world; while Aristotle, on the other hand, is to be regarded as the father of those unhappy academical schismatics from the Great Church of living humanity, who allowed the ministrant faculty of reason to assume an unlawful supremacy over the higher powers of intellect, and gave birth to that voracious despotism of barren dialectics, in the middle ages commonly called the scholastic philosophy. The Greek philosophy, however, even its noblest Avatar, Plato, much less in the case of a Zeno or an Aristotle, was never able to achieve that which must be the practically proposed end of all higher philosophy that is in earnest; viz. the coming out of the narrow sphere of the school and the palaestra, uniting itself with actual life, and embodying itself completely in the shape of that which we call a CHURCH. This Platonism could not do. Christianity did it. Revelation did it. God Incarnate did it. Now once again came humanity forth, fresh from the bosom of the divine creativeness, conquering and to conquer. There was no Aristotle and Plato—no Abelard and Bernard here—reason carping at imagination, and imagination despising reason. But once, if but once in four thousand years, man appeared in all the might of his living completeness. Love walked hand in hand with knowledge, and both were identified in life. The spirit of divine peace brooded in the inner sanctuary of the heart, while the outer man was mailed for the sternest warfare. Such was pure Christianity, so long as it lasted—for the celestial plant was condemned to grow in a terrestrial atmosphere; and there, alas! it could only grow with a stunted likeness of itself. It was more than stunted also—it was tainted; for are not all things tainted here? Do we not live in a tainted atmosphere? do we not live in a time out of joint? Does not the whole creation literally groan? Too manifestly it does, however natural philosophers may affect to speak of the book of nature, as if it were the clear and uncorrupted text of the living book of God. Not only man, but the whole environment of external nature, which belongs to him, has been deranged by the Fall. In such a world as this, wherein whoso will not believe a devil cannot believe a God, it was impossible for Christianity to remain in that state of blissful vital harmony with itself with which it set out. It became divided. Extravagant developments of ambitious, monopolizing faculties became manifest on every side. Self-sufficing Pelagianisn and Arianism, here; self-confounding Gnosticism and Manichaeism there. Then came those two great strifes and divisions of the middle ages—the one, that old dualism of the inner man, the ever-repeated strife between reason and imagination, to which we have so often alluded—the other, a no less serious strife of the outward machinery of life, the strife between the spiritual and the temporal powers, between the Pope and the Emperor. This was bad enough; that the two vicars of God on earth should not know to keep the peace among themselves, when the keeping of the peace among others was the very end and aim of the appointment. But worse times were coming. For in the middle ages, notwithstanding the rank evils of barren scholasticism, secular-minded popes, and intrusive emperors, there was still a church, a common Christian religion, a common faith of all Christians; but now, since that anarchical and rebellious movement, commonly called the Reformation, but more fitly termed the revolution, the overturning and overthrowing of the religion of Christendom, we have no more a mere internal strife and division to vex us, but there is an entire separation and divorce of one part of the Christian church (so called) from the main mother institution. The abode of peace has become the camp of war and the arena of battles; that dogmatical theology of the Christian church, which, if it be not the infallible pure mathematics of the moral world, has been deceiving men for 1800 years, and is a liar—that theology is now publicly discussed and denied, scorned and scouted by men who do not blush to call themselves Christians; there is no universal peace any longer to be found in that region where it is the instinct of humanity, before all things, to seek repose; the only religious peace which the present age recognises, is that of which the Indian talks, when he says of certain epochs of the world's history, Brahma sleeps! Those who sleep and are indifferent in spiritual matters find peace; but those who are alive and awake must beat the wind, and battle, belike, with much useless loss of strength, before they can arrive even at that first postulate of all healthy thinking—there is a God. "Ueber Gott werd ich nie streiten," said Herder. "About God I will never dispute." Yet look at German rationalism, look at Protestant theology—what do you see there? Reason usurping the mastery in each individual, without control of the higher faculties of the soul, and of those institutions in life by which those faculties are represented; and as one man's reason is as good as another's, thence arises war of each self-asserted despotism against that which happens to be next it, and of all against all—a spiritual anarchy, which threatens the entire dissolution of the moral world, and from which there is no refuge but in recurring to the old traditionary faith of a revolted humanity, no redemption but in the venerable repository of those traditions—the one and indivisible holy Catholic church of Christ, of whom, as the inner and eternal keystone is God, so the outer and temporal is the Pope.

Such is a general outline of the philosophy of Frederick Schlegel—a philosophy belonging to the class theological and supernatural, to the genus Christian, to the species sacerdotal and Popish. Now, without stopping here to blame its sublime generalities and beautiful confusions, on the one hand, or to praise its elevated tendency, its catholic and reconciling tone on the other, we shall merely call attention, in a single sentence, physiologically, to its main and distinguishing character. It was, in fact, (in spirit and tendency, though not in outward accomplishment,) to German literature twenty years ago what Puseyism is now to the English church—it was a bold and grand attempt to get rid of those vexing doubts and disputes on the most important subjects that will ever disquiet minds of a certain constitution, so long as they have nothing to lean on but their own judgment; and as Protestantism, when consistently carried out, summarily throws a man back on his individual opinion, and subjects the vastest and most momentous questions to the scrutiny of reason and the torture of doubt, therefore Schlegel in literary Germany, and Pusey in ecclesiastical England, were equally forced, if they would not lose Christianity altogether, to renounce Protestantism, and to base their philosophy upon sacerdotal authority and ecclesiastical tradition. That Schlegel became a Romanist at Cologne, and Dr Pusey an Anglo-Catholic at Oxford, does not affect the kinship. Both, to escape from the anarchy of Protestant individualism, (as it was felt by them,) were obliged to assert not merely Christianity, but a hierarchy—not merely the Bible, but an authoritative interpretation of the Bible; and both found, or seemed to find, that authoritative interpretation and exorcism of doubt there, where alone in their circumstances, and intellectually constituted as they were, it was to be found. Dr Pusey did not become a Papist like Frederick Schlegel, for two plain reasons—first, because he was an Englishman, second, because he was an English churchman. The authority which he sought for lay at his door; why should he travel to Rome for it? Archbishop Laud had taught apostolical succession before—Dr Pusey might teach it again. But this convenient prop of Popery without the Pope was not prepared for Frederick Schlegel. There was no Episcopal church, no Oxford in Germany, into whose bosom he could throw himself, and find relief from the agony of religious doubt. He was a German, moreover, and a philosopher. To his searching eye and circumspective wariness, the general basis of tradition which might satisfy a Pusey, though sufficiently broad, did not appear sure enough. To his lofty architectural imagination a hierarchical aristocracy, untopped by a hierarchical monarch, did not appear sufficiently sublime. To his all-comprehending and all-combining historical sympathies, a Christian priesthood, with Cyprian, Augustine, and Jerome, but without Hildebrand, Innocent, and Boniface, would have presented the appearance of a fair landscape, with a black yawning chasm in the middle, into which whoever looked shuddered. Therefore Frederick Schlegel, spurning all half measures, inglorious compromises, and vain attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, vaulted himself at once, with a bold leap, into the central point of sacerdotal Christianity. The obstacles that would have deterred ordinary minds had no effect on him. All points of detail were sunk in the over-whelming importance of the general question. Transubstantiation or consubstantiation, conception, maculate or immaculate, were a matter of small moment with him. What he wanted was a divinely commissioned church with sacred mysteries—a spiritual house of refuge from the weary battle of intellectual east winds, blasting and barren, with which he saw Protestant Germany desolated. This house of refuge he found in Cologne, in Vienna; and having once made up his mind that spiritual unity and peace were to be found only in the one mother church of Christendom, not being one of those half characters who, "making I dare not wait upon I would," are continually weaving a net of paltry external no's to entangle the progress of every grand decided yes of the inner man, Schlegel did not for a moment hesitate to make his thought a deed, and publicly profess his return to Romanism in the face of enlightened and "ultra-Protestant" Germany. To do this certainly required some moral courage; and no just judge of human actions will refuse to sympathize with the motive of this one, however little he may feel himself at liberty to agree with the result.

But Frederick Schlegel, a well informed writer has said,[F] "became Romanist in a way peculiar to himself, and had in no sense given up his right of private judgment." We have not been able to see, from a careful perusal of his works, (in all of which there is more or less of theology,) that there is any foundation for this assertion of Varnhagen. Frederick Schlegel, the German, was as honest and stout a Romanist in this nineteenth century as any Spanish Ferdinand Catholicus in the fifteenth. Freedom of speculation indeed, within certain known limits, and spirituality of creed above what the meagre charity of some Protestants may conceive possible in a Papist, we do find in this man; but these good qualities a St Bernard, a Dante, a Savonarola, a Fenelon, had exhibited in the Romish Church before Schlegel, and others as great may exhibit them again. Freedom of thought, however, in the sense in which it is understood by Protestants, was the very thing which Schlegel, Goeres, Adam Mueller, and so many others, did give up when they entered the Catholic Church. They felt as Wordsworth did when he wrote his beautiful ode to "Duty;" they had more liberty than they knew how to use—

"Me this uncharter'd freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires; My hopes no more must change their name— I long for a repose that ever is the same."

And if it seem strange to any one that Frederick Schlegel, the learned, the profound, the comprehensive, should believe in Transubstantiation,[G] let him look at a broader aspect of history than that of German books, and ask himself—Did Isabella of Castile—the gentle, the noble, the generous—establish the Inquisition, or allow Ximenes to establish it? In a world which surrounds us on all sides with apparent contradictions, he who admits a real one now and then into his faith, or into his practice, is neither a fool nor a monster.

[Footnote F: Varnhagen Von Ense, Rahel's Umgang, i. p. 227. "Er war auf besondere Weise Katholisch, und hatte seine Geistesfreiheit dabei gar nicht aufgegeben."]

[Footnote G: The following is Schlegel's philosophy of transubstantiation—"Though it be true, that in the Holy Scriptures, in accordance with the symbolical nature of man, there is much that is generally symbolical, and symbolically to be understood; yet when a symbol proceeds immediately from God, it can in this case be nothing less than substantial; it cannot be a mere sign, it must also be something actual; otherwise it would be as if one would palm on the eternal LOGOS, who is the ground of all existence and all knowledge, words without meaning and without power. Quite natural, therefore, it must be regarded, i.e. quite suitable to the nature of the thing, although per se certainly supernatural, and surpassing all comprehension, when that highest symbol which forms the proper principle of unity, and the living central point of Christianity, is perceived to possess this character, that it is at once the sign and the thing signified. For now, that on the high altar of divine love the one great sacrifice has been accomplished for ever, and no flame more can rise from it save the inspiration of a pure God-united will, that solemn act by which the bond formed between the soul and God is from time to time revealed, can consist in nothing else than this—that here the essential substance of the divine power and the divine love is in all its lively fullness communicated to, and received by man, as the miraculous sign of his union with God."—Philosophie des Lebene, p. 376. On the logic of this remarkable passage, those who are strong in Mill and Whately may decide; its orthodoxy belongs to the consideration of the Tridentine doctors.]

In his political opinions, Schlegel maintained the same grand consistency that characterizes his religious philosophy. He had more sense, however, and more of the spirit of Christian fraternity in him than, for the sake of absolutism, to become a Turk or a Russian; nay, from some passages in the Concordia—a political journal, published by him and his friend Adam Mueller, in 1820, and quoted by Mr Robertson—it would almost appear that he would have preferred a monarchy limited by states, conceived in the spirit of the middle ages, to the almost absolute form of monarchical government, under whose protection he lived and lectured at Vienna. To some such constitution as that which now exists in Sweden, for instance, we think he would have had no objections. At the same time, it is certain he gave great offence to the constitutional party in Germany, by the anti-popular tone of his writings generally, more perhaps than by any special absolutist abuses which he had publicly patronized. He was, indeed, a decided enemy to the modern system of representative constitutions, and popular checks; a king by divine right according to the idea of our English nonjurors, was as necessary a corner-stone to his political, as a pope by apostolical succession to his ecclesiastical edifice. And as no confessed corruption of the church, represented as it might be by the monstrous brutality of a Borgia, or the military madness of a Julius, was, in his view, sufficient to authorize any hasty Luther to make a profane bonfire of a papal bull; any hot Henry to usurp the trade of manufacturing creeds; so no "sacred right of insurrection," no unflinching patriotic opposition, no claim of rights, (by petitioners having swords in their hands,) are admissible in his system of a Christian state. And as for the British constitution, and "the glorious Revolution of 1688," this latter, indeed, is one of the best of a bad kind, and that boasted constitution as an example of a house divided against itself, and yet not falling, is a perfect miracle of dynamical art, a lucky accident of politics, scarcely to be looked for again in the history of social development, much less to be eagerly sought after and ignorantly imitated. Nay, rather, if we look at this boasted constitution a little more narrowly, and instruct ourselves as to its practical working, what do we see? "Historical experience, the great teacher of political science, manifestly shows that in these dynamical states, which exist by the cunningly devised balance and counter-balance of different powers, what is called governing is, in truth, a continual strife and contention between the Ministry and the Opposition, who seem to delight in nothing so much as in tugging and tearing the state and its resources to pieces between them, while the hallowed freedom of the hereditary monarch seems to serve only as an old tree, under whose shades the contending parties may the more comfortably choose their ground, and fight out their battles."[H] It is but too manifest, indeed, according to Schlegel's projection of the universe, that all constitutionalism is, properly speaking, a sort of political Protestantism, a fretful fever of the social body, having its origin (like the religious epidemic of the sixteenth century) in the private conceit of the individual, growing by violence and strife, and ending in dissolution. This is the ever-repeated refrain of his political discourses, puerile enough, it may be, to our rude hearing in Britain, but very grateful to polite and patriotic ears at Vienna, when the cannon of Wagram was yet sounding in audible echo beneath their towers. The propounder of such philosophy had not only the common necessity of all philosophers to pile up his political in majestic consistency with his ecclesiastical creed, but he had also to pay back the mad French liberalism with something more mad if possible, and more despotic. And if also Danton, and Mirabeau, and Robespierre, and other terrible Avatars of the destroying Siva in Paris, had raised his naturally romantic temperament a little into the febrile and delirious now and then, what wonder? Shall the devil walk the public streets at noon day, and men not be afraid?

[Footnote H: Philosophie des Lebens, p.407.]

We said that Frederick Schlegel's philosophy, political and religious, but chiefly religious, was the grand key to his popular work on the history of literature. We may illustrate this now by a few instances. In the first place, the "many-sided" Goethe seems to be as little profound as he is charitable, when he sees nothing in the Sanscrit studies of the romantic brothers but a pis aller, and a vulgar ambition to bring forward something new, and make German men stare. We do not answer for the elder brother; but Frederick certainly made the cruise to the east, as Columbus did to the west, from a romantic spirit of adventure. He was not pleased with the old world—he wished to find a new world more to his mind, and, beyond the Indus, he found it. The Hindoos to him were the Greeks of the aboriginal world—"diese Griechen der Urwelt"—and so much better and more divine than the western Greeks, as the aboriginal world was better and more divine than that which came after it. If imagination was the prime, the creative faculty in man, here, in the holy Eddas, it had sat throned for thousands of years as high as the Himalayas. If repose was sought for, and rest to the soul from the toil and turmoil of religious wars in Europe, here, in the secret meditations of pious Yooges, waiting to be absorbed into the bosom of Brahma, surely peace was to be found. Take another matter. Why did Frederick Schlegel make so much talk of the middle ages? Why were the times, so dark to others, instinct to him with a steady solar effluence, in comparison of which the boasted enlightenment of these latter days was but as the busy exhibition of squibs by impertinent boys, the uncertain trembling of fire-flies in a dusky twilight? The middle ages were historically the glory of Germany; and those who had lived to see and to feel the Confederation of the Rhine, and the Protectorate of Napoleon, did not require the particular predilections of a Schlegel to carry them back with eager reaction to the days of the Henries, the Othos, and the Fredericks, when to be the German emperor was to be the greatest man in Europe, after the Pope. But to Schlegel the middle ages were something more. The glory of Germany to the patriot, they were the glory of Europe to the thinker. Modern wits have laughed at the enthusiasm of the Crusades. Did they weep over the perfidy of the partition of Poland? Do they really trust themselves to persuade a generous mind that the principle of mutual jealousy and mere selfishness, the meagre inspiration of the so called balance of power in modern politics, is, according to any norm of nobility in action, a more laudable motive for a public war, than a holy zeal against those who were at once the enemies of Christ, and (as future events but too clearly showed) the enemies of Europe? Modern wits sneer at the scholastic drivelling or the cloudy mistiness of the writers of the middle ages. Did they ever blush for the impious baseness of Helvetius, for the portentous scaffolding of notional skeletons in Hegel? But, alas! we talk of we know not what. What spectacle does modern life present equal to that of St Bernard, the pious monk of Clairvaux, the feeble, emaciated thinker, brooding, with his dove-like eyes, ("oculos columbinos,") over the wild motions of the twelfth century, and by the calm might of divine love, guiding the sceptre of the secular king, and the crosier of the spiritual pontiff alike? Was that a weak or a dark age, when the strength of mind and the light of love could triumph so signally over brute force, and that natural selfishness of public motive which has achieved its cold, glittering triumphs in the lives of so many modern heroes and heroines—a Louis, a Frederick, a Catharine, a Napoleon? But indeed here, as elsewhere, we see that the modern world has fallen altogether into a practical atheism by the idolatry of mere reason; whereas all true greatness comes not down from the head, but up from the heart of man. In which greatness of the heart, the Bernards and the Barbarossas of the middle ages excelled; and therefore they were better than we.

It is by no means necessary for the admirer of Schlegel to maintain that all this eulogium of the twelfth century, or this depreciation of the times we live in, is just and well-merited. Nothing is more cheap than to praise a pretty village perched far away amid the blue skies, and to rail at the sharp edges and corners of things that fret against our ribs. Let it be admitted that there is not a little of artistical decoration, and a great deal of optical illusion, in the matter; still there is some truth, some great truth, that lay in comparative neglect till Schlegel brought it into prominency. This is genuine literary merit; it is that sort of discovery, so to speak, which makes criticism original. And it was not merely with the bringing forward of new materials, but by throwing new lights on the old, that Frederick Schlegel enriched aesthetical science. If the criticism of the nineteenth century may justly boast of a more catholic sympathy, of a wider flight, of a more comprehensive view, and more various feast than that which it superseded, it owes this, with something that belongs to the spirit of the age generally, chiefly to the special captainship of Frederick Schlegel. If the grand spirit of combination and comprehension which distinguishes the "Lectures on Ancient and Modern Literature," be that quality which mainly distinguishes the so called Romantic from the Classical school of aesthetics, then let us profess ourselves Romanticists by all means immediately; for the one seems to include the other as the genus does the species. The beauty of Frederick Schlegel is, that his romance arches over every thing like a sky, and excludes nothing; he delights indeed to override every thing despotically, with one dominant theological and ecclesiastical idea, and now and then, of course, gives rather a rough jog to whatever thing may stand in his way; but generally he seeks about with cautious, conscientious care to find room for every thing; and for a wholesale dealer in denunciation (as in some views we cannot choose but call him) is really the most kind, considerate, and charitable Aristarchus that ever wielded a pen. Hear what Varnhagen Von Ense says on this point—"The inward character of this man, the fundamental impulses of his nature, the merit or the results of his intellectual activity, have as yet found none to describe them in such a manner as he has often succeeded in describing others. It is not every body's business to attempt an anatomy and re-combination of this kind. One must have courage, coolness, profound study, wide sympathies, and a free comprehensiveness, to keep a steady footing and a clear eye in the midst of this gigantic, rolling conglomeration of contradictions, eccentricities, and singularities of all kinds. Here every sort of demon and devil, genius and ghost, Lucinde and Charlemagne, Alarcos, Maria, Plato, Spinoza and Bonald, Goethe consecrated and Goethe condemned, revolution and hierarchy, reel about restlessly, come together, and, what is the strangest thing of all, do not clash. For Schlegel, however many Protean shapes he might assume, never cast away any thing that had ever formed a substantial element in his intellectual existence, but found an advocatus Dei to plead always with a certain reputable eloquence even for the most unmannerly of them; and with good reason too, for in his all-appropriating and curiously combining soul, there did exist a living connexion between the most apparently contradictory of his ideas. To point out this connexion, to trace the secret thread of unity through the most distant extremes, to mark the delicate shade of transition from one phasis of intellectual development to another, to remove, at every doubtful point, the veil and to expose the substance, that were a problem for the sagacity of no common critic."[I] We take the hint. It is not every Byron that finds a Goethe to take him to pieces and build him up again, and peruse him and admire him, as Cuvier did the Mammoth. Those who feel an inward vocation to do so by Schlegel may yet do so in Germany; if there be any in these busy times, even there, who may have leisure to applaud such a work. To us in Britain it may suffice to have essayed to exhibit the fruit and the final results, without attempting curiously to dissect the growth of Schlegel's criticism.

[Footnote I: RAHEL'S Umgang. FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL, vol. i. p. 325.]

The outward fates of this great critic's life may be found, like every thing else, in the famous "Conversations Lexicon;" but as very few readers of these remarks, or students of the history of ancient and modern literature, may be in a condition to refer to that most useful Cyclopaedia of literary reference, we may here sketch the main lines of Schlegel's biography from the sources supplied by Mr Robertson,[J] in the preface to his excellent translation of the "Lectures on the philosophy of history." Whatever we take from a different source will be distinctly noted.

[Footnote J: The authorities given by Mr Robertson are, (1.) La Biographie des Vivans, Paris. (2.) An article for July 1829, in the French Globe, apparently an abridgement of the account of Schlegel in the Conversations Lexicon. (3.) A fuller and truer account of the author, in a French work published several years ago at Paris, entitled "Memoirs of distinguished Converts." (4.) Some facts in Le Catholique, a journal, edited at Paris from 1826 to 1829, by Schlegel's friend, the Baron d'Echstein.]

The brothers Schlegel belonged to what Frederick in his lectures calls the third generation of modern German literature. The whole period from 1750 to 1800, being divided into three generations, the first comprehends all those whose period of greatest activity falls into the first decade, from 1750 to 1760, and thereabout. Its chief heroes are Wieland, Klopstock, and Lessing. These men of course were all born before the year 1730. The second generation extends from 1770 to 1790, and thereabouts, and presents a development, which stands to the first in the relation of summer to spring—Goethe and Schiller are the two names by which it will be sent down to posterity. Of these the one was born in 1749, and the other in 1759. Then follows that third generation to which Schlegel himself belongs, and which is more generally known in literary history as the era of the Romantic school—a school answering both in chronology, and in many points of character also, to what we call the Lake school in England. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, are contemporaries of Tieck, Novalis, and the Schlegels. Their political contemporaries are Napoleon and Wellington. The event which gave a direction to their literary development, no less decidedly than it did to the political history of Europe, was the French Revolution. Accordingly, we find that all these great European characters—for so they all are more or less—made the all-important passage from youth into manhood during the ferment of the years that followed that ominous date, 1789. This coincidence explains the celebrity of the famous biographical year 1769—Walter Scott was born in that year, Wellington and Napoleon, as every body knows—and the elder Aristarchus of the Romantic school, the translator of Shakspeare, Augustus William Von Schlegel was born in 1767. At Hanover, five years later, was born his brother Frederick, that is to say, in May 1772, and our Coleridge in the same year—and to carry on the parallel for another year, Ludwig Tieck, Henry Steffens, and Novalis, were all born in 1773. These dates are curious; when taken along with the great fact of the age—the French Revolution—they may serve to that family likeness which we have noted in characterizing the Romanticists in Germany and the Lake school in England. When Coleridge here was dreaming of America and Pantisocracy, Frederick Schlegel was studying Plato, and scheming republics there.[K] In the first years of his literary career Schlegel devoted himself chiefly to classical literature; and between 1794 and 1797 published several works on Greek and Roman poetry and philosophy, the substance of which was afterwards concentrated into the four first lectures on the history of literature. About this time he appears to have lived chiefly by his literary exertions—a method of obtaining a livelihood very precarious, (as those know best who have tried it,) and to men of a turn of mind more philosophical than popular, even in philosophical Germany, exceedingly irksome. Schlegel felt this as deeply as poor Coleridge—"to live by literature," says he, in one of those letters to Rahel from which we have just quoted—"is to me je laenger je unertraeglicher—the longer I try it the more intolerable." Happily, to keep him from absolute starvation, he married the daughter of Moses Mendelsohn, the Jewish philosopher, who, it appears, had a few pence in her pocket, but not many;[L] and between these, and the produce of his own pen, which could move with equal facility in French as in German, he managed not merely to keep himself and his wife alive, but to transport himself to Paris in the year 1802, and remain there for a year or two, laying the foundation for that oriental evangel which, in 1808, he proclaimed to his countrymen in the little book, Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Meanwhile, in the year 1805, he had returned from France to his own Germany—alas, then about to be one Germany no more! And while the sun of Austerlitz was rising brightly on the then Emperor of France, and soon to be protector of the Rhine, the future secretary of the Archduke Charles, and literary evangelist of Prince Metternich, was prostrating himself before the three holy kings, and swearing fealty to the shade of Charlemagne in Catholic Cologne. There were some men in those days base enough to impeach the purity of Schlegel's motives in the public profession thus made of the old Romish faith. Such men wherever they are to be found now or then, ought to be whipped out of the world. If mere worldly motives could have had any influence on such a mind, the gates of Berlin were as open to him as the gates of Vienna. As it was, not wishing to expatriate himself, like Winkelmann, he had nowhere to go to but Vienna; in those days, indeed, mere patriotism and Teutonic feeling, (in which the Romantic school was never deficient,) independently altogether of Popery, could lead him nowhere else. To Vienna, accordingly, he went; and Vienna is not a place—whatever Napoleon, after Mack's affair, might say of the "stupid Austrians"—where a man like Schlegel will ever be neglected. Prince Metternich and the Archduke Charles had eyes in their head; and with the latter, therefore, we find the great Sanscrit scholar marching to share the glory of Aspern and the honour of Wagram; while the former afterwards decorated him with what of courtly remuneration, in the shape of titles and pensions, it is the policy alike and the privilege of politicians to bestow on poets and philosophers who can do them service. Nay, with some diplomatic missions and messages to Frankfurt also, we find the Romantic philosopher entrusted and even in the great European Congress of Vienna in 1815, he appears exhibiting himself, in no undignified position, alongside of Gentz, Cardinal Gonsalvi, and the Prince of Benevento.[M] We are not to imagine, however, from this, either that the comprehensive philosopher of history had any peculiar talent for practical diplomacy, or that he is to be regarded as a thorough Austrian in politics. For the nice practical problems of diplomacy, he was perhaps the very worst man in the world; and what Varnhagen states in the place just referred to, that Schlegel was, what we should call in England, far too much of a high churchman for Prince Metternich, is only too manifest from the well-known ecclesiastical policy of the Austrian government, contrasted as it is with the ultramontane and Guelphic views propounded by the Viennese lecturer in his philosophy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Frederick Schlegel wished to see the state, with relation to the church, in the attitude that Frederick Barbarossa assumed before Alexander III. at Venice—kneeling, and holding the stirrup.

"An emperor tramples where an emperor knelt."

Joseph II., in his estimation, had inverted the poles of the moral world, making the state supreme, and the church subordinate—that degrading position, which the Non-intrusionsts picture to themselves when they talk of ERASTIANISM, and which Schlegel would have denominated simply—PROTESTANTISM.

[Footnote K: "Das republikanishe Werk erscheint gewiss nicht vor Zwei Jahren."—Letters to Rahel—1802. Varnhagen, as above. Vol. I. p. 234.]

[Footnote L: "Das kleine Vermogen meiner Frau."—Letters to Rahel. Paris: 1803.]

[Footnote M: Das Wiener Congress in 1814-15, by VARNHAGEN VON ENSE, in the fifth volume of his Denkwuerdigkeiten, p. 51. By the way here, Mr Robertson in his list of famous Catholics in Germany, (p. 19,) includes Gentz. Now, Varnhagen, who knew well, says that Gentz was only politically an Austrian, and always remained Protestant in his religious opinions; which is doubtless the fact.]

During his long residence at Vienna, from 1806 to 1828, Schlegel delivered four courses of public lectures in the following order:—One-and-twenty lectures on Modern History,[N] delivered in the year 1810; sixteen lectures on Ancient and Modern Literature, delivered in the spring of 1812, fifteen lectures on the Philosophy of Life, delivered in 1827; and lastly, eighteen lectures on the Philosophy of History, delivered in 1828. Of these, the Philosophy of life contains the theory, as the lectures on literature and on history do the application, of Schlegel's catholic and combining system of human intellect, and, altogether, they form a complete and consistent body of Schlegelism. Three works more speculatively complete, and more practically useful in their way, the production of one consistent architectural mind, are, in the history of literature, not easily to be found.

[Footnote N: Ueber die neuere Geschichte Vorlesungen gehalten zu Wien im Jahre 1810; Wien, 1811.]

Towards the close of the year 1828, Schlegel repaired to Dresden, a city endeared to him by the recollections of enthusiastic juvenile studies. Here he delivered nine lectures Ueber die Philosophie der Sprache, und des Worts, on the Philosophy of Language, a work which the present writer laments much that he has not seen; as it is manifest that the prominency given in Schlegel's Philosophy of Life above sketched to living experience and primeval tradition, must, along with his various accomplishments as a linguist, have eminently fitted him for developing systematically the high significance of human speech. On Sunday the 11th January 1829, he was engaged in composing a lecture which was to be delivered on the following Wednesday, and had just come to the significant words—"Das ganz vollendete und voll-kommene Verstehen selbst, aber"—"The perfect and complete understanding of things, however"—when the mortal palsy suddenly seized his hand, and before one o'clock on the same night he had ceased to philosophize. The words with which his pen ended its long and laborious career, are characteristic enough, both of the general imperfection of human knowledge, and of the particular quality of Schlegel's mind. The Germans have a proverb:—"Alles waere gut waere kein ABER dabei"—"every thing would be good were it not for an ABER—for a HOWEVER—for a BUT." This is the general human vice that lies in that significant ABER. But Schlegel's part in it is a virtue—one of his greatest virtues—a conscientious anxiety never to state a general proposition in philosophy, without, at the same time, stating in what various ways the eternal truth comes to be limited and modified in practice. Great, indeed, is the virtue of a Schlegelian ABER. Had it not been for that, he would have had his place long ago among the vulgar herds of erudite and intellectual dogmatists.

Heinrich Steffens, a well-known literary and scientific character in Germany, in his personal memoirs recently published,[O] describes Frederick Schlegel, at Jena in 1798, as "a remarkable man, slenderly built, but with beautiful regular features, and a very intellectual expression"—(im hoechsten Grade gisntreich.) In his manner there was something remarkably calm and cool, almost phlegmatic. He spoke with great slowness and deliberation, but often with much point, and a great deal of reflective wit. He was thus a thorough German in his temperament; so at least as Englishmen and Frenchmen, of a more nimble blood, delight to picture the Rhenish Teut, not always in the most complimentary contrast with themselves. As it is, his merit shines forth only so much the more, that being a German of the Germans, he should by one small work, more of a combining than of a creative character, have achieved an European reputation and popularity with a certain sphere, that bids fair to last for a generation or two, at least, even in this book-making age. Such an earnest devotedness of research; such a gigantic capacity of appropriation, such a kingly faculty of comprehension, will rarely be found united in one individual. The multifarious truths which the noble industry of such a spirit either evolved wisely or happily disposed, will long continue to be received as a welcome legacy by our studious youth; and as for his errors in a literary point of view, and with reference to British use, practically considered they are the mere breadth of fantastic colouring, which, being removed, does not destroy the drawing.

[Footnote O: Was Ich Erlebte, von HEINRICH STEFFENS. Breslau, 1840-2. Vol. iv. p. 303.]

* * * * *



MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART IV.

"Have I not in my time hear lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

What that residence and Brighton have since become, is familiar to the world—the one an oriental palace, and the other an English city. But at this time all that men saw in the surrounding landscape was almost as it had been seen by our forefathers the Picts and Saxons. I found the prince standing, with four or five gentlemen of distinguished appearance, under the veranda which shaded the front of the cottage from the evening sun. The day had been one of that sultry atmosphere in which autumn sometimes takes its leave of us, and the air from the sea was now delightfully refreshing. The flowers, clustered in thick knots over the little lawn, were raising their languid heads, and breathing their renewed fragrance. All was sweetness and calmness. The sunlight, falling on the amphitheatre of hills, and touching them with diversities of colour as it fell on their various heights and hollows, gave the whole a glittering and fantastic aspect; while the total silence, and absence of all look of life, except an occasional curl of smoke from some of the scattered cottages along the beach; with the magnificent expanse of the ocean bounding all, smooth and blue as a floor of lapis-lazuli, completed the character of a scene which might have been in fairyland.

The prince, whose politeness was undeviating to all, came forward to meet me at once, introduced me to his circle, and entered into conversation; the topic was his beautiful little dwelling.

"You see, Mr Marston," said he, "we live here like hermits, and in not much more space. I give myself credit for having made the discovery of this spot. I dare say, the name of Brighthelmstone may have been in the journal of some voyager to unknown lands, but I believe I have the honour of being the first who ever made it known in London."

I fully acknowledged the taste of his discovery.

"Why," said he, "it certainly is not the taste of Kew, whose chief prospect is the ugliest town on the face of the earth, and whose chief zephyrs are the breath of its brew houses and lime-kilns. Hampton Court has always reminded me of a monastery, which I should never dream of inhabiting unless I put on the gown of a monk. St James's still looks the hospital that it once was. Windsor is certainly a noble structure—Edward's mile of palaces—but that residence is better tenanted than by a subject. While, here I have found a desert, it is true; but as the poet says or sings—

'I am monarch of all I survey.'"

"Yes," I observed. "But still a desert highly picturesque, and capable of cultivation."

"Oh! I hope not," he answered laughingly. "The first appearance of cultivation would put me to flight at once. Fortunately, cultivation is almost impossible. The soil almost totally prohibits tillage, the sea air prohibits trees, the shore prohibits trade, nothing can live here but a fisherman or a shrimp, and thus I am secure against the invasion of all improvers. W——, come here, and assist me to cure Mr Marston of his skepticism on the absolute impossibility of our ever being surrounded by London brick and mortar."

A man of a remarkably graceful air bowed to the call, and came towards us.

"W——," said the prince, "comfort me, by saying that no man can be citizenized in this corner of the world."

"It is certainly highly improbable," was the answer. "And yet, when we know John Bull's variety of tastes, and heroic contempt of money in indulging them, such things may be. I lately found one of my country constituents the inhabitant of a very pretty villa—which he had built, too, for himself—in Sicily; and of all places, in the Val di Noto, the most notorious spot in the island, or perhaps on the earth, for all kinds of desperadoes—the very haunt of Italian smugglers, refugee Catalonians, expert beyond all living knaves in piracy, and African renegades. Yet there sat my honest and fat-cheeked friend, with Aetna roaring above him; declaiming on liberty and property, as comfortably as if he could not be shot for the tenth of a sixpence, or swept off, chattels and all, at the nod of an Algerine. No, sir. If the whim takes the Londoner, you will have him down here without mercy. To the three per cents nothing is impossible."

"Well, well," said the good-humoured prince, "that cannot happen for another hundred years; and in the mean time my prospect will never be shut out. Let them build, or pull down the pyramids, if they will. The tide of city wealth will never roll through this valley; the noise of city life will never fill those quiet fields; the smoke of an insurrection of city hovels will never mingle with the freshness of such an evening as this. Here, at all events, I have spent half a dozen of the pleasantest years of my existence, and here, if I should live so long, I might spend the next fifty, notwithstanding your prophecies, W——, as far from London, except in the mere matter of miles, as if I had fixed myself in a valley of the Crimea."

His royal highness was clever, but he was no prophet, more than other men. Need I say that London found him out within the tenth part of his fifty years; instead of suffering him to escape, compelled him to build: and, after the outlay of a quarter of a million, shut him up within his own walls, like the giant of the Arabian tales in a bottle—His village a huge suburb of the huge metropolis; his lawn surrounded by a circumvallation of taverns and toyshops; the sea invisible; and the landscape scattered over with prettinesses of architecture created by the wealth of Cheapside, and worthy of all the caprices of all the tourists of this much travelled world.

But simple as was the exterior of the cottage, all within was costliness, so far as it can be united with elegance. Later days somewhat impaired the taste of this accomplished man, and he sought in splendour what was only to be found in grace. But here, every decoration, from the ceiling to the floor, exhibited the simplicity of refinement. A few busts of his public friends, a few statues of the patriots of antiquity, and a few pictures of the great political geniuses of Europe—among which the broad forehead and powerful eye of Machiavel were conspicuous—showed at a glance that we were under the roof of a political personage. Even the figures in chased silver on the table were characteristic of this taste. A Timoleon, a Brutus, and a Themistocles, incomparably classic, stood on the plateau; and a rapier which had belonged to Doria, and a sabre which had been worn by Castruccio, hung on either side of the mantelpiece. The whole had a republican tendency, but it was republicanism in gold and silver—mother-of-pearl republicanism—the Whig principle embalmed in Cellini chalices and porcelain of Frederic le Grand. Fortunately the conversation did not turn upon home politics. It wandered lightly through all the pleasanter topics of the day; slight ventilations of public character, dexterous allusions to anecdotes which none but the initiated could understand; and the general easy intercourse of well-bred men who met under the roof of another well-bred man to spend a few hours as agreeably as they could. The prince took his full share in the gaiety of the evening; and I was surprised to find at once so remarkable a familiarity with the classics, whose sound was scarcely out of my college ears; and with those habits of the humbler ranks, which could have so seldom come to his personal knowledge. To his exterior, nature had been singularly favourable. His figure, though full, still retained all the activity and grace of youth; his features, though by no means regular, had a general look of manly beauty, and his smile was cordiality itself. I have often since heard him praised for supreme elegance; but his manner was rather that of a man of great natural good-humour, who yet felt his own place in society, and of that degree of intelligence which qualified him to enjoy the wit and talents of others, without suffering a sense of inferiority. Among those at table were C—— and H——, names well known in the circles of Devonshire House; Sir P—— F——, who struck me at first sight by his penetrating physiognomy, and who was even then suspected of being the author of that most brilliant of all libels, Junius; W——, then in the flower of life, and whose subtilty and whim might be seen in his fine forehead and volatile eyes; some others, whose names I did not know, and among them one of low stature, but of singularly animated features. He was evidently a military man, and of the Sister Isle, a prime favourite with the prince and every body; and I think a secretary in the prince's household. He had just returned from Paris; and as French news was then the universal topic, he took an ample share in the conversation. The name of La Fayette happening to be mentioned, as then carrying every thing before him in France—

"I doubt his talents," said the prince.

"I more doubt his sincerity," said W——.

"I still more doubt whether this day three months he will have his head on his shoulders," said Sir P——.

"None can doubt his present popularity," said the secretary.

"At all events," said his highness, "I cannot doubt that he has wit, which in France was always something, and now, in the general crash of pedigree, is the only thing. Any man who could furnish the Parsans with a bon-mot a-day, would have a strong chance of succeeding to the throne in the probable vacancy."

"A case has just occurred in point," said the secretary. "Last week La Fayette had a quarrel with a battalion of the National Guard on the subject of drill; they considering the manual exercise as an infringement of the Rights of Man. The general being of the contrary opinion, a deputation of corporals, for any thing higher would have looked too aristocratic, waited on him at the quarters of his staff in the Place Vendome, to demand—his immediate resignation. On further enquiry, he ascertained that all the battalions, amounting to thirty thousand men, were precisely of the same sentiments. Next morning happened to have been appointed for a general review of the National Guard. La Fayette appeared on the ground as commandant at the head of his staff, and after a gallop along the line, suddenly alighted from his horse, and taking a musket on his shoulder, to the utter astonishment of every body walked direct into the centre of the line, and took post in the ranks. Of course all the field-officers flew up to learn the reason. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'I am tired of receiving orders as commander-in-chief, and that I may give them, I have become a private, as you see.' The announcement was received with a shout of merriment; and, as in France a pleasantry would privilege a man to set fire to a church, the general was cheered on all sides, was remounted and the citizen army, suspending the 'Rights of Man' for the day, proceeded to march and manoeuvre according to the drill framed by despots and kings."

"Well done, La Fayette," said the prince, "I did not think that there was so much in him. To be sure, to have one's neck in danger—for the next step to deposing would probably be to hang him—might sharpen a man's wits a good deal."

"Yes," said Sir P——, "so many live by their wits in Paris, that even the marquis of the mob might have his chance; but a bon-mot actually saved, within these few days, one even so obnoxious as a bishop from being sus. per coll. In the general system of purifying the church by hanging the priests, the rabble of the Palais Royal seized the Bishop of Autun, and were proceeding to treat him 'a la lanterne' as an aristocrat. It must be owned that the lamps in Paris, swinging by ropes across the streets, offer really a very striking suggestion for giving a final lesson in politics. It was night, and the lamp was trimmed. They were already letting it down for the bishop to be its successor; when he observed, with the coolness of a spectator—'Gentlemen, if I am to take the place of that lamp, it does not strike me that the street will be better lighted.' The whimsicality of the idea caught them at once; a bishop for a reverbere was a new idea; they roared with laughter at the conception, and bid him go home for a 'bon enfant!'"

"I cannot equal the La Fayette story," said C——, "but I remember one not unlike it, when the Duke of Rutland was Irish viceroy. Charlemont was reviewing a brigade of his volunteers when he found a sudden stop in one of the movements, a troop of cavalry on a flank: choosing to exhibit a will of their own in an extraordinary way. If the brigade advanced, they halted; if it halted, they advanced. The captain bawled in vain. Aide-de-camp after aide-de-camp was sent to enquire the cause; they all came back roaring with laughter. At length Charlemont, rather irritated by the ridicule of the display, rode down the line and desired the captain to order them to move; not a man stirred; they were as immovable as a wall of brass. He then took the affair upon himself; and angrily asked, 'if they meant to insult him.' 'Not a bit of it, my lord,' cried out all the Paddies together. 'But we are not on speaking terms with the captain.'"

"How perfectly I can see Charlemont's countenance at that capital answer: his fastidious look turning into a laugh, and the real dignity of the man forced to give way to his national sense of ridicule. Is there any hope of his coming over this season, C——?" asked the prince.

"Not much. He talks in his letters of England, as a man married to a termagant might talk of his first love—hopeless regrets, inevitable destiny, and so forth. He is bound to Ireland, and she treats him as Catharine treated Petruchio before marriage. But he has not the whip of Petruchio, nor perhaps the will, since the knot has been tied. He is only one of the many elegant and accomplished Irishmen who have done just the same—who find some strange spell in the confusions of a country full of calamities; prefer clouds to sunshine, and complain of their choice all their lives."

"Yes," said W——. "It is like the attempt to put a coat and trousers on the American Indian. The hero flings them off on the first opportunity, takes to his plumes and painted skin, and prefers being tomahawked in a swamp to dying in a feather-bed like a gentleman!"

"Or," said the prince, "as Goldsmith so charmingly expresses it of the Swiss—to whom, however, it is much less applicable than his own countrymen—

'For as the babe, whom rising storms molest, Clings but the closer to his mother's breast, So the rude whirlwind and the tempest's roar But bind him to his native mountains more.'"

My story next came upon the tapis; and the sketch of my capture by the free-traders was listened to with polite interest.

"Very possibly I may have some irregular neighbours," was the prince's remark. "But, it must be confessed, that I am the intruder on their domain, not they on mine; and, if I were plundered, perhaps I should have not much more right to complain, than a whale-catcher has of being swamped by a blow of the tail, or a man fond of law being forced to pay a bill of costs."

"On the contrary," said the secretary, "I give them no slight credit for their forbearance; for the sacking of this cottage would, probably, be an easier exploit than beating off a revenue cruiser, and the value of their prize would be worth many a successful run. I make it a point never to go to war with the multitude. I had a little lesson on the subject myself, within the week, in Paris"—

An attendant here brought in a letter for the prince, which stopped the narrative. The prince honoured the letter with a smile.

"It is from Devonshire House," said he—"a very charming woman the Duchess; just enough of the woman to reconcile us to the wit, and just enough of the wit to give poignancy to the woman. She laughingly says she is growing 'heartless, harmless, and old.' What a pity that so fine a creature should grow any of the three!"

"There is no great fear of that," observed Sir P——, "if it is to be left to her Grace's own decision. There is no question in the world on which a fine woman is more deliberate in coming to a conclusion."

"Well, well," said the prince; "she, at least, is privileged. Diamonds never grow old."

"They may require a little resetting now and then, however," said I.

"Yes, perhaps; but it is only once in a hundred years. If they sparkle during one generation, what can we ask more? Her Grace tells me an excellent hit—the last flash of my old friend Selwyn. It happens that Lady ——"—another fine woman was mentioned—"has looked rather distantly upon her former associates since her husband was created a marquis. 'I enquired the other day,' says the duchess, 'for a particular friend of hers, the wife of an earl.' 'I have not seen her for a long time,' was the answer. Selwyn whispered at the moment, I dare say, long enough—she has not seen her since the creation.'"

"If Selwyn," said Sir P——, "had not made such a trade of wit; if he had not been such a palpable machine for grinding every thing into bons-mots; if his distillation of the dross of common talk into the spirit of pleasantry were less tardy and less palpable; I should have allowed him to be"—

"What?" asked some one from the end of the table.

"Less a bore than he was," was the succinct answer.

"For my part," said the prince, "I think that old George was amusing to the last. He had great observation of oddity, and, you will admit, that he had no slight opportunities; for he was a member of, I believe, every club for five miles round St James's. But he was slow. Wit should be like a pistol-shot; a flash and a hit, and both best when they come closest together. Still, he was a fragment of an age gone by, and I prize him as I should a piece of pottery from Herculaneum; its use past away, but its colours not extinguished, and, though altogether valueless at the time, curious as the beau reste of a pipkin of antiquity."

"Sheridan," observed C——, "amounts, in my idea, to a perfect wit, at once keen and polished; nothing of either violence or virulence—nothing of the sabre or the saw; his weapon is the stiletto, fine as a needle, yet it strikes home."

"Apropos," said the prince, "does any one know whether there is to be a debate this evening? He was to have dined here. What can have happened to him?"

"What always happens to him," said one of the party; "he has postponed it. Ask Sheridan for Monday at seven, and you will have him next week on Tuesday at eight. 'Procrastination is the thief of time,' to him more than, I suppose, any other man living."

"At all events," said H——, "it is the only thief that Sheridan has to fear. His present condition defies all the skill of larceny. He is completely in the position of Horace's traveller—he might sing in a forest of felons."

At this moment the sound of a post-chaise was heard rushing up the avenue, and Sheridan soon made his appearance. He was received by the prince with evident gladness, and by all the table with congratulations on his having arrived at all. He was abundant in apologies; among the rest "his carriage had broken down halfway—he had been compelled to spend the morning with Charles Fox—he had been subpoenaed on the trial of one of the Scottish conspirators—he had been summoned on a committee of a contested election." The prince smiled sceptically enough at this succession of causes to produce the single effect of being an hour behind-hand.

"The prince bows at every new excuse," said H—— at my side, "as Boileau took off his hat at every plagiarism in his friend's comedy—on the score of old acquaintance. If one word of all this is true, it may be the breaking down of his post-chaise, and even that he probably broke down for the sake of the excuse. Sheridan could not walk from the door to the dinner-table without a stratagem."

I had now, for the first time, an opportunity of seeing this remarkable man. He was then in the prime of life, his fame, and of his powers. His countenance struck me at a glance, as the most characteristic that I had ever seen. Fancy may do much, but I thought that I could discover in his physiognomy every quality for which he was distinguished: the pleasantry of the man of the world, the keen observation of the great dramatist, and the vividness and daring of the first-rate orator. His features were fine, but their combination was so powerfully intellectual, that, at the moment when he turned his face to you, you felt that you were looking on a man of the highest order of faculties. None of the leading men of his day had a physiognomy so palpably mental. Burke's spectacled eyes told but little; Fox, with the grand outlines of a Greek sage, had no mobility of feature; Pitt was evidently no favourite of whatever goddess presides over beauty at our birth. But Sheridan's countenance was the actual mirror of one of the most glowing, versatile, and vivid minds in the world. His eyes alone would have given expression to a face of clay. I never saw in human head orbs so large, of so intense a black, and of such sparkling lustre. His manners, too, were then admirable; easy without negligence, and respectful, as the guest at a royal table, without a shadow of servility. He also was wholly free from that affectation of epigram, which tempts a man who cannot help knowing that his good things are recorded. He laughed, and listened, and rambled through the common topics of the day, with all the evidence of one enjoying the moment, and glad to contribute to its enjoyment; and yet, in all this ease, I could see that remoter thoughts, from time to time, passed through his mind. In the midst of our gaiety, the contraction of his deep and noble brows showed that he was wandering far away from the slight topics of the table; and I could imagine what he might be, when struggling against the gigantic strength of Pitt, or thundering against Indian tyranny before the Peerage in Westminster Hall.

I saw him long afterwards, when the promise of his day was overcast; when the flashes of his genius were like guns of distress; and his character, talents, and frame were alike sinking. But, ruined as he was, and humiliated by folly as much as by misfortune, I have never been able to regard Sheridan but as a fallen star—a star, too, of the first magnitude; without a superior in the whole galaxy from which he fell, and with an original brilliancy perhaps more lustrous than them all.

"Well, Sheridan, what news have you brought with you?" asked the prince.

The answer was a laugh. "Nothing, but that Downing Street has turned into Parnassus. The astounding fact is, that Grenville has teemed, and, as the fruits of the long vacation, has produced a Latin epigram.

'Veris risit Amor roses caducas: Cui Ver—"Vane puer, tuine flores, Quaeso, perpetuum manent in aevum?'"

The prince laughed. "He writes on the principle, of course, that in one's dotage we are privileged to return to the triflings of our infancy, and that Downing Street cannot be better employed in these days than as a chapel of ease to Eton."

"Yet, even there, he is but a translator," said Sir P——.

"'The tenth transmitter of an idler's line,'

It is merely a rechauffe of the old Italian.

'Amor volea schernir la primavera Sulla breve durata e passegiera Dei vaghi fiori suoi. Ma la belle stagione a lui rispose Forse i piacere tuoi Vita piu lunga avran delle mie rose.'"

The prince, who, under Cyril Jackson, had acquired no trivial scholarship, now alluded to a singular poetic production, printed in 1618, which seemed distinctly to announce the French Revolution.

'Festinat propere cursu jam temporis ordo, Quo locus, et Franci majestas prisca, senatus, Papa, sacerdotes, missae, simulacra, Deique Fictitii, atque omnis superos exosa potestas, Judicio Domini justo sublata peribunt.[A]

[Footnote A:

The time is rushing on When France shall be undone; And like a dream shall pass, Pope, monarch, priest, and mass; And vengeance shall be just, And all her shrines be dust, And thunder dig the grave Of sovereign and of slave.]

"The production is certainly curious," remarked W——; "but poets always had something of the fortune-teller; and it is striking, that in many of the modern Italian Latinists you will find more instances of strong declamation against Rome, and against France as its chief supporter, than perhaps in any other authorship of Europe. Audacity was the result of terror. All Italy reminds one of the papal palace at Avignon—the banqueting-rooms above, the dungeons of the Inquisition below; popes and princes feasting within sound of the rack and the scourge. The Revolution is but the ripening of the disease; the hydrophobia which has been lurking in the system for centuries."

"Why, then," said Sheridan, "shall we all wonder at what all expected? France may be running mad without waiting for the moon; mad in broad day; absolutely stripping off, not merely the royal livery, which she wore for the last five hundred years with so much the look of a well-bred footman; but tearing away the last coverture of the national nakedness. Well; in a week or two of this process, she will have got rid not only of church and king, but of laws, property, and personal freedom. But, I ask, what business have we to interfere? If she is madder than the maddest of March hares, she is only the less dangerous; she will probably dash out her brains against the first wall that she cannot spring over."

"But, at least, we know that mischief is already done among ourselves. Those French affairs are dividing our strength in the House," remarked C——.

"What then?" quickly demanded Sheridan. "What is it to me if others have the nightmare, while I feel my eyes open? Burke, in his dreams, may dread the example of France; but I as little dread it as I should a fire at the Pole. He thinks that Englishmen have such a passion for foreign importations, that if the pestilence were raging on the other side of the Channel, we should send for specimens. My proposition is, that the example of France is more likely to make slaves of us than republicans."

"Is it," asked W——, "to make us

'Fly from minor tyrants to the throne?'"

"I laugh at the whole," replied Sheridan, "as a bugbear. I have no fear of France as either a schoolmaster, or a seducer, of England. France is lunatic, and who dreads a lunatic after his first paroxysm? Exhaustion, disgust, decay, perhaps death, are the natural results. If there is any peril to us, it is only from our meddling. The lunatic never revenges himself but on his keeper. I should leave the patient to the native doctors, or to those best of all doctors for mad nations, suffering, shame, and time. Chain, taunt, or torment the lunatic, and he rewards you by knocking out your brains."

"Those are not exactly the opinions of our friend Charles," observed the prince with peculiar emphasis.

"No," was the reply. "I think for myself. Some would take the madman by the hand, and treat him as if in possession of his senses. Burke would gather all the dignitaries of Church and State, and treat him as a demoniac; attempt to exorcise the evil spirit, and if it continued intractable, solemnly excommunicate the possessed by bell, book, and candle. But, as I do not like throwing away my trouble, I should let him alone."

"The doctrine of confiscation is startling to all property," remarked the prince. "I wish Charles would remember, that his strength lies in the aristocracy."

"No man knows it better," observed W——. "But I strongly doubt whether his consciousness of his own extraordinary talents is not at this moment tempting him to try a new source of hazard. The people, nay, the populace, are a new element to him, and to all. I can conceive a man of pre-eminent ability, as much delighted with difficulty as inferior men are delighted with ease. Fox has managed the aristocracy so long, and has bridled them with so much the hand of a master, that what he might have once considered as an achievement, he now regards as child's play. If Alexander's taming Bucephalus was a triumph for a noble boy, I scarcely think that, after passing the Granicus, he would have been proud of his fame as a horse-breaker. Fox sees, as all men see, that great changes, for either good or ill, are coming on the world. Next to that of a great king, perhaps the most tempting rank to ambition would be that of a great demagogue."

The glitter of Sheridan's eye, and the glow which passed across his cheek, as he looked at the speaker, showed how fully he agreed with the sentiment; and I expected some bold burst of eloquence. But, with that sudden change of tone and temper which was among the most curious characteristics of the man, he laughingly said, "At all events, whatever the Revolution may do to our neighbours, it will do a vast deal of good to ourselves. The clubs were growing so dull, that I began to think of withdrawing my name from them all. Their principal supporters were daily yawning themselves to death. The wiser part were flying into the country, where, at least, their yawning would not be visible; and the rest remained enveloped in dry and dreary newspapers, like the herbs of a 'Hortus siccus.' White's was an hospital of the deaf and dumb; and Brookes's strongly resembled Westminster Hall in the long vacation. It was in the midst of this general doze that the news from Paris came. I assure you the effects were miraculous—the universal spasm of lock-jaw was no more. Men no longer regarded each other with a despairing glance in St James's Street, and passed on. All was sudden sociability. Even in the city people grew communicative, and puns were committed that would have struck their forefathers with amazement. As Burke said, in one of his sybilline speeches the other night: 'The tempest had come, at once bending down the summits of the forest and stirring up the depths of the pool.' One of the aldermen, on being told that the French were preparing to pass the Waal, said, that if the Dutch would take his advice, and if iron spikes were not enough, they should glass their wall."

The newspapers now arrived, and France for a while engrossed the conversation. The famous Mirabeau had just made an oration with which all France was ringing.

"That man's character," said the prince, after reading some vehement portions of his speech, "perplexes me more and more. An aristocrat by birth, he is a democrat by passion; but he has palpably come into the world too early, or too late, for power. Under Louis XIV., he would have made a magnificent minister; under his successor, a splendid courtier; but under the present unfortunate king, he must be either the brawler or the buffoon, the incendiary, or the sport, of the people. Yet he is evidently a man of singular ability, and if he knows how to manage his popularity, he may yet do great things."

"I always," said Sheridan, "am inclined to predict well of the man who takes advantage of his time. That is the true faculty for public life; the true test of commanding capacity. There are thousands who have ability, for one who knows how to make use of it; as we are told that there are monsters in the depths of the ocean which never come up to the light. But I prefer your leviathan, which, whether he slumbers in the calm or rushes through the storm, shows all his magnitude to the eye."

"And gets himself harpooned for his pains," observed W——.

"Well, then, at least he dies the death of a hero," was the reply—"tempesting the brine, and perhaps even sinking the harpooner." He uttered this sentiment with such sudden ardour, that all listened while he declaimed—"I can imagine no worse fate for a man of true talent than to linger down into the grave; to find the world disappearing from him while he remains in it; his political vision growing indistinct, his political ear losing the voice of man, his passions growing stagnant, all his sensibilities palpably paralyzing, while the world is as loud, busy, and brilliant round him as ever—with but one sense remaining, the unhappy consciousness that, though not yet dead, he is buried; a figure, if not of scorn, of pity, entombed under the compassionate gaze of mankind, and forgotten before he has mouldered. Who that could die in the vigour of his life, would wish to drag on existence like Somers, coming to the Council day after day without comprehending a word? or Marlborough, babbling out his own imbecility? If I am to die, let me die in hot blood, let me die like the lion biting the spear that has entered his heart, or springing upon the hunter who has struck him—not like the crushed snake, miserable and mutilated, hiding itself in its hole, and torpid before it is turned into clay!"

"Will Mirabeau redeem France?" asked the prince; "or will he overwhelm the throne?"

"I never heard of any one but Saint Christopher," said Sheridan, sportively, "who could walk through the ocean, and yet keep his head above water. Mirabeau is out of soundings already."

"Burke," said F——, "predicts that he must perish; that the Revolution will go on, increasing in terrors; and that it would be as easy to stop a planet launched through space, as the progress of France to ruin."

"So be it," said Sheridan with sudden animation. "There have been revolutions in every age of the world, but the world has outlived them all. Like tempests, they may wreck a royal fleet now and then, but they prevent the ocean from being a pond, and the air from being a pestilence. I am content if the world is the better for all this, though France may be the worse. I am a political optimist, in spite of Voltaire; or, I agree with a better man and a greater poet—'All's well that ends well.'"

The prince looked grave; and significantly asked, "Whether too high a present price might not be paid for prospective good?"

Sheridan turned off the question with a smile. "The man who has as little to pay as I have," said he, "seldom thinks of price one way or the other. Possibly, if I were his Grace of Bedford, or my Lord Fitzwilliam, I might begin to balance my rent-roll against my raptures. Or, if I were higher still, I might be only more prudent. But," said he, with a bow, "if what was fit for Parmenio was not fit for Alexander, neither would what was fit for Alexander be fit for Parmenio."

The prince soon after rose from table, and led the way into the library, where we spent some time in looking over an exquisite collection of drawings of Greece and Albania, a present from the French king to his royal highness. The windows were thrown open, and the fresh scents of the flower garden were delicious; the night was calm, and the moon gleamed far over the quiet ocean.

At this moment a soft sound of music arose at a distance. I looked in vain for the musicians—none were visible. The strain, incomparably managed, now approached, now receded, now seemed to ascend from the sea, now to stoop from the sky. All crowded to the casement—to me, a stranger and unexpecting, all was surprise and spell. I, almost unconsciously, repeated the fine lines in the Tempest:—

"Where should this music be? I' the air, or the earth? It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon Some god of the island— This music crept by me upon the waters, Allaying both their fury and my passion With its sweet air—But 'tis gone! No, it begins again."

The prince returned my quotation with a gracious smile, and the words of the great poet,

"This is no mortal business, nor no sound This the earth owns."

The private band, stationed in one of the thickets, had been the magicians. Supper was laid in this handsome apartment, not precisely

"The spare Sabine feast, A radish and an egg,"

but perfectly simple, and perfectly elegant. The service was Sevre, and I observed on it the arms of the Duke of Orleans, combined with those of the Prince. It had been a present from the most luxurious, and most unfortunate, man on earth. And thus closed my first day in the exclusive world.

On the next evening, I had exchanged fresh breezes and bright skies for the sullen atmosphere and perpetual smoke of the great city; stars for lamps, and the gentle murmurs of the tide, for the turbid rush and heavy roar of the million of London. During the day, I had been abandoned sufficiently to my own meditations. For though we did not leave Brighton till noon, Marianne remained steadily, and I feared angrily, invisible. Mordecai, during the journey, consulted nothing but his tablets, and was evidently plunged in some huge financial speculation; and when he dropped me at a hotel in St James's, and hurried towards his den in the depths of the city, like a bat to its cave, I felt as solitary as if I had dropped from the moon.

But an English hotel is a cure for most of the sorrows of English life. The well-served table—the excellent sherry—a blazing fire, not at all unrequired in the first sharp evenings of our autumn—and the newspaper "just come in," are capital "medicines for the mind diseased." And like old Marechal Louvois, who recommended roast pigeons as a cure for grief—observing that, "whenever he heard of the loss of any of his friends, he ordered a pair, and found himself always much comforted after eating them"—I was beginning to sink into that easy oblivion of the rules of life, which, without actual sleep, has all the placid enjoyment of slumber; when a voice pronounced my name, and I was startled and half suffocated by the embrace of a figure who rushed from an opposite box, and in a torrent of French poured out a torrent of raptures on my arriving in London.

When I contrived at last to disengage myself, I saw Lafontaine; but so hollow-cheeked and pale-visaged, that I could scarcely recognize my showy friend in the skeleton knight who stood gesticulating his ultra-happiness before me.

At length he drew, with a trembling touch and a glistening eye, from his bosom a letter, which he placed in my hand with a squeeze of eternal friendship. "Read," said he, "read, and then wonder, if you can, at my misery and my gratitude." The letter was from Mariamne, and certainly a very pretty one—gay and tender at once; gracefully alluding to some little fretfulness on her part, or his, I could scarcely tell which; but assuring him that all this was at an end—that she foreswore the world henceforth, and was quite his own. All this was expressed with an elegance which I was not quite prepared to find in the fair one, and with a tone of sincerity for which I was still less prepared; yet with the coquette in every line.

I should have been glad to see him at any time, but now I received him as a resource from solitude, or rather from those restless thoughts which made solitude so painful to me. Another bottle, perhaps, made me more sensitive, and him more willing to communicate; and before it was finished, he had opened his whole heart and emptied his letter-case, and I had consulted him on the improbabilities of my ever being able to succeed in the object which had so strangely, yet so totally, occupied all my feelings.

It was clear, from her correspondence, that his pretty Jewess had played him much as the angler plays the trout which he has secured on his hook. She evidently enjoyed the display of her skill in tormenting: every second letter was almost a declaration of breaking off the correspondence altogether; or, what was even worse, mingled with those menaces, there were from time to time allusions to my opinions, and quotations of my chance remarks, which, rather to my surprise, showed me that the proverb, "Les absens ont toujours tort," was true in more senses than one, and that the Frenchman occasionally lost ground by being fifty miles off. Once or twice it seemed to me that the little "betrothed" was evidently thinking of the error of precipitate vows, and was beginning to change her mind. But her last letter was a complete extinguisher of all my vanity, if it had ever been awakened. It was a curious mingling of poignancy and penitence; an acknowledgment of the pain which she felt in ever having given pain, and almost an entreaty that he would hasten his affairs in London, and return to Brighton, to "guard her against herself, once and for ever."

All this was quite as it should be; but the envelope contained an enormous postscript, of which I happened to be the theme. It was evidently written in another mood of mind; and except that passion is blind, and even refuses to see, when it might, I should probably have had another rencontre with the best swordsman in the Chevaux Legers. After speaking of me and my prospects in life, with an interest which reached at least to the full amount of friendship, the subject of my reveries came on the tapis. "My father and Mr Marston are on the point of going to town," said the postscript; "the latter to dream of Mademoiselle De Tourville, without the smallest hope of ever obtaining her hand. But I scarcely know what to think of him and his feelings—if feelings they can be called—which change like the fashions of the day, and at the mercy of all the triflers of the day; or like the butterfly fluttering round the garden, as if merely to show that it can flutter. This habit must make him for ever incapable of the generous devotedness of heart and truth of affection which I so much value in my 'friend.'" But here Lafontaine interfered, obviously through fear of my plunging into some discovery of my own demerits, which had not struck him on his first perusal; and I surrendered the letter, postscript and all, having first ascertained by a glance, that the former was dated at the very hour of the discovery of my unlucky stanzas to Clotilde, and the latter probably after the "fair penitent" had time to reflect on the matter, and let compassion make its way. Woman is a brilliant problem—but a problem after all.

A sudden trampling of cavalry and loud rush of carriages prevented my attempting the solution—at least for that sitting. All the guests crowded to the door. "His Majesty was going to Drury-Lane!" It was a performance "by command." The never-failing pulse in the foreign heart was touched. Lafontaine crushed his correspondence into his bosom, sprang on his feet, wiped his eyes of all their sorrows, and proposed that we should see the display. I was rejoiced to escape a topic too delicate for my handling. A carriage was called, and by a double fee we contrived, through many a hazard, in the narrowest and most dangerous defiles of any Christian city, to reach the stately entrance, just as the troopers were brushing away the mob from the steps, and the trumpets were outringing the cries of the orangewomen.

By another bribe we contrived to make our way into a box, whose doors were more unrelenting than brass or marble to the crowd in the lobby, less acquainted with the mode of getting through the English world; and I had my first view of national loyalty, in the handsomest theatre which I have ever seen. How often it has been burnt down and built since, is beyond my calculation. It was then perfection.

We had galloped to some purpose; for we had distanced the monarch and his eight carriages. The royal party had not yet entered the house; and I enjoyed, for a few minutes, one of the most striking displays that the opulence and animation of a great country can possibly produce—the coup-d'oeil of a well-dressed audience in a fine and spacious theatre. Multitudes spread over hill and dale may be picturesque; the aspect of great public meetings may be startling, stern, or powerfully impressive; the British House of Lords, on the opening of the session, exhibits a majestic spectacle; but for a concentration of all the effects of art, beauty, and magnificence, I have yet seen nothing like one of the English theatres in their better days. To compare it in point of importance with any other great assemblage, would in general be idle. But at this time, even the assemblage before me, collected as it was for indulgence, had a character of remarkable interest. The times were anxious. The nation was avowedly on the eve of a struggle of which no human foresight could discover the termination. The presence of the king was the presence of the monarchy; the presence of the assemblage was the presence of the nation. The house was only a levee on a large scale, and the crowd, composed as it was of the most distinguished individuals of the country—the ministers, the peerage, the heads of legislature—and the whole completed by an immense mass of the middle order, gave a strong and admirable representation of the power and feelings of the empire.

At length the sound of the trumpets was heard, the door of the royal box was thrown open, and "God save the King" began. Noble as this noblest of national songs is, it had, at that period, a higher meaning. It is impossible to describe the spirit and ardour in which it was received; nay, the almost sacred enthusiasm in which it was joined by all, and in which every sentiment was followed with boundless acclamation. It was more than an honourable and pleased welcome of a popular king. It was a national pledge to the throne—a proud declaration of public principle—a triumphant defiance of the enemy and the Earth to strike the stability of a British throne, or subdue the hearts of a British people.

The king advanced to the front of the box, and bowed in return to the general plaudits. It was the first time that I had seen George the Third, and I was struck at once with the stateliness of his figure and the kindliness of his countenance. Combined, they perfectly realized all that I had conceived of a monarch, to whose steadiness of determination, and sincerity of good-will, the empire had been already indebted in periods of faction and foreign hostility; and to whom it was to be indebted still more in coming periods of still wilder faction, and of hostility which brought the world in arms against his crown.

As I glanced around for a moment, to see the effect on the house, which was then thundering with applause, I observed a slight confusion, like a personal quarrel, in the pit; and in the next instant saw a hand raised above the crowd, and a pistol fired full in the direction of the royal box. The King started back a pace or two, and the general apprehension that he had been struck, produced a loud cry of horror. He evidently understood the public feeling, and instantly came forward, and by a bow, with his hand on his heart, at once assured them of his gratitude and his safety. This was acknowledged by a shout of universal congratulation; and many a bright eye, and many a manly one, too, streamed with tears. In the midst of all, the Queen and the royal family rushed into the box, flung themselves round the king, and all was embracing, fainting, and terror. Cries for the seizure of the assassin now resounded on every side. He was grasped by a hundred hands, and torn out of the house. Then the universal voice demanded "God save the King" once more: the performers came forward and the national chant, now almost elevated to a hymn, was sung by the audience with a solemnity scarcely less than an act of devotion. All the powers of the stage never furnished a more touching, perhaps a more sublime scene, than the simple reality of the whole occurrence before my eyes.

But at length the tumult sank; the order of the theatre was resumed; and the curtain rose, displaying a remarkably fine view of Roman architecture, a vista of temples and palaces, the opening scene of Coriolanus.

The fame of the admirable actor who played the leading character was then at its height; and John Kemble shared with his splendid sister the honour of being the twin leaders of the theatrical galaxy. I am not about to dwell on Shakspeare's conception of the magnificent republican, nor on the scarcely less magnificent representative which it found in the actor of the night. But I speak to a generation which have never seen either Siddons or Kemble, and will probably never see their equals. I may be suffered, too, to indulge my own admiration of forms and faculties which once gave me a higher sense of the beauty and the powers of which our being is capable. Is this a dream? or, if so, is it not a dream that tends to ennoble the spirit of man? The dimness and dulness of the passing world require relief, and I look for it in the world of recollections.

Kemble was, at that time, in the prime of his powers; his features strongly resembling those of Siddons; and his form the perfection of manly grace and heroic beauty. His voice was his failing part; for it was hollow and interrupted; yet its tone was naturally sweet, and it could, at times, swell to the highest storm of passion. In later days he seemed to take a strange pride in feebleness, and, in his voice and his person, affected old age. But when I saw him first, he was all force, one of the handsomest of human beings, and, beyond all comparison, the most accomplished classic actor that ever realized the form and feelings of the classic age. His manners in private life completed his public charm; and, in seeing Kemble on the stage, we saw the grace and refinement acquired by the companionship of princes and nobles, the accomplished, the high-born, and the high-bred of the land.

From the mingled tenderness and loftiness of Kemble's playing, a new idea of Coriolanus struck me. I had hitherto imagined him simply a bold patrician, aristocratically contemptuous of the multitude, indignant at public ingratitude, and taking a ruthless revenge. But the performance of the great actor on this night opened another and a finer view to me. Till now, I had seen the hero, a Roman, merely a gallant chieftain of the most unromantic of all commonwealths, the land of inflexibility, remorseless daring, and fierce devotement to public duty. But, by throwing the softer feelings of the character into light, Kemble made him less a Roman than a Greek—a loftier and purer Alcibiades, or a republican Alexander, or, most and truest of all, a Roman Achilles—the same dazzling valour, the same sudden affections, the same deep conviction of wrong, and the same generous, but unyielding, sense of superiority. Say what we will of the subordination of the actor to the author, the great actor shares his laurels. He, too, is a creator.

But while I followed, with eye and mind, the movements of the stage, Lafontaine was otherwise employed. His opera-glass was roving the boxes; and he continually poured into my most ungrateful ear remarks on the diplomatic body, and recognitions of the merveilleux glittering round the circle. At last, growing petulant at being thus disturbed, I turned to beg of him to be silent, when he simply said—"La Voila!" and pointed to a group which had just taken their seats in one of the private boxes. From that moment I saw no more of the tragedy. The party consisted of Clotilde, Madame la Marechal, and a stern but stately-looking man, in a rich uniform, who paid them the most marked attention.

"There is the Marquis," said my companion; "he has never smiled probably, since he was born, or, I suppose, he would smile to-night; for the secretary to the embassy told me, not half an hour ago, that his marriage-contract had just come over, with the king's signature."

My heart sank within me at the sound. Still my gay informant went on, without much concerning himself about feelings which I felt alternately flushing and chilling me. "The match will be a capital one, if matters hold out for us. For Montrecour is one of the largest proprietors in France; but, as he is rather of the new noblesse, the blood of the De Tourvilles will be of considerable service to his pedigree. His new uniform shows me that he has got the colonelcy of my regiment, and, of course, I must attend his levee tomorrow. Will you come?"

My look was a sufficient answer.

"Ah!" said he, "you will not. Ah! there is exactly the national difference. Marriage opens the world to a French belle, as much as it shuts the world to an English one. Mademoiselle is certainly very handsome," said he, pausing, and fixing his opera-glass on her. "The contour of her countenance is positively fine; it reminds me of a picture of Clairon in Medea, in the King's private apartments—her smile charming, her eyes brilliant, and her diamonds perfect."