Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IRISH RELIQUARIES.

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

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

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

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

THE CADENAS.

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

TOFINO.

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

“_Credo che il senta ogni gentil persona._”

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELIGIONS.

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

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

TOWER OF BABEL.

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

MATHEMATICAL LADIES.

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

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

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

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

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

CARDINAL GONSALVI.

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

MADAME DE MAINTENON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“MY DEAR MADAM,

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

“Pray believe me very much yours,

“ELIZABETH DEVONSHIRE.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRENCH POETRY.

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

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

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

IDLENESS OF GENIUS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRANKNESS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A soul as sure to charm as seen,”

which

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

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

MANŒUVRERS.

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

WONDERFUL CHILDREN, AND GOOD MOTHERS.

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

_Richard III._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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