sion, ever since. And so, from the nature of the case, it must ever remain. The pages of Hansard tell the same tale in the reign of Edward VII. as the correspondence of the Privy Council told in that of James I. No legislation can ever so alter a dependence and a connexion which result much less from conquest than from the compelling magnetism of physical proximity as to relieve the Government and the Parliament of Great Britain of the duty of providing for the reasonable wants and meeting the legitimate wishes of Ireland. But it may well be that one result of just and well-devised legislation may be to give to the paramount obligation of duty, hitherto too often presented as a heavy and a hopeless burden, the more attractive garb of a privilege. He would be a bold prophet who, after so many centuries of disappointment on both sides, would venture to predict the permanent mitigation of the causes of discord between England and Ireland as certain to result even from the final settlement of a question to which the testimony of the most opposite witnesses has combined to assign the largest share in the elements of mutual provocation. A spirit of too confident optimism has animated many high-minded Englishmen to many wellintentioned failures in the field of Irish legislation. It is too soon to assert that the political prescience of Mr. Wyndham is as remarkable as his Parliamentary adroitness is admirable. But if in courageously attempting afresh the task defined so clearly by Sir John Davies, in the sentence already quoted, Ministers set themselves to a venture in which the risks of failure are great, they are entitled to look for a reward no less splendid than that which Davies believed he had secured in giving effect to the wishes of his master. We will not aver that the reward is sure. But this much we think the existing state of parties in Ireland permits us to affirm-that never since they were written, three long centuries ago, has there been a fairer prospect of realising the hopes of Irish prosperity and of reciprocal goodwill between the three kingdoms, so eloquently expressed by Sir John Davies towards the close of his famous work: 'Briefly, the clock of the civil government is now well set, and all the wheels thereof do move in order. The strings of this Irish harp which the civil magistrate doth finger are all in tune, and make a good harmony in the Commonweal. So as we may well conceive a hope that Ireland, which heretofore might well be called the land of "Ire," because the irascible power was predominant there for the space of four hundred years together, will from henceforth prove a land of peace and concord.' ART. X.-1. Mdlle. de Lespinasse et la Marquise du Deffand, suivi de documents inédits sur Mdlle. de Lespinasse. Par EUGÈNE ASSE. Paris: G. Charpentier, 1877. 2. Lettres de Mdlle. de Lespinasse. Par EUGÈNE ASSE. Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier [undated]. 3. Letters of Mdlle. de Lespinasse. With Notes on her Life and Character by D'Alembert, Marmontel, De Guibert, &c., and an Introduction by C. A. Sainte-Beuve. Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley. London : Heinemann, 1903. 4. La Femme au Dix-huitième Siècle. Par EDMOND et JULES DE GONCOURT. Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier, 1901. 5. Lady Rose's Daughter. By Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1903. MONSIEUR EUGÈNE ASSE has fixed in a single clear and concise volume the main facts of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse's life, and his book, copiously provided with notes and references, enables the reader to follow his subject accurately. We can hardly be too grateful for work such as his at a time when careless writing is common. English readers are indebted to Miss Wormeley for a translation from his edition of the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, presented in an attractive form, which is useful in placing an historical personage before that public who will not trouble to turn to works of the period for their information, or to whom a foreign tongue is irksome. Some faults of detail would, however, have been avoided had she utilised the later work of M. Asse ;* interest in the narrative remains, but it is wanting in the exactness with which historical research should be pursued. In previous papers in this Review † studies have been presented of Madame du Deffand and of Madame d'Epinay each of whom, as we then pointed out, was not only personally charming but was a type of the women of the eighteenth century who, intuitively perceptive of, and sensible to, the influences at work about them were, as well as more seemingly dangerous malcontents, rising in their way in revolt against the customs and habits antagonistic to the Mdlle. de Lespinasse et la Marquise du Deffand. well-being of the Frenchwoman. They were the ornaments and the victims of that glittering superficial society the intellectual glory and personal charm of which have never been equalled, while the precarious state of its existence is unexampled. The forces which finally resulted in the French Revolution were drawing toward their culmination in every section of the social structure and their action was visible in strangely unexpected places. It could be seen in the salons of Paris, which had then reached their highest phase of developement, as in the sumptuous apartments of the châteaux of La Chevrette and Chantilly, and in those magnificent buildings many of which, surviving the Revolution, still rise in splendour high above the banks of the Loire, and whose turrets and battlements peep out from Normandy forests. Courtiers, philosophers, and agreeable women were here collected, where their discussions, animated by a spirit of criticism and enquiry, were destructive of these very surroundings and of existing institutions in society and in the state. Wrong impressions have been usual among foreigners in regard to the French salons of the eighteenth century. It was inevitable, certainly, that it should be so, when one stops to consider the confusion of mind resulting from racial, political, religious, and social differences, added to the subtleties of language. These illusions, however, vanish when seen through the medium of contemporary letters, the surest method of gauging an epoch. The salons are sometimes dwelt upon as a light and loose society, whose leaders and frequenters, freeing themselves from all the restraints not only of conventionality, but of any standard of morality as well, carried freedom of speech to the extreme of license; where an assemblage of dissipated, if brilliant, men were often gathered together by a frivolous and unconventional, probably equally censurable, though gifted, woman. Such was not the case. On the contrary, women not only were the skilful hostesses but were usually to be seen mingled, in various types of elegance and eloquence, among the guests, and men also held salons equally renowned and popular as those of women. That grandee at the court of Louis XV., the Prince de Conti, assisted, to be sure, by his Minerva, the Comtesse de Boufflers, entertained the entire court circle at his magnificent supper parties at the Temple, and the salons of the cosmopolitan d'Holbach and the benevolent Helvétius, the spirituel Abbé Morellet, and the versatile President Hénault, whose good suppers were as celebrated as the guests whom he gathered about his table, were meeting-places quite as much in vogue as those réunions which the ambitious Duchesse de Maine held at her little court at Sceaux, the powerful Maréchale de Luxembourg at the château de Montmorency, or which congregated at the house of Madame Necker, equally celebrated as the discarded fiancée of Gibbon, the wife of the famous financier, the mother of Madame de Staël, and the leader of a salon. A great advance in morals and in public sentiment generally has been made since their time, along with the gradual progress of civilisation and ideas, and the world of to-day would be offended at much which at that period was overlooked or condoned; but the salons, far from being aids or abettors to a scandalous life were, rather, society's adjusters, the court of public opinion-from whence there was no appeal-as to behaviour and manners, while they inspired and directed the intelligence and thought; high ideals of truth and beauty were their constant aim; a perfect proportion, an exquisite harmony, which tended to unity and temperance, was the rule, and less freedom in the sense of license was to be found there than in any society in the great capitals of the world before or after; therein lay their power and their success, stimulating and enlarging, as they did, the life of the intellect. The private life of the individual, past or present, might be as corrupt as his code allowed, but when he entered the society of the salons he must satisfy the requirements of his environment if he would remain there. They were where what was best in thought and expression flourished, where all that was exalted in sentiment was applauded, and where, if an original idea were introduced, the divine spark was not permitted to expire for want of sympathy. It is thus evident that the leader of a salon had no light task to perform; he or she was an arbiter chosen by society for the interest of good manners and high thinking, and any one who should shock such ideals was peremptorily banished, for these rulers were autocratic and all-powerful. It cannot be said that there was one among those famous women who held salons who led a happy life, but it was especially the fate of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to be unhappy, and we feel an exceeding pity as we follow the life of one born under a cloud and followed by misfortune. By the publication of her letters she is seen in a clearer light by succeeding generations than by her contemporaries from whom, with one or two exceptions, her deeply emotional temperament was concealed. She played her part so well that she succeeded in deceiving her most intimate friends who saw in her only the clever, charming, sympathetic companion and confidant. They scarcely realised, though warned by her frail appearance, her precarious hold on life, and still less suspected that her death should be caused by the struggles of an intense nature between a past and present passion. It was long afterward before the intricacies and depths of her passionate heart and undisciplined mind were revealed by her letters in their extraordinary avowals of regret and remorse and of strangely intermingled exaltation and pain. Julie de Lespinasse was born at Lyons, November 9, 1732. She was the daughter of the Comtesse d'Albon, who had been living for some years apart from her husband; the Countess belonged to an old and noble family, and was very rich, her child receiving the name of Lespinasse from a part of her large property, while Julie was her own name. Her father, in the gossip of the time, was said to be Cardinal de Tencin, a report, however, which seems to be unfounded.* Mademoiselle de Lespinasse herself, in referring to her youth, repeats that it would make a more moving tale than any novel of Richardson or Prévost. 'Mon histoire est un 'composé de circonstances si funestes, que cela m'a prouvé que le vrai n'est souvent pas vraisemblable.' † Her childhood and early youth must, however, have been happy enough-though La Harpe tells a dramatic tale of the cloister and of danger from poison-for it was really passed with her mother and her other children in the picturesque old château d'Avauges, in the romantic country between Lyons and Tartare. She was plainly the Countess's favourite, and was educated better than was common. But when she was sixteen she had the misfortune to lose her mother who, dying suddenly, was unable to complete the arrangements she had contemplated for her daughter's settlement, and she was only left by her will a legacy of three hundred livres in rente viagère, the smallness of the amount to be accounted for, probably, by the delicacy of their relations. The Comtesse d'Albon thought to supplement the bequest p. 203. *Correspondance Complète de Madame du Deffand, 1865, vol. i. † Letter to M. de Guibert, August 26, 1774. |