Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

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

“Posters by the sea and land,”

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

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

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

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

FOREIGN VISITORS.

“Point de rose sans épine.”

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

Here is the paragraph alluded to:—

“LADY MORGAN AND THE AMERICANS.

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

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

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

_Cymbeline._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IRISH UNION.

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

HUMAN MACHINERY.

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

SUICIDE.

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

EXTERNAL EXISTENCE.

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

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

ECLECTICS.

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

ATTITUDES OF GRIEF.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELIGIOUS DIABOLISM.

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

FÊTES, PARTIES, AND SOIRÉES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Such were the joys of my dancing days.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DOCTRINE OF CAUSATION.

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

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

THE COUNTESS D’ALBANY.