And the blissful day came on—slowly, at last, to the happy lovers—for happy they were in each other's sight, and in their passionate attachment. And the blissful day arrived. Michael led her to the altar. A hundred curious eyes looked on, admired, and praised, and envied. He might be proud of his possession, were she unendowed with any thing but that incomparable, unfading loveliness. And he, with his young and vigorous form, was he not made for that rare plant to clasp and hang upon? "Heaven bless them both!" So said the multitude, and so say I, although I scarce can hope it; for who shall dare to think that Heaven will grant its benediction on a compact steeped in earthliness, and formed without one heavenward view!

* * * * *



THE WRONGS OF WOMEN.

I knew, my dear Eusebius, how delighted you would be with that paper in Maga on "Woman's Rights." It was balm to your Quixotic spirit. Though your limbs are a little rheumatic, and you do not so often as you were wont, when your hair was black as raven's wing, raise your hands to take down the armour that you have long since hung up, you know and feel with pride that it has been charmed by due night-watchings, and will yet serve many a good turn, should occasion require your service for woman in danger. Then, indeed, would you buckle on in defence of all or any that ever did, or did not, "buckle to." Then would come a happy cure to aching bones—made whole with honourable bruises, oblivious of pain, the "bruchia livida," lithesome and triumphant. Your devotion to the sex has been seasoned under burning sun and winter frost, and has yet vital heat against icy age, come on fast as it will. You would not chill, Eusebius, though you were hours under a pump in a November night, and lusty arms at work watering your tender passion.

I know you. Rebecca and her daughters had a good word, a soft word from you, till you found out their beards. No mercy with them after that with you—the cowardly disguise—pike for pike was the cry. It was laughable to see you, and to hear you, as you brought a battery that could never reach them—fired upon them the reproach of Diogenes to an effeminate—"If he was offended with nature for making him a man, and not a woman;" and the affirmation of the Pedasians, from your friend Herodotus, that, whenever any calamity befell them, a prodigious beard grew on the chin of the priestess of Minerva. You ever thought a man in woman's disguise a profanation—a woman in man's a horror. The fair sex were never, in your eyes, the weaker and the worse; how oft have you delighted in their outward grace and moral purity, contrasting them with gross man, gloriously turning the argument in their favour by your new emphasis—"Give every man his deserts, and who shall escape whipping"—satisfying yourself, and every one else, that good, true, woman-loving Shakspeare must have meant the passage so to be read. And do you remember a whole afternoon maintaining, that the well-known song of "Billy Taylor" was a serious, true, good, epic poem, in eulogy of the exploits of a glorious woman, and in no way ridiculous to those whose language it spoke; and when we all gave it against you, how you turned round upon the poor author, and said he ought to have the bastinado at the soles of his feet?

And if an occasional disappointment, a small delinquency in some feminine character did now and then happen, and a little sly satire would force its way, quietly too, out of the sides of your mouth, how happily would you instantly disown it, fling it from you as a thing not yours, then catch at it, and sport with it as if you could afford to sport with it, and thereby show it was no serious truth, and pass it off with the passage from Dryden—

"Madam, these words are chanticleer's, not mine; I honour dames, and think their sex divine!"

No human being ever collected so many of the good sayings and doings of women as you, Eusebius. I am not, then, surprised that, having read the "Rights of Women," you are come to the determination to take up "The Wrongs of Women." The wrongs of women, alas!

——"Adeo sunt multa loquacem Delassare valent Fabium."

And so you write to me, to supply you with some sketches from nature, instances of the "Wrongs of Woman." Ah me! Does not this earth teem with them—the autumnal winds moan with them? The miseries want a good hurricane to sweep them off the land, and the dwellings the "foul fiend" hath contaminated. Man's doing, and woman's suffering, and thence even arises the beauty of loveliness—woman's patience. In the very palpable darkness besetting the ways of domestic life, woman's virtue walks forth loveliest—

"Virtue gives herself light, through darkness for to wade."

The gentle Spenser, did he not love woman's virtue, and weep for her wrongs? You, Eusebius, were wont ever to quote his tender lament:—

"Naught is there under heaven's wide hollowness That moves more clear compassion of mind Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness By envy's frowns or fortune's freaks unkind. I, whether lately through her brightness blind, Or through allegiance and fast fealty, Which I do owe unto all womankind, Feel my heart pierced with so great agony, When such I see, that all for pity I could die."

This melting mood will not long suit your mercurial spirit. You used to say that the fairies were all, in common belief, creatures feminine, hence deservedly called "good people,"—that they made the country merry, and kept clowns in awe, and were better for the people's morals than a justice of the peace. They tamed the savage, and made him yield, and bow before feminine feet. Sweet were they that hallowed the brown hills, and left tokens of their visits, blessing all seasons to the rustic's ear, whispering therein softly at nightfall—

"Go, take a wife unto thy arms, and see Winter and brownie-hills shall have a charm for thee."

Such was your talk, Eusebius, passing off your discontent of things that are, into your inward ideal, rejoicing in things unreal, breaking out into your wildest paradox—"What is the world the better for all its boasted truth! It has belied man's better nature. Faith, trust, belief, is the better part of him, the spiritual of man; and who shall dare to say that its creations, visible, or invisible, all felt, acknowledged as vital things, are not realities?" All this—in your contempt for beadles and tip-staves, even overseers and churchwardens, and all subdividing machinery of country government, that, when it came in and fairly established itself, drove away the "good people," and with them merriment and love, and sweet fear, from off the earth—that twenty wheedling, flattering Autolycuses did not do half the hurt to morals or manners that one grim-visaged justice did—the curmudgeon, you called him, Eusebius, that would, were they now on earth, and sleeping all lovely with their pearly arms together, locked in leafy bower, have Cupid and Psyche taken up under the Vagrant Act, or have them lodged in a "Union House" to be disunited. You thought the superstition of the world as it was, far above the knowledge it now brags of. You admired the Saxons and Danes in their veneration of the predictions of old women, whom the after ungallantry of a hard age would have burned for witches. Marriage act and poor act have, as you believe, extinguished the holy light of Hymen's torch, and re-lighted it with Lucifer matches in Register offices; and out it soon goes, leaving worse than Egyptian darkness in the dwellings of the poor—the smell of its brimstone indicative of its origin, and ominous of its ending.

I verily believe, Eusebius, you would have spared Don Quixote's whole library, and have preferred committing the curate to the flames. Your dreams, even your day-dreams, have hurried you ever far off and away from the beaten turnpike-road of life, through forests of enchantment, to rescue beauty which you never saw, from knight-begirt and dragon-guarded castles; and little thankful have you been when you have opened your eyes awake in peace to the cold light of our misnamed utilitarian day, and found all your enchantment broken, the knights discomfited, the dragon killed, the drawbridge broken down, and the ladies free—all without your help; and then, when you have gone forth, and in lieu of some rescued paragon of her sex, you have met but the squire's daughter, in her trim bonnet, tripping with her trumpery to set up her fancy-shop in Vanity-Fair, for fops to stare at through their glasses, your imagination has felt the shock, and incredulous of the improvement in manners and morals, and overlooking all advancement of knowledge, all the advantages of their real liberty, momentarily have you wished them all shut up in castles, or in nunneries, to be the more adored till they may chance to be rescued. But soon would the fit go off—and the first sweet, innocent, lovely smile that greeted you, restored your gentleness, and added to your stock of love. And once, when some parish shame was talked of, you never would believe it common, and blamed the Overseer for bringing it to light—and vindicated the sex by quoting from Pennant, how St Werberg lived immaculate with her husband Astardus, copying her aunt, the great Ethelreda, who lived for three years with not less purity with her good man Tonberetus, and for twelve with her second husband the pious Prince Egfrid: and the churchwarden left the vestry, lifting up his hands, and saying—"Poor gentleman!"—and you laughed as if you had never laughed before, when you heard it, and heartily shook him by the hand to convince him you were in your senses; which action he nevertheless put to the credit of the soundness of your heart, and not a bit to that of your head. You saw it—and immediately, with a trifling flaw in the application quite worthy yourself, reminded me of a passage in a letter from Lord Bolingbroke to Swift, that "The truest reflection, and at the same time the bitterest satire, which can be made on the present age, is this, that to think as you think, will make a man pass for romantic. Sincerity, constancy, tenderness, are rarely to be found. They are so much out of use, that the man of mode imagines them to be out of nature." So insane and romantic, you added, are synonymous terms to this incredulous, this matter-of-fact world, that, like the unbelieving Thomas, trusts in, believes in nothing that it does not touch and handle. Your partiality for days of chivalry blinds you a little. The men were splendid—women shone with their reflected splendour—you see them through an illuminated haze, and, as you were not behind the curtain, imagine their minds as cultivated as their beauty was believed to be great. The mantle of chivalry hid all the wrongs, but the particular ones from which they rescued them. If the men are worse, our women are far better—more like those noble Roman ladies, intellectual and high-minded, whom you have ever esteemed the worthiest of history. Then women were valued. Valerius Maximus gives the reason why women had the upper-hand. After the mother of Coriolanus and other Roman women had preserved their country, how could the senate reward them?—"Sanxit uti foeminis semita viri cederent—permisit quoque his purpurea veste et aureis uti segmentis." It was sanctioned by the senate, you perceive, that men should yield the wall to the sex, in honour, and that they should be allowed the distinction of purple vests and golden borders—privileges the female world still enjoy. Yet in times you love to applaud, the paltry interference of men would have curtailed one of these privileges. For a mandate was issued by the papal legate in Germany in the 14th century, decreeing, that "the apparel of women, which ought to be consistent with modesty, but now, through their foolishness, is degenerated into wantonness and extravagance, more particularly the immoderate length of their petticoats, with which they sweep the ground, be restrained to a moderate fashion, agreeably to the decency of the sex, under pain of the sentence of excommunication." "Velamina etiam mulierum, quae ad verecundiam designandam eis sunt concessa, sed nunc, per insipientiam earum, in lasciviam et luxuriam excreverunt, it immoderata longitudo superpelliccorum quibus pulverem trahunt, ad moderatum usum, sicut decet verecundiam sexus, per excommunicationis sententiam cohibeantur."

Excommunication, indeed! Not even the church could have carried on that war long. Every word of this marks the degradation to which those monkish times would have made the sex submit, "velamina concessa insipientiam earum!" and pretty well for men of the cloth of that day's make, to speak of women's "lasciviam et luxuriam," when, perhaps, the hypocritical mandate arose from nothing but a desire in the coelibatists themselves to get a sly peep at the neatly turned feet and ankles of the women. One would almost think the old nursery song of

—"The beggar whose name was Stout, He cut her petticoats all round about, He cut her petticoats far above her knee, &c.,"

was written to perpetuate the mandate. Certainly a "Stout beggar was the Papal church." "Consistent with modesty," "sicut decet verecundiam sexus;" nothing can beat that bare-faced hypocrisy. So when afterwards the sex shortened their petticoats, other Simon Pures start up and put them in the stocks for immodesty. Poor women! Here was a wrong, Eusebius. Long or short, they were equally immodest. Immodest, indeed! Nature has clad them with modesty and temperance—their natural habit—other garment is conventional. I admire what Oelian says of Phocion's wife.

"[Greek: Empeicheto de prote te sophrosune, deuterois ge men tois parousi.]"

"She first arrayed herself in temperance, and then put on what was necessary." Every seed of beauty is sown by modesty. It is woman's glory, "[Greek: he gar aidos anthos epispeirei]" says Clearchus in his first book of Erotics, quoting from Lycophronides. The appointment of magistrates at Athens, [Greek: gunaikokosmoi], to regulate the dress of women, was a great infringement on their rights—the origin of men-milliners. You are one, Eusebius, who

"Had rather hear the tedious tales Of Hollingshed, than any thing that trenches On love."

I remember how, in contempt of the story of the Ephesian matron, you had your Petronius interleaved, and filled it with anecdotes of noble virtue, till the comment far exceeded the text—then, finding your excellent women in but bad company, you tore out the text of Petronius, and committed it to the flames. Preserve your precious catalogue of female worthies—often have you lamented that of Hesiod was lost, of all the [Greek: Hoiai megalai] Alcmena alone remaining, and you will not make much boast of her. How far back would you go for the wrongs of women—do you intend to write a library—a library in a series of novels in three volumes—what are all that are published but "wrongs of women?" Could but the Lion have written! Books have been written by men, and be sure they have spared themselves—and yet what a catalogue of wrongs we have from the earliest date! Even the capture of Helen was not with her consent; and how lovely she is! and how indicative is that wondrous history of a high chivalrous spirit and admiration of woman in those days! Old Priam and all his aged council pay her reverence. Menelaus is the only one of the Grecian heroes that had no other wife or mistress—here was devotion and constancy! Andromache has been, and ever will be, the pride of the world. Yet the less refined dramatist has told of her wrongs; for he puts into her mouth a dutiful acquiescence in the gallantries of Hector. Little can be said for the men. Poor old Priam we must pardon, if Hecuba could and did; for Priam told her that he had nineteen children by her, and many others by the concubines in his palace. He had enough, too, upon his hands—yet found time for all things—"[Greek: hore eran, hore de gamein, hore de pepausthai]." How lovely is Penelope, and how great her wrongs!—and the lovely Nausicaa complains of scandal. But great must have been the deference paid to women; for Nausicaa plainly tells Ulysses, that her mother is every thing and every body. People have drawn a very absurd inference to the contrary, from the fact of the princess washing the clothes. That operation may have been as fashionable then as worsted work now, and clothes then were not what clothes are now—there were no Manchesters, and those things were rare and precious, handed down to generations, and given as presents of honour. You have shed tears over the beautiful, noble-hearted Iphigenia—wronged even to death. Glorious was the age that could find an Alcestis to suffer her great wrong! Such women honour human nature, and make man himself better. Oh, how infinitely less selfish are they than we are—confiding, trusting—with a fortitude for every sacrifice! We have no trust like theirs, no confidence—are jealous, suspicious, even on the wedding-day. You quite roared with delight when you heard of a fool, who, mistrusting himself and his bride, tried his fortune after the fashion of the Sortes Virgilianae, by dipping into Shakspeare on his wedding-day and finding

"Not poppy nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, Shall ever med'cine to thee that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday."

You have rather puzzled me, Eusebius, by giving me so wide a field of enquiry—woman's wrongs; of what kind—of ancient or modern times—general or particular? You should have arranged your objects. It is you that are going to write this "Family Library," not I. For my own part, I should have been contented in walking into the next village, an unexpected guest, to the houses of rich and poor—do you think you would have wanted materials? But forewarned is forearmed—and few will "tell the secrets of their prison-house," if you take them with a purpose. On your account, in this matter, I have written to six ladies of my acquaintance, three married and three single. Two of the married have replied that they have nothing to complain of—not a wrong. The third bids me ask her husband. So I put her down as ambiguous—perhaps she wishes to give him a hint through me; I am wise, and shall hold my tongue. Of the unmarried, one says she has received no wrong, but fears she may have inflicted some—another, that as she is going to be married on Monday, she cannot conceive a wrong, and cannot possibly reply till after the honeymoon. The third replies, that it is very wrong in me to ask her. But stay a moment—here is a quarrel going on—two women and a man—we may pick up something. "Rat thee, Jahn," says a stout jade, with her arm out and her fist almost in Jahn's face, "I wish I were a man—I'd gie it to thee!" She evidently thinks it a wrong that she was born a woman—and upon my word, by that brawny arm, and those masculine features, there does appear to have been a mistake in it. If you go to books—I know your learning—you will revert to your favourite classical authorities. Helen of Troy calls herself by a sad name, "[Greek: kuon hos eimi]," dog (feminine) as I am—her wrongs must, therefore, go to no account. I know but of one who really takes it in hand to catalogue them, and she is Medea. "We women," says she, "are the most wretched of living creatures." For first—of women—she must buy her husband, pay for him with all she has—secondly, when she has bought him, she has bought a master, one to lord it over her very person—thirdly, the danger of buying a bad one—fourthly, that divorce is not creditable—fifthly, that she ought to be a prophetess, and is not to know what sort of a man he is to whose house she is to go, where all is strange to her—sixthly, that if she does not like her home, she must not leave it, nor look out for sympathising friends—seventhly, that she must have the pains and troubles of bearing children—eighthly, she gives up country, home, parents, friends, for one husband—and perhaps a bad one. So much for Medea and her list; had she lived in modern times it might have been longer; but she was of too bold a spirit to enter into minutiae. Hers, too, are the wrongs of married life. Nor on this point the wise son of Sophroniscus makes the man the sufferer. "Neither," he says, "can he who marries a wife tell if he shall have cause to rejoice thereat." He had most probably at that moment Xantippe in his eye. You remember how pleasantly Addison, in the Spectator, tells the story of a colony of women, who, disgusted with their wrongs, had separated themselves from the men, and set up a government of their own. That there was a fierce war between them and the men—that there was a truce to bury the dead on either side—that the prudent male general contrived that the truce should be prolonged; and during the truce both armies had friendly intercourse—on some pretence or other the truce was still lengthened, till there was not one woman in a condition, or with an inclination, to take up her wrongs—not one woman was any longer a fighting man—they saw their errors—they did not, as the fable says we all do, cast the burden of their own faults behind them, but bravely carried them before them—made peace, and were righted.

We would not, Eusebius, have all their wrongs righted—so lovely is the moral beauty of their wonderful patience in enduring them. What—if they were in a condition to legislate and impose upon us some of their burdens, or divide them with us? What man of your acquaintance could turn dry-nurse—tend even his own babes twelve hours out of the twenty-four?

A pretty head-nurse would my Eusebius make in an orphan asylum. I should like to see you with twins in your arms, both crying into your sensitive ears, and you utterly ignorant of their wants and language. And I do think your condition will be almost as bad, if you publish your catalogue of wrongs in your own name. By all means preserve an incognito. You will be besieged with wrongs—will be the only "Defender of the Faithful"—not knight-errant, for you may stay at home, and all will come to you for redress. You will be like the author, or rather translator, of the Arabian Tales, whose window was nightly assailed, and slumber broken in upon, by successive troops of children, crying "Monsieur Galland if you are not asleep, get up—come and tell us one of those pretty stories." Keep your secret. Now, the mention of the Arabian Tales reminds me of Sinbad—there is a true picture of man's cowardice; what loathsome holes did he not creep into to make his escape when the wife of his bosom was sick, and he understood the law that he was to be buried with her. It is all very well, in the sick chamber, for the husband to say to his departing partner for life—"Wait, my dearest—I will go with you." She is sure, as La Fontaine says in his satire, reversing the case, "to take the journey alone." This is all talk on the man's side—but see what the master of the slave woman has actually imposed upon her as a law. The Hindoo widow ascends the funeral pile, and is burnt rejoicing. What male creature ever thought of enduring this for his wife?—this wrong, for it is a grievous wrong thus to tempt her superior fortitude. It was not without reason that, in the heathen mythology, (and it shows the great advancement of civilization when and wherever it was conceived,) were deified all great and noble qualities in the image of the sex. What are Juno, Minerva, and Venus, but acknowledgments of the strength, wisdom, fortitude, beauty, and love, of woman, while their male deities have but borrowed attributes and ambiguous characters? It is a deference—perhaps unintentionally, unconsciously—paid to the sex, that in every language the soul itself, and all its noblest virtues, and the personification of all virtue, are feminine.

I supposed woman the legislatrix—what reason have we to say she would enact a wrong? The story of the mother of Papirius is not against her; for in that case there was only a choice of evils. It is from Aulus Gellius, as having been told and written by M. Cato in the oration which he made to the soldiers against Galba. The mother of young Papirius, who had accompanied his father into the senate-house, as was usual formerly for sons to do who had taken the toga praetexta, enquired of her son what the senate had been doing; the youth replied, that he had been enjoined silence. This answer made her the more importunate and he adopted this humorous fallacy—that it had been discussed in the senate which would be most beneficial to the state, for one man to have two wives, or for one woman to have two husbands? Hearing this, she left the house in no small trepidation, and went to tell other matrons what she had heard. The next day a troop of matrons went to the senate-house, and implored, with tears in their eyes, that one woman might be suffered to have two husbands, rather than one man have two wives. The senate honoured the young Papirius with a special law in his favour; they should rather have conferred honour upon his mother and the other matrons for their disinterested virtue, who were content to submit themselves to so great an evil, I may say wrong, as to have imposed upon them two masters instead of one. Not that you, Eusebius, ever entertained an idea that women are wronged by not being admitted to a share of legislation. I will not suppose you to be that liberal fool. But you are aware that such a scheme has been, and is still entertained. I believe there is a Miss Somebody now going about our towns, lecturing on the subject, and she is probably worthy to be one of the company of the "Ecclesiagusae." This idea is not new. The other day I hit upon a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine for the year 1740 on the subject, by which you will see there was some amusement about it a century ago:—

"TO CALEB D'ANVERS, Esq.

"Sir,—I am a mournful relict of five husbands, and the happy mother of twenty-seven children, the tender pledges of our chaste embraces. Had old Rome, instead of England, been the place of my nativity and abode, what honours might I not have expected to my person, and immunities to my fortune? But I need not tell you that virtue of this sort meets with no encouragement in our northern climate. Children, instead of freeing us from taxes increase the weight of them, and matrimony is become the jest of every coxcomb. Nor could I allow, till very lately, that an old bachelor, as you profess yourself to be, had any just pretence to be called a patriot. Don't think that I mean to offer myself to you; for I assure you that I have refused very advantageous proposals since the decease of my last poor spouse, who hath been dead near five months. I have no design at present of altering my condition again. Few women are so happy as to meet with five good husbands, and therefore I should be glad to devote the remaining part of my life to the good of my country and family, in a more public and active station than that of a wife, according to your late scheme for a septennial administration of women. But I think you ought to have enforced your project with some instances of illustrious females, who have appeared in the foremost classes of life, not only for heroic valour, but likewise for several branches of learning, wisdom, and policy—such as Joan of Naples, the Maid of Orleans, Catherine de Medicis, Margaret of Mountfort, Madame Dacier, Mrs Behn, Mrs Manly, Mrs Stephens, Doctor of Physic, Mrs Mapp, Surgeon, the valiant Mrs Ross, Dragoon, and the learned Mrs Osborne, Politician. I had almost forgot the present Queen of Spain, who hath not only an absolute ascendant over the counsels of her husband, but hath often outwitted the greatest statesmen, as they fancy themselves, of another kingdom, which hath already felt the effects of her petticoat government.

"If we look back into history, a thousand more instances might be brought of the same kind; but I think those already mentioned sufficient to prove, that the best capacities of our sex are by no means inferior to the best capacities of yours; and the triflers of either sex are not designed to be the subject of this letter. But much as our sex are obliged to you, in general, for your proposal, I have one material objection against it; for I think you have carried the point a little too far, by excluding all males from the enjoyment of any office, dignity, or employment; for as they have long engrossed the public administration of the government to themselves, (a few women only excepted,) I am apprehensive that they will be loth to part with it, and that if they give us power for seven years, it will be very difficult to get it out of our hands again. I have, therefore, thought of the following expedient, which will almost answer the same purpose—viz. that all power, both legislative and executive, ecclesiastical and civil, may be divided among both sexes; and that they may be equally capable of sitting in Parliament. Is it not absurd that women in England should be capable of inheriting the crown, and yet not intrusted with the representation of a little borough, or so much as allowed to vote for a representative? Is this consistent with the rights of a people, which certainly includes both men and women, though the latter have been generally deprived of their privileges in all countries? I don't mean that the people should be obliged to choose women only, as I said before, for that would be equally hard upon the men—but that the electors should be left at their own liberty; for it is certainly a restraint upon the freedom of elections, that whatever regard a corporation may have for a man of quality's family, if he happened to have no sons or brothers, they cannot testify their esteem for it by choosing his daughters or sisters. I am for no restraint upon the members of either sex; for if the honour, integrity, or great capacity of a fine lady should recommend her to the intimacy or confidence of a Prime Minister, in consequence of which he should get her a place—would it not be very hard that this very act of mutual friendship must render her incapable of doing either him or her country any real service in the senate-house? Is freedom consistent with restraint? or can we propose to serve our country by obstructing the natural operations of love and gratitude? I would not be understood to propose increasing the number of members. Let every county or corporation choose a man or a woman, as they think proper; and if either of the members should be married, let it be in the power of the constituents to return both husband and wife as one member, but not to sit at the same time; from whence would accrue great strength to our constitution, by having the house well attended, without the present disagreeable method of frequent calls, and putting several members to the expense and disgrace of being brought up to town in the custody of messengers; for if a country gentleman should like fox-hunting, or any other rural diversion, better than attending his duty in Parliament, let him send up his wife. Or if an officer in the army should be obliged to be at his post in Ireland, the Mediterranean, the West Indies, or aboard the fleet, a thousand leagues off, or upon any public embassy, if his wife should happen to be chosen, never fear that she would do the nation's business, full as well. Besides, in several affairs of great consequence, the resolutions might perhaps be much more agreeable to the tenderness of our sex than the roughness of yours. As, for instance, it hath often been thought unnatural for soldiers to promote peace. When a debate, therefore, of that sort should be to come on, if the soldiers staid at home, and their wives attended, it would very well become the softness of the female sex to show a regard for their husbands; especially if they should be such pretty, smart, young fellows, as make a most considerable figure at a review." The lady writer goes on at some length, that she has a borough of her own, and will be certainly returned whether she marries or not, and will act with inflexible zeal, naively adding—"If, therefore, I should hereafter be put into a considerable employment, and fourteen of my sons be advanced in the army; should the ministry provide for the other seven in the Church, Excise Office, or Exchequer; and my poor girls, who are but tender infants at the boarding-school, should have places given to them in the Customs, which they might officiate by deputy—don't imagine that I am under any undue influence if I should happen always to vote with the Ministry." We do not quote further. The letter is signed "MARGERY WELDONE."

It is needless to tell you the wrong done to the sex by the rigour of modern law. You have stamped the foot at it often enough. I mean, not so much the separation in the whimsically-called union houses, for, as husbands go, they may have little to complain of on that score; but that dire injustice which throws upon woman the whole penalty of a mutual crime, of which the instigator is always man. Then, is she not injured by the legislative removal of the sanctity of marriage, by which the man is less bound to her—thinks less of the bond—the vinculum matrimoniae being, in his mind, one of straw, to her one of iron. And here, Eusebius, a difficulty presents itself which I do not remember ever to have seen met, no, nor even noticed. How can a court ecclesiastical, which from its very constitution and formula of marriage which it receives and sanctions—that marriage is a Divine institution, that man shall not put asunder those by this matrimony made one—I ask, how can such a court deal with cases where the people have not been put together by the only bond of matrimony which the church can allow? But these are painful subjects, and I feel myself wading in deeper water than will be good for one who can't swim without corks, though he be levior cortice; and lighter than cork, too, will be the obligation on the man's side, who has taken trusting woman to one of these registry houses, leaped over a broomstick and called it a marriage. It will soon come to the truth of the old saying, "The first month is the honeymoon or smick-smack, the second is hither and thither; the third is thwick-thwack; the fourth, the devil take them that brought thee and I together."

"Love, light as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies."

The great walking monster that does the great wrong to women is, depend upon it, Eusebius, the "brute of a husband," called, by courtesy, in higher life, "Sir John Brute." Horace says wittily, that Venus puts together discordant persons and minds with a bitter joke, "saevo mittere cum joco;" it begins a jest, and ends a crying evil. We name the thing that should be good, with an ambiguous sound that gives disagreement to the sense. It is marry-age, or matter o' money. And let any man who is a euphonist, and takes omens from names, attend the publication of banns, he will be quite shocked at the unharmonious combination. Now, you will laugh when I tell you positively, that within a twelvemonth I have heard called the banns of "John Smasher and Mary Smallbones;" no doubt, by this time they are "marrow bones and cleaver," what else could be expected? Did you never note how it has puzzled curates to read the ill-assorted names?

"Serpentes avibus geminantur, tigribus agni."

Then to look at the couples as they come to be bound for life. One would think they had been shaken together hap-hazard, each in a sack. I have met with a quotation from Hermippus who says—"There was at Lacedaemon a very retired hall or dwelling, in which the unmarried girls and young bachelors were confined, till each of the latter, in that obscurity which precluded the possibility of choice, fixed on one, which he was obliged to take as a wife, without portion. Lysander having abandoned that which fell to his lot, to marry another of greater beauty, was condemned to pay a heavy fine." Is there not in the Spectator a story or dream, where every man is obliged to choose a wife unseen, tied up in a sack? At this said Lacedaemon, by the by, women seem to have somewhat ruled the roast, and taken the law, at least before marriage, into their own hands; for Clearchus Solensis, in his adages, reports, that "at Lacedaemon, on a certain festival, the women dragged the unmarried men about the altar, and beat them with their hands, in order that a sense of shame at the indignity of this injury might excite in them a desire to have children of their own to educate, and to choose wives at a proper season for this purpose." Mr Stephens, in his Travels in Yucatan, shows how wives are taken and treated in the New World. "When the Indian grows up to manhood, he requires a woman to make him tortillas, and to provide him warm water for his bath at night. He procures one sometimes by the providence of the master, without much regard to similarity of tastes or parity of age; and though a young man is mated to an old woman, they live comfortably together. If he finds her guilty of any great offence, he brings her up before the master or the alcalde, gets her a whipping, and then takes her under his arm, and goes quietly home with her." This "whipping" the unromantic author considers not at all derogatory to the character of a kind husband, for he adds—"The Indian husband is rarely harsh to his wife, and the devotion of the wife to her husband is always a subject of remark." Some have made it a grave question whether marriages should not be made by the magistrate, and be proclaimed by the town-crier. To imagine which is a wrong and tyranny, and arises from the barbarous custom that no woman shall be the first to tell her mind in matters of affection. Men have set aside the privilege of Leap year; it is as great a nickname as the church's "convocation." We tie her tongue upon the first subject on which she would speak, then impudently call woman a babbler. There is no end, Eusebius, to the wrongs our tongues do the sex. We take up all old, and invent new, proverbs against them. Ungenerous as we are, we learn other languages out of spite, as it were, to abuse them with, and cry out, "One tongue is enough for a woman." We rate them for every thing and at nothing—thus: "He that loseth his wife and a farthing, hath a great loss of his farthing." There's not a natural evil but we contrive to couple them with it. "Wedding and ill-wintering tame both man and beast." I heard a witty invention the other day—it was by a lady, and a wife, and perhaps in her pride. It was asked whence came the saying, that "March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb." "Because," said she, "he meets with Lady Day, and gets his quietus." Whatever we say against them, however, lacks the great essential—truth, and that is why we go on saying, thinking we shall come to it at last. We show more malice than matter. Birds ever peck at the fairest fruit; nay, cast it to the ground, and a man picks it up, tastes it, and says how good is it. He enjoys all good in a good wife, and yet too often complains. He rides a fast mare home to a smiling wife, pats them both in his delight, and calls them both jades—he unbridles the one, and bridles the other. There is no end to it; when one begins with the injustice we do the sex, we may go on for ever, and stick our rhapsodies together "with a hot needle, and a burnt thread," and no good will come of it. It is envy, jealousy—we don't like to see them so much better than ourselves. We dare not tell them what we really think of them, lest they should think less of us. So we speak with a disguise. Sir Walter Scott forgot himself when he spoke of them:—

"Oh woman, in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please;"

as if they were stormy peterals, whose appearance indicated shipwreck and troubled waters on the sea of life. Woman's bard, and such he deserves to be entitled, should only have thought of her as the "fair and gentle maid," or the "pleasing wife," placens uxor—the perfectness of man's nature, by whom he is united to goodness, gentleness, the two, man and woman united, making the complete one—as "Mulier est hominis confusio"—malevolent would he be that would mistranslate it "man's confusion," for—

"Madam, the meaning of this Latin is, That womankind to man is sovereign bliss."—Dryden.

By this "mystical union," man is made "Paterfamilias," that name of truest dignity. See him in that best position, in the old monuments of James's time, kneeling with his spouse opposite at the same table, with their seven sons and seven daughters, sons behind the father, and daughters behind the mother. It is worth looking a day or two beyond the turmoil or even joys of our life, and to contemplate in the mind's eye, one's own post mortem and monumental honour. Such a sight, with all the loving thoughts of loving life, ere this maturity of family repose—is it not enough to make old bachelors gaze with envy, and go and advertise for wives?—each one sighing as he goes, that he has no happy home to receive him—no best of womankind his spouse—no children to run to meet him and devour him with kisses, while secret sweetness is overflowing at his heart and so he beats it like a poor player, and says, that is, if he be a Latinist—

"At non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent."—Lucret.

But leaving the "gentle bachelor" to settle the matter with himself as he may, I will not be hurried beyond bounds—not bounds of the subject, or what is due to it, but of your patience, Eusebius, who know and feel, more sensibly than I can express, woman's worth. You want to know her wrongs—and you say that I am a sketcher from life. Well, that being the case, though it is painful to dwell upon any case, accept the following sketch from nature; it is a recent event—you may not question the truth—the names I conceal. A sour, sulky, cantankerous fellow, of some fortune, lean, wizened, and little, with one of those parchment complexions that indicate a cold antipathy to aught but self, married a fine generous creature, fair and large in person; neither bride nor bridegroom were in the flower of youth—a flower which, it is hard to say why, is supposed to shed "a purple light of love." After the wedding, the "happy couple" departed to spend the honeymoon among their relations. In such company, the ill-tempered husband is obliged to behave his best—he coldly puts on the polite hypocrite in the presence of others—but, every moment of tete-a-tete, vents maliciously his ill-temper upon his spouse. It happened, that after one day of more remarkably well-acted sweetness, he retired in more than common disgust at the fatigue he had been obliged to endure, to make himself appear properly agreeable. He gets into bed, and instantly tucks up his legs with his knees nigh to his chin, and—detestable little wretch!—throws out a kick with his utmost power against his fair, fat, substantial partner. What is the result? He did not calculate the "vis inertiae," that a little body kicking against the greater is wont to come off second best—so he kicks himself out of bed, and here ends the comedy of the affair; the rest is tragic enough. Some how or other, in his fall, he broke his neck upon the spot. This was a very awkward affair. The bell is rung, up come the friends; the story is told, nor is it other than they had suspected. It does not end here, for, of course, there must be an inquest. It is an Irish jury. All said it served him right—and so what is the verdict?—Justifiable felo-de-se." Here, Eusebius, you have something remarkable;—one happier at the termination than the commencement of the honeymoon—a widow happier than a bride. She might go forth to the world again, with the sweet reputation of having smothered him with kisses, and killed him with kindness—if the verdict can be concealed; if not, while the husband is buried with the ignominy of "felonious intent," the widow will be but little disconsolate, and universally applauded. To those of any experience, it will not be a cause of wonder how such parties should come together. It is but an instance of the too common "bitter jokes" of Love, or rather Hymen. I only wish, that if ever man try that experiment again, he may meet with precisely the same success; and that if any man marries, determined to fall out with his bride, he may fall out in that very way, and at the very first opportunity.

The next little incident from married life which I mean to give you, will show you the wonderful wit and ingenuity of the sex. Here the parties had been much longer wedded. The poor woman had borne much. The husband thought he had a second Griselda. The case of his tyranny was pretty well known; indeed, the poor wife too often bore marks, that could not be concealed, of the "purple light" of his love—his passion. The gentleman, for such was, I regret to say, his grade of life, invited a number of friends to dine with him, giving directions to his lady that the dinner should be a good one. Behold the guests assembled—grace said—and hear the dialogue:—Husband—"My dear, what is that dish before you?" Wife—"Oh, my dear, it is a favourite dish of yours—stewed eels." Husband—"Then, my dear, I will trouble you." After a pause, during which the husband endeavours in vain to cut through what is before him—Then—Husband—"Why, my dear, what is this—it is quite hard, I cannot get through it." Wife—"Yes, my dear, it is very hard, and I rather wished you to know how hard—it is the horse whip you gave me for breakfast this morning." I will not add a word to it. You, Eusebius, will not read a line more; you are in antics of delight—you cannot keep yourself quiet for joy—you walk up and down—you sit—you rise—you laugh—you roar out. Oh! this is better than the "taming of a shrew." And do you think "a brute of a husband" is so easily tamed? The lion was a gentle beast, and made himself submissive to sweet Una; but the brute of a husband, he is indeed a very hideous and untameable wild-fowl. Poor, good, loving woman is happily content at some thing far under perfection. In a lower grade of life, good wife once told me, that she had had an excellent husband, for that he had never kicked her but twice. On enquiry, I found he died young.—My dear Eusebius, yours ever, and as ever,

———

* * * * *



MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART V.

"Have I not in my time heard 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 ordinance 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?"

SHAKESPEARE.

I found the Jew in his den as usual, and communicated my object, like a man of business, in as few words as possible, and in that tone which showed that I had made up my mind. To my surprise, and, I must own, a little to the chagrin of my vanity, he made no opposition to it whatever. I afterwards ascertained that, on the day before, he had received a proposal of marriage for his daughter from a German millionaire of his own line; and that, as there could be no comparison between a penniless son-in-law, if he came of the blood of all the Paleologi, and one of the tribe of Issachar with his panniers loaded with guineas, the sooner I took my flight the better.

"You are perfectly right," said he, "in desiring to see the Continent; and in Paris you will find the Continent all gathered into a glance, as a French cook gives you a dozen sauces in compounding one fricassee. It happens, curiously enough, that I can just now furnish you with some opportunities for seeing it in the most convenient manner. A person with whom I have had occasional business in Downing Street, has applied to me to name an individual in my confidence, as an attache to our embassy in France, though, be it understood, without an actual appointment."

I started at this dubious diplomacy.

"This," said he, "only shows that you have still to learn the trade. Let me then tell you, that it is by such persons that all the real work of diplomacy is carried on. Can you suppose that the perfumed and polished young gentlemen who, under the name of secretaries and sub secretaries, superior and inferior attaches, and so forth, haunt the hotels of the embassy, are the real instruments? It is true, they are necessary to the dinners and balls of the embassy. They are useful to drive out the ambassador's horses to air, escort his wife, and dance with his daughters. But the business is uniformly done by somebody of whom nobody knows any thing, but that he is never seen loitering about the ambassador's drawing-room though he has the entree of his closet; and that he never makes charades, though he corresponds from day to day with the government at home. Of course you will accept the appointment—and now, let me give you your credentials."

He unlocked a cabinet, which, except for its dust and the coating of cobwebs which time had wrought upon it, might have figured in the saloons of the Medici. The succession of springs which he touched, and of secret drawers which started at the touch, might have supplied a little history of Italian intrigue. At last he found the roll of papers which he sought, and having first thrown a glance round the room, as if a spy sat on every chair, he began to unroll them; with a rapid criticism on each as the few first lines met his eye. Every nerve of his countenance was in full play as he looked over those specimens of the wisdom of the wise; It would have been an invaluable study to a Laveter. He had evidently almost forgotten that I was present; and the alternate ridicule and disdain of his powerful physiognomy were assisted, in my comprehension, by notes from time to time—certainly the antipodes of flattery—"paltry knave"—"pompous fool"—"specious swindler." "Ambassador! ay, if we were to send one to a nation of baboons." "Here," said he, throwing, the bundle on the table, "if I did not despise mankind enough already, I have sufficient evidence to throng the pillory. I deal in gold; well, it is only such that can know the world. Hate, ambition, religion—all have their hypocrisies; but money applies the thumbscrew to them all. Want, sir, want, is the master of mankind. There have been men—ay, and women too—within this dungeon, as you think it, whose names would astonish you. Oh! Father Abraham"—

I finished the quotation.—"What fools these Christians are!" He burst into grim laughter. "Here you have the paper," said he, "and I must therefore send you back to the secretary's office. But there you must not be known. Secrecy is essential even to your life. Stabbing in Paris is growing common, and the knowledge that you had any other purpose than gambling, might be repaid by a poniard."

He now prepared his note, and as he wrote, continued his conversation in fragments. "Three-fourths of mankind are mere blunderers, and the more you know of them the more you will be of my opinion. I am by no means sure that we have not some of them in Whitehall itself. Pitt is a powerful man, and he alone keeps them together; without him they would be potsherds.—Pitt thinks that we can go on without a war: he is mistaken. How is it possible to keep Europe in peace, when the Continent is as rotten as thatch, and France as combustible as gunpowder?—The minister is a man of wonders, but he cannot prevent thirty millions of maniacs from playing their antics until they are cooled by blood-letting; or a hundred millions of Germans, Spaniards, Dutch, and Italians from being pilfered to their last coin!—Old Frederick, the greatest genius that ever sat upon a German throne, saw this fifty years ago. I have him at this moment before my eyes, as he walked with his hands behind his bent back in the little parterre of Sans Souci. I myself heard him utter the words—'If I were King of France, a cannon-shot should not be fired in Europe without my permission.'—France is now governed by fools, and is nothing. But if ever she shall have an able man at her head, she will realize old Frederick's opinion."

As no time was to be lost, I hurried with my note of introduction to Whitehall, was ushered through a succession of dingy offices into a small chamber, where I found, busily employed at an escrutoire, a young man of a heavy and yet not unintelligent countenance. He read my note, asked me whether I had ever been in Paris, from which he had just returned; uttered a sentence or two in the worst possible French, congratulated me on the fluency of my answer, rang his bell, and handed me a small packet, endorsed—most secret and confidential. He then made the most awkward of bows; and our interview was at an end. I saw this man afterwards prime minister.

Till now, the novelty and interest of any new purpose had kept me in a state of excitement; but I now found, to my surprise, my spirits suddenly flag, and a dejection wholly unaccountable seize upon me. Perhaps something like this occurs after all strong excitement; but a cloud seemed actually to draw over my mind. My thoughts sometimes even fell into confusion—I deeply repented having involved myself in a rash design, which required qualities so much more experienced than mine; and in which, if I failed, the consequences might be so ruinous, not merely to my own character, but to noble and even royal lives. I now felt the whole truth of Hamlet's description—the ways of the world "flat, stale, and unprofitable;" the face of nature gloomy; the sky a "congregation of pestilent vapours." It was not the hazard of life; exposed, as it might be, in the midst of scenes of which the horrors were daily deepening; it was a general undefined feeling, of having undertaken a task too difficult for my powers, and of having engaged in a service in which I could neither advance with hope nor retreat with honour.

After a week of this painful fluctuation, I received a note, saying that I had but six hours before me, and that I must leave London at midnight.

I strayed involuntarily towards Devonshire House. It was one of its state dinner-days, and the street rang with the incessant setting down of the guests. As I stood gazing on the crowd, to prevent more uneasy thoughts, Lafontaine stood before me. He was in uniform, and looked showily. He was to be one of the party, and his manner had all the animation which scenes of this order naturally excite in those with whom the world goes well. But my countenance evidently startled him, and he attempted to offer such consolation as was to be found in telling me that if La Comtesse was visible, he should not fail to tell her of the noble manner in which I had volunteered; and the happiness which I had thus secured to him and Mariamne. "You may rely on it," said he, "that I shall make her sick of Monsieur le Marquis and his sulky physiognomy. I shall dance with her, shall talk to her, and you shall be the subject, as you so well deserve."

"But her marriage is inevitable," was my sole answer.

"Oh, true; inevitable! But that makes no possible difference. You cannot marry all the women you may admire, nor they you. So, the only imaginable resource is, to obtain their friendship, to be their pastor fido, their hero, their Amadis. You then have the entree of their houses, the honour of their confidence, and the favoured seat in their boxes, till you prefer the favoured seat at their firesides, and all grow old together."

The sound of a neighbouring church clock broke off our dialogue. He took out his diamond watch, compared it with the time, found that to delay a moment longer would be a solecism which might lose him a smile or be punished with a frown; repeated a couplet on the pangs of parting with friends; and with an embrace, in the most glowing style of Paris, bounded across the street, and was lost in the crowd which blocked up her grace's portal.

Thus parted the gay lieutenant and myself; he to float along the stream of fashion in its most sparkling current—I to tread the twilight paths of the green park in helplessness and heaviness of soul.

This interview had not the more reconciled me to life. I was vexed with what I regarded the nonchalance of my friend, and began to wish that I had left him to go through his own affairs as he might. But reflection did justice to his gallant spirit, and I mentally thanked him for having relieved me from the life of an idler. At this moment my name was pronounced by a familiar voice; it was Mordecai's. He had brought me some additional letters to the leaders of the party in Paris. We returned to the hotel, and sat down to our final meal together. When the lights were brought in, I saw that he looked at me with some degree of surprise, and even of alarm. "You are ill," said he; "the life of London is too much for you. There are but three things that constitute health in this world—air, exercise, and employment." I acknowledged to him my misgivings as to my fitness for the mission. But he was a man of the world. He asked me, "Do you desire to resign? If so, I have the power to revoke it at this moment. And you can do this without loss of honour, for it is known to but two persons in England—Lafontaine and myself. I have not concealed its danger from you, and I have ascertained that even the personal danger is greater than I thought. In fact, one of my objects in coming to you at this hour was, to apprise you of the state of things, if not to recommend your giving up the mission altogether."

The alternative was now plainly before me; and, stern as was the nature of the Israelite, I saw evidently that he would be gratified by my abandoning the project. But this was suddenly out of the question. The mission, to escape which in the half hour before I should have gladly given up every shilling I ever hoped to possess, was at once fixed in my mind as a peculiar bounty of fortune. There are periods in the human heart like those which we observe in nature—the atmosphere clears up after the tempest. The struggle which had shaken me so long had now passed away, and things assumed as new and distinct an aspect as a hill or a forest in the distance might on the passing away of a cloud. Mordecai argued against my enthusiasm; but when was enthusiasm ever out-argued? I drove him horse and foot from the field. I did more, enthusiasm is contagious—I made him my convert. The feverish fire of my heart lent itself to my tongue, and I talked so loftily of revolutions and counter-revolutions; of the opportunity of seeing humankind pouring, like metal from the forge, into new shapes of society, of millions acting on a new scale of power, of nations summoned to a new order of existence, that I began to melt even the rigid prepossessions of that mass of granite, or iron, or whatever is most intractable—the Jew. I could perceive his countenance changing from a smile to seriousness; and, as I declaimed, I could see his hollow eye sparkle, and his sallow lip quiver, with impressions not unlike my own.

"Whether you are fit for a politician," said he, "I cannot tell; for the trade is of a mingled web, and has its rough side as well as its smooth one. But, young as you are, and old as I am, there are some notions in which we do not differ so much as in our years. I have long seen that the world was about to undergo some extraordinary change. That it should ever come from the rabble of Paris, I must confess, had not entered into my mind; a rope of sand, or a mountain of feathers, would have been as fully within my comprehension. I might have understood it, if it had come from John Bull. But I have lived in France, and I never expected any thing from the people; more than I should expect to see the waterworks of Versailles turned into a canal, or irrigating the thirsty acres round the palace."

"Yes," I observed; "but their sporting and sparkling answers their purpose. They amuse the holiday multitude for a day."

"And are dry for a week.—If France shall have a revolution, it will be as much a matter of mechanism, of show, and of holiday, as the 'grand jet-d'eau.'" He was mistaken. We ended with a parting health to Mariamne, and his promise to attend to my interests at the Horse-guards, on which I was still strongly bent. The Jew was clearly no sentimentalist; but the glass of wine, and the few words of civility and recollection with which I had devoted it to his pretty daughter, evidently touched the father's heart. He lingered on the steps of the hotel, and still held my hand. "You shall not," said he, "be the worse for your good wishes, nor for that glass of wine. I shall attend to your business at Whitehall when you are gone; and you might have worse friends than Mordecai even there." He seemed big with some disclosure of his influence, but suddenly checked himself. "At all events," he added, "your services on the present occasion shall not be forgotten. You have a bold, ay, and a broad career before you. One thing I shall tell you. We shall certainly have war. The government here are blind to it. Even the prime minister—and there is not a more sagacious mind on the face of the earth—is inclined to think that it may be averted. But I tell you, as the first secret which you may insert in your despatches, that it will come—will be sudden, desperate, and universal."

"May I not ask from what source you have your information; it will at least strengthen mine?"

"Undoubtedly. You may tell the minister, or the world, that you had it from Mordecai. I lay on you only one condition—that you shall not mention it within a week. I have received it from our brethren on the Continent, as a matter of business. I give it to you here as a flourish for your first essay in diplomacy."

We had now reached the door of the post-chaise. He drew out another letter. "This," said he, "is from my daughter. Before you come among us again, she will probably be the wife of one of our nation, and the richest among us. But she still values you as the preserver of her life, and sends you a letter to one of our most intimate friends in Paris. If he shall not be frightened out of it by the violence of the mob, you will find him and his family hospitable. Now, farewell!" He turned away.

I sprang into the post-chaise, in which was already seated a French courier, with despatches from his minister; whose attendance the Jew had secured, to lighten the first inconveniences to a young traveller. The word was given—we dashed along the Dover road, and I soon gave my last gaze to London, with its fiery haze hanging over it, like the flame of a conflagration.

My mind was still in a whirl as rapid as my wheels. Hope, doubt, and determination passed through my brain in quick succession, yet there was one thought that came, like Shakspeare's "delicate spirit," in all the tumult of soul, of which, like Ariel in the storm, it was the chief cause, to soothe and subdue me. Hastily as I had driven from the door of my hotel, I had time to cast my eye along the front of Devonshire House. All the windows of its principal apartments shone with almost noonday brightness—uniforms glittered, and plumes waved in the momentary view. But in the range above, all was dark; except one window—the window of the boudoir—and there the light was of the dim and melancholy hue that instinctively gives the impression of the sick-chamber. Was Clotilde still there, feebly counting the hours of pain, while all within her hearing was festivity? The answers which I had received to my daily enquiries were cheerless. "She had not quitted the apartment where she had been first conveyed."—"The duchess insisted on her not being removed."—"Madame was inconsolable, but the doctor had hopes." Those, and other commonplaces of information, were all that I could glean from either the complacent chamberlains or the formal physician. And now I was to give up even this meagre knowledge, and plunge into scenes which might separate us for ever. But were we not separated already? If she recovered, must she not be in the power of a task-master? If she sank under her feebleness, what was earth to me?

In those reveries I passed the hours until daybreak, when the sun and the sea rose together on my wearied eyes.

* * * * *

The bustle of Dover aroused me to a sense of the world. All was animation on sea and shore. The emigration was now in full flow, and France was pouring down her terrified thousands on the nearest shore. The harbour was crowded with vessels of every kind, which had just disgorged themselves of their living cargoes; the streets were blocked up with foreign carriages; the foreign population had completely overpowered the native, and the town swarmed with strangers of every rank and dress, with the hurried look of escaped fugitives. As I drove to the harbour, my ear rang with foreign accents, and my eyes were filled with foreign physiognomies. From time to time the band of a regiment, which had furnished a guard to one of the French blood-royal, mingled its drums and trumpets with the swell of sea and shore; and, as I gazed on the moving multitude from my window, the thunder of the guns from the castle, for the arrival of some ambassador, grandly completed the general mass and power of the uproar.

* * * * *

Three hours carried me to the French shore. Free from all the vulgar vexations of the road, I had the full enjoyment of one of the most pleasant of all enjoyments—moving at one's ease through a new and interesting country. The road to Paris is now like the road to Windsor, to all the higher portions of my countrymen; but then it was much less known even to them than in later days, and the circumstances of the time gave it a totally new character. It was the difference between travelling through a country in a state of peace and in a state of war; between going to visit some superb palace for the purpose of viewing its paintings and curiosities, and hurrying to see what part of its magnificence had escaped an earthquake. The landscape had literally the look of war; troops were seen encamped in the neighbourhood of the principal towns; the national guards were exercising in the fields; mimic processions of children were beating drums and displaying banners in the streets, and the popular songs were all for the conquest of every thing beneath the moon.

But I was to have a higher spectacle. And I shall never forget the mixture of wonder and awe which I felt at the first distant sight of the capital.

It was at the close of a long day's journey, while the twilight gave a mysterious hue to a scene in itself singular and stately.—Glistening spire on spire; massive piles, which in the deepening haze might be either prisons or palaces; vast ranges of buildings, gloomy or glittering as the partial ray fell on them; with the solemn beauty of the Invalides on one wing, the light and lovely elegance of the St Genevieve on the other, and the frowning majesty of Notre-Dame in the midst, filled the plain with a vision such as I had imaged only in an Arabian tale. Yet the moral reality was even greater than the visible. I felt that I was within reach of the chief seat of all the leading events of the Continent since the birth of monarchy; every step which I might tread among those piles was historical; within that clouded circumference, like the circle of a necromancer, had been raised all the dazzling and all the disturbing spirits of the world. There was the grand display of statesmanship, pomp, ambition, pleasure, and each the most subtle, splendid, daring, and prodigal ever seen among men. And, was it not now to assume even a more powerful influence on the fates of mankind? Was not the falling of the monarchical forest of so many centuries, about to lay the land open to a new, and perhaps a more powerful produce; where the free blasts of nature were to rear new forms, and demand new arts of cultivation? The monarchy was falling—but was not the space, cleared of its ruins, to be filled with some new structure, statelier still? Or, if the government of the Bourbons were to sink for ever from the eyes of men, were there to be no discoveries made in the gulf itself in which it went down; were there to be no treasures found in the recesses thus thrown open to the eye for the first time; no mines in the dissevered strata—no founts of inexhaustible freshness and flow opened by thus piercing into the bowels of the land?

There are moments on which the destiny of a nation, perhaps of an age, turns. I had reached Paris at one of those moments. As my caleche wound its slow way round the base of Montmartre, I perceived, through the deepening twilight, a long train of flame, spreading from the horizon to the gates of the city. Shouts were heard, with now and then the heavy sounds of cannon. This produced a dead stop in my progress. My postilion stoutly protested against venturing his caleche, his horses, and, what he probably regarded much more than either, himself, into the very heart of what he pronounced a counter-revolution. My courier, freighted with despatches, which might have been high treason to the majesty of the mob, and who saw nothing less than suspension from the first lamp-post in their discovery, protested, with about the same number of sacres; and my diplomatic beams seemed in a fair way to be shorn.

But this was the actual thing which I had come to see: Paris in its new existence; the capital of the populace; the headquarters of the grand army of insurgency; the living centre of all those flashes of fantasy, fury, and fire, which were already darting out towards every throne of Europe. I determined to have a voice on the occasion, and I exerted it with such vigour, that I roused the inmates of a blockhouse, a party of the National Guard, who, early as it was, had been as fast asleep as if they had been a posse of city watchmen. They clustered round us, applauded my resolve, to see what was to be seen, as perfectly national, vraiment Francais; kicked my postilion till he mounted his horse, beat my sulky courier with the flats of their little swords, and would have bastinadoed, or probably hanged him, if I had not interposed; and, finally, hoisting me into the caleche, which they loaded with half a dozen of their number before and behind, commenced our march into Paris. This was evidently not the age of discipline.

It may have been owing to this curious escort that I got in at all; for at the gate I found a strong guard of the regular troops, who drove back a long succession of carriages which had preceded me. But my cortege were so thoroughly in the new fashion, they danced the "carmagnole" so boisterously, and sang patriotic rhymes with such strength of lungs, that it was impossible to refuse admission to patriots of such sonorousness. The popular conjectures, too, which fell to my share, vastly increased my importance. In the course of the five minutes spent in wading through the crowd of the rejected, I bore fifty different characters—I was a state prisoner—a deputy from Marseilles, a part of the kingdom then in peculiar favour; an ex-general; a captain of banditti, and an ambassador from England or America; in either case, an especially honoured missionary, for England was then pronounced by all the Parisian authorities to be on the verge of a revolution. Though, I believe, Jonathan had the preference, for the double reason, that the love of Jean Francais for John Bull is of a rather precarious order, and that the American Revolution was an egg hatched by the warmth of the Gallic bird itself; a secondary sort of parentage.

As we advanced through the streets, my noisy "compagnons de voyage" dropped off one by one, some to the lowest places of entertainment, and some tired of the jest; and I proceeded to the Place de Vendome, where was my hotel, at my leisure. The streets were now solitary; to a degree that was almost startling. As I wound my way through long lines of houses, tortuous, narrow, and dark as Erebus, I saw the cause of the singular success which had attended all Parisian insurrections. A chain across one of these dismal streets, an overturned cart, a pile of stones, would convert it at once into an impassable defile. Walls and windows, massive, lofty, and nearly touching each other from above afforded a perpetual fortification; lanes innumerable, and extending from one depth of darkness and intricacy into another, a network of attack and ambush, obviously gave an extraordinary advantage to the irregular daring of men accustomed to thread those wretched and dismal dens, crowded with one of the fiercest and most capricious populations in the world. Times have strikingly changed since. The "fifteen fortresses" are but so many strong bars of the great cage, and they are neither too strong nor too many. Paris is now the only city on earth which is defended against itself, garrisoned on its outside, and protected by a perpetual Praetorian band against a national mania of insurrection.

But, on turning into the Boulevards, the scene changed with the rapidity of magic. Before me were raging thousands, the multitude which I had seen advancing to the gates. The houses, as far as the eye could reach, were lighted up with lamps, torches, and every kind of hurried illumination. Banners of all hues were waving from the casements, and borne along by the people; and in the midst of the wild procession were seen at a distance a train of travelling carriages, loaded on the roofs with the basest of the rabble. A mixed crowd of National Guards, covered with dust, and drooping under the fatigue of the road, poissardes drunk, dancing, screaming the most horrid blasphemies, and a still wider circle, which seemed to me recruited from all the jails of Paris, surrounded the carriages, which I at length understood to be those of the royal family. They had attempted to escape to the frontier, had been arrested, and were now returning as prisoners. I caught a glimpse, by the torchlight, of the illustrious sufferers, as they passed the spot where I stood. The Queen was pale, but exhibited that stateliness of countenance for which she was memorable to the last; she sat with the Dauphiness pressed in her arms. The King looked overcome with exhaustion; the Dauphin gazed at the populace with a child's curiosity.

At the moment when the carriages were passing, an incident occurred terribly characteristic of the time. A man of a noble presence, and with an order of St Louis at his breast, who had been giving me a hurried and anxious explanation of the scene, excited by sudden feeling, rushed forward through the escort, and laying one hand on the royal carriage, with the other waved his hat, and shouted, "Vive le Roi!" In another instant I saw him stagger; a pike was darted into his bosom, and he fell dead under the wheel. Before the confusion of this frightful catastrophe had subsided, a casement was opened immediately above my head, and a woman, superbly dressed, rushed out on the balcony waving a white scarf, and crying, "Vive Marie Antoinette!" The muskets of the escort were turned upon her, and a volley was fired at the balcony. She started back at the shock, and a long gush of blood down her white robe showed that she had been wounded. But she again waved the scarf, and again uttered the loyal cry. Successive shots were fired at her by the monsters beneath; but she still stood. At length she received the mortal blow; she tottered and fell; yet, still clinging to the front of the balcony, she waved the scarf, and constantly attempted to pronounce the words of her generous and devoted heart, until she expired. I saw this scene with an emotion beyond my power to describe; all the enthusiasm of popular change was chilled within me; my boyish imaginations of republicanism were extinguished by this plunge into innocent blood; and I never felt more relieved, than when the whole fearful procession at length moved on, and I was left to make my way once more, through dim and silent streets, to my dwelling.

* * * * *

I pass by a considerable portion of the time which followed. The Revolution was like the tiger, it advanced couching; though, when it sprang, its bound was sudden and irresistible. My time was occupied in my official functions, which became constantly more important, and of which I received flattering opinions from Downing Street. I mingled extensively in general society, and it was never more animated, or more characteristic, than at that period in Paris. The leaders of faction and the leaders of fashion, classes so different in every other part of the world, were there often the same. The woman who dazzled the ball-room, was frequently the confidente of the deepest designs of party. The coterie in a salon, covered with gilding, and filled with chefs-d'oeuvre of the arts, was often as subtle as a conspiracy in the cells of the Jacobins; and the dance or the masquerade only the preliminary to an outbreak which shattered a ministry into fragments All the remarkable men of France passed before me, and I acknowledge that I was frequently delighted and surprised by their extra ordinary attainments. The age of the Encyclopedie was in its wane, but some of its brilliant names still illustrated the Parisian salons. I recognised the style of Buffon and Rousseau in a crowd of their successors; and the most important knowledge was frequently communicated in language the most eloquent and captivating. Even the mixture of society which had been created by the Revolution, gave an original force and freshness to these assemblies, infinitely more attractive than the most elaborate polish of the old regime. Brissot, the common printer, but a man of singular strength of thought, there figured by Condorcet, the noble and the man of profound science. St Etienne, the little bustling partizan, yet the man of talent, mingled with the chief advocates of the Parisian courts; or Servan fenced with his subtle knowledge of the world against Vergniaud, the romantic Girondist, but the most Ciceronian of orators. Talleyrand, already known as the most sarcastic of men, and Maury, by far the most powerful debater of France since Mirabeau—figured among the chief ornaments of the salons of De Stael. Roland, and the showy and witty Theresa Cabarrus, and even the flutter of La Fayette, the most tinsel of heroes, and the sullen sententiousness of Robespierre, then known only as a provincial deputy, furnished a background which increased the prominence of the grouping.

But the greatest wonder of France still escaped the general eye. At a ball at the Hotel de Stael, I remember to have been struck with the energetic denunciation of some rabble insult to the Royal family, by an officer whom nobody knew. As a circle were standing in conversation on the topic of the day, the little officer started from his seat, pushed into the group, and expressed his utter contempt for the supineness of the Government on those occasions, so strongly, as to turn all eyes upon him. "Where were the troops, where the guns?" he exclaimed. "If such things are suffered, all is over with royalty; a squadron of horse, and a couple of six pounders, would have swept away the whole swarm of scoundrels like so many flies." Having thus discharged his soul, he started back again, flung himself into a chair, and did not utter another word through the evening. I little dreamed that in that meagre frame, and long, thin physiognomy, I saw Napoleon.

I must hasten to other things. Yet I still cast many a lingering glance over these times. The vividness of the collision was incomparable. The wit, the eccentricity, the anecdote, the eloquence of those assemblages, were of a character wholly their own. They had, too, a substantial nutriment, the want of which had made the conversation of the preceding age vapid, with all its elegance.—Public events of the most powerful order fed the flame. It was the creation of a vast national excitement; the rush of sparks from the great electrical machine, turned by the hands of thirty millions. The flashes were still but matters of sport and surprise. The time was nigh when those flashes were to be fatal, and that gay lustre was to do the work of conflagration.

I had now been a year in Paris, without returning, or wishing to return, to London. A letter now and then informed me of the state of those who still drew my feelings towards England. But I was in the centre of all that awoke, agitated, or alarmed Europe; and, compared with the glow and rapidity of events in France, the rest of Europe appeared asleep, or to open its eyes solely when some new explosion shook it from its slumber.

My position, too, was a matchless school for the learner in diplomacy. France shaped the politics of the Continent; and I was present in the furnace where the casting was performed. France was the stage to which every eye in Europe was turned, whether for comedy or tragedy; and I was behind the scenes. But the change was at hand.

One night I found an individual, of a very marked appearance, waiting for me at my hotel. His countenance was evidently Jewish, and he introduced himself as one of the secret police of the ministry. The man handed me a letter—it was from Mordecai, and directed to be given with the utmost secrecy. It was in his usual succinct and rapid style.

"I write this in the midst of a tumult of business. My friend Mendoza will give you such knowledge and assistance as may be necessary. France is on the point of an explosion. Every thing is prepared. It is impossible that it can be delayed above a week or two, and the only origin of the delay is in the determination to make the overthrow final. Acquaint your English officials with this. The monarchy of the Bourbons has signed its death-warrant. By suffering a legislature to be formed by the votes of the mere multitude, it has put property within the power of all beggars; rank has been left at the mercy of the rabble; and the church has been sacrificed to please a faction. Thus the true pillars of society have been cut away; and the throne is left in the air. Mendoza will tell you more. The train is already laid. A letter from a confidential agent tells us that the day is fixed. At all events, avoid the mine. There is no pleasure in being blown up, even in company with kings."

A postscript briefly told me—that his daughter sent her recollections; that Clotilde was still indisposed; La Fontaine giddier than ever; and, as the proof of his own confidence in his views, that he had just sold out 100,000 three per cent consols.

My first visit next morning was to the British embassy. But the ambassador was absent in the country, and the functionary who had been left in charge was taking lessons on the guitar, and extremely unwilling to be disturbed by matters comparatively so trifling as the fate of dynasties. I explained, but explained in vain. The hour was at hand when his horses were to be at the door for a ride in the Bois de Boulogne. I recommended a ride after the ambassador. It was impossible. He was to be the escort of a duchess; then to go to a dinner at the Russian embassy, and was under engagements to three balls in the course of the evening. Nothing could be clearer than that such duties must supersede the slight concerns of office. I left him under the hands of his valet, curling his ringlets, and preparing him to be the admiration of mankind.

I saw Mendoza secretly again; received from him additional intelligence; and, as I was not inclined to make a second experiment on the "elegant extract" of diplomacy, and escort of duchesses, I went, as soon as the nightfall concealed my visit, to the hotel of the Foreign Minister. This was my first interview with the celebrated Dumourier.

He received me with the courtesy of a man accustomed to high life; and I entered on the purport of my visit at once. He was perfectly astonished at my tidings. He had known that strong resolutions had been adopted by the party opposed to the Cabinet; but was startled by the distinct avowal of its intention to overthrow the monarchy. I was struck with his appearance, his quickness of conception, and that mixture of sportiveness and depth, which I had found characteristic of the higher orders of French society. He was short in stature, but proportioned for activity; his countenance bold, but with smiling lips and a most penetrating grey eye. His name as a soldier was at this period wholly unknown, but I could imagine in him a leader equally subtle and daring;—he soon realized my conjecture.

We sat together until midnight; and over the supper-table, and cheered by all the good things which French taste provides and enjoys more than any other on earth, he gave full flow to his spirit of communication. The Frenchman's sentences are like sabre-cuts—they have succession, but no connexion.

"I shall always converse with you, M. Marston," said he, "with ease; for you are of the noblesse of your own great country, and I am tired of roturiers already.—The government has committed dangerous faults. The king is an excellent man, but his heart is where his head ought to be, and his head where his heart.—His flight was a terrible affair, but it was a blunder on both sides; he ought never to have gone, or the government ought never to have brought him back.—However, I have no cause to complain of its epitaph. The blunder dissolved that government. I have to thank it for bringing me and my colleagues into power. Our business now is to preserve the monarchy, but this becomes more difficult from day to day."

I adverted to the personal character of the royal family.

"Nothing can be better. But chance has placed them in false position.—If the king were but the first prince of the blood, his benevolence without his responsibility would make him the most popular man in France.—If the queen were still but the dauphiness, she would be, as she was then, all but worshipped. As the leader of fashion in France, she would be the leader of taste in Europe.—Elegant, animated, and high-minded, she would have charmed every one, without power. If she could but continue to move along the ground, all would admire the grace of her steps; but, sitting on a throne, she loses the spell of motion."

"Yet, can France ever forget her old allegiance, and adopt the fierce follies of a republic?"

"I think not. And yet we are dealing with agencies of which we know nothing but the tremendous force. We are breathing a new atmosphere, which may at first excite only to kill.—We have let out the waters of a new river-head, which continues pouring from hour to hour, with a fulness sufficient to terrify us already, and threatening to swell over the ancient landmarks of the soil.—It is even now a torrent—what can prevent it from being a lake? what hand of man can prevent that lake from being an ocean? or what power of human council can say to that ocean in its rage—Thus far shalt thou go?"