Chapter VI: Part 6

Besides these, were many others calculated to awaken in the thoughtful mind both sweet and bitter fancies. How often have I walked up and down this noble gallery lost in "commiserating reveries" on the vicissitudes of departed grandeur!--on the nothingness of all that life could give!--on the fate of youthful beauties who lived to be broken-hearted, grow old, and die!--on heroes that once walked the earth in the blaze of their fame, now gone down to dust, and an endless darkness!--on bright faces, "petries de lis et de roses," since time-wrinkled!--on noble forms since mangled in the battle-field!--on high-born heads that fell beneath the axe of the executioner!--O ye starred and ribboned! ye jewelled and embroidered! ye wise, rich, great, noble, brave, and beautiful, of all your loves and smiles, your graces and excellencies, your deeds and honours--does then a "painted board circumscribe all?"

ALTHORPE.

A FRAGMENT.

It was on such a day as I have seen in Italy in the month of December, but which, in our chill climate, seemed so unseasonably, so ominously beautiful, that it was like the hectic loveliness brightening the eyes and flushing the cheek of consumption,--that I found myself in the domains of Althorpe. Autumn, dying in the lap of Winter, looked out with one bright parting smile;--the soft air breathed of Summer; the withered leaves, heaped on the path, told a different tale. The slant, pale sun shone out with all heaven to himself; not a cloud was there, not a breeze to stir the leafless woods--those venerable woods, which Evelyn loved and commemorated:[67] the fine majestic old oaks, scattered over the park, tossed their huge bare arms against the blue sky; a thin hoar frost, dissolving as the sun rose higher, left the lawns and hills sparkling and glancing in its ray; now and then a hare raced across the open glade--

"And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, which glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run."

Nothing disturbed the serene stillness except a pheasant whirring from a neighbouring thicket, or at intervals the belling of the deer--a sound so peculiar, and so fitted to the scene, that I sympathized in the taste of one of the noble progenitors of the Spencers, who had built a hunting-lodge in a sequestered spot, that he might hear "the harte bell."

This was a day, an hour, a scene, with all its associations, its quietness and beauty, "felt in the blood, and felt along the heart." All worldly cares and pains were laid asleep; while memory, fancy, and feeling waked. Althorpe does not frown upon us in the gloom of remote antiquity; it has not the warlike glories of some of the baronial residences of our old nobility; it is not built like a watch-tower on a hill, to lord it over feudal vassals; it is not bristled with battlements and turrets. It stands in a valley, with the gradual hills undulating round it, clothed with rich woods. It has altogether a look of compactness and comfort, without pretension, which, with the pastoral beauty of the landscape, and low situation, recall the ancient vocation of the family, whose grandeur was first founded, like that of the patriarchs of old, on the multitude of their flocks and herds.[68] It was in the reign of Henry the Eighth that Althorpe became the principal seat of the Spencers, and no place of the same date can boast so many delightful, romantic, and historical associations. There is Spenser the poet, "high-priest of all the Muses' mysteries," who modestly claimed, as an honour, his relationship to those Spencers who now, with a just pride, boast of _him_, and deem his Faery Queen "the brightest jewel in their coronet;" and the beautiful Alice Spencer, countess of Derby, who was celebrated in early youth by her poet-cousin, and for whom Milton, in her old age, wrote his "Arcades." At Althorpe, in 1603, the queen and son of James the First were, on their arrival in England, nobly entertained with a masque, written for the occasion by Ben Jonson, in which the young ladies and nobles of the country enacted nymphs and fairies, satyrs and hunters, and danced to the sound of "excellent soft music," their scenery the natural woods, their stage the green lawn, their canopy the summer sky. What poetical picturesque hospitality! In these days it would have been a dinner, with French cooks and confectioners express from London to dress it. Here lived Waller's famous Sacharissa, the first Lady Sunderland--so beautiful and good, so interesting in herself, she needed not his wit nor his poetry to enshrine her. Here she parted from her young husband,[69] when he left her to join the king in the field; and here, a few months after, she received the news of his death in the battle of Newbury, and saw her happiness wrecked at the age of three-and-twenty. Here plotted her distinguished son, that Proteus of politics, the second Lord Sunderland. Charles the First was playing at bowls on the green at Althorpe, when Colonel Joyce's detachment surprised him, and carried him off to imprisonment and to death. Here the excellent and accomplished Evelyn used to meditate in the "noble gallerie," and in the "ample gardens," of which he has left us an admiring and admirable description, which would be as suitable today as it was a hundred and fifty years ago, with the single exception of the great proprietor, deservedly far more honoured in this generation than was his apostate time-serving ancestor, the Lord Sunderland of Evelyn's day.[70] When the Spencers were divided, the eldest branch of the family becoming Dukes of Marlborough and the youngest Earls Spencer--if the former inherited glory, Blenheim, and poverty--to the latter have belonged more true and more substantial distinctions: for the last three generations the Spencers have been remarked for talents, for benevolence, for constancy, for love of literature, and patronage of the fine arts.

The house retains the form described by Evelyn--that of a half H: a slight irregularity is caused by the new gothic room, built by the present earl, to contain part of his magnificent library, which, like the statue in the Castle of Otranto, had grown "too big for what contained it." We entered by a central door the large and lofty hall, or vestibule, hung round with pictures of fox-chases and those who figured in them, famous hunters, quadruped and biped, all as large as life, spread over as much canvass as would make a mainsail for a man-of-war. These huge perpetrations are of the time of Jack Spencer, a noted Nimrod in his day; and are very fine, as we were told, but they did not interest me. I had caught a glimpse of the superb staircase, hung round with pictures above and below, and not the less interesting as having been erected by Sacharissa herself during the few years she was mistress of Althorpe. A face looked at us from over an opposite door, which there was no resisting. Does the reader remember Horace Walpole's pleasant description of a party of _seers_ posting through the apartments of a show-place? "They come; ask what such a room is called?--write it down; admire a lobster or cabbage in a Dutch market piece; dispute whether the last room was green or purple; and then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be over-dressed."[71] We were not such a party; but with imaginations ready primed to take fire, and memories enriched with all the associations the place could suggest, to us every portrait was a history. The orthodox style of seeing the house is to turn to the left, and view the ground-floor apartments first; but the face I have mentioned seemed to beckon me straight-forward, and I could not choose but obey the invitation: it was that of Lady Bridgewater, the loveliest of the four lovely daughters of the Duke of Marlborough: she had the misfortune to be painted by Jervas, and the good fortune to be celebrated by Pope as the "tender sister, daughter, friend, and wife;" and again--

"Thence Beauty, waking, all her forms supplies--
An angel's sweetness--or Bridgewater's eyes."

Jervas was supposed to have been presumptuously and desperately in love with this beautiful woman, who died at the age of five-and-twenty: hence Pope has taken the liberty--by a poetical licence, no doubt--to call her, in his Epistle to Jervas, "_thy_ Bridgewater." Two of her fair sisters, the Duchess of Montagu and Lady Godolphin, hung near her; and above, her fairer sister, Lady Sunderland. Ascending the magnificent staircase, a hundred faces look down upon us, in a hundred different varieties of expression, in a hundred different costumes. Here are Queen Anne and Sarah Duchess of Marlborough placed amicably side by side, as in the days of their romantic friendship, when they conversed and corresponded as Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman: the beauty, the intellect, the spirit, are all on the side of the imperious duchess; the poor queen looks like what she was, a good-natured fool. On the left is the cunning abigail, who supplanted the duchess in the favour of Queen Anne--Mrs. Masham. Proceeding along the gallery, we are met by the portrait of that angel-devil, Lady Shrewsbury,[72] whose exquisite beauty fascinates at once and shocks the eye like the gorgeous colours of an adder. I believe the story of her holding the Duke of Buckingham's horse while he shot her husband in a duel, has been disputed; but her attempt to assassinate Killegrew, while she sat by in her carriage,[73] is too true. So far had her depravities unsexed her!

----"Lorsque la vertu, avec peine abjuree,
Nous fait voir une femme a ses fureurs livree,
S'irritant par l'effort que ce pas a coute,
Son ame avec plus d'art a plus de cruaute."

She was even less famous for the number of her lovers, than the catastrophes of which she was the cause.

"Had ever nymph such reason to be glad?
Two in a duel fell, and one ran mad."

Not two, but half a dozen fell in duels; and if her lovers "ran mad," it was in despite, not in despair. Lady Shrewsbury is past jesting or satire; and after a first involuntary pause of admiration before her matchless beauty, we turn away with horror. For the rest of the portraits on this vast staircase, it would take a volume to give a _catalogue raisonnee_ of them. We pass, then, into a corridor hung with two large and very mediocre landscapes, representing Tivoli and Terni. Any attempt, even the best, to paint a cataract _must_ be abortive. How render to the fancy the two grandest of its features--sound and motion? the thunder and the tumult of the headlong waters? We will pass on to the gallery, and lose ourselves in its enchantments.

Where shall we begin?--Any where. Throw away the catalogue: all are old acquaintances. We are tempted to speak to them, and they look as if they could curtsey to us. The very walls breathe around us. What Vandykes--what Lelys--what Sir Joshuas! what a congregation of all that is beauteous and noble!--what Spencers, Sydneys, Digbys, Russells, Cavendishes, and Churchills!--O what a scene to moralize, to philosophize, to sentimentalize in!--what histories in those eyes, that look, yet see not!--what sermons on those lips, that all but speak; I would rather reflect in a picture-gallery, than elegize in a churchyard. The "poca polvere che nulla sente," can only tell us we must die; these, with a more useful and deep-felt morality, tell us how to live.

Yet I cannot say I felt thus pensive and serious the first time I looked round the gallery at Althorpe. Curiosity, excitement, interest, admiration--a crowd of quick successive images and recollections fleeting across the memory--left me no time to think. I remember being startled, the moment I entered, by a most extraordinary picture,--the second Prince of Orange, and his preceptor Katts, by Flinck. The eyes of the latter are really shockingly alive; they stare out of the canvass, and glitter and fascinate like those of a serpent. If I had been a Roman Catholic, I should have crossed myself, as I looked at them, to shield me from their evil and supernatural expression.[74] The picture of the two Sforzas, Maximilian and his brother Francis, by Albert Durer, is quite a curiosity; and so is another, by Holbein, near it, containing the portraits of Henry the Eighth, his daughter Mary, and his jester, Will Somers,--all full of individuality and truth. The expression in Mary's face, at once saturnine, discontented and vulgar, is especially full of character. These last three pictures are curious and valuable as specimens of art; but they are not pleasing. We turn to the matchless Vandykes, at once admirable as paintings, and yet more interesting as portraits. A full-length of his master and friend, Rubens, dressed in black, is magnificent; the attitude particularly graceful. Near the centre of the gallery is the charming full-length of Queen Henrietta Maria, a well-known and celebrated picture. She is dressed in white satin, and stands near a table on which is a vase of white roses, and, more in the shade, her regal crown. Nothing can be in finer taste than the contrast between the rich, various, but subdued colours of the carpet and background, and the delicate, and harmonious, and brilliant tints which throw out the figure. None of the pictures I had hitherto seen of Henrietta, either in the king's private collection, or at Windsor, do justice to the sparkling grace of her figure, or the vivacity and beauty of her eyes, so celebrated by all the contemporary poets. Waller, for instance:--

"Could Nature then no private woman grace,
Whom we might dare to love, with such a face,
Such a complexion, and so radiant eyes,
Such lovely motion, and such sharp replies?"

Davenant styles her, very beautifully, "The rich-eyed darling of a monarch's breast." Lord Holland, in the description he sent from Paris, dwells on the charm of her eyes, her smile, and her graceful figure, though he admits her to be rather _petite_; and if the poet and the courtier be distrusted, we have the authority of the puritanic Sir Symond d'Ewes, who allows the influence of her "excellent and sparkling black eyes." Henrietta could be very seductive, and had all the French grace of manner; but, as is well known, she could play the virago, "and cast such a scowl, as frightened all the lords and ladies in waiting." Too much importance is attached to her character and her influence over her husband, in the histories of that time. She was a fascinating, but a superficial and volatile Frenchwoman. With all her feminine love of sway, she had not sufficient energy to govern; and with all her disposition to intrigue, she never had discretion enough to keep her own or the king's secrets. When she rushed through a storm of bullets to save a favourite lap-dog; or when, amid the shrieks and entreaties of her terrified attendants, she commanded the captain of her vessel to "blow up the ship rather than strike to the Parliamentarian,"--it was more the spirit and wilfulness of a woman, who, with all her faults, had the blood of Henri Quatre in her veins, than the mental energy and resolute fortitude of a heroine. Near her hangs her daughter, who inherited her grace, her beauty, her petulance,--the unhappy Henriette d'Orleans,[75] fair, radiant, and lively, with a profusion of beautiful hair; it is impossible to look from the mother to the daughter, without remembering the scene in Retz's memoirs, when the queen said to him, in excuse for her daughter's absence, "My poor Henrietta is obliged to lie in bed, for I have no wood to make a fire for her--et la pauvre enfant etait transie de froid."

Another picture by Vandyke hangs at the top of the room, one of the grandest and most spirited of his productions. It represents William, the first Duke of Bedford, the father of Lord William Russell, when young, and his brother-in-law, the famous (and infamous) Digby, Earl of Bristol. How admirably Vandyke has caught the characters of the two men!--the fine commanding form of the duke, as he steps forward, the frank, open countenance, expressive of all that is good and noble, speak him what he was--not less than that of Digby, which, though eminently handsome, has not one elevated or amiable trait in the countenance; the drapery, background, and more especially the hands, are magnificently painted. On one side of this superb picture, hangs the present Earl Spencer when a youth; and on the other, his sister, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, at the age of eighteen, looking all life and high-born loveliness, and reminding one of Coleridge's beautiful lines to her:--

"Light as a dream your days their circlets ran
From all that teaches brotherhood to man,
Far, far removed! from want, from grief, from fear!
Obedient music lull'd your infant ear;
Obedient praises soothed your infant heart;
Emblazonments and old ancestral crests,
With many a bright obtrusive form of art,
Detain'd your eye from nature. Stately vests,
That veiling strove to deck your charms divine,
Rich viands and the pleasurable wine,
Were yours unearn'd by toil."----

And he thus beautifully alludes to her maternal character; for this accomplished woman set the example to the highest ranks, of nursing her own children:--

"You were a mother! at your bosom fed
The babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye,
Each twilight thought, each nascent feeling read,
Which you yourself created."

Alas, that such a beginning should have such an end!

Both these are whole-lengths, by Sir Joshua Reynolds: the middle tints are a little flown, else they were perfect; they suffer by being hung near the glowing yet mellowed tints of Vandyke.

We have here a whole bevy of the heroines of De Grammont, delightful to those who have what Walpole used to call the "De Grammont madness" upon them. Here is that beautiful, audacious termagant, Castlemaine, very like her picture at Windsor, and with the same characteristic bit of storm gleaming in the background.--Lady Denham,[76] the wife of the poet, Sir John Denham, and niece of that Lord Bristol who figures in Vandyke's picture above mentioned--a lovely creature, and a sweet picture.--Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, who so long ruled the heart and councils of Charles the Second, in Lely's finest style; the face has a look of blooming innocence, soon exchanged for coarseness and arrogance.--The indolent, alluring Middleton, looking from under her sleepy eyelids, "trop coquette pour rebuter personne."--"La Belle Hamilton," the lovely prize of the volatile De Grammont; very like her portrait at Windsor, with the same finely formed bust and compressed ruby lips, but with an expression more vivacious and saucy, and less elevated.--Two portraits of Nell Gwyn, with the fair brown air and small bright eyes they ought to have; _au reste_, with such prim, sanctified mouths, and dressed with such elaborate decency, that instead of reminding us of the "parole sciolte d'ogni freno, risi, vezzi, giuochi"--they are more like Beck Marshall, the puritan's daughter, on her good behaviour.[77]

Here is that extraordinary woman Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, the fame of whose beauty and gallantries filled all Europe, and once the intended wife of Charles the Second, though she afterwards intrigued in vain for the less (or more) eligible post of _maitresse en titre_. What an extraordinary, wild, perverted, good-for-nothing, yet interesting set of women, were those four Mancini sisters! all victims, more or less, to the pride, policy, or avarice, of their cardinal uncle; all gifted by nature with the fervid Italian blood and the plotting Italian brain; all really _aventurieres_, while they figured as duchesses and princesses. They wore their coronets and ermine as strolling players wear their robes of state--with a sort of picturesque awkwardness--and they proved rather too scanty to cover a multitude of sins.

This head of Hortense Mancini, as Cleopatra dissolving the pearl, is the most spirited, but the least beautiful portrait I have seen of her. An appropriate pendant on the opposite side is her lover, philosopher, and eulogist, the witty St. Evremond--Grammont's "Caton de Normandie;" but instead of looking like a good-natured epicurean, a man "who thought as he liked, and liked what he thought,"[78] his nose is here wrinkled up into an expression of the most supercilious scorn, adding to his native ugliness.[79] Both these are by Kneller. Farther on, is another of Charles's beauties, whose _sagesse_ has never been disputed--Elizabeth Wriothesley, Countess of Northumberland, the sister of that half saint, half heroine, and _all_ woman--Lady Russell.

There is also a lovely picture of that magnificent brunette, Miss Bagot. "Elle avait," says Hamilton, "ce teint rembruni qui plait tant quand il plait." She married Berkeley Lord Falmouth, a man who, though unprincipled, seems to have loved her; at least, was not long enough her husband to forget to be her lover: he was killed, shortly after his marriage, in the battle of Southwold-bay. This is assuredly one of the most splendid pictures Lely ever painted; and it is, besides, full of character and interest. She holds a cannon-ball in her lap, (only an airy emblematical cannon-ball, for she poises it like a feather,) and the countenance is touched with a sweet expression of melancholy: hence it is plain that she sat for it soon after the death of her first husband, and before her marriage with the witty Earl of Dorset.--Near her hangs another fair piece of witchcraft, "La Belle Jennings," who in her day played with hearts as if they had been billiard balls; and no wonder, considering what _things_ she had to deal with:[80] there was a great difference between her vivacity and that of her vivacious sister, the Duchess of Marlborough.--Old Sarah hangs near her. One would think that Kneller, in spite, had watched the moment to take a characteristic likeness, and catch, not the Cynthia, but the Fury of the minute; as for instance, when she cut off her luxuriant tresses, so worshipped by her husband, and flung them in his face; for so she tosses back her disdainful head, and curls her lip like an insolent, pouting, spoiled, grown-up baby. The life of this woman is as fine a lesson on the emptiness of all worldly advantages, boundless wealth, power, fame, beauty, wit, as ever was set forth by moralist or divine.

"By spirit robb'd of power--by warmth, of friends--
By wealth, of followers! without one distress,
Sick of herself through very selfishness."[81]

And yet I suspect that the Duchess of Marlborough has never met with justice. History knows her only as Marlborough's wife, an intriguing dame d'honneur, and a cast-off favourite. Vituperated by Swift, satirized by Pope, ridiculed by Walpole--what angel could have stood such bedaubing, and from such pens?

"O she has fallen into a pit of ink!"

But glorious talents she had, strength of mind, generosity, the power to feel and inspire the strongest attachment,--and all these qualities were degraded, or rendered useless, by _temper_! Her avarice was not the love of money for its own sake, but the love of power; and her bitter contempt for "knaves and fools" may be excused, if not justified. Imagine such a woman as the Duchess of Marlborough out-faced, out-plotted by that crowned cypher, that sceptred commonplace, queen Anne! It should seem that the constant habit of being forced to serve, outwardly, where she really ruled,--the consciousness of her own brilliant and powerful faculties brought into immediate hourly comparison with the confined trifling understanding of her mistress, a disdain of her own forced hypocrisy, and a perception of the heartless baseness of the courtiers around her, disgusting to a mind naturally high-toned, produced at length that extreme of bitterness and insolence which made her so often "an embodied storm." She was always a termagant--but of a very different description from the vulgar Castlemaine.

Though the picture of Colonel Russell, by Dobson, is really fine as a portrait, the recollection of the scene between him and Miss Hamilton[82]--his love of dancing, to prove he was not old and asthmatical,--and his attachment to his "_chapeau pointu_," make it impossible to look at him without a smile--but a good-humoured smile, such as his lovely mistress gave him when she rejected him with so much politeness.--Arabella Churchill, the sister of the great Duke of Marlborough, and mistress of the Duke of York, has been better treated by the painter than by Hamilton; instead of "La grande creature, pale et decharnee," she appears here a very lovely woman. But enough of these equivocal ladies. No--before we leave them, there are yet two to be noticed, more equivocal, more interesting, and more extraordinary than all the rest put together--Bianca di Capello, who, from a washerwoman, became Grand Duchess of Florence, with less beauty than I should have expected, but as much _countenance_; and the beautiful, but appalling picture of Venitia Digby, painted after she was dead, by Vandyke: she was found one morning sitting up in her bed, leaning her head on her hand, and lifeless; and thus she is painted. Notwithstanding the ease and grace of the attitude, and the delicacy of the features, there is no mistaking this for slumber: a heavier hand has pressed upon those eyelids, which will never more open to the light: there is a leaden lifelessness about them, too shockingly true and real--

"It thrills us with mortality,
And curdles to the gazer's heart."

Her picture at Windsor is the most perfectly beautiful and impressive female portrait I ever saw. How have I longed, when gazing at it, to conjure her out of her frame, and bid her reveal the secret of her mysterious life and death!--Nearly opposite to the dead Venitia, in strange contrast, hangs her husband, who loved her to madness, or was mad before he married her, in the very prime of life and youth. This picture, by Cornelius Jansen, is as fine as any thing of Vandyke's: the character expresses more of intellectual power and physical strength, than of that elegance of face and form we should have looked for in such a fanciful being as Sir Kenelm Digby: he looks more like one of the Athletae than a poet, a metaphysician, and a "squire of dames."

There are three pictures of Waller's famed Sacharissa, the first Lady Sunderland: one in a hat, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, gay and blooming; the second, far more interesting, was painted about the time of her marriage with the young Earl of Sunderland, or shortly after--very sweet and lady-like. I should say that the high-breeding of the face and air was more conspicuous than the beauty; the neck and hands exquisite. Both these are Vandyke's. A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage: the expression wholly changed--cold, sad, faded, but pretty still: one might fancy her contemplating, with a sick heart, the portrait of Lord Sunderland, the lover and husband of her early youth, who hangs on the opposite side of the gallery, in complete armour: he fell in the same battle with Lord Falkland, at the age of three-and-twenty. The brother of Sacharissa, the famous Algernon Sidney, is suspended near her; a fine head, full of contemplation and power.

Among the most interesting pictures in the gallery is an undoubted original of Lady Jane Grey. After seeing so many hideous, hard, prim-looking pictures and prints of this gentle-spirited heroine, it is consoling to trust in the genuineness of a face which has all the sweetness and dignity we look for, and ought to find. Then, by way of contrast, we have that most curious picture of Diana of Poitiers, once in the Crawfurd collection: it is a small half-length; the features fair and regular; the hair is elaborately dressed with a profusion of jewels; but there is no drapery whatever--"force pierreries et tres peu de linge," as Madame de Sevigne described the two Mancini.[83] Round the head is the legend from the 42d Psalm--"Comme le cerf braie apres le decours des eaues, ainsi brait mon ame apres toi, O Dieu," which is certainly an extraordinary application. In the days of Diana of Poitiers, the beautiful mistress of Henry the Second of France, it was the court fashion to sing the Psalms of David to dance and song tunes;[84] and the courtiers and beauties had each their favourite psalm, which served as a kind of _devise_: this may explain the very singular inscription on this very singular picture. Here are also the portraits of Otway and Cowley, and of Montaigne; the last from the Crawfurd collection.

I had nearly omitted to mention a magnificent whole-length of the Duc de Guise--who was stabbed in the closet of Henry the Third--whose life contains materials for ten romances and a dozen epics, and whose death has furnished subjects for as many tragedies. And not far from him that not less daring, and more successful chief, Oliver Cromwell: a page is tying on his sash. There is a vulgar power and boldness about this head, in fine contrast with the high-born, fearless, chivalrous-looking Guise.

In the library is the splendid picture of Sofonisba Angusciola, by herself: she is touching the harpsichord, for like many others of her craft, she excelled in music. Angelica Kauffman had nearly been an opera-singer. The instances of great painters being also excellent musicians are numerous; Salvator Rosa could have led an orchestra, and Vernet could not exist without Pergolesi's piano. But I cannot recollect an instance of a great musician by profession, who has also been a painter: the range of faculties is generally more confined.

Rembrandt's large picture of his mother, which is, I think, the most magnificent specimen of this master now in England, hangs over the chimney in the same room with the Sofonisba.

The last picture I can distinctly remember is a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, with all his perfections combined in their perfection. It is that of a beautiful Frenchwoman, an intimate friend of the last Lady Spencer--with as much intellect, sentiment, and depth of feeling as would have furnished out twenty ordinary heads; all harmony in the colouring, all grace in the drawing.

Here then was food for the eye and for the memory--for sweet and bitter fancy--for the amateur, and for the connoisseur--for antiquary, historian, painter, and poet. Well might Horace Walpole say that the gallery at Althorpe was "endeared to the pensive spectator." He tells us in his letters, that when here, (about seventy years since,) he surprised the housekeeper by "his intimate acquaintance with all the faces in the gallery." I was amused at the thought that we caused a similar surprise in our day. I hope his female cicerone was as civil and intelligent as ours; as worthy to be the keeper of the pictorial treasures of Althorpe. When we lingered and lingered, spell-bound, and apologized for making such unconscionable demands on her patience, she replied, "that she was flattered; that she felt affronted when any visitor hurried through the apartments." Old Horace would have been delighted with her; and not less with the biblical enthusiasm of a village glazier, whom we found dusting the books in the library, and who had such a sublime reverence for old editions, unique copies, illuminated MSS., and rare bindings, that it was quite edifying.

* * * * *

END OF VOL. II.

LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In the throne-room at the Buckingham Palace the idea of grandeur is suggested by a vile heraldic crown, stuck on the capitals of the columns. Conceive the flagrant, the vulgar barbarity of taste!! It cannot surely be attributed to the architect?]

[Footnote 2: There is a very pretty little edition of his lyrical poems, rendered into the modern German by Karl Simrock, and published at Berlin in 1833.]

[Footnote 3: See a very interesting account of Walther von der Vogelweide, with translations of some of his poems in "The Lays of the Minnesingers," published in 1825.]

[Footnote 4: See a very learned and well-written article on the ancient German and northern poetry in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 26.]

[Footnote 5: The legend of this charming saint, one of the most popular in Germany, is but little known among us. She was the wife of a margrave of Thuringia, who was a fierce, avaricious man, while she herself was all made up of tenderness and melting pity. She lived with her husband in his castle on the Wartsburg, and was accustomed to go out every morning to distribute alms among the poor of the valley: her husband, jealous and covetous, forbade her thus to exercise her bounty; but as she regarded her duty to God and the poor, even as paramount to conjugal obedience, she secretly continued her charitable offices. Her husband encountered her one morning at sunrise, as she was leaving the castle with a covered basket containing meat, bread, and wine, for a starving family. He demanded, angrily, what she had in her basket! Elizabeth, trembling, not for herself, but for her wretched proteges, replied, with a faltering voice, that she had been gathering roses in the garden. The fierce chieftain, not believing her, snatched off the napkin, and Elizabeth fell on her knees.--But, behold, a miracle had been operated in her favour!--The basket was full of roses, fresh gathered, and wet with dew.]

[Footnote 6: See Taylor's "Historic Survey of German Poetry." Herman was afterwards murdered by a band of conspirators, and Thusnelda, on learning the fate of her husband, died brokenhearted.]

[Footnote 7: The notices which follow are abridged from the essay "on Ancient German and Northern Poetry," before mentioned--from the preface to the edition of the Nibelungen Lied, by M. Von der Hagen--and the analysis of the poem in the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities. My own first acquaintance with the Nibelungen Lied, I owed to an accomplished friend, who gave me a detailed and lively analysis of the story and characters; and certainly no child ever hung upon a tale of ogres and fairies with more intense interest than I did upon her recital of the adventures of the Nibelungen.]

[Footnote 8: Dietrich of Bern (i. e. Theodoric of Verona,) is the great hero of South Germany--the King Arthur of Teutonic romance, who figures in all the warlike lays and legends of the middle ages.]

[Footnote 9: See the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 213.]

[Footnote 10: In the altercation between the two queens, Chrimhilde boasts of possessing these trophies, and displays them in triumph to her mortified rival; for which indiscretion, as she afterwards complains, "her husband was in high anger, and _beat her black and blue_." This treatment, however, which seems to have been quite a matter of course, does not diminish the fond idolatry of the wife,--rather increases it.]

[Footnote 11: This list will be subjoined at the end of these Sketches.]

[Footnote 12: Sofonisba Augusciola, one of the most charming of portrait painters. She died in 1626, at the age of ninety-three.]

[Footnote 13: I regret that I omitted to note the _name_ of the artist of this magnificent work. There is a still more admirable monument of the same period in the church at Inspruck, the tomb of the archduke, Ferdinand of Tyrol, consisting, I believe, of twelve colossal statues in bronze.]

[Footnote 14: The first stone of the Valhalla was laid by the King of Bavaria, on the 18th of October 1830.]

[Footnote 15: The Einheriar are the souls of heroes admitted into the Valhalla.]

[Footnote 16: Daniel.]

[Footnote 17: Lithography was invented at Munich between 1795 and 1798, for so long were repeated experiments tried before the art became useful or general. Senefelder, the inventor, was an actor, and the son of an actor. The first occasion of the invention was his wish to print a little drama of his own, in some manner less expensive than the usual method of type. The first successful experiment was the printing of some music, published (1796) by Gleissner, one of the king of Bavaria's band: the first drawing attempted was a vignette to a sheet of music. In the course of his attempts to pursue and perfect his discovery, Senefelder was reduced to such poverty, that he offered himself to enlist for a common soldier, and, luckily, was refused. He again took heart, and, supported through every difficulty and discouragement by his own strong and enthusiastic mind, he at length overcame all obstacles, and has lived to see his invention established and spread over the whole civilized world. Hitherto, I believe, the stone used by lithographers is found only in Bavaria, whence it is sent to every part of Europe and America, and forms a most profitable article of commerce. The principal quarries are at Solenholfen, on the Danube, about fifty miles from Munich.

Senefelder has published a little memoir of the origin and progress of the invention, in which he relates with great simplicity the hardship, and misery, and contumely, he encountered before he could bring it into use. He concludes with an earnest prayer, "that it may contribute to the benefit and improvement of mankind, and that it may never be abused to any dishonourable or immoral purpose."

If I remember rightly, a detailed history of the art was given in one of the early numbers of the Foreign Review.]

[Footnote 18: The population of Munich is estimated at about 60,000. It does not enter into my plan, at present, to give any detailed account of the public institutions, whether academies, schools, hospitals, or prisons; yet I cannot but mention the prison at Munich, which more than pays its own expenses, instead of being a burthen to the state; the admirable hospital for the poor, in which all who cannot find work elsewhere, are provided with occupation; two large hospitals for the sick poor, in which rooms and attendance are also provided for those who do not choose to be a burthen to their friends, nor yet dependent on charity; the orphan school; the female school, endowed by the king; the foundling and lying-in hospitals, establishments unhappily most _necessary_ in Munich, and certainly most admirably conducted. These, and innumerable private societies for the assistance, the education, and the improvement of the lower classes, ought to receive the attention of every intelligent traveller.

There are no poor laws in operation at Munich, no mendicity societies, no tract, and soup and blanket charities; yet pauperism, mendicity, and starvation, are nearly unknown. For the system of regulations by which these evils have been repressed or altogether remedied, I believe Bavaria is indebted to the celebrated American, Count Rumford, who was in the service of the late king, Max-Joseph, from 1790 to 1799.

Several new manufactories have lately been established, particularly of glass and porcelain, and the latter is carried to a high degree of perfection.]

[Footnote 19: Ida of Saxe-Meiningen, sister of the queen of England.]

[Footnote 20: It is difficult to translate this laconic proverb, because we have not the corresponding words in English: the meaning may be rendered--"_according to the country, so are the manners_."]

[Footnote 21: When the city was besieged by Wallenstein in 1632.]

[Footnote 22: Born at Nuremberg in 1494.]

[Footnote 23: See the admirable "Essay on the Early German and Northern Poetry," already alluded to.]

[Footnote 24: Anthony, the present king of Saxony. He is, however, in his dotage, being now in his eighty-fifth year.]

[Footnote 25: The description of Dresden and its environs, in Russel's Tour in Germany, is one of the best written passages in that amusing book--so admirably graphic and faithful, that nothing can be added to it _as a description_, therefore I have effaced those notes which it has rendered superfluous. It must, however, be remembered by those who refer to Mr. Russel's work, that a revolution has taken place, by which the king, now fallen into absolute dotage, has been removed from the direct administration of the government, and a much more popular and liberal tone prevails in the Estates: the two princes, nephews of the king, whom Mr. Russel mentions as "persons of whom scarcely any body thinks of speaking at all," have since made themselves extremely conspicuous;--Prince Frederic has been declared regent, and is apparently much respected and beloved; and Prince John has distinguished himself as a speaker in the Assembly of the States, and takes the liberal side on most occasions. A spirit of amelioration is at work in Dresden, as elsewhere, and the ten or twelve years which have elapsed since Mr. Russel's visit have not passed away without some salutary changes, while more are evidently at hand.

Mr. Russel speaks of the secrecy with which the sittings of the Chambers were then conducted: they are now public, and the debates are printed in the Gazette at considerable length.]

[Footnote 26: Augustus II. abjured the Protestant religion in 1700, in order to obtain the crown of Poland.]

[Footnote 27: The first tenor at Dresden in 1833.]

[Footnote 28: An opera by Franz Glazer of Berlin. The subject, which is the well-known story of the mother who delivers her infant when carried away by the eagle, or rather vulture of the Alps, might make a good melodrama, but is not fit for an opera--and the music is _trainante_ and monotonous.]

[Footnote 29: Zingarelli composed his _Romeo e Giulietta_ in 1797: Bellini produced the Capelletti at Venice in 1832, for our silver-voiced Caradori and the contr'alto Giudita Grisi, sister of that accomplished singer, Giulietta Grisi. Thirty-five years are an age in the history of music. Of the two operas, Bellini's is the most effective, from the number of the conceited pieces, without containing a single air which can be placed in comparison with five or six in Zingarelli's opera.]

[Footnote 30: Lord Byron.]

[Footnote 31: "Tieck," says Carlyle, "is a poet _born_ as well as made.--He is no mere observist and compiler, rendering back to us, with additions or subtractions, the beauty which existing things have of themselves presented to him; but a true Maker, to whom the actual and external is but the _excitement_ for ideal creations, representing and ennobling its effects. His feeling or knowledge, his love or scorn, his gay humour or solemn earnestness; all the riches of his inward world are pervaded and mastered by the living energy of the soul which possesses them, and their finer essence is wafted to us in his poetry, like Arabian odours, on the wings of the wind. But this may be said of all true poets; and each is distinguished from all, by his individual characteristics. Among Tieck's, one of the most remarkable is his combination of so many gifts, in such full and simple harmony. His ridicule does not obstruct his adoration; his gay southern fancy lives in union with a northern heart; with the moods of a longing and impassioned spirit, he seems deeply conversant; and a still imagination, in the highest sense of that word, reigns over all his poetic world."]

[Footnote 32: Vide Shelley's Epipsychidion.]

[Footnote 33: Mr. Russel is quite right in his observation that the Correggios are hung too near together: the fact is, that in the Dresden gallery, the pictures are not well hung, nor well arranged; there is too little light in the inner gallery, and too much in the outer gallery. Lastly, the numbers are so confused that I found the catalogue of little use. A new arrangement and a new catalogue, by Professor Matthai, are in contemplation.]

[Footnote 34: Spence.]

[Footnote 35: Lanzi says, that many of the works of Lavinia Fontana might easily pass for those of Guido;--her best works are at Bologna. She died in 1614.]

[Footnote 36: At Althorpe.]

[Footnote 37: The Miss Sharpes were at Dresden while I was there, and their names and some of their works were fresh in my mind and eye when I wrote the above; but I think it fair to add, that I had not the opportunity I could have wished of cultivating their acquaintance. These three sisters, all so talented, and so inseparable,--all artists, and bound together in affectionate communion of hearts and interests, reminded me of the Sofonisba and her sisters.]

[Footnote 38: She is the "Julie" celebrated in some of Goethe's minor poems.]

[Footnote 39: Since this was written, in November 1833, Retzsch has sent over to England a series of these _Fancies_ for publication.]

[Footnote 40: We have among us a young German painter, (Theodor von Holst,) who, uniting the exuberant enthusiasm and rich imagination of his country, with a just appreciation of the style of English art, is likely to achieve great things.]

[Footnote 41: "Belier! mon ami! commence par le commencement!"--_Contes de Hamilton._]

[Footnote 42: A manor situated on the borders of Derbyshire, between Chesterfield and Mansfield.]

[Footnote 43: The Cavendishes were originally of Suffolk. Whether this William Cavendish was the same who was gentleman usher and secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, is, I believe, a disputed point.]

[Footnote 44: Bishop Kennel's memoirs of the family of Cavendish.]

[Footnote 45: Lodge's Illustrations of British History.]

[Footnote 46: Scott's Memoir of Sir Ralph Sadler.]

[Footnote 47: Lodge's "Illustrations."]

[Footnote 48: This celebrated letter is yet preserved, and well known to historians and antiquarians. It is sufficient to say that scarce any part of it would bear transcribing.]

[Footnote 49: See two of her letters in Sir Henry Ellis's Collection.]

[Footnote 50: See some letters in Ellis's Collection, vol. ii. series 1, which show with what constant jealousy Lady Shrewsbury and her charge were watched by the court.]

[Footnote 51: In All Hallows, in Derby. After leaving Hardwicke, I went, of course, to pay my respects to it. It is a vast and gorgeous shrine of many coloured marbles, covered with painting, gilding, emblazonments, and inscriptions, within which the lady lies at full length in a golden ruff, and a most sumptuous farthingale.]

[Footnote 52: As the measurements are interesting from this fact, I took care to note them exactly; as follows:--length 55 ft. 6 inches; breadth 30 ft. 6 inches; height 24 ft. 6 inches.]

[Footnote 53: Horace Walpole, as an antiquarian, should have known that Mary was never kept _there_.]

[Footnote 54: It had formerly been richly painted, and must then have had an effect superior to tapestry; the colours are still visible here and there.]

[Footnote 55: Mary's own account of her occupations displays the natural elegance of her mind. "I asked her grace, since the weather did cut off all exercises abroad, how she passed her time within? She sayd that all day she wrought with her needle, and that the diversitie of the colours made the work appear less tedious, and that she continued at it till pain made her to give o'er: and with that laid her hand on her left side, and complayned of an old grief newly increased there. Upon this occasion she, the Scottish queen, with the agreeable and lively wit natural to her, entered into a pretty disputable comparison between carving, painting, and working with the needle, affirming painting, in her opinion, for the most commendable quality."--_Letter of Nicholas White to Cecil._]

[Footnote 56: I was as much delighted by these singular fire-screens as Horace himself could have been; they are about seven feet high. The yellow velvet suspended from the bar is embossed with black velvet, and intermingled with embroidery of various colours and gold--something like a Persian carpet--but most dazzling and gorgeous in the effect. I believe there is nothing like them any where.]

[Footnote 57: Now replaced by the family portraits brought from Chatsworth.]

[Footnote 58: Margaret Cavendish, wife of the first Duke of Newcastle.]

[Footnote 59: Anecdotes of Painting. Reigns of Elizabeth and James I.]

[Footnote 60: Dante. Inferno, Canto 28.]

[Footnote 61: Life of Johnson, vol. ii. p. 144. Boswell asked, "Are you of that opinion as to the portraits of ancestors one has never seen?" JOHNSON. "It then becomes of still _more_ consequence that they should be like."]

[Footnote 62: This picture and the next are said to be by Richard Stevens, of whom there is some account in Walpole, (Anecdotes of Painting.) Mary also sat to Hilliard and to Zucchero. The lovely picture by Zucchero is at Chiswick. There is another small head of her at Hardwicke, said to have been painted in France, in a cap and feather. The turn of the head is airy and graceful. As to the features, they have been so marred by some _soi-disant_ restorer, it is difficult to say what they may have been originally.]

[Footnote 63: Waller's lines on Lady Rich.]

[Footnote 64: William, sixth Duke of Devonshire.]

[Footnote 65: "Lady Dorothy Savile, daughter of the Marquis of Halifax: she had no less attachment to the arts than her husband; she drew in crayons, and succeeded admirably in likenesses, but working with too much rapidity, did not do justice to her genius; she had an uncommon talent too for caricature."--_Anecdotes of Painting._]

[Footnote 66: He was a monster; and no wife of the coarsest plebeian profligate could have suffered more than did this lovely, amiable being, of the highest blood and greatest fortune in England. "She was," says the affecting inscription on her picture at Chiswick, "the comfort and joy of her parents, the delight of all who knew her angelic temper, and the admiration of all who saw her beauty. She was married October 10th, 1741, and delivered by death from misery, May 2nd, 1742.

But how did it happen that from a condition like this, there was no release but by _death_?--See Horace Walpole's Correspondence to Sir Horace Mann, vol. i. p. 328.]

[Footnote 67: I was much struck with the inscription on a stone tablet, in a fine old wood near the house: "This wood was planted by Sir William Spencer, Knighte of the Bathe, in the year of our Lord 1624:"--on the other side, "Up and bee doing, and God will prosper." It is mentioned in Evelyn's "Sylva."]

[Footnote 68: See the accounts of Sir John Spencer, in Collins's Peerage, and prefixed to Dibdin's "AEdes Althorpianae."]

[Footnote 69: Henry, first Earl of Sunderland.]

[Footnote 70: This Lord Sunderland not only changed his party and his opinions, but his religion, with every breath that blew from the court.]

[Footnote 71: Horace Walpole's Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 227.]

[Footnote 72: Anne Brudenel.]

[Footnote 73: See Pepys's Diary.]

[Footnote 74: I was told that a female servant of the family was so terrified by this picture that she could never be prevailed on to pass through the door near which it hangs, but made a circuit of several rooms to avoid it.]

[Footnote 75: She is supposed to have been poisoned by her husband, at the instigation of the Chevalier de Lorraine.]

[Footnote 76: Elizabeth Brooke, poisoned at the age of twenty.]

[Footnote 77: See the scene between Beck Marshall and Nell Gwyn, in "Pepys."]

[Footnote 78: Walpole.]

[Footnote 79: The gay, gallant St. Evremond, besides being naturally ugly, had a wen between his eye-brows. There is a fine picture of him and Hortense as Vertumnus and Pomona, in the Stafford gallery.]

[Footnote 80: The pictures of Miss Jennings are very rare. This one at Althorpe was copied for H. Walpole, and I have heard of another in Ireland. Miss Jennings was afterwards Duchess of Tyrconnel.]

[Footnote 81: Pope. One hates him for taking a thousand pounds to suppress this character of Atossa, and publishing it after all; yet who for a thousand pounds would have lost it?]

[Footnote 82: See his declaration of love--"Je suis frere du Comte de Bedford; je commande le regiment des gardes," &c.]

[Footnote 83: The Princess Colonna and the Duchesse de Mazarin.]

[Footnote 84: Clement Marot had composed a version of the Psalms, then very popular. See _Bayle_, and the Curiosities of Literature.]

* * * * *

[Transcriber's Note: Errata as given in the original have been applied to the text. Other than the most exceedingly obvious typographical errors, all inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, diacriticals, archaic usage, etc. have been preserved as printed in the original. The equals signs used to bracket the name "Kunstverein" in the entry for the 16th in the first section indicate characters in a Fraktur typeface.]

<pre id="pg-footer">