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this could soften the stubborn pride of this foolish Agnes. To have broken down all that separated their hearts, she must have confessed her faults-and such a confession a nature like hers never makes. Albert has nothing now to cling to but his art. It is child, mistress, all to him. But where is he to find peace? To him, love is a necessity, and it is denied him. How this aching want tells upon him, is seen by the eyes of her who should have been his wife Clara, now a nun-and who passes once more across the picture thus. Albert is sent for to the convent to paint her portrait:

-

"She was unveiled, patiently awaiting him, and greeted him softly with a smile, and a delicate blush-for virgin modesty why she was therewas only perceptible because she looked so very pale. When she saw, however, how years had gnawed on him--and a woman sees at a glance, as the gardener sees by the fruit how the tree is flourishing, the fruit of his past life-yea the soul of the man in his countenance-then her features

a

for extract, but having already exceeded our limits, we must conclude (first thanking the accomplished lady who has transferred the work to such pure and vigorous English) with a passage, which should be written in characters of gold upon every young heart:

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To know how to live requires perpetual genius for life is the highest of all arts. Only no one believes this, because he fancies he knows how to live, as every one fancies he knows how to love, when he looks deep into the eyes of beautiful maiden. Alas! love also is an art; but it consists not in raptures and enthusiasm ; it is not to wander in the moonlight, to listen to the song of the nightingale, to kneel before the beloved, the art of love: to preserve its fire, its divine to languish and pine for her kiss! No; this is in pure gold; to spend it for him alone, to whom treasure; to carry about its riches through life as the heart is devoted; to be always ready to sympathize, to smile, to weep, to assist, to counsel, to encourage, to alleviate; in short, to live with the beloved as he lives, and thus, by virtue of an in

if

assumed the sadness which he needed for the dwelling heavenly power, to preserve invariably scene. A difficult picture! But his soul held the a heavenward direction. And this art is the highcolors. He thought not-if this sweet form-if est, tenderest love. He who possesses it, knows this gentle Clara were thy Agnes! Ah, no! he fice hours, and days, and wealth; but to bear and what love is. The greater part of men can sacriscarcely thought-if thy Agnes were like her! For his father's will was sacred to him, and sacred to suffer patiently for 'years; never to consider her he loved; for it was because he loved, that he one's own life and well-being; to pine away now suffered! And because she would not love gradually; to suffer death in the heart, and yet to hasten to the arms of the beloved as soon as they are again opened to us, and then to be happyyea, blest, as if nothing had been amiss, as if no time had elapsed between that moment and the first embrace-all this love can do."

him that she suffered !"

is

And unless it can do this, say we, then it surely not love.

GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY.-A letter from St. Pe

tersburgh in the Journal des Débats announces the discovery, not far from the right bank of the Nikolaiefska, in the government of Tobolski, in Siberia, of a rich mine of stones in the midst of the establishment for the washing of auriferous sands. These stones present a perfect resemblance to diamonds, except that they are a trifle less heavy and less hard, although harder than granite. Specimens of the of Natural History at St. Petersburgh, and Russtones have been deposited in the Imperial Museum sian mineralogists propose to call them diamantoide. Athenæum.

How Albert grows famous-the guest of emperors, the feasted of burgomastershow he waxeth abundant in wealth, pays for his house, clears his old Italian debts, enables Agnes to indulge her vanities to her heart's content, and so makes her happy for a time-how, notwithstanding, she evermore finds new modes of perplexing and goading him—is still apologized for, still forgiven, till the good master at last dies tranquilly away, at the early age of fiftyseven, reconciled to the world, and thanking God for the good which had come to him, out of all his miseries, we trust the reader will go to the book itself to learn. Imperfect as our extracts have been, they can hardly fail, we think, to attract the thoughtful reader to the original source. A fiction so full of exquisite pictures, so redolent of the purest spirit of Christianity, so instructive in the priceless wisdom "to bear and forbear," it will be hard to find in so small a compass. It is, indeed, "infinite riches in little room"-riches of fancy, riches of thought, and, above all, riches of a high and gentle heart-a book for a spe-lance of a debt which he had contracted in his zeal We had marked many passages to promote the temperance principle.—Ib.

cial shelf.

We We regret to see, by a letter to Col. Sherburne of the United States, that the great apostle of the temperance movement, Father Mathew, is yet a martyr municates the distressing fact that not a shilling of pecuniarily to the cause. In this matter he comthe pension (3001. a-year) granted to him by Government can be appropriated to his own use; it having been assigned to pay a premium of insur

ance on his life for 6,000l.,-the amount of the ba

1848.]

MEMOIRS AND ANECDOTES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

497

From Bentley's Miscellany.

MEMOIRS AND ANECDOTES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.*

To those who rule themselves on the Epi-, curean principle of "After us, the Deluge!" it is of small consequence whether or not some Gold Key or Gold Stick, some Lord President, or honorable Clerk of the Privy Council be taking notes of our own time for the edification of Gowers, and Percys, and Howards still unborn. It may possibly be merely a touch of the bilious humor of the quadruped who declared that the grapes were sour," which induces our fancy that the present days are less favorable to this specics of composition than those when a Suffolk was succeeded by a Walmoden, or when a Walpole had an Ossory to write to. Such, however, is in some measure our creed. Public affairs, we firmly believe, are managed with more integrity and openness than formerly: private scandal has grown a vulgar thing, been brought into discredit by the -, and the

and the -, also by the floggings and the legal proceedings which have wasted to naught the sarcasm of their editors. Mr. Rowland Hill has bidden the letter shrink into the note. The Railway King and his faction" have destroyed the remoteness and provincial air of the countryhouse. The electrical telegraph shoots news as rapid as an echo," from court to court, till political intelligence is diffused throughout Europe sympathetically, as if a Michael Scott ordained it.

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66 -when in Salamanca's cave," Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame. All these characteristics and inventions are so many possible dissuasions to the writer of memoirs. Matter can never be wanting, but it may be otherwise discussed and disposed of than in "sealed boxes" which are not to be opened for a century. At least such flattering unction "that their

*Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, from his Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline. By John Lord Hervey. Edited, from the original manuscript at Ickworth, by the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. 2 vols. Mur

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children will fare worse than themselves" may be laid to their souls, by those whose curiosity with regard to their contemporaries must needs die unsatisfied. It has also the valuable effect of heightening the zest with which we fall upon records of the past century, over which the two works here coupled range widely.

Yet never did books less deserve to be classed among the library of dead letters than these meditations of Hervey (not among the tombs, but in drawing-rooms and royal closets) than these epistles of Horace addressed to no Lælius, (still less to a Lalia; to a Lalia; "the Chudleigh," his favorite antipathy, monopolizing that name), but to the graceful, fashionable, kindly Anna, Countess of Ossory. The coincidences they illustrate between the last century and this, are many and curious; the vivacity of their writers is a spirit, the aroma of which no bottling up "in an ancient bin" can transmute into dullness. Progressives and Retrospectives (to use the class jargon of the day) must alike rejoice in the disinterment of chronicles so full of persons and portraits,-of warnings and corroborations. They also possess a special charm for the literary student and artificer, to linger on which for a moment is not superfluous.

It is impossible to read these Memoirs and Letters, without feeling the charm of their style, by contrast. "The genteel" in writing has of late been too largely laughed at; "the unwashed" (to avail ourselves of Voltaire's "dirty linen" simile applied by him to the king of Prussia's MSS.) has been too blindly mistaken for sense, nature, and manhood in authorship. The coarse words and indelicate anecdotes which speck the pages of the dainty Lord Hervey and (more sparingly) the letters of the still finer Wit of Strawberry Hill, must not be cited in contradiction of our assertion. They belonged to a period when chaste and virtuous ladies (as Sir Walter Scott has recorded) could sit with pleasure to hear the shameless novels of Aphra Behn read aloud to a society less nice in its reserves and concealments than ours. These admissions and commissions have nothing to do with the old art of writing. We should be the last of critics to defend them. Too thankfully would we see this revived.

The dislocated, ill-balanced, fragmentary | better written than many a subsequent book fashion of talk, which Sir Bulwer Lytton of travels by a professed littérateur. In has so pungently satirized in his "England fact, the good English of this quality was and the English" has been too largely al- the rule, not the exception, until Johnson lowed" to obtain among our fashionable changed the fashion of style. But we must authors; nor only among those who aspire not be seduced into a lecture on taste when to ephemeral success, but also among those our design was merely to illustrate a coinwho think, teach, legislate. Are we not cidence between the two writers before us;— justified, indeed, in recommending Lord and to prove that the family resemblance, Hervey's elegance and purity of English which is so remarkable in these memoirs when we find accomplished historians and and letters, may be ascribable, not to blood profound philosophers unable to content relationship on the part of their authors, themselves, save they can give their chroni- (as gossips have asserted, with what aucles and reasonings the dye of transla-thority it were fruitless here to enquire), tions, compounding strange words after so much as to the general influences of their the fashion of one foreign humorist, mysti- times. fying simple thoughts according to the cloudy canons of another? In such a time of cosmopolitan license, mistake, carelessness, or affectation, the easy, polished, epigrammatic English of these Gentlemen of the last century becomes doubly welcome. They knew how to drive their meaning home without needless circuits:-how to report a good story without being thrown into spasms of diversion at their own drollery. Above all, they knew when to stop. They impress by the charm of being readable: a charm, sad to say, increasingly rare of occurrence in contemporary literature, and for which we at least shall never cease to sigh, till we fall irretrievably and for ever, under the republican reign of Bad Grammar!

Opening Lord Hervey's book, we can merely touch upon one or two points calculated to interest the general reader, apart from the political gossip which they contain. The name of Mr. Croker, as editor of the Ickworth manuscript, is a guarantee for care and diligence, if not for that absence of prejudice which is, also, so desirable a quality in all cases of literary superintendence. But the Memoirs, by what is omitted, as well as by what is given, speak for themselves. They are "full as an egg" of character. The King, himself, pining for Hanoverian pleasures, till one wonders how he would condescend to "rule the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland," (as the simple parson of the Hebrides was used to call them), -the Queen, who checked Lady Suffolk, Nor had the Herveys and the Walpoles her husband's mistress, and was checked by the monopoly. A like virtue pervades the Lady Sundon,-who governed the King, belles lettres of the earlier part of the cen- and was governed by the King's gros homtury. Pope's prose periods were not like me, his coarse man of business, the redoubthis willows, dishevelled and hanging down able Sir Robert Walpole, the Prince of "something poetical." Lady Mary Wort- Wales, with his headstrong and heinous ley's letters are charming in the ease and impertinences (all traces of his personal brilliancy of their manner. The sophisti- quarrel with Lord Hervey having been carecations of Chesterfield were more naturally fully removed from the manuscript,-if, indelivered than we dare deliver our truths deed, they were ever allowed a record now-a-days. Lady Hervey's communica- there), are all living and breathing portions to Mr. Morris have the " grace of traits. Then the Excise riots, the Westpropriety" which, as Horace Walpole as- minster and Edinburg mobs, and the long sures us, never forsook the writer to her and elaborate tissue of home and foreign, dying day. Selwyn, though one might parliamentary and household intrigues are have thought he had left himself no spirits, described with all the vivacity and minuteshows in his correspondence the same gen-ness of personal experience, if not with all tlemanly vivacity and explicitness as pointed his bon mots. Nay, to take an extreme and neglected instance, let us turn to the correspondence of two ladies of quality, one common-place, the other pedantic, we mean the letters of the Ladies Hertford and Pomfret, including the Italian tour of the latter, and we shall find them

the judicial calmness and reserve of truth. Not merely historical research proves, but instinct also secures to them, a larger share of credibility than belongs to the efforts of many a more pompous historian. And, though it may be all very well for the scholar in the closet to talk of personal influences warping the sympathies and powers

of observation; and, though the politics tices of the City, impudently disaffected and and philosophy which are studied by state disrespectful; by no means satisfied to hear adherents,

"Up stairs, down stairs,

And in my lady's chamber,"

are open to-nay, demand-the minutest scrutiny ere they are to be admitted among a country's valuable muniments and records; they have still one advantage, that of opportunity enjoyed by their writers, which the falsehood of Belial's self, did he hold the pen, could not utterly neutralize, nor the most active spirit of Revenge, did it point the attack, render valueless.

in silence of money voted to old favorites,
or given secretly to new Hanoverian mis-
tresses-there were a race of eager, rapa-
cious intriguers and suppliants, who choked
every avenue to every public office, and
threw an ugly, warping spirit of party and
self-interest into the best devised and most
liberally executed measures.
Yet we see
no one, after reading the records of the
time, as written by half a hundred pens,
whom "affairs" and casualties must have
ground with so heavy a weight, as the first
Lady in England!

If, again, we give ourselves up to these With regard to the cruel hardships of the Memoirs, as a mere book to read, without Court Servitor, we are, generally speaking, demanding that the writer shall have "kiss-less compassionate. Every now and then ed the Book" betwixt chapter and chapter, we come upon some genuine example of love where shall we find novel so full of charac- and loyalty,-of implicit faith urging its ter, or serious comedy richer in situation, possessor to implicit duty, which makes the or picture more complete in color or more heart ache when we read of the amount and exquisite in finish? Perhaps the world has manner of its repayment; but, for the most never been favored with a drearier picture part, we believe, that those who have made of court life than the one with which Lord anti-chambering the pursuit of their lives, Hervey presents us. The Maintenon do not suffer from it, that they must have Letters" sufficiently showed us what lay be- parted from their independence at so early neath the "glitter of the gold" of Versail-a period as to move glibly through service, les, under the empire of him who played unaware of their mutilation. In all their the King better than most monarchs. The memoirs and confessions will be found a Burney diary, in even the portions selected touch of gratulation and conscious importfor publication, told us enough of the dis-ance (even when grievances are in question) mal monotony which lies like a spell on the which calls to mind the tone of the upper palace,-enough of the tendency towards servant in Crabbe's inimitable "Delay has distortion which the best affections of na- danger," ture must encounter when power and partyspirit come between parent and child. But this record of Lord Hervey's is unparagoned. What a picture do we derive from it of that striking and stately woman, Queen Caroline-what a story of a life of secret misery and outward show,-of wearing, incessant intrigues, to be counteracted by Nor is even Lord Hervey exempt from measures no less wary and ceaseless!-what this (shall we call it ?) obsequiousness, all an exhibition of violent passions trained high bred as he is. To be in council with into a degrading submissiveness, which the Queen's griefs (discreditable to womancould almost mistake itself for extinction! hood though some of them were), to bring -what a revelation of a strong will mov- her the earliest intelligence,-to manage her ing puppet-like at others' pleasure! What by hints of his own originating, repeated family groups are revealed, of a son without as the rumors and opinions of "the town," duty, of daughters at variance,-of a hus--to make conversation for her when she band, whose infidelities the wife must needs was distrait, to find mirth for her when encourage! And consider the frame work coarser comedy tired, and all this while to of all this! The age, in general, was one be laid under the "soft impeachment" of of anxiety, unsettlement, and expectation. having kindled a deep and tender passion There were plotting Papists in corners, who in the breast of one of the Queen's daughmight at any moment turn up in the heart ters, her own namesake,-never seems to of London, following a Stuart on his bold have been felt as a hardship, or burden, or way to St. James's. There were the 'pren-waste of life, and power, and intelligence.

"He saw my Lord, and Lady Jane was there,
And said to Johnson, Johnson take a chair,-
True, we are servants in a certain way,
But in the higher places so are they;
We are obey'd in ours, and they in theirs obey.'
So, Johnson bow'd, for that was right and fit,
And had no scruple with the Earl to sit."

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All this seems to us a position at best ra- est fortitude, strength of mind, tenderness, ther pitiful for a man of " parts, accom-resignation, and patience." Add to this, plishments, and high station: the husband what we have gathered from former "Walof

"Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepel," and the friend, or the foe, of some of the finest spirits of our Augustan age. In one page, it is true, Lord Hervey apologizes for the triviality of the incidents he chronicles; but that is, as it were, behind his fan, in order that, the apology once made, he may be at liberty to discharge a fresh volley of "strokes" against his most Gracious Majesty's tenderness and brutality" towards his never-wearied and much enduring wife," -or, to blacken with his blackest distillation of gall the unfilial and unfeeling behavior of the heir-apparent,—or, to laugh at that great girl, the Princess Royal, whose approaching marriage with a Prince Hunchback-Him of Orange-could not so absorb her but that she had "time, and time enough" to concern herself about Handel "her music-master," and the opera, as the matters of consequence closest to her heart. So much for the "History of the Court of George the Second, by the Queen's old Courtier." The "Times of Geroge the Third by Nobody's Courtier,'' is not the worst secondary title which could be affixed to the delightful book here coupled with my Lord Hervey's. Let us not whisper that there are now-a-days on more fascinating Lady Ossorys, for whom a correspondent might chronicle" the Lind fever;" or the humors of the National Convention hard by Fitzroy Square, or other topics of the moment. But, on turning to this treasury of bright things, we must feel that if even we have among us memoir-inditing lords or "Cynosures" innumerable to whom gentlemen of taste could pay suit and service, we cannot pretend to a letter-writing Horace! The present collection contains some of Walpole's gayest letters, thrown off with the utmost ease, confidence, and certainty of sympathy, and in his highest strain of courtesy. Lady Ossory," says Mr. Vernon Smith, in his preface, was said to have been gifted with high endowments of mind and person; high-spirited and noble in her ways of thinking, and generous in her disposition. She was a beautiful woman, her mental faculties superior; she possessed a lively imagination, quick discernment, ready wit, great vivacity, both in conversation and writing. In her last illness, which was long and painful, she evinced the great

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poliana," a certain airiness,-a willingness to play at dissipation perpetually, often to be remarked among those endowed with high animal spirits (totally distinct from the serious pursuit of pleasure as often to be observed among the phlegmatic), and it will be easily understood how precious the gay Duchess of Grafton of Horace Walpole's loo-days became, in their maturer life, as a recipient of his anecdotes, speculations, and reminiscences. The old, confidental, philandering tone could be maintained between a pair of friends so equal in rank and in pursuit, without any "inconvenience to any Lord Castlecomer." In a case where there was no very serious interests or tie to introduce restraint or passion into the correspondence, who could appreciate Mrs. Hobart's oldest cotillon step as intimately as "our Lady" of Ossory, who could understand so thoroughly as herself the absurdity of Lady Mary Cope's newest and most desperate effort to display herself advantageously in the eyes of Royalty?— who so perfectly enter into the "fairyism” which was the true tone (as its master once described it) of Strawberry Hill?-who so exquisitely relish George Selwyn's " dismal stories" or smart sayings about Mrs. St. Jack? Then, though Lady Ossory was too highly bred to be herself blue, she seems to have loved to learn, in a sort of lady-like way, what "the Town" thought of the great new play or the sweet new poem. Thus, too, if we are to judge by the letters addressed to her, she seems to have tasted of politics, like Lady Grace, "soberly,"— but with a discernment of flavors totally different from the hearsay patriotism or parrot-like republicanism of one unable to choose or to judge for herself,-who echoes "the gentlemen." To such a lady the newest French fashion, the newest Twickenham robbery, the newest court rumor, were alike welcome. That she prized her correspondent's letters highly is evident from the last of the series, written only six weeks before his death, in which he declares that she distresses him "infinitely by showing my idle notes, which I cannot conceive can amuse anybody." And we repeat that the above sympathies and congenial tastes give a charm and a fulness to these letters, which justifies us in ranking them below no former collection in the variety of their topics or the sparkle of their style. We are warned,

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