lock of her hair preserved in the Ambrosian library at Milan. On the envelope he put a happy motto:

"And Beauty draws us with a single hair."

If ever hair was golden, it is this. It is not red, it is not yellow, it is not auburn; it is golden, and nothing else: and though natural-looking too, must have had a surprising appearance in the mass. Lucretia, beautiful in every respect, must have looked like a vision in a picture, an angel from the sun. Every body who sees it, cries out, and pronounces it the real thing. I must confess, after all, I prefer the auburn, as we consirue it. It forms, I think, a finer shade for the skin; a richer warmth; a darker lustre. But Lucretia's hair must have been still divine. Wat Sylvan, a man of genius whom I became acquainted with over it, as other acquaintances commence over a bottle, was inspired on the occasion with the following verses:

So.

"Borgia, thou once wert almost too august,

And high for adoration;-now thou 'rt dust!
All that remains of thee these plaits infold-
Calm hair meand'ring with pellucid gold!"

The third line is not true to the matter-of-fact; but the whole is true to the spirit of it. The sentiment implied in the last line will be echoed by every bosom that has worn a lock of hair next it, or longed to do Hair is at once the most delicate and lasting of our materials; and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that with a lock of hair belonging to a child or a friend, we may almost look up to heaven, and compare notes with the angelic nature; may almost say, "I have a piece of thee here, not unworthy of thy being now."

FOREHEAD. There are fashions in beauty as well as dress. In some parts of Africa, no lady can be charming under twenty stone.

King Chihu put nine queens to death
Convict on Statute, Irory Teeth.

In Shakspear's time, it was the fashion to have high foreheads, probably out of compliment to Queen Elizabeth. They were thought to be equally beautiful and indicative of wisdom and if the portraits of the great men of that day are to be trusted, wisdom and high foreheads were certainly often found together. Of late years, physiognomists have declared for the wisdom of strait and compact foreheads, rather than high ones. I must own I have seen very silly persons with both. It must be allowed at the same time, that a very retreating forehead is apt to be no accompaniment of wit. With regard to high ones, they are often confounded with foreheads merely bald; and baldness, whether natural or otherwise, is never handsome; though in men it sometimes takes a character of simplicity and firmness. According to the Greeks, who are reckoned to have been the greatest judges of beauty, the high forehead never bore the palm. A certain conciseness carried it. "A forehead," says Junius, in his Treatise on Ancient Art," should be smooth and even, white, delicate, short, and of an open and cheerful character." The Latin is briefer.* Ariosto has expressed it in two words, perhaps in one.

*" Frons debet esse plana, candida, tenuis, brevis, pura." Junius De Pictura Veterum, Lib. 3, cap. 9. The whole chapter is very curious and abundant on the subject of ancient beauty. Yet it might be rendered a good deal more so. A treatise on Hair alone might be collected out of Ovid.

Di terso avorio era la fronte lieta.

Orlan. Fur. canto 7.

Terse ivory was her forehead glad.

A large bare forehead gives a woman a masculine and defying look.
The word effrontery comes from it.
The hair should be brought over

such a forehead, as vines are trailed over a naked wall.

And now in respect to "Eyes,"-but as upon this subject I may be too copious for the space allotted me at present, I must begin another paper with my criticism upon them.

THE hollow dash of waves!-the ceaseless roar !
-Silence, ye billows! vex my soul no more.

COWPER.

-There's a spring in the woods by my sunny home
Afar from the dark sea's tossing foam:

Oh the gush of that fountain is sweet to hear,

As

song from the shore to the sailor's ear!
And the sparkle which up to the sun it throws,

Through the feathery fern, and the wild olive boughs,
And the gleam on its path, as its steals away,
Into deeper shades, from the sultry day,
And the large water-lilies that o'er its bed
Their pearly leaves to the soft light spread,

They haunt me!-I dream of that bright spring's flow,
I thirst for its rills like a wounded roe!

Be still, thou sea-bird, with thy changing cry!
My spirit sickens as thy wing sweeps by.

Know ye my home, with the lulling sound
Of leaves from the lime and the chesnut round?
Know ye it, brethren! where bower'd it lies,
Under the purple of southern skies?
With the streamy gold of the sun that shines
In through the cloud of its wreathing vines,
And the breath of the fainting myrtle-flowers,
Borne from the mountains in dewy hours,

And the fire-fly's glance through the darkening shades,
Like shooting stars in the forest-glades,

And the scent of the citron at Eve's dim fall-
-Speak! have ye known, have ye felt them all?

The heavy-rolling surge! the rocking mast!

Hush! give my dream's deep music way, thou blast!

Oh! the glad sounds of the joyous earth!
The notes of the singing cicala's mirth,
The murmurs that live in the mountain-pines,
The sighing of reeds as the day declines,

The wings flitting home through the crimson glow
That steeps the woods when the sun is low,

The voice of the night-bird that sends a thrill
To the heart of the leaves when the winds are still!
-I hear them!-around me they rise, they swell,
They claim back my spirit with hope to dwell!
They come with a breath of the fresh spring-time,
And waken my youth in its hour of prime!
The white foam dashes high-away, away,
Shroud my green land no more, thou blinding spray!
'Tis there!-down the mountains I see the sweep
Of the chesnut forests, the rich and deep!
With the burden and glory of flowers they wear,
Floating upborne on the blue summer-air,

And the light pouring through them in tender gleams,
And the flashing forth of a thousand streams!
-Hold me not, brethren! I go, I go

To the hills of my youth, where the myrtles blow,
To the depths of the woods where the shadows rest
Massy and still, on the greensward's breast,
To the rocks that resound with the water's play--

I hear the sweet laugh of my Fount!-give way!
Give way!-the booming surge, the tempest's roar,
The sea-bird's wail, shall vex my soul no more!

MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE GENLIS.*

AFTER all, vanity is good for something. It encourages all sorts of manufacturers; and among the rest, the manufacture of memoirs. Without this delightful imperfection, which induces a man to imagine every particular of the "rebus ad eum pertinentibus," as interesting to the public as to himself, the human heart would still remain a terra incognita. This is the secret of that superior charm and attraction which auto-biography possesses (if we must speak Greek) over hetero-biography. It is vanity, and vanity alone, which engages a writer in the thousand and one minutiæ of time, place, and circumstance, that give colour and verisimilitude to the narrative, and to indulge in those "épanchemens du cœur," which betray, in the exuberance of prattle, the innermost recesses of character and motive. In treating of the concerns of others, we see things in the gross, overlooking whatever appears "beneath the dignity of history:" in treating of ourselves, we deem nothing unimportant, nil dictum reputantes dum quid superesset dicendum; and though this sometimes betrays a coxcomb into tediousness, it always gives interest to the pages of a writer who is intent only on narration. It moreover foils all attempts at falsehood and concealment (designed or unconscious), forcing the author, like a bad witness under cross-examination, to expose the truth, even by his very efforts to exclude it. Auto-biography always smacks high of human nature. No matter what may be the subject, statesman or fiddler, peer or prostitute, player or bishop, a Melcombe Regis or a Ludlow, a Cibber or a George Anne Bellamy, the bottom of the story is always man; and, provided the narrator be but naïve, and not utterly vapid and pretending, his work must please. If we look a little closely into the Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, we find the details often disgustingly offensive

* Memoirs of the Countess de Genlis, illustrative of the History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Written by herself. Vols. III. and IV.

to good manners, always trifling and frivolous in point of adventure and action, and rarely involving any of the great interests of society; yet by the mere bonhommie of egotism, by the mere display of what exists in the human heart, the volume is (independently of all charm of style) one of the most attractive in the French language. Our sympathies are not indeed engaged either with the hero, or with the intriguing tracassier personages he groups round himself in picture. We love and we respect Rousseau less than we did before the book fell into our hands, and we are disappointed with the figure which some of the first names in science and in literature make in his narrations. Yet we feel that they are real men and women of whom we read; and we have a strong interest, if not in the individuals, in the species of which they form such singular varieties.

It is not then very necessary that the hero of a work of this description should be particularly wise, good, or great, in order that it may instruct or amuse. It is not very important that he or she should be scrupulously exact in speaking the " truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." All that is requisite is, that the party should have lived in the world, in order to have something to relate, and that he be garrulous; and every desirable object is attained by the production.

We have thought it necessary to premise thus much, because we are not quite sure that those who are best acquainted with the literary history of Modern France, will be disposed to place much confidence in the fidelity of Madame de Genlis. This very charming and elegant writer is assuredly not to be reckoned among those "rara aves" of French moral ornithology, which are wholly undeserving of a place in the Dictionnaire des Girouettes. Whether it be system or nature, a determination to paint men and things as best suits existing interests, or the exaggeration into which females are usually hurried, whenever their feelings are excited, her writings are thought to partake too decidedly of that particular nuance of opinion which happened to be prepotent at the hour when they were respectively composed. In compiling the volumes now before us, Madame de Genlis appears to have had two objects of which she never loses sight; the first is to do every imaginable honour by her own moral and intellectual character; and the second to uphold the ancien regime in its utmost purity at the expense of every one who has in the remotest degree been connected with the Revolution. To the former of these objects she has, if we may believe the Parisian wits, sacrificed no small sum of money. The booksellers, it appears, have given her 40,000 francs for her work as it stands; but had she favoured the world with all she could tell of a more personal nature, she might, according to the dictum of her countrymen, have doubled that price.

With respect to the political leanings of her Memoirs, it must in justice be allowed that Madame de G. is by no means singular; but is entitled to the full effect of that fashionable plea, the " numerus defendit." Every day is producing from the French press works of various descriptions, all tending to the one great end, of proving the French monarchy the perfection of political wisdom, and the voluptuous and bigoted race of Bourbons the models of patriot kings. Unfortunately for the cause, it has so happened that these very writers have done more mischief to the party they advocate, than its most de

termined enemies. Monsieur Chateaubriand, the ultra, is more dangerous to the "right divine to govern wrong," than Citizen Chateaubriand, the republican, who measured the abuses of the French monarchy accumulatively by its duration: and Madame de Genlis, the eulogist of Ferdinand the embroiderer, betrays more of the secrets of the prison house, than the Madame de Genlis of the days of égalité would ostentatiously have displayed. The very title of such books as "Les Crimes des Rois" puts the reader on his guard, and begets a wholesome suspicion of the poisonous nature of their contents: but whatever escapes to the detriment of a cause, through the simplicity of its professed panegyrists and avowed partizans, is at once accepted as irrecusable testimony. The eulogies indeed of the French ultra writers forcibly remind one of that kind-hearted man, who when his friend was accused of not being fit to carry entrails to feed a bear, defended him à l'ovtrance, by a strenuous and noisy assertion that he was the most proper man alive for the performance of that office.

Thus it is with Madame de Genlis: with every determination to paint the court and aristocracy in the most winning colours, her whole life from the very cradle is a practical illustration of the bad habits, bad morals, and bad taste which an exclusive government never fails to engender. Though she loses no opportunity "in season and out of season," of ridiculing the Revolution, and of railing against the literary party whom she supposes to have contributed to its developement, yet it is impossible to read a page of her book without obtaining evidence of that corruption of manners, and that accumulation of errors and abuses, moral, political, and economical, which rendered a revolution as salutary as it was inevitable. If any specimen were necessary to illustrate the spirit in which these Memoirs are written, we might refer the reader to the account of the author's visit to Voltaire, in the fourth volume, in which every trait that malignity could discover and ingenuity distort, is seized with the avidity of a sycophant, to ridicule the man who received her with courtesy and hospitality.*

The natural curiosity we felt to discover in what way a woman, situated like Madame de Genlis, would write of the many persons with whom she had been connected, was considerable. From one who had such liaisons in the successive courts,-royal, imperial, revolutionary and legitimate, we did not expect a rigid adherence to accuracy, and that expectation was but little increased by the strenuous protestations of candour and veracity with which the volumes open. According to Madame de Genlis, her contemporary memorists are universally dealers in scandal; and she herself the Quixotte born to redress all distressed knights and damsels whose characters are in the limbo of misrepresentation. Exempt from passions, and elevated above prejudices, she professes that it was an "object of her work, to refute calumnies, without regard to resentment or affection. Let us, however, perpend her own words.

* Arriving at Ferney an hour before the appointed dinner-hour, she describes herself as interrupting Voltaire in his studies; and she adds, that it was some consolation to her to recollect that he no longer wrote tragedies. "I hindered him only," she says, "from putting down a few impieties, a few licentious lines the more!!"