"If she would but open her sore heart to me—to me, her mother," Eleanor wailed forth in prayer to God, "I would be content. Once it was enough to have my Nest all my own. Then came love, and I knew it would never be as before; and then I thought the grief I felt, when Edward spoke to me, was as sharp a sorrow as could be; but this present grief, Oh Lord, my God, is worst of all; and Thou only, Thou canst help!"

When Nest grew as strong as she was ever likely to be on earth, she was anxious to have as much labor as she could bear. She would not allow her mother to spare her any thing. Hard work—bodily fatigue—she seemed to crave. She was glad when she was stunned by exhaustion into a dull insensibility of feeling. She was almost fierce when her mother, in those first months of convalescence, performed the household tasks which had formerly been hers; but she shrank from going out of doors. Her mother thought that she was unwilling to expose her changed appearance to the neighbors' remarks; but Nest was not afraid of that: she was afraid of their pity, as being one deserted and cast off. If Eleanor gave way before her daughter's imperiousness, and sat by while Nest "tore" about her work with the vehemence of a bitter heart, Eleanor could have cried, but she durst not; tears, or any mark of commiseration, irritated the crippled girl so much, she even drew away from caresses. Every thing was to go on as it had been before she had known Edward; and so it did, outwardly; but they trod carefully, as if the ground on which they moved was hollow—deceptive. There was no more careless ease; every word was guarded, and every action planned. It was a dreary life to both. Once, Eleanor brought in a little baby, a neighbor's child, to try and tempt Nest out of herself, by her old love of children. Nest's pale face flushed as she saw the innocent child in her mother's arms; and, for a moment, she made as if she would have taken it; but then, she turned away, and hid her face behind her apron, and murmured, "I shall never have a child to lie in my breast, and call me mother!" In a minute she arose, with compressed and tightened lips, and went about her household works, without her noticing the cooing baby again, till Mrs. Gwynn, heart-sick at the failure of her little plan, took it back to its parents.

One day the news ran through Pen-Morfa that Edward Williams was about to be married. Eleanor had long expected this intelligence. It came upon her like no new thing; but it was the filling-up of her cup of woe. She could not tell Nest. She sat listlessly in the house, and dreaded that each neighbor who came in would speak about the village news. At last, some one did. Nest looked round from her employment, and talked of the event with a kind of cheerful curiosity as to the particulars, which made her informant go away, and tell others that Nest had quite left off caring for Edward Williams. But when the door was shut, and Eleanor and she were left alone, Nest came and stood before her weeping mother like a stern accuser.

"Mother, why did not you let me die? Why did you keep me alive for this?" Eleanor could not speak, but she put her arms out toward her girl. Nest turned away, and Eleanor cried aloud in her soreness of spirit. Nest came again.

"Mother, I was wrong. You did your best. I don't know how it is I am so hard and cold. I wish I had died when I was a girl, and had a feeling heart."

"Don't speak so, my child. God has afflicted you sore, and your hardness of heart is but for a time. Wait a little. Don't reproach yourself, my poor Nest. I understand your ways. I don't mind them, love. The feeling heart will come back to you in time. Any ways, don't think you're grieving me, because, love, that may sting you when I'm gone; and I'm not grieved, my darling. Most times we're very cheerful, I think."

After this, mother and child were drawn more together. But Eleanor had received her death from these sorrowful, hurrying events. She did not conceal the truth from herself; nor did she pray to live, as some months ago she had done, for her child's sake; she had found out that she had no power to console the poor wounded heart. It seemed to her as if her prayers had been of no avail; and then she blamed herself for this thought.

There are many Methodist preachers in this part of Wales. There was a certain old man, named David Hughes, who was held in peculiar reverence because he had known the great John Wesley. He had been captain of a Caernarvon slate-vessel; he had traded in the Mediterranean, and had seen strange sights. In those early days (to use his own expression) he had lived without God in the world; but he went to mock John Wesley, and was converted to the white-haired patriarch, and remained to pray. Afterward he became one of the earnest, self-denying, much-abused band of itinerant preachers, who went forth under Wesley's direction to spread abroad a more earnest and practical spirit of religion. His rambles and travels were of use to him. They extended his knowledge of the circumstances in which men are sometimes placed, and enlarged his sympathy with the tried and tempted. His sympathy, combined with the thoughtful experience of four-score years, made him cognizant of many of the strange secrets of humanity; and when younger preachers upbraided the hard hearts they met with, and despaired of the sinners, he "suffered long and was kind."

When Eleanor Gwynn lay low on her death-bed, David Hughes came to Pen-Morfa. He knew her history, and sought her out. To him she imparted the feelings I have described.

"I have lost my faith, David. The tempter has come, and I have yielded. I doubt if my prayers have been heard. Day and night have I prayed that I might comfort my child in her great sorrow; but God has not heard me. She has turned away from me, and refused my poor love. I wish to die now; but I have lost my faith, and have no more pleasure in the thought of going to God. What must I do, David?"

She hung upon his answer; and it was long in coming.

"I am weary of earth," said she, mournfully, "and can I find rest in death even, leaving my child desolate and broken-hearted?"

"Eleanor," said David, "where you go, all things will be made clear; and you will learn to thank God for the end of what now seems grievous and heavy to be borne. Do you think your agony has been greater than the awful agony in the Garden—or your prayers more earnest than that which He prayed in that hour when the great drops of blood ran down his face like sweat? We know that God heard Him, although no answer came to Him through the dread silence of that night. God's times are not our times. I have lived eighty-and-one years, and never yet have I known an earnest prayer fall to the ground unheeded. In an unknown way, and when no one looked for it, may be, the answer came; a fuller, more satisfying answer than heart could conceive of, although it might be different to what was expected. Sister, you are going where in His light you will see light; you will learn there that in very faithfulness He has afflicted you!"

"Go on—you strengthen me," said she.

After David Hughes left that day, Eleanor was calm as one already dead, and past mortal strife. Nest was awed by the change. No more passionate weeping—no more sorrow in the voice; though it was low and weak, it sounded with a sweet composure. Her last look was a smile; her last word a blessing.

Nest, tearless, streeked the poor worn body. She laid a plate with salt upon it on the breast, and lighted candles for the head and feet. It was an old Welsh custom; but when David Hughes came in, the sight carried him back to the time when he had seen the chapels in some old Catholic cathedral. Nest sat gazing on the dead with dry, hot eyes.

"She is dead," said David, solemnly, "she died in Christ. Let us bless God, my child. He giveth and He taketh away!"

"She is dead," said Nest, "my mother is dead. No one loves me now."

She spoke as if she were thinking aloud, for she did not look at David, or ask him to be seated.

"No one loves you now? No human creature, you mean. You are not yet fit to be spoken to concerning God's infinite love. I, like you, will speak of love for human creatures. I tell you, if no one loves you, it is time for you to begin to love." He spoke almost severely (if David Hughes ever did); for, to tell the truth, he was repelled by her hard rejection of her mother's tenderness, about which the neighbors had told him.

"Begin to love!" said she, her eyes flashing. "Have I not loved? Old man, you are dim and worn-out. You do not remember what love is." She spoke with a scornful kind of pitying endurance. "I will tell you how I have loved, by telling you the change it has wrought in me. I was once the beautiful Nest Gwynn; I am now a cripple, a poor, wan-faced cripple, old before my time. That is a change; at least people think so." She paused, and then spoke lower. "I tell you, David Hughes, that outward change is as nothing compared to the change in my nature caused by the love I have felt—and have had rejected. I was gentle once, and if you spoke a tender word, my heart came toward you as natural as a little child goes to its mammy. I never spoke roughly, even to the dumb creatures, for I had a kind feeling for all. Of late (since I loved, old man), I have been cruel in my thoughts to every one. I have turned away from tenderness with bitter indifference. Listen!" she spoke in a hoarse whisper. "I will own it. I have spoken hardly to her," pointing toward the corpse. "Her who was ever patient, and full of love for me. She did not know," she muttered, "she is gone to the grave without knowing how I loved her—I had such strange, mad, stubborn pride in me."

"Come back, mother! Come back," said she, crying wildly to the still, solemn corpse; "come back as a spirit or a ghost—only come back, that I may tell you how I have loved you."

But the dead never come back.

The passionate adjuration ended in tears—the first she had shed. When they ceased, or were absorbed into long quivering sobs, David knelt down. Nest did not kneel, but bowed her head. He prayed, while his own tears fell fast. He rose up. They were both calm.

"Nest," said he, "your love has been the love of youth; passionate, wild, natural to youth. Henceforward you must love like Christ; without thought of self, or wish for return. You must take the sick and the weary to your heart and love them. That love will lift you up above the storms of the world into God's own peace. The very vehemence of your nature proves that you are capable of this. I do not pity you. You do not require pity. You are powerful enough to trample down your own sorrows into a blessing for others; and to others you will be a blessing; I see it before you; I see in it the answer to your mother's prayer."

The old man's dim eyes glittered as if they saw a vision; the fire-light sprang up and glinted on his long white hair. Nest was awed as if she saw a prophet, and a prophet he was to her.

When next David Hughes came to Pen-Morfa, he asked about Nest Gwynn, with a hovering doubt as to the answer. The inn-folk told him she was living still in the cottage, which was now her own.

"But would you believe it, David," said Mrs. Thomas, "she has gone and taken Mary Williams to live with her? You remember Mary Williams, I'm sure."

No! David Hughes remembered no Mary Williams at Pen-Morfa.

"You must have seen her, for I know you've called at Thomas Griffiths's where the parish boarded her?"

"You don't mean the half-witted woman—the poor crazy creature!"

"But I do!" said Mrs. Thomas.

"I have seen her sure enough, but I never thought of learning her name. And Nest Gwynn has taken her to live with her."

"Yes! I thought I should surprise you. She might have had many a decent girl for companion. My own niece, her that is an orphan, would have gone and been thankful. Besides, Mary Williams is a regular savage at times; John Griffiths says there were days when he used to beat her till she howled again, and yet she would not do as he told her. Nay, once, he says, if he had not seen her eyes glare like a wild beast, from under the shadow of the table where she had taken shelter, and got pretty quickly out of her way, she would have flown upon him and throttled him. He gave Nest fair warning of what she must expect, and he thinks some day she will be found murdered."

David Hughes thought awhile. "How came Nest to take her to live with her?" asked he.

"Well! Folk say John Griffiths did not give her enough to eat. Half-wits, they tell me, take more to feed them than others, and Eleanor Gwynn had given her oat-cake and porridge a time or two, and most likely spoken kindly to her (you know Eleanor spoke kind to all), so some months ago, when John Griffiths had been beating her, and keeping her without food to try and tame her, she ran away and came to Nest's cottage in the dead of night, all shivering and starved, for she did not know Eleanor was dead, and thought to meet with kindness from her. I've no doubt and Nest remembered how her mother used to feed and comfort the poor idiot, and made her some gruel, and wrapped her up by the fire. And in the morning when John Griffiths came in search of Mary, he found her with Nest, and Mary wailed so piteously at the sight of him, that Nest went to the parish officers and offered to take her to board with her for the same money they gave to him. John says he was right glad to be off his bargain."

David Hughes knew there was a kind of remorse which sought relief in the performance of the most difficult and repugnant tasks. He thought he could understand how, in her bitter repentance for her conduct toward her mother, Nest had taken in the first helpless creature that came seeking shelter in her name. It was not what he would have chosen, but he knew it was God that had sent the poor wandering idiot there.

He went to see Nest the next morning. As he drew near the cottage—it was summer time, and the doors and windows were all open—he heard an angry, passionate kind of sound that was scarcely human. That sound prevented his approach from being heard; and standing at the threshold, he saw poor Mary Williams pacing backward and forward in some wild mood. Nest, cripple as she was, was walking with her, speaking low, soothing words, till the pace was slackened, and time and breathing was given to put her arm around the crazy woman's neck, and soothe her by this tender caress into the quiet luxury of tears; tears which give the hot brain relief. Then David Hughes came in. His first words, as he took off his hat, standing on the lintel, were—"The peace of God be upon this house." Neither he nor Nest recurred to the past; though solemn recollections filled their minds. Before he went, all three knelt and prayed; for, as Nest told him, some mysterious influence of peace came over the poor half-wit's mind when she heard the holy words of prayer; and often when she felt a paroxysm coming on, she would kneel and repeat a homily rapidly over, as if it were a charm to scare away the Demon in possession; sometimes, indeed, the control over herself requisite for this effort was enough to dispel the fluttering burst. When David rose up to go, he drew Nest to the door.

"You are not afraid, my child?" asked he.

"No," she replied. "She is often very good and quiet. When she is not, I can bear it."

"I shall see your face on earth no more;" said he. "God bless you!" He went on his way. Not many weeks after, David Hughes was borne to his grave.

The doors of Nest's heart were opened—opened wide by the love she grew to feel for crazy Mary, so helpless, so friendless, so dependent upon her. Mary loved her back again, as a dumb animal loves its blind master. It was happiness enough to be near her. In general she was only too glad to do what she was bidden by Nest. But there were times when Mary was overpowered by the glooms and fancies of her poor disordered brain. Fearful times! No one knew how fearful. On those days, Nest warned the little children who loved to come and play around her, that they must not visit the house. The signal was a piece of white linen hung out of a side window. On those days the sorrowful and sick waited in vain for the sound of Nest's lame approach. But what she had to endure was only known to God, for she never complained. If she had given up the charge of Mary, or if the neighbors had risen, out of love and care for her life, to compel such a step, she knew not what hard curses and blows—what starvation and misery, would await the poor creature.

She told of Mary's docility, and her affection, and her innocent little sayings; but she never told the details of the occasional days of wild disorder, and driving insanity.

Nest grew old before her time, in consequence of her accident. She knew that she was as old at fifty as many are at seventy. She knew it partly by the vividness with which the remembrance of the days of her youth came back to her mind, while the events of yesterday were dim and forgotten. She dreamt of her girlhood and youth. In sleep she was once more the beautiful Nest Gwynn, the admired of all beholders, the light-hearted girl, beloved by her mother. Little circumstances connected with those early days, forgotten since the very time when they occurred, came back to her mind in her waking hours. She had a sear on the palm of her left hand, occasioned by the fall of a branch of a tree, when she was a child; it had not pained her since the first two days after the accident; but now it began to hurt her slightly; and clear in her ears was the crackling sound of the treacherous, rending wood; distinct before her rose the presence of her mother tenderly binding up the wound. With these remembrances came a longing desire to see the beautiful fatal well, once more before her death. She had never gone so far since the day when, by her fall there, she lost love, and hope, and her bright, glad youth. She yearned to look upon its waters once again. This desire waxed as her life waned. She told it to poor crazy Mary.

"Mary!" said she, "I want to go to the Rock Well. If you will help me, I can manage it. There used to be many a stone in the Dol Mawr on which I could sit and rest. We will go to-morrow morning before folks are astir."

Mary answered briskly, "Up, up! To the Rock Well! Mary will go. Mary will go." All day long she kept muttering to herself, "Mary will go."

Nest had the happiest dream that night. Her mother stood beside her—not in the flesh, but in the bright glory of a blessed spirit. And Nest was no longer young—neither was she old—"they reckon not by days, nor years where she was gone to dwell;" and her mother stretched out her arms to her with a calm, glad look of welcome. She awoke; the woodlark was singing in the near copse—the little birds were astir, and rustling in their leafy nests. Nest arose, and called Mary. The two set out through the quiet lane. They went along slowly and silently. With many a pause they crossed the broad Dol Mawr; and carefully descended the sloping stones, on which no trace remained of the hundreds of feet that had passed over them since Nest was last there. The clear water sparkled and quivered in the early sun-light, the shadows of the birch-leaves were stirred on the ground; the ferns—Nest could have believed that they were the very same ferns which she had seen thirty years before, hung wet and dripping where the water overflowed—a thrush chanted matins from a holly bush near—and the running stream made a low, soft, sweet accompaniment. All was the same; Nature was as fresh and young as ever. It might have been yesterday that Edward Williams had overtaken her, and told her his love—the thought of his words—his handsome looks—(he was a gray, hard-featured man by this time), and then she recalled the fatal wintry morning when joy and youth had fled; and as she remembered that faintness of pain, a new, a real faintness—no echo of the memory—came over her. She leant her back against a rock, without a moan or sigh, and died! She found immortality by the well side, instead of her fragile, perishing youth. She was so calm and placid that Mary (who had been dipping her fingers in the well, to see the waters drop off in the gleaming sun-light), thought she was asleep, and for some time continued her amusement in silence. At last she turned, and said,

"Mary is tired. Mary wants to go home." Nest did not speak, though the idiot repeated her plaintive words. She stood and looked till a strange terror came over her—a terror too mysterious to be borne.

"Mistress, wake! Mistress, wake!" she said, wildly, shaking the form.

But Nest did not awake. And the first person who came to the well that morning found crazy Mary sitting, awe-struck, by the poor dead Nest. They had to get the poor creature away by force, before they could remove the body.

Mary is in Tre-Madoc workhouse; they treat her pretty kindly, and in general she is good and tractable. Occasionally the old paroxysms come on; and for a time she is unmanageable. But some one thought of speaking to her about Nest. She stood arrested at the name; and since then, it is astonishing to see what efforts she makes to curb her insanity; and when the dread time is past, she creeps up to the matron, and says, "Mary has tried to be good. Will God let her go to Nest now?"



THE YOUNG MAN'S COUNSELOR.

GENERAL CONDUCT.

Move with the multitude in the common walks of life, and you will be unnoticed in the throng; but break from them, pursue a different path, and every eye, perhaps with reproach, will be turned toward you. What is the rule to be observed in general conduct? Conform to every innocent custom as our social nature requires, but refuse compliance with whatever is inconsistent with propriety, decency, and the moral duties; and dare to be singular in honor and virtue.

In conversation, truth does not require you to utter all your thoughts, yet it forbids you to speak in opposition to them. To open the mind to unreserved communication, is imbecility; to cover it with a vail, to dissever its internal workings from its external manifestations, is dissimulation and falsehood. The concordance of the thoughts, words, and deeds, is the essence of truth, and the ornament of character.

A man who has an opportunity to ruin a rival, with whom he is at enmity, without public dishonor, and yet generously forbears, nay, converts the opportunity into a disinterested benefit, evinces a noble instance of virtuous magnanimity. He conquers his own enmity, the most glorious of all conquests, and overcomes the enmity of a rival by the most heroic and praiseworthy mode of retaliation.

As to an evil report of a neighbor, the opinion of the frivolous is lightly regarded, the calumny of the known slanderer is discredited by all who venerate truth, and the character of the known liar is a sufficient antidote to falsehood. A respectable man, in his good name, offers a guarantee for his veracity; and, impressed with the benevolent affections and the love of justice, he is scrupulous to believe an evil report, and still more so to repeat it.

As a rill from a fountain increases as it flows, rises into a stream, swells into a river, so symbolically are the origin and course of a good name. At first, its beginning is small: it takes its rise from home, its natural source, extends to the neighborhood, stretches through the community, and finally takes a range proportioned to the qualities by which it is supported—its talents, virtue, and usefulness, the surest basis of an honorable reputation.

The relatives and kindred of a young man, by a natural process, communicate his amiable and opening character to a wider circle than that of home. His associates and friends extend the circle, and thus it widens till its circumference embraces a portion more or less of society, and his character places him in the class of respectable men. With good principles and conduct, neither envy nor malice can intercept the result of this progressive series; without good principles and conduct, no art or dissimulation can realize the noblest aim of a social being—a well-founded reputation.

A person commits an error, and he has sufficient address to conceal it, or sufficient ingenuity to palliate it, but he does neither; instead of availing himself of concealment and palliation, with the candor of a great mind, he confesses his error, and makes all the apology or atonement which the occasion requires. None has a title to true honor but he who can say with moral elevation, when truth demands the acknowledgment, I have done wrong.

The events of life are not fortunate or calamitous so much in themselves, as they are in their effect on our feelings. An event which is met by one with equanimity or indifference, will fret another with vexation, or overwhelm him with sorrow. Misfortunes encountered with a composed and firm resolution, almost cease to be evils; it is, therefore, less our wisdom to endeavor to control external events, than to regulate the habitual temper of our minds to endurance and resignation.

The emotions of the mind are displayed in the movements of the body, the expression of the features and the tones of the voice. It is more difficult to disguise the tones of the voice, than any other external manifestation of internal feeling. The changing accents of the voice of those with whom we have long lived in intimate intercourse, in the communication of sentiment, are less equivocal and more impressive than even language itself.

The vocal sounds of speech, expressive of thought and feeling, are too much neglected by us in our individual and personal education. Could we analyze the opinion which we form of people on a first acquaintance, we should certainly find that it is greatly influenced by the tones of the voice. Study, then, agreeable sounds of speech, but seek not rules to guide you from etiquette—from artificial politeness; descend into the heart, there cherish the kind and moral sympathies, and speech will be modulated by the sincere and endearing tone of benevolence.

With your commiseration for distress, join firmness of mind. Interest yourself in general happiness, feel for all that is human, but suffer not your peace to be disturbed by what is beyond the sphere of your influence, and beyond your power to remedy.

A medical man has all the humane feelings, but they are merged into the art of healing. When he sees a patient suffering, he feels no perturbation; he feels only the desire, by means of his art, to relieve the sufferer: thus should all our humane and social sympathies be regulated, divested of their morbid sensibility, and reduced to active and practical principles.

Some, when they move from the common routine of life, and especially on any emergency, are embarrassed, perplexed, and know not how to resolve with decision, and act with promptitude. Presence of mind is a valuable quality, and essential to active life; it is the effect of habit, and the formation of habit is facilitated by rule.

Command your feelings, for strong feelings disconcert the mind, and produce confusion of ideas. On every occasion that requires attention, learn to concentrate your thoughts with quickness and comprehension. These two rules reduced into habits, if steadily practiced, will induce decision of resolve and promptitude of action.

Precipitation spoils the best concerted plan; perseverance brings the most difficult, when it is practicable, to a successful result. The flutter of haste is characteristic of a weak mind that has not the command of its thoughts; a strong mind, master of itself, possesses the clearness and prescience of reflection.

In learning, concentrate the energy of the mind principally on one study. The attention divided among many studies, is weakened by the division; besides, it is not granted to an individual to excel in many things. But, while one study claims your main attention, make occasional excursions into the fields of literature and science, and collect materials for the improvement of your mind, and the advancement of your favorite pursuit.

Excellence in a profession, and success in business, can be attained only by persevering industry. None who thinks himself above his vocation can succeed in it, for we can not give our attention to what our self-importance despises. None can be eminent in his vocation who devotes his mental energy to a pursuit foreign to it, for, in such a case, success in what we love is failure in what we neglect.

Among men, you must either speak what is agreeable to their humor, or what is consistent with truth and good morals. Make it a general rule of conduct neither to flatter virtue nor exasperate folly: by flattering virtue, you can not confirm it; by exasperating folly, you can not reform it. Submit, however, to no compromise with truth, but, when it allows, accommodate yourself with honest courtesy to the prepossessions of others.

In your whole behavior to mankind, conduct yourself with fairness and integrity. If an action is well received, you will have the credit it deserves; if it is not well received, you will have the approval of your own mind. The approval of a good conscience is preferable to the applause of the world.

Form no resolution, and engage in no undertaking, which you can not invoke Heaven to sanction. A good man prays the Almighty to be propitious to his virtuous plans: if his petition is denied, he knows it is denied in mercy, and he is resigned; if it is granted, he is grateful, and enjoys the blessings with moderation. A wicked man, in his iniquitous plans, either fails or succeeds: if he fails, disappointment is embittered by self-reproach; if he succeeds, success is without pleasure, for, when he looks around, he sees no smile of congratulation.



[From Fraser's Magazine.]

TALLEYRAND.[17]

"Celebrated people," said Napoleon, when speaking of Necker, "lose on a close view:" a remark not substantially different from that of the Duke of Marlborough, that "no man was a hero to his valet de chambre." Proximity, like familiarity, "breeds contempt;" and the proper cure for the illusions of distance is nearness. Few objects in nature, whether living or dead, can stand the application of that test, which is as fatal to the pretensions of men as of mountains: while it is notorious that the judgments of history are seldom in accordance with the decisions of contemporaries or friends. Human greatness resembles physical magnitude in this, that its proportions are more or less affected by surrounding influences, which must be removed before its real dimensions can be ascertained. It is, in fact, one of the fluctuating quantities of social arithmetic, and to fix its precise amount is now, and ever has been, one of the most difficult enterprises in which a public writer can engage. It is apt, also, to be confounded with mere celebrity. Obscurity is not one of its accidents, but fame is; and there is something like an irresistible tendency on the part of mankind at large, to believe in the claims to distinction of the man who has been vulgatus per orbem. Humility does very well for poets—your Horaces and Grays, for instance—who can find Agamemnons and Hampdens on every village green, to whom the opportunity only of acquiring renown has been denied by envious fate; but the prose of life discards it as an unsuitable and troublesome adjunct, and refuses to extend its reverence to what is not appreciable. A famous man is, therefore, always presumed to be a great man, and he may be so in so far as popular reputation is concerned, though he need not be so otherwise. To which of these classes did Talleyrand belong? That he was celebrated is beyond doubt. Was he great? That is a different question, and could be answered satisfactorily only by a much more elaborate inquiry into his history than it is possible for us to institute. Forty years must elapse from his death, which took place in 1838, before those memoirs, which he is known to have compiled, shall be given to the world; and whoever tries will find it to be no easy task to anticipate those revelations which are reserved for the eyes and ears of the generation of 1878. Let us, then, be contented with a humbler effort, and endeavor to make the most of the materials which are accessible to us, scanty though they be. There are spurious lives of Talleyrand by the dozen. He repudiated these scandalous and gossiping chronicles in his life-time, and it is no part of our business to resuscitate them. M. Colmache's volume is of another stamp, however, and bears unexceptionable internal evidence of the honesty of the writer, whether we agree in his conclusions or not. As secretary to the prince he had superior facilities for acquiring a knowledge of, at least, the domestic habits of the man, but beyond this he has accomplished little; for though his work be well, and even powerfully written, and though it contain numerous fragments of strong dramatic interest which illustrate in a very remarkable manner Talleyrand's moral idiosyncracy, as well as the usages of the age and country in which he lived—it would be absurd to suppose that the most reserved man in Europe, who had drilled his passions into a state of repose, and disciplined his tongue into the obedient slave of his own secret purposes, had given his confidence to a servant, in the full knowledge that every word which he uttered, and every opinion which he expressed, would be noted down, and published to the world when the grave had closed upon his remains. A less astute person, occupying the same conspicuous position in life, would have been guilty of no such folly as this: and though M. Colmache may have thought otherwise, he was obviously trusted with no more than it was perfectly safe for his master's posthumous reputation that he should be allowed to know. Moreover, we must remember, that though the French pride themselves on their skill in conversation—l'art de causer, as they term it—it is a wholly different thing from what would pass by that name in Britain. Men do not meet together in France (or, rather, they did not, for it is impossible to tell what they do now, and it would be unprofitable to inquire), freely to exchange their thoughts upon questions of importance, to discuss philosophy, religion, literature, or even politics; but to chat, to trifle with time, and to dispel weariness. Every thing that is serious is interdicted as an offense against good taste; and a French talker would rather run the risk of being considered a fool than a bore. The tyranny of fashion has been always cheerfully submitted to on this point; and to be brilliant, startling, and epigrammatic, are the passports to conversational reputation: not to be weighty, solid, or wise. To judge by M. Colmache's book, Talleyrand did not converse. It was no part of his social economy to intercommune with any one. His thoughts were his own, and he kept them to himself: hence, after we have perused this book, abounding as it does in curious sketches and narratives, we know nothing more of Talleyrand's sentiments on men and things than we did before. There was, no doubt, the usual lingual intercourse among his guests at the Chateau Vallencay, but the great man took no part in it. His role was lofty, mysterious, and grand. When he spoke all were silent, all attentive, all obsequious: but there was no conversation, in our sense of the word, and no dialogue, for there were no interlocutors. It was a monologue, in fact, and an interesting one—for his memory was deeply impressed with the recollections of the past, and he delighted to call them up, and to astonish his auditors by the freshness and vigor of his coloring: but, so far as we can discover, he never allowed himself to indulge in unnecessary commentaries or disclosures, and, with all his diligence, M. Colmache was unable to extract out of the wily diplomatist a single idea which it was his desire to conceal. Let there be no mistake, then, about the character of these Revelations. They are always amusing, sometimes highly interesting, and at others instructive: but they furnish exceedingly little toward a life of Talleyrand; and what his own countrymen are unable to give, foreigners can not supply. In what follows, therefore, we must be both abrupt and irregular.

Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord, eldest son of the Comte de Talleyrand-Perigord, was born at Paris in the year 1754; and died in that city in the year 1838, at the advanced age of eighty-four. His father was by position a member of the ancient noblesse, and by profession, a soldier: his mother a woman of fashion, and attached to the court. According to M. Colmache, he came into the world "without spot or blemish," and we are led to infer that his lameness—the cause of so much suffering and injustice to him in after-life—was not congenital, as has been generally believed, but the result of want of care in his childhood; for, as it was not the custom in those days for women of rank to nurse their own offspring, or even to rear them in their own houses, the future diplomatist was removed to a distant part of the country a few days after his birth, and consigned to the care of a hired nurse, Mere Rigaut, in whose cottage, wild, neglected, and forgotten, he dwelt, for twelve years. He was at length recalled from his involuntary exile by the Bailli Talleyrand, his uncle—the youngest brother of his father, a naval officer, and a knight of Malta; who, with the warmth of feeling proper to men of his profession, was enraged, upon his return home, to find the poor boy condemned to banishment and obscurity, and determined to free him from both. He accordingly brought him to Paris, but was sadly mortified to find that his intention of making him a sailor was marred by his infirmity; and leaving him at the hotel Talleyrand in charge of the parties whom his mother had instructed to receive him—for she was not there to perform that maternal duty herself—the honest Bailli set out for Toulon, where he rejoined his ship, and was drowned at sea a few months afterward. Young Talleyrand was now placed at the College of Louis le Grand, and under the immediate direction of the Pere Langlois, Professor of Rhetoric in that institution; a kind and benevolent-minded man, as it would seem, to whom his pupil remained attached throughout his whole life, and who, unchanged and unchangeable, wore, in 1828, the academic costume which had prevailed before the Revolution—a long-skirted, collarless black coat, buttoned to the chin; black knee breeches and silk stockings; large shoes with silver-plated buckles; well powdered hair, with ailes de pigeon and a queue of portentous dimensions; and that indispensable companion of a savant crasseux of the middle of the eighteenth century, a huge flat snuff-box, which lay concealed in the deep recesses in his ample pockets. Talleyrand remained at this school for three years, and would appear to have made a respectable figure as a student, considering the disadvantages under which he labored from the want of preliminary training. It is probable that a sense of this deficiency on the part of a lively lad, joined to the stimulus of competition, quickened his diligence, and he was rewarded with praise and prizes. He was also addicted to active sports, for "he was strong and hardy in spite of his lameness;" and we are told that his temper was mild and tractable at this period, and that, when attacked, his defensive weapon was his tongue, not his hands—so true is it, that "the boy is father to the man." His sharp, quick speech, we are assured, was the terror of his comrades—i.e. when a bolder youth would have boxed his antagonist's ears, Talleyrand scolded, and doubtlessly provoked him; but as there must be a philosophical reason for whatever concerns the nonage of a celebrated person, it is added, that "even then (between twelve and fifteen, observe) he had learned that the art of governing others consisted merely in self-command." During his residence at college he saw nothing of his father, and little of his mother; and when the latter did visit him, she was always attended by an eminent surgeon, whose duty it was to torture the unfortunate boy's leg, and to try, by bandages, cauteries, and other appliances, to make that long and straight which neglect had made short and crooked. These visits of madame mere were anticipated with horror, and ever afterward spoken of with disgust; nor could they have increased that love for the author of his being which is so natural to youth, and which an incident that occurred about this time would seem to have utterly extinguished.

At the close of his third year at college, his father died from the effects of an old wound received in battle. This event must have happened when his son had attained to the fifteenth year of his age, and, consequently, in the year 1769. By the laws of nature and of feudal succession, that son was now the head of his house, a peer of France, the inheritor of those peculiar privileges which then belonged to his order, the owner of large territorial possessions, and the Comte Talleyrand-Perigord: of all which rights, immunities, titles, and dignities, he was arbitrarily deprived by the cruel decision of a family council, of which his mother was the author and promoter, and his birthrights handed over to his younger brother, who, in his infancy, had been companion of his exile. Why this act of iniquity was committed, and how, we shall allow M. Colmache to tell:

"It was at this time that his father died, and Charles Maurice was now the Comte de Talleyrand, and head of that branch of the family to which he belonged. Meanwhile the younger son, Archambaut, had likewise returned from his nursing; but he had the better chance—his limbs were sound and well developed, as God had made them. No dire accident, the consequence of foul neglect, had marred his shape, or tarnished his comeliness. So, one fine day, and as a natural consequence, mark you, of this fortunate circumstance, when Charles Maurice, the eldest son, had finished his course of study at Louis le Grand, having passed through his classes with great eclat, there came a tall, sallow, black-robed priest, and took him away from the midst of his friends to the grim old seminaire of St. Sulpice, and it was there that he received the astounding intimation, from the lips of the superior himself, that, by the decision of a conseil de famille, from which there was no appeal, his birthright had been taken from him, and transferred to his younger brother.

"'Why so?' faltered the boy, unable to conceal his emotion.

"'He is not cripple,' was the stern and cruel answer.

"It must have been that hour—nay, that very instant—the echo of those heartless words, which made the Prince de Talleyrand what he is even to this very day. Who shall tell the bitter throes of that bold, strong-hearted youth, as he heard the unjust sentence? Was it defiance and despair, the gift of hell, or resignation, the blessed boon of heaven, which caused him to suffer the coarse black robe to be thrown at once above his college uniform, without a cry, without a murmur? None will ever be able to divine what his feelings were, for this one incident is always passed over by the prince. He never refers to it, even when in familiar conversation with his most loved intimates. It is certain, therefore, that the single hour of which I speak bore with it a whole life of bitterness and agony. (P. 106, 107.)"

Let us pause for a moment to consider the probable effects of such nurture and treatment on a nature like Talleyrand's. He was fifteen years of age; imperfectly educated for his station in life; lame, from the neglect of the guardians of his infancy; disinherited by those who should have watched with the most jealous care over his interests; cruelly punished for a physical defect chargeable to the carelessness of others; a stranger to hope, love, and fear; the victim of a domestic conspiracy; and the novitiate of a profession which he loathed, and to which, in his subsequent years, he did dishonor. His father he had never known, his mother he knew only as his tormentor and oppressor: no tie seems to have bound him to his brother, and up to this hour he had never yet slept one night under the paternal roof. These were no ordinary trials; and if the youth who was subjected to them became in after-life a cynic, is it to be wondered at? Indeed, a hasty view of this remarkable man's character might lead to the conclusion of M. Colmache, that the untoward accidents of his infancy and boyhood afforded an explanation of all his adult peculiarities; but we can not allow ourselves to accept this inference, natural as it would seem to be, for it appears to us, upon a closer inspection, that though these incidents might deepen the force of his mental inequalities, they could not have created them, and that the difference between the Bishop of Autun and the ancient noble, had he succeeded to his inheritance, would have amounted to little more than the difference between a proscribed ecclesiastic and a proscribed aristocrat. No doubt, if the generous affections expand and blossom under genial culture, they as certainly contract and wither under neglect and harshness; nor should we, in ordinary cases, have any hesitation in giving the benefit of this elementary rule to the subject of an ordinary biography: but Talleyrand's is not such. There is no evidence in this book or elsewhere, for instance, that the sensitive part of his nature was acute, or that he was easily moved by strong emotions of any kind; and it is exceedingly difficult for us to comprehend how so singular a moral and intellectual organization as he unquestionably possessed could have been the result of any imaginable series of occurrences in early life, of whatever description they might happen to be. The power of intense concentration by which he was so remarkably distinguished was, assuredly, a gift from Nature (whether good or bad we say not), and not a circumstantial accident; and it is all but incredible that a man of vivid sensibilities could have succeeded by a mere effort of the will in suppressing every manifestation of their existence during a life prolonged far beyond the ordinary term, and in the midst of the most terrible convulsions that had agitated the world since the establishment of society in Western Europe. The cause appears to us to be unequal to the effect; and we are obliged to conclude that the cold, sarcastic, and selfish man, who believed in nothing and nobody, and who rejected even the common impulses of humanity, was no casual product of events, but precisely what he had been designed to be from the cradle, and what he would have shown himself to have been—though, perhaps, in a different way—had he never known what paternal neglect and maternal cruelty were.

We have no account in this volume of the progressive steps of his clerical education, beyond the intimation that it was wearisome and distasteful. Talleyrand disliked references to his ecclesiastical career. It had not been a respectable one; and if M. Colmache really got from him the stories which he tells in his book, we need not be surprised that there is nothing in them about either the Abbe or the Bishop. We know from other sources that, notwithstanding his constitutional timidity, he accepted the Revolution eagerly; and that he did his best, by precept and example, to consummate the destruction of the old order of things. He was the bosom friend of Mirabeau, so far as his suspicious nature would allow him to be the bosom-friend of any one; and his account (or what M. Colmache says was his) of the last days of that able, but profligate person's troubled life is one of the most striking things in this volume. Another extraordinary being likewise appears here, of whom less is generally known than of the other two, viz., the Abbe Cerutti, an Italian Jesuit, who had been in the service of the Dauphin, the father of Louis XVI., and who, like so many others, threw his religion and his allegiance behind his back when they could no longer subserve his personal ends, and who was, moreover, with Mirabeau and Talleyrand, one of the most active promoters of the popular cause. This trio, in conjunction with Condorcet, started, in 1789, the first democratical journal known in Paris. It was called the Feuille Villageoise, and was designed for circulation among the rural populations of the provinces. It has been accused of having provoked many of the atrocities of the Revolution; but this, it would seem, was a mistake. It only fanned the flames after they had broken out, but did not excite them: and it was remarkable for "burning columns" from Mirabeau, the ex-noble; for "cold, bitter irony," from Cerutti, the ex-Jesuit; and for recommendations of the "divisions of church property, &c." from Talleyrand, the ex-bishop. Such pastimes could have done no harm, according to M. Colmache; and were obviously inadequate to the production of a revolution—and such a revolution! Let us acquit these patriots, then, of treason against society, and let us believe that they were actuated by the purest motives, when they used every effort within their reach to rouse to madness an ignorant and excitable multitude, and stimulated by every possible means, the cupidity of the poor by suggestions to plunder the rich and to despoil the Church. It may be difficult to do this, but there is no help for it; and with such undeniable proofs of the wisdom, virtue, and moderation of this celebrated junta, as M. Colmache has been pleased to furnish, we may let the matter drop.

Talleyrand was consumed by a burning hatred of England, even before the Revolution broke out, and, in conjunction with a friend, gave a practical illustration of his hostility by fitting out a privateer at Brest, which was designed to intercept British ships trading to the West Indies; and as we do not remember to have seen this strange incident in his life mentioned elsewhere, we shall give the short account of it which M. Colmache has furnished:

"The sudden change from the frivolous papillotage of the ancien regime to the sombre enthusiasm which broke out at the epoch of the American war, made but little impression on M. Talleyrand. He was evidently prepared; and at once declared his opinion, not by pamphlets or inflammatory speeches, but by an argument far more forcible than either. Conjointly with his friend, the Count Choiseul Gouffier, he equipped a privateer, which he called the Holy Cause, and which left the harbor of Brest in the month of May, 1779. The Duc de Castries, then Minister of Marine, furnished the guns. This single fact would almost serve to paint the time. A vessel of war armed and equipped by the agent general du clerge de France, aided by a savant of the haute noblesse, and countenanced by one of the ministers, exhibits at once the utter confusion of ideas which must have existed just then. I have heard that the privateer, which, placed under command of a runaway scion of nobility, was to have carried death and destruction among the English merchant-ships trading from the West Indies, never more made its appearance on the French coast. Be this as it may, I know that the prince does not like to talk of this little episode in his life; and the other day, when questioned rather closely on the subject, he answered, 'Laissons cela, c'est un de mes peches de jeunesse.'" (P. 232.)

The temper of mind indicated by this passage was itself one of the forerunners of the Revolution, for at that time France had become delirious on the subject of the American struggle; and her soldiers and nobles who were aiding the revolted provincialists, were busily employed in gathering the fruits of that harvest of republicanism which they were so soon to transport to their own country, where they were destined to produce extraordinary results. At the time this event happened, Talleyrand was twenty-five years of age, and in holy orders; and we are to presume that the Anglo-mania, which overtook his countrymen ten years later, and was the rage in '89, had not yet set in. The anecdote is curious, but it strikes us as being illustrative rather of the character of the age and people than of the individual man, for whom in his natural mood, it was trop prononce.

As the Revolution advanced Talleyrand's safety was endangered, and like most French patriots, ancient and modern, that was a thing which he looked carefully to. Some papers were found, after the sack of the Tuilleries, which compromised him; and in '92 he fled to the United States of America, taking up his abode in the city of New York. He was accompanied in his flight by a friend of the name of Beaumetz, and in concert with whom he resolved to enter into trade. A small ship was freighted with goods for Calcutta, whither the two exiles had resolved to proceed in search of fortune; and all that was wanted to enable them to put their scheme in execution was a fair wind, which, however, the elements refused. In the interval caused by this detention Talleyrand had one of what he called his "presentiments;" and to its occult warnings, as he afterward declared, he owed the immediate preservation of his life, salvation from shipwreck, and that change in his "destiny" which led to all the future incidents of his eventful career. Disappointment and vexation preying upon an irritable temper drove his partner mad. He saw insanity in his look and gestures, and suffering himself to be led by the lunatic to the heights of Brooklyn, which overlook the harbor, he fixed his eyes sternly upon him, exclaiming, at the same time, "Beaumetz, you mean to murder me; you intend to throw me from the height into the sea below. Deny it, monster, if you can!" Thus apostrophized, the unhappy and conscience-stricken maniac quailed beneath the intensity and sternness of his gaze; confessed that such was his design, the thought, "like a flash from the lurid fire of hell," having haunted him day and night; implored forgiveness, flung himself upon the neck of his meditated victim, and burst into tears. The paroxysm had passed off, and tottering reason had resumed her sway. Beaumetz was conveyed home and placed under medical treatment, speedily recovered, proceeded on his voyage alone, and was never more heard of. "My Fate," said Talleyrand, when speaking of this incident in after life, "was at work."

From the way in which this anecdote is introduced we learn that Talleyrand had some strong leaning to the Celtic superstition known as the second sight, which, in the adust imagination of a Frenchman, is closely allied to fatalism, and which, we fear, loses its interest, as it certainly does its virtue, when transported into sunnier regions from "the land of the mountain and the flood." In ancient times Augustus Caesar,[18] and in modern Samuel Johnson, Napoleon, and Walter Scott, were all, more or less, and after the manner of their several idiosyncracies, the victims of this imaginary belief; and if we knew the apocalyptic tendencies of obscure, as well as we do those of celebrated individuals, we should probably, discover that this weakness was much more prevalent than is generally supposed. We have no great difficulty in understanding how a fanciful notion of this kind should attach itself to minds of a certain conformation, or be even generated by them, and that it should exercise a considerable, though unseen influence over the secret convictions of men of ability, and of women of vivid religious emotions; but we do not so readily comprehend how such persons as Napoleon and Talleyrand should have embraced a delusion which was utterly irreconcilable with their skeptical natures, and which necessarily presupposed an immaterial state of existence, and the providential superintendence of human affairs by a benevolent order of beings, whose powers must have been deputed to them by a superior and over-ruling Intelligence. It was the part of an ancient Roman, like Augustus, to believe in portents and omens, however insignificant; it might even require some philosophy to despise them; and among ourselves in modern times it will be found, if we mistake not, that strong poetical sensibilities, or a peculiarly impressible temperament, is the foundation of what can be regarded in no other light than an hallucination. The world of spirits, with all its shadowy tenants and imaginary impulses, might be a reality to Scott, whose demonology never for one moment obscured the lucid perceptions of a singularly clear and masculine intellect; while the Rosicrucianism of so vigorously-minded a man as Samuel Johnson was the plain result of that constitutional melancholy under which he labored—fortified, it may be, by theological tenets which bordered on the mystical: but what could Napoleon mean by Fate, or Talleyrand by Destiny? They were both of them unbelievers in spiritualism of any kind; and whence could those intimations come of which Talleyrand, at least, conceived himself to be the recipient? He was obviously possessed by the idea that numerous premonitions had been vouchsafed to him; and what chiefly moved in him a desire to visit Scotland was, not its scenery, its lakes, its mountains, or its people, but a wish to inquire into the (as he supposed) natural faculty of divination. The dream may be of Jove[19]—Homer is a sound heathen authority upon this point; but Talleyrand was no dreamer. His "presentiments" (for so he loved to call them), were, apparently, sudden intuitions, which he was wholly unable to explain, but in which he placed so much confidence that he acted upon them to the letter—so says M. Colmache—and never, it would seem, in vain. They directed him rightly; and when, in old age, he had gathered around him at Vallencay all that remained of the wit, genius, and talent of French society in its better forms, he delighted to recount the instances in which this supernatural influence, like Socrates' daemon, had befriended him. He believed in the reality of this power when he believed in nothing else, and that is the puzzle.

Having once returned to France, Talleyrand never again quitted it—at least, as an exile; but continued for the next forty years of his eventful life to cultivate the art of advancement, and to study carefully the means of acquiring a fortune: and he succeeded in both. The First Consul found in his extraordinary abilities precisely what he wanted and he in the First Consul that social support which he required, and upon which he found he could rely. There was no mutual esteem, however, between these remarkable men, whom interest alone bound together; and Bonaparte has left upon record his opinion of his Minister for Foreign Affairs, delivered at a time when he had nothing to expect from the favors of men or the caprices of Fortune. "Talleyrand," said Napoleon, at St. Helena, "is a corrupt man, who has betrayed all parties and persons. Wary and circumspect, always a traitor, but always in conspiracy with Fortune, Talleyrand treats his enemies as if they were one day to become his friends, and his friends as if they were to become his enemies. He is a man of unquestionable talent, but venial in every thing. Nothing could be done with him but by means of bribery."[20] This is not complimentary; and it would be curious to compare such a sentence of condemnation with the judgment of Talleyrand on Napoleon which is contained in his memoirs, for that there is one we need not doubt.

Talleyrand's department as a minister of state was that of Foreign Affairs, and the future historian of his diplomatic career will have to review his connection with all the great incidents which occurred in Europe from the year 1797 to his death, in 1838. That he was supple, unscrupulous, and able, is the conclusion of mankind at large; and, we presume, the correct one.

Passion never disturbed him, and feeling (except for himself) seldom. A revolutionary education superinduced upon a cold nature a distrust of all men—ay, and of women, too; and he seems to have entertained just so much respect for political stability of any kind as circumstances warranted, and no more. He was no believer in the reality of virtue—itself a quality of which he had but an inadequate conception, and to the active operation of which he would have held it to be mere simplicity and folly to trust. We may infer, therefore, that what he did not look for he did not find; and that, as generally happens to those who are wise beyond what is written, he denied the existence of a property, with the use of which, could it have been discovered, he was wholly unacquainted. He served the emperor so long as it was consistent with his interests to do so, and he deserted him when he saw that there was more peril in fidelity than in apostasy. The Restoration was, in a great measure, the work of his hands, though he hated Louis XVIII. mortally; and the grounds of that hatred were, apparently, personal, resting partly on those antipathies which dissimilarity in habits and taste is apt to generate in all ranks of life, and partly on disappointed ambition. Louis was fat; Talleyrand was thin. Louis liked good eating (most men do, by the way, be they kings or not); Talleyrand cared little for it, and ate but once a day. Louis had, rightly or wrongly, an idea that he was an independent monarch, to whose volitions some regard was due, and the legitimate sovereign of one of the greatest kingdoms in Europe; Talleyrand saw in him only a political stop-gap and glutton, to whose wishes little deference was owing, and whose intellect he despised: but he took care not to refuse the bounties or the honors bestowed upon him by his royal master—nor can we repress a smile when we find such a man gravely rebuking that prince for utter heartlessness and selfishness. It might be, and probably was so, but assuredly Talleyrand was not the person to make the charge.

The erection of the throne of the Barricades was also Talleyrand's work, if we may believe M. Colmache; and many of the incidents connected with the expulsion of Charles X., and the elevation of the Duke of Orleans, which are given in this volume, possess at this moment an instructive and melancholy interest, when we consider where the aspirant for that perilous honor is now, and what a dark cloud has settled down upon the stormy evening of his ambitious life.[21] Had we space, we would give some of these details; but we have not, and must be contented to refer to the book for them. The object of the writer, however, is, to construct an exculpation, and to vindicate (vain task!) the memory of Talleyrand from the reproach of ingratitude; but it is abundantly evident, even from the narrative itself, that if not one of the most active, he was, at least, one of the most zealous, promoters of the Revolution of 1830. There was little sympathy between Charles and Talleyrand, though he preferred him much to his brother Louis. He even admitted—which, for him, was going far—that Charles was distinguished in private life by many excellent qualities; that he had "a feeling and a generous nature, and was a faithful and grateful friend;" but for many, and some of them obvious enough reasons, he disliked "the devout monarch," and we are told that Charles "returned tenfold in hatred and suspicion all the pity and contempt which the wily diplomatist sought to cast upon his government." The conclusion is, of course, plain. Talleyrand saw that every thing was going wrong, as did every body else after the event. He, therefore, withdrew from Paris in the winter of 1829—30; and, under the pretense of consulting his health, retired to Rochecotte, in Touraine, the seat of his niece, the Duchess de Dino. He had no political object in view, and was only driven "by the force of circumstances," into that vortex which was whirling tout le monde in the capital round about; but, somehow or other, the leaders of the movement gathered around him in his retreat, and, unfortunately for the theory of neutrality, it is stated that "it was at Rochecotte, during the month of May, which Thiers spent there with M. de Talleyrand, that he (i.e., Thiers) conceived the plan of those terrific articles in the National, which, every morning, like the battering-rams of ancient warfare, laid in ruins the wretched bulwarks, behind which the tottering monarchy thought itself secure." (P. 32.)

All this was, no doubt, purely accidental; and, as the editor of the National was a person of no social consideration whatever, it would be absurd to suppose that the Prince of Benevento had any secondary purpose to achieve by patronizing so obscure an adventurer. It turns out, indeed, that "M. Thiers was, in the eyes of M. Talleyrand, nothing more than a young writer, full of vigor and talent, whom the old seigneur loved to protect, and to initiate into the manners and customs of good society, without a knowledge of which (he would often say) there can be no good taste in literature. But he was the last person in the world who, at that time, would have looked upon Thiers as a conspirator, of whom he was making himself, by such protection, the vile associate." (P. 33.)

This should settle the point, and yet it does nothing of the kind; for, as if it were necessary that a mystery should involve all the actions of this man's life, and even comprehend his friends, we find in this very volume, and in immediate succession to the energetic disclaimer we have just quoted, the most elaborate proofs of his "complicity" in that "conspiracy," which ended by dethroning one monarch and elevating another. A single passage will set this matter at rest forever, and here it is:

"It has been to this day a matter of speculation whether the Duke of Orleans had anticipated being called to the throne, or whether it was the force of circumstances which had brought him to it. These are the facts: Although the Duke of Orleans had for a long time looked upon the event of a change in the dynasty as possible, and was most certainly prepared[22] to place the crown upon his own head in case of such an event, yet even so late as the 30th of July he hesitated to grasp it, and resisted the arguments and persuasions of Thiers. It is a known fact that the duke was concealed in the environs of Neuilly in fear of a popular outbreak, when a secret message from M. de Talleyrand, which he received on the evening of that day, caused him to decide at length upon re-entering Paris, and proclaiming himself Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom—the head of the new power. The new king soon forgot, however, this proof of attachment (attachment!!) on the part of his old friend; and M. de Talleyrand, who knew that kings, even when chosen by the will of the people, are, for the most part, compelled to be illustres ingrats, never, during the years which followed these events, alluded to the circumstances which brought about the avenement of Louis Philippe." (P. 35.)

And again:

"Now came the time when the high intelligence and marvelous sagacity of the prince were brought into action, and I hesitate not to repeat, saved the country. M. de Talleyrand dispatched to Neuilly, with all possible speed, a little billet written with his own hand. The bearer was a person of high courage and great integrity, and was charged, should he fall into danger, to destroy the billet. He could not in honor read its contents, but saw that there were but few words traced upon the paper. They were addressed to the king's sister, Madame Adelaide. This messenger was commissioned to place the billet himself in the hands of the princess, and to tell her that the Prince de Talleyrand conjured her to warn the Duke of Orleans that not a moment was to be lost; that the duke might reckon upon his aid, and that he must appear immediately; that he must come at once to Paris, to place himself at the head of the movement, or all would be lost without recall. Above all, he was only to take the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which Charles had conferred upon him before leaving St. Cloud. He implored him not to manifest any other intention. In this advice the old diplomatist was reserving for himself a back door to creep out at in case Charles should march on Paris." (P. 39.)

There follows this conclusive revelation an account of Madame Adelaide's astuteness (astuce)—her anxiety not to commit herself in writing; her transmission to Prince Talleyrand of a verbal message; and of the climax of the whole intrigue in the arrival in Paris that same night of Louis Philippe, and of his proclamation in his capacity of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. The transition from this to royalty was easy, for it had been pre-arranged. It was M. de Talleyrand, we are assured, who overcame the "faint scruples" of the Duke of Orleans, and it was his advice that "decided the king to go at once to the Hotel de Ville, there to receive publicly the sceptre of France, and to swear allegiance to the charter."

After such statements as these, what useful purpose can it serve to declaim about conspiracies, reservations, and the like, when they so conspicuously testify to the fact, that one of the most energetic agents—after his own peculiar way—in bringing about a change of dynasty in France, was the very man whose memory his secretary is so anxious to relieve from this reproach? It is mere folly and blundering to do so, the more especially when we are told that the Orleans party comprehended all the leading members of the "Opposition" in both Chambers; that M. de Talleyrand was its head; and that, without declaring himself in favor of the new regime, he regulated all its movements, and was in constant and direct communication with the individual in whose behalf the Revolution of 1830 was got up. It is idle to quarrel about words; but if this was not "conspiracy," it was something so exceedingly like it, that it would require a very nice eye, indeed, to detect wherein the difference lay. The simple truth is this—that Talleyrand and his associates did in 1829-30, what Odillon Barrot and his accomplices (including the ubiquitous Thiers) did in 1847-48, but more successfully; for there can be no comparison between the government established under Louis Philippe and that inaugurated in the person of Louis Napoleon, and still less between the prospect of happiness which France enjoyed in 1830, and that which lies before her in 1850. The experiment has been closely copied by M. de Talleyrand's pupils, though the result has not been analogous; but this does not depend so much upon the men as upon the circumstances. Such a substitute for legitimate authority as the Duke of Orleans was can not be found twice in the same age and country; and one of the most mournful spectacles of our time is, the fate of the man and his family, for whom all these violent, and we must add, tortuous exertions, were made twenty years ago. Talleyrand's share in these transactions can not be gainsaid. Though a revolutionist, in so far as the elder branch of the Bourbons was concerned, he was not, however, a Republican in 1830; and had, probably, never been honestly so at any period of his life. The feeling of the ancient seigneur was strong in him to the last; and his constitutional timidity made him shrink with instinctive aversion from all contact with the mob: hence his terror during the "three glorious days of July" was agonizing: and when he discovered that, in the bloody triumph of the populace, no superiority of rank, talent, or fortune, was regarded, he trembled for his own safety—"for he knew that the people loved him not."

Talleyrand survived this, his last great political exploit, nearly eight years, having expired tranquilly at his hotel in Paris, in May, 1838. His ex-secretary has a copious and rambling commentary upon his death, in which there is the usual amount of complaint and vindication. His patron had become reconciled to the church, and had submitted to its formalities immediately before his decease; and, considering his past hostility to it as a social institution, his renunciation of his sacred vows, and his ostentatious rejection of the Christian religion, such a step naturally caused some talk, and requires explanation—though none is given by M. Colmache, beyond the barren and somewhat commonplace intimation, that "he was influenced in this, as in many other instances, wherein he has drawn down the blame of the sticklers for consistency, by the desire to spare pain and trouble to his family; for he knew that his relatives would suffer much inconvenience by his resistance on his death-bed to the execution of certain religious formalities to which, in his own mind, he attached not the slightest importance."

It is rather a delicate matter to scrutinize motives, however great the temptation to do so, may be: fortunately, however, all call for the performance of so ungracious a duty on the present occasion is removed by M. Colmache, who tells us frankly what the reason was which induced M. de Talleyrand to enact something like a solemn farce in his dying moments. It was not religious compunction, nor any affectation of it, but a regard for the convenience and the material interests of his successors; "for it can not be denied," said he, "that he had ever held in view the elevation and aggrandizement of his family."

Certainly not. Nobody will be bold enough to do so. What prompted Voltaire to attend his parish church regularly to the last hour of his life, and even to take the communion; what led Franklin to mingle in the throngs which crowded around Whitefield in America; and what induced Gibbon to visit temples of religion when he had nothing else to do, and to record his impressions of the sermons he was condemned to listen to, must forever remain among the minor mysteries of humanity; but about M. de Talleyrand's "retraction," as it has been called, strange to say, there is no mystery at all. It was a mere exemplification of "the ruling passion strong in death." He could no longer care for himself, which had been the chief business of his life; but he could do what was next thing to it—he could care for his relations whom he was leaving behind him, and he did so.

The querulous part of this statement relates to Louis Philippe. The monarch, as is well known, visited his aged servant on his death-bed, and, we have not a doubt, behaved both gracefully and kindly. M. Colmache, however, does not think so, and all but abuses the king for an act which, being spontaneous, has the look, if it had not the reality, of benevolence. His manner was, it seems, constrained, the task itself was irksome, and his "bearing," as compared with that of the dying statesman, tant son peu bourgeois. "Despite the old faded dressing-gown of the one, and the snuff-colored coat, stiff neckcloth, and polished boots of the other, the veriest barbarian could have told at a glance which was the 'last of the nobles,' and which the 'First Citizen' of the Empire." (P. 343.)

This would be severe were it not sheer gossip, and gossip dictated by a feeling of intense hostility to Louis Philippe, who committed the unpardonable blunder of not bestowing any particular regard upon the prince's secretary, though, with others, he had been specially introduced to him. In that case, and if M. Colmache really was, as he says, present in the chamber when this interview took place, we can only express our surprise that his account of it is so meagre; for it is impossible to believe that the last conversation between two men so distinguished, and so closely united by the ties of mutual obligation, should have been confined to a formal inquiry and a formal reply, which is all we find in this volume. We are at a loss to know, also, why the king should have been less of a gentleman and more of a tradesman in his manners and appearance than M. de Talleyrand; for, if that has any thing to do with the matter, he was as certainly one of the "last of the nobles," as his minister; and as we find nothing in M. Colmache's book respecting this valedictory visit, which the journals had not promulgated at the time of its occurrence, we are not only led to doubt the fact of his having been present, but likewise to withhold all confidence from his relation of its details. One reflection, however, he does make, which, as read in 1850, is curious: "I had looked," he says, "upon this visit as the farewell of the safely-landed voyager (landed, too, amid storm and tempest), to the wise and careful pilot who had steered him skillfully through rock and breaker, and now pushed off alone amid the darkness, to be seen no more!" (P. 344.)

Alas for human wisdom in its most imposing forms! where is now the "skillful pilot?" Dead, and his skill buried with him. And the "voyager" whom he "steered" into a secure haven amid "storm and tempest?" A fugitive and an exile, driven from the rickety throne which Talleyrand's necromancy had conjured up by a wave of his wand, and which his sagacious biographer obviously considered to be as stable as the globe itself:

Fato profugus ... Multum ille et terris jactatus, et alto.

The share which Talleyrand is alleged to have had in the murder of the Duc d'Enghein, and which the Duke of Rovigo positively declared to have been, from first to last, a contrivance of his,[23] we must pass over in comparative silence; as the subject is one which it is impossible to elucidate, and which we could not hope to discuss with any profit in the short space which remains to us. If noticed at all in this volume, we have unfortunately mislaid the reference to it; and in a work which is without an index, and which has been compiled with a total disregard to chronological arrangement, we have not been able to recover it. All the parties to that infamous transaction were anxious in after times to shift the culpability from off their own shoulders; and amidst the criminations and recriminations of the future dukes and princes of the Empire, there is little positive knowledge of any kind to be gained. It might be, as Fouche said, "worse than a crime—a blunder;" but there was certainly nothing about the act itself from which a man of Talleyrand's lax morality would have shrunk; and our present impression is, that he was privy to this odious and useless tragedy, if the whole scheme of the violation of a neutral territory, the arrest, the mock trial, and the execution, did not originate with him. Even Napoleon regretted the occurrence, though he was too inflexible in his character to throw the blame on others when the deed was done, and at St. Helena he took the whole responsibility of it upon himself. "The Duc d'Enghein," said he, "died, because I willed it." This is the style imperial, but it is not the expression of a fact; and the Duke of Rovigo, with great probability, attributes this language to the desire which he latterly manifested to impress upon others a lofty idea of his absolute power as a sovereign. He was at the time only First Consul, and he has himself stated that, to use a familiar phrase, he was worried into it by those about him. "I did not rightly know," says he, "who the Duc d'Enghein was. The Revolution had come upon me when I was very young, and I had never been at court. All these points were explained to me. If it be so, I said, he must be seized, and the necessary orders were given in consequence. Every thing had been provided beforehand. The papers were prepared, and there was nothing to do but to sign them, and the fate of the prince was already decided."[24] This, if accepted as true—and we see no reason why it should not be—is conclusive; and if Bonaparte may be believed, a letter addressed to him from Strasburgh by the duke was kept by Talleyrand, and not delivered up till after the execution. He likewise committed the gross outrage upon public decency of giving a masked ball to the diplomatic body on the night of the unfortunate prince's death; and, all the circumstances taken into account, we fear there can be no doubt of his active participation (to say no more) in one of the foulest political enormities of modern times. His motive for allowing himself to be involved in so perilous an enterprise was, as usual, altogether personal. He dreaded lest a successful conspiracy formed beyond the Rhine might lead (a vain apprehension) to the restoration of the Bourbons; and he would seem to have taken this dark mode of preventing it, for he had offended too deeply to expect forgiveness. But let us proceed to another theme—his marriage.

It is well known that Napoleon obtained from the fears of the Pope, Pius VII., a brief of secularization for his Minister for Foreign Affairs, and that Talleyrand subsequently married Madame Grand, or, as she is called in this book, Grandt, a lady who had lived with him as his mistress, and who, in consequence of this transformation, became no less a personage than the Princesse de Benevento of the Imperial Court. Much has been written about this woman, whose history was long a mystery; and of whose ignorance, etourderies, and arrogance, every body has heard something. In this volume her introduction to Talleyrand is related in the usual melo-dramatic style of French writers, and her beauty described with that fullness of detail which approaches to voluptuousness. The meeting was accidental, at least on Talleyrand's part. Returning at an early hour of the morning from a gambling visit to the Chevalier Fenelon, the particulars of which are hideous, he found his study occupied by a female, who had waited for five hours alone in the chamber; and who was now fast asleep in an arm-chair by the fire, the upper part of her body enveloped in a fashionable mantle, and the lower part displaying the gilded finery of a ball-dress. The diplomatist was stupefied by the fair vision, which he gazed upon with admiration, and having tried in vain to awaken her by coughing, and other innocent devices, he took up a letter addressed to himself which lay upon the table, and which he found to be from a friend, requesting him to give madame the benefit of his advice in a difficulty in which no one else could assist her. The servant slams the door—the lady awakes—a scene of mutual confusion ensues, which tries to the utmost M. Colmache's powers of description, but which ends in M. de Talleyrand giving to the lovely applicant the document she required, and in the commencement of a liaison which ultimately terminated in matrimony. It was, of course, a trick or practical joke, which had been played off by certain wags, male and female, at Madame Hamelin's assembly on the unsuspecting and guileless Madame Grand, according to M. Colmache; but to any one else it will seem plain enough that it was no more than the step of a daring and clever intriguante, who knew perfectly well what she was about, and who had resolved to conquer where Madame Tallien and Madame Beauharnais had failed—and she did conquer.

Who, then, was this bold lady who contrived so cunningly to ensnare in her toils the wariest man in France? "I have heard," says M. Colmache, "that she was of English origin. This is not true. Her maiden name was Dayot, and she was born at L'Orient; but her connection with India, where a great part of her family resided, and the peculiar character of her beauty, would seem to have been the ground-work of the supposition." (P. 298). We can not clear up this riddle altogether, but we can do something toward its partial solution.

Her family name we are unacquainted with, but she was a native of Scotland, and her first husband was a British officer, though we are likewise ignorant of his name. Her marriage most likely took place in India, and at an early age: for after her husband's death she became the wife of a M. Grand, a French gentleman, who obtained a divorce from her in India in consequence of an improper intimacy with Mr., afterward the celebrated Sir Philip Francis. How long she lived with Mr. Francis we know not, but she subsequently passed under the protection of a Mr. William Macintosh, a British merchant, with whom she returned to Europe in 1781. Mr. Macintosh's private affairs calling him to France, Madame Grand accompanied him; but her protector was an unfortunate man, whose claims upon the French Government were dissipated by the Revolution, and we lose sight of his friend altogether till her reappearance on the theatre of the great world, after that event, as the companion of Madame Beauharnais, and other celebrated women of that day. There is thus a blank in her personal history of twenty-one years which we are quite unable to fill up, and which we must leave to be supplied by others. Mr. Macintosh died at Eisenach, in Saxony, in 1809, at an advanced age; but his name is no longer associated with that of Madame Grand. He left a daughter, who became afterward the Countess de Colville; but whether Madame Grand was her mother, or whether he had married after his separation from that lady, are points on which we can throw no light.[25]

Such, then, was the much-talked-of Madame de Talleyrand, Princesse de Benevento. The date of her death is not given, but she certainly predeceased her last husband by several years. This marriage was not productive of happiness. There was not only much difference of habits, temper, and bearing, between the parties, to say nothing of the antecedents of both, but it appears that madame was jealous "of every member of her husband's family," to whom he showed affection. A separation was the consequence, and this loving couple dwelt in distinct establishments till the end of their lives.

It is a remarkable, and not uninstructive fact, that the revolution could not extinguish the cultivated instincts of this extraordinary man; and one of the most interesting things in this volume, is the glimpses which we occasionally get of his impressions of the new order of things. Harsh, and even cruel, as the old society had been to him, it had a profound hold upon his affections; and when the solitude and satiety of age invited reflection, he was compelled "to doubt whether the good which had been gained could ever compensate for that which had been forfeited". He lived on the memory of the past, and drew his best inspirations from it. "Where," said he, "is the wit of your salons, the independence of your writers, the charm and influence of your women? What have you received in exchange for all these, which have fled forever? I would not give the remembrance of these times for all the novelty, and what you call improvements of the social system of to-day, even with the youth and spirit necessary to enjoyment. 'Tis true, there were abuse and exaggeration in many of our institutions, but where is the system in which these do not exist? If our people were devoured with misery and taxes, yours is wasting to the core with envy and discontent. Our noblesse was corrupt and prodigal; yours is bourgeoise and miserly—greater evils still for the prosperity of the nation. If our king had many mistresses, yours has many masters. Has he gained by the exchange? Thus you see it clearly demonstrated, that not one of the three orders has advanced in happiness by these wonderful improvements which you so much admire."[26] This is a strange testimony to the blessings of revolution on a grand scale, and from one, too, who had been in the midst of it as a prominent actor; but we suspect it is what most others, in like circumstances, would give were they candid, and what, after all, is simply true. Let any man of sound understanding look at France now, and say what she has gained, or the world through her, from the last outburst of popular fury; which has not only left her the prey of charlatanism, but made her the victim of the grossest passions. Talleyrand was, undoubtedly, right in his retrospect, but his healthy convictions came too late to be of any use.

Of Talleyrand's literary habits little is known that can be relied upon, but M. Colmache tells as, that "he could neither write nor dictate with ease"; and that the most trifling productions of his pen caused him as much trouble as the most elaborate dispatch. This may have proceeded from fastidiousness in the choice of language, but was, most probably, attributable to the defects of his education, and to the want of early practice in composition. We are not told what kind of reading pleased him, nor whether he was addicted to books; but he was a great admirer of Voltaire, with whom he had conversed in early life, and whose style, of its class, is perfect. He always deplored the scantiness of his classical attainments, and, particularly, his ignorance of the Greek tongue; and, so far as this volume teaches us, he would not appear to have been what it is customary to call a learned man. M. Colmache gives us certain "maxims for seasoning conversation," which, he says, were Talleyrand's, but which convey to the mind the idea of a lively and acute, rather than that of a profound thinker. If they want the bitterness of Rochefoucauld, they have not the point and pith of Bacon, nor the gravity of Locke. Three of these may suffice as specimens, and as favorable ones:

"Both erudition and agriculture ought to be encouraged by government; wit and manufactures will come of themselves.

"Metaphysics always remind me of the caravanseras in the desert. They stand solitary and unsupported, and are always ready to crumble into ruin.

"A great capitalist is like a vast lake, upon whose bosom ships can navigate; but which is useless to the country, because no stream issues therefrom to fertilize the land."

M. Colmache professes to give two fragments of the Memoirs, but he does not state how he came by them, and we doubt the fact of their being genuine. They are gracefully written, however, and that on the death of Mr. Fox particularly so. In his "Maxims" he speaks of women disrespectfully—a consequence, no doubt, of his disregard for the domestic virtues, and of the dissolute manners which prevailed in the higher ranks of French society in his time—and of the priesthood contemptuously. No hatred is so intense, or so durable, as that which is begotten of apostasy; and a renegade clerk, or a renegade politician, may be always expected to rail fiercely against his original creed. In his personal habits, the Prince of the Empire would seem to have adhered closely to the manners of the ancien regime, in the bosom of which he had been nurtured. He was courtly, formal, and somewhat exclusive; but his rigid temperance, and his regularity were proper to the man, and neither to the past nor present age. Of his bons mots we have a sprinkling, and but a sprinkling, in this volume; but the celebrated one about language is not there, though others of less piquancy are. Did M. Colmache consider it of apocryphal authenticity? We suspect so.

To sum up, then, What was the character of M. de Talleyrand? Of his extraordinary abilities there is no question, since men of every variety of feeling and position have borne testimony to them; but, was he great, great as we esteem any of the models of our own, or other countries? We think not. Celebrated he might be, but great he was not. No intensely selfish man like Talleyrand can ever become so. Where there is so much individual concentration, there is no room left for that expansion of the faculties of the soul upon which true renown rests, and out of which it springs. The region in which the mind acts is, necessarily, circumscribed by the constant pressure of a never-absent egotism; and when this mental constitution happens to be united to timidity, distrust, and temperamental coldness, greatness ceases to be a possible achievement. Moreover, he wanted principle, which is the natural foundation of public virtue; and he had no higher an idea of morality than its conveniency. His sense of propriety, which, in some cases was high, was merely a conventional instinct but it was derived from no anterior obligation, and recognized no source more elevated than the canons of society. Of duty (that sacred word!) in its English sense, he had not the faintest conception; and provided that his person was protected, and his fortunes advanced, it was a matter of absolute indifference to him what master he served, or in what cause he enlisted. The first revolution, the empire, the restoration, and the throne of the barricades, all found in him a willing and an able instrument, and yet he proved faithless to all; for, though we have not circumstantial proof of this as to the last, his growing discontent with Louis Philippe shows clearly, that the political weathercock was again veering. Even when we make allowance for the very peculiar circumstances by which he was surrounded from his entry into life until his exit from it, it is impossible to doubt that this versatility was a consequence of a particular mental organization, and that, if rigorously analyzed, its causes would be found to resolve themselves into habits of reasoning upon men and things from which courage, generosity, and masculine disinterestedness, were carefully excluded. Patriotism may be pleaded in justification—it is a ready argument, and a common defense; but, ample as its proportions are, it will not cover every thing: besides that, in Talleyrand's case it was a non-existence, for of that holy love of country which the word is designed to convey, and which is the fruitful mother of moral heroism, he had not one particle. He might be, and no doubt was, the clever minister of a system, whatever that system chanced to be, and we know that he carried out the views of his immediate employers a toute outrance, and without the slightest regard to their future social or political consequences; but of any grand conceptions resting upon the rights, or contemplating the happiness of mankind, and discriminated from the claims of an existing dynasty, be it democratical or monarchical, he was utterly incapable. Carpe diem was his motto, and he was faithful to it; but however proper that Epicurean maxim might have been in the mouth of a Roman poet, or however truly it might depict the philosophy of a Roman courtesan, it is the deadly antagonist of greatness, which it blights in the bud. Out of such a nature as this—a nature unequal to the slightest sacrifice for the benefit of others, conservative of itself, and indifferent to all the world besides, it is impossible to make a great, though it may be easy enough to make a celebrated man—and such we take M. de Talleyrand, Prince de Benevento, to have been.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: Revelations of the Life of Prince Talleyrand. Edited from the Papers of the late M. Colmache, Private Secretary to the Prince. Second Edition. One Volume. London, 1850. H. Colburn.]

[Footnote 18: Suetonius, in Vita, cap. 92.]

[Footnote 19: [Greek: Onar ek Dios estin].]

[Footnote 20: Voice from St. Helena.]

[Footnote 21: The reader will perceive that this was written before the death of Louis Philippe, which took place at Claremont on the 26th day of August last.]

[Footnote 22: The italics are not ours.]

[Footnote 23: See Caulincourt's Recollections, &c. vol. ii. Appendix.]

[Footnote 24: Caulincourt, vol. ii. p. 274, 5.]

[Footnote 25: The particulars have been gleaned from a few scanty notices contained in an unpublished volume by the late George Macintosh, Esq., the nephew of the Mr. Wm. Macintosh spoken of above, entitled, Biographical Memoir of the late Charles Macintosh, Esq., F.R.S. &c. &c. Glasgow, 1847.]

[Footnote 26: P. 210. The italics are in the original.]



THE DANGERS OF DOING WRONG. A TALE OF THE SEA-SIDE.

BY AGNES STRICKLAND.

"And so you will not join our party to Dunwich fair to-morrow, Elizabeth?" said Margaret Blackbourne to the pretty daughter of the Vicar of Southwold, with whom she was returning from a long ramble along the broken cliffs toward Eastern Bavent, one lovely July evening in the year 1616.

Southwold, be it known to such of my readers as may happen to be unacquainted with its locale, is a pretty retired bathing town on the coast of Suffolk, remarkable for its picturesque scenery and salubrious air. At the time when the events on which my tale is founded took place, Southwold, though it boasted none of the pretty marine villas which now grace the Gunhill and centre cliffs, was a place of greater wealth and importance than with all its modern improvements it is at present. It was then one of the most flourishing sea-ports in Suffolk, and occasionally sheltered in its ample bay the stateliest ships in the British navy. And, in addition to the little corn-brigs and colliers, whose light sails alone vary the blue expanse of waters, a mighty fleet of vessels of war might not unfrequently be seen stretching in majestic order along the undulating coast between Eastenness and Dunwich, and the more remote promontory of Orford-Ness. Dunwich, too, that Tyre of the East Angles, sat not then so wholly desolate on her crumbling cliff as now overlooking, in dust and ashes, the devouring waves of the German ocean in which her former glory lies buried two centuries ago. Dunwich, however changed and fallen from what she was in olden time, still retained the rank of a city; and, instead of the miserable horde of smugglers' and fishermen's huts we now behold, with the roofless remains of one lonely church, there were busy and populous streets, with shops, and some appearances of maritime enterprise and mercantile prosperity. The annual fair, which still takes place there on St. James's-day, was at that time considered as a most attractive holiday by the denizens of all the scattered towns and villages along that picturesque coast. Many a well-manned yawl and light sailing-vessel would, in those days, put off from Southwold, Lowestofft, or Aldborough, freighted with a pleasure-loving crew, eager to enjoy a summer voyage and a merry day at old Dunwich.