needs of Macready's nature, but he will have no jot of them beyond what he can fairly and honorably claim. Least of all, will he exalt himself at the expense of others. He pays no idle compliments, pours out no fulsome or insidious eulogies, but he speaks of his rivals and his predecessors with the warm appreciation of one who had felt the full influence of their power, and who could never look on merit with an oblique eye. His worship of Mrs. Siddons, as unparalleled in her genius, was life-long, and his descriptions of her acting convey a more vivid idea of its peculiar qualities and matchless effect than any others we can remember to have read. Talma comes next in his regard as "the most finished artist of his time, not below Kean in his most energetic displays, and far above him in the refinement of his taste and the extent of his research--equaling Kemble in dignity, unfettered by his stiffness and formality." He says acutely of Kean that "when under the impulse of his genius he seemed to _clutch_ the whole idea of the man, ... but if he missed the character in his first attempt at conception he never could recover it by study." Of Kean, if of any actor, we might have feared that his notices would be tinged with jealousy; but not only does he render justice to his originality and "burning energy," but his account of the only evening he ever spent in private with "this extraordinary man" brings into full relief the charm of his manners and personal qualities at a time when he was still unspoilt by flattery and unenfeebled by dissipation. Sketches and criticisms more or less complete are given of many other great performers, whom, it is to be remembered, Macready had less opportunity of seeing in a variety of parts than if he had not himself been a busy member of the profession. He can censure as well as praise--less warmly, but not less candidly. His verdict on Ristori, whom he saw after his retirement, may not improbably appear harsh to her admirers, but we should recommend them to ponder well before endeavoring to controvert it.

It would, however, be difficult if not impossible to name a volume of memoirs in which there is so little dispraise of individuals, such an absence of what can be characterized as depreciation either in the way of direct remark or of insinuation. There will be no call for contradiction of any slurs upon character through perversion of facts or the repetition of hearsay calumny in its pages. Nor does this seem to proceed from either a mere distaste for the chatter of gossips or an unwillingness to wound the feelings of survivors, though both these traits are discernible enough. The strong and more pervading cause lay in an instinctive nobility of nature which sought only what was excellent and had no keen scent for blemishes or meannesses. There are in his _Diaries_ many bitter reproaches and vehement denunciations, but they are all directed against his own conduct. Like Orlando, he will chide no breather in the world but himself, against whom he knows most faults. He had the defects incidental to a sensitive organization, an irritable temperament and an aspiring mind. He was apt to suspect hostility where none existed, and to resent indignities that were never intended. He confesses on one occasion at least to an unworthy elation at the inferiority of a rival. Above all, he was unable to curb the outbreaks of impatience and anger excited by negligence or stupidity--outbreaks which were often sufficiently amusing to the bystanders from the contrast between the old-fashioned violence of the language and the refined tones and lofty bearing of the speaker. In fact, so foreign were such displays to the dominant qualities of his character, while yet so closely connected with the fine sense and exacting spirit of the artist, that one is tempted to wish that he could himself have viewed them with more indifference, accepting this thorn in the flesh as a slight but irremediable misfortune, instead of making it the constant subject of penitence and self-abasement. But such a course would have been still more foreign to his nature, ever aiming at perfection, moral and artistic, ever summoning his faculties and actions to the stern inquest of conscience, and refusing to accept the verdict of any lower tribunal. And the struggle had its reward in a real if not complete victory. The weeds, if never wholly eradicated, could not choke the nobler growth; the stream, if it retained its turbid coloring, increased always in volume and majesty. The fine qualities which might so easily have deteriorated remained unscathed. His keen sense of justice and honor, his inborn candor and generosity, his fervent love of virtue and goodness in their simplest and least obtrusive exhibitions, his cordial admiration of true greatness,--these and kindred traits never lost their freshness or force. Above all, he retained throughout life that deep and exquisite tenderness of feeling which formed the supreme charm of his character, as it did of his acting, and to which it would not, we think, be easy to find a parallel in a person of his own sex. It was not alone in his ardent family affections--his fond recollections of the mother he lost in boyhood, his devotion to his sister, wife and brother, his passionate love of his children, or his anguish and abiding sorrow at every severance of such ties--that this quality displayed itself. His sympathy with all suffering, especially if conjoined with innocence and patient endurance, was not only quick but strong. His eyes fill with tears at the sight of a fellow-passenger in a mail-coach, a poor deformed boy, who is carrying a basket of toys from one town to another, and he shakes his hand at parting with a "God bless thee!" that comes direct from the heart. It was strikingly characteristic of him that, with all his intense ambition, his resolute desire--to use a phrase which we have heard him apply to himself--"to rise above the crowd, and stand when others fall," he chose for his wife a young provincial actress, whom he had once chided for her inattention or inability, but whose artlessness of manner, purity and sweetness of nature and aptness for improvement so enlisted his sympathies that he constituted himself her friend and guide until the death of her father and brother awakened a still warmer solicitude, bringing with it the discovery that "love had been the inspiration of all the counsel and assistance he had rendered her." Nor is the noble frankness less noticeable with which he tells of his sister's unconcealed disappointment on her first introduction to the _fiancée_, whose person as well as mind he had so extolled in his descriptions and whom happily she learned ere long to look at with his eyes, so that the happiness and serenity of his home were destined to be pure and undisturbed.

Within a few years after his marriage he fixed his abode at a short distance from London, where the sight of open fields, of trees and flowers, never failed to exercise its soothing and restorative influence upon him. The love of Nature was a passion with him, and in the record of his journeys--whether the few which he was able to make for the sole purpose of pleasure or his many professional tours--his notices of the scenery show how large was the enjoyment he derived from this healthful source. When, too, he withdrew from public life, it was to the neighborhood of a small town, remote from the former scenes of his struggles and triumphs, but commanding a wide view over a pleasing landscape. Here, as the friend who has edited this volume tells us, "he devoted himself almost exclusively to labors of kindness and usefulness; his charity was so extensive that, although his left hand knew not what his right hand did, it was impossible that it should escape observation even beyond the sphere of the recipients of his bounty; and while thus engaged in relieving distress in the neighborhood of his new home, he continued to remit money to old pensioners elsewhere up to the day of his death.... But his great interest was in the cause of education, especially among the poorer classes, which he developed at the cost of incessant personal exertion, and mainly at his own expense. He established a night-school, which he conducted himself, and in which he was assisted by voluntary teachers from among the gentlemen and tradesmen of the town, who attended in turns, but he was himself never absent from his post, except under very urgent necessity. After a time some of his friends raised a subscription in order to relieve Macready of a part of the burden which his own zeal in the cause had brought upon himself. Yet, although his own contribution to it had not been ever less than one hundred pounds a year [about a twelfth of his whole income], he was so fond of the night-school that he accepted this aid as a proof of the estimation in which his work was held, and as an additional fund, but not in ease of his own payments." Such a close to such a life will seem either a lame and impotent conclusion or a most fitting and harmonious cadence, according to the point of view.