Chapter IV: Part 4

Under the old regime in France, the first symptom of a woman’s intending to “give herself to God” (_se donner à Dieu_, as the phrase ran) was her giving up rouge; so that paint and piety became inseparably connected in the minds of the demi-saints, and demireps, of the profligate reign of Louis XIV. “La Princesse d’Harcourt,” says Madame de Coulanges, in one of her letters, “has appeared at court, without rouge. This is a circumstance which, for the present, absorbs every other: one may add, that it is a great sacrifice.”

This outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, this toilette baptism of regeneration, is not peculiar to Catholics. The sacrifice of rouge is but the grey gown and little bonnet of an English Methodist; and the rigorous proscription of gay colours of the Protestant sectarian is but the counterpart of what appears so ridiculous in the French penitent, “_qui se jette dans la dévotion_,”—who gives herself up to Heaven when nobody else will have her. On this subject, Madame du Deffand, the blind and aged enamorata of Horace Walpole, is singularly pleasant. When she was young and pretty, and the enamorata of the President d’Hainhault, she took a sudden fit of devotion; and her director stipulated for the usual sacrifices. Fasts, prayers, &c. &c. were promised at the first word; but when it came to love, and the toilette, she cut him short at once, with “_pour ce qui est du rouge, et du président, je ne leur ferai pas l’honneur de les quitter_.”[27]

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.

“We dined at Mr. H.’s,” says Bozzy, in his delightful book of twaddle, which has proved such an evidence of the world’s love of idle gossip—“We dined at Mr. H.’s (Dr. Johnson and myself), and Mr. H. expected Miss Helen Maria Williams. He gave her Ode on Peace to Dr. Johnson; and when this amiable, elegant, and accomplished young lady entered, he (Dr. J.) took her hand in the most courteous manner, and repeated the finest stanza of her poem. He complained of ill health, and said to Miss Williams, ‘I am very ill, when you are near me; what should I be if you were at a distance?’”

Young, amiable, elegant, and a poetess! Sylphs, nymphs, and muses, how ye glided before me when, at sixteen, I read this passage in a green arbour at B—— Castle! Then, to think of Dr. Cerberus growling gallantries: hearts of stone! what were your callosity under the influence of Helen Maria’s eyes! I immediately wrote an ode to Helen Maria Williams, with all the rhymes borrowed from Pope’s Essay on Man, and all the spirit from Anna Matilda’s Farewell to Della Crusca (my constant study). My ode was quite as good as the poetry of rhyming young ladies of sixteen generally is. There was not an original thought in it; but then there were such pretty sounding words! and it began, too, I remember, with “Oh! thou.” I was most desirous to send my ode to Miss Williams without knowing any thing of her “whereabouts,” partly for her sake, and very much for my own; for I really thought the composition Sapphic, and when my volume of poems was published immediately after, (my _début_ in authorship, of which nobody ever heard,) I was no less anxious to print it. But I did not. Still, however, my imagination was full of its fair subject, of whom I only knew what Bozzy had told me; and the lapse of time which had intervened since he wrote, never suggested itself.

I was then in the commencement of my intimacy with Mrs. Le Fanu, the presiding priestess of the muses in Dublin; and I wrote to her on the subject, and received the following pleasant and sensible letter, which I have just tossed out of my portfolio, and which has brought the long forgotten subject to my recollection, in all its original freshness. The whole letter is so fair a specimen of the style of the literary ladies of the old school, so like the charming conversation of the writer, and so good a lesson to young ladies who write odes, and who read and write sentimental novels, (besides its coming from a Sheridan,) that I will transcribe it at large.

“Imagine to yourself, _ma belle amie_, how very _gay_ I must
feel, when I tell you I have had a confinement of near five
weeks. I caught a feverish cold and sore throat, and, at the
end of a fortnight, supposing myself in a manner well, I went
out to take the air, or rather the damp, (for nothing else was
to be had;) and I came home with rheumatic pains, first in
my lungs, which removed to my right shoulder and arm, which
confined me to my bed, where I was as agreeably as St. Laurence
on his gridiron. Thank God I am better, and hope revives,
though the season be cheerless; but every day brings us nearer
the spring, and as Madame de Sévigné observes, no one stops
short in the midst of a month, or a bad road, for want of
power to get through it. So _vive la patience_, best friend in
sickness or sorrow. You recollect, no doubt, Mason’s beautiful
personification of it, in Elfrida. ‘Patience here, her meek
hands folded on her modest breast, in mute submission lifts the
adoring eye, even to the storm that wrecks her.’ The following
is (I think) no bad invocation to the temperate goddess:—

‘Oh! Patience, heavenly power, hear!
Be ever to thy suppliant near,
Nor let one murmur rise;
Since still some mighty joys are given,
Dear to her soul, the gift of heaven,
The sweet domestic ties.’

You are precisely at the age; you are exactly of the character
of mind to admire more the splendid than the useful virtues.
They ever attract and still deceive. How many have lulled
themselves into perfect self-satisfaction upon the strength of
quick feelings, tender emotions, and easily excited sympathies,
who have never practised the every-day qualities that come
perpetually into play, and are essential to human happiness.
Good humour, according to Johnson’s definition, endurance
of the follies and absurdities of others, appear qualities
of such easy attainment, that they are neglected as vulgar.
What a mistake—how fatal in its consequences! Talents extort
admiration; but genuine and habitual affectionate feelings
alone beget love. Well has Rousseau insisted so much upon the
‘_cœur aimant_’ of Julie. I know two women, both highly gifted,
the one of very striking and generally admired talents, the
other possessing taste and powers of conversation in a very
high degree, yet neither of them can boast the possession
of one friend even in their own families. For, ‘proud with
opinion of superior merit,’ it tinctures their manners, it
renders even their condescension offensive. And à propos to
remarkable women, Helen Maria Williams’s history is briefly
as follows:—I believe it is many years since she first came
forward as a literary character. The novel of Julia was, I
think, her first publication: it has merit, but certainly a
very bad tendency—some of the poetry in it is, I think, very
beautiful. She was soon known to Dr. Johnson and other literary
characters. She was at that time not more than twenty. The
year after the French revolution, she was in Paris, and was
present at a meeting of the National Assembly, of which she
gives a very lively picture. In Paris she met a Mr. Stone, a
married man; but with a noble disdain of every opinion we are
bound by the laws of God and man to respect, she chose this
gentleman for her companion in a tour to Switzerland. Perhaps
you will think me harsh in my judgment, but certainly a woman
possessing those talents that necessarily imply strong and
delicate feelings, more justly incurs blame than another, when
she sacrifices to passion the respectability of her character,
and voluntarily incurs contempt when she might command respect
and admiration. She becomes useless when she might highly
benefit her fellow-creatures.[28]

“As I have not been out, I gave your two commissions to Tom.
Archer has not yet received the English edition of St. Clair.
He also called at Power’s music shop, who lays the fault upon
Stevenson that Castle Hyde has not yet come out. He has had it,
I know not what time, to put basses to it.

“I have just been reading St. Clair for the third time, and
was more pleased with it than at first, but I think the hero
and heroine very dangerous people. You will tell me that
the catastrophe would prevent any mischief arising from the
witchery of such characters. I do not think so, for we all know
that people are not punished in this world because they are
vicious; and (as Horatio has it) ‘to be good’ is not always ‘to
be happy.’ Moralists lead you into errors, and often throw you
into despair, when they tell you so; for if _you are_ good to
the best of your lights and means, and the events of your life
are disastrous, you will certainly not feel _happy_, though you
may be resigned; and you will then, like Burgher’s Leonora,
either be tempted to arraign Providence, or reject altogether
doctrines, of which you have found the fallacy.”

Time passed: and it became my turn to receive odes from young ladies in the country, beginning “Oh thou,” quite as good and as poetical as my own. Yet oh! how many successive idols of admiration had my fancy erected in the interval. There was Miss Edgeworth, and Madame de Staël, and Madame Cottin, and Miss Baillie, and a long _et cetera_ of literary females, to each and all of whom I felt the sincerest gratitude for the amusement and instruction they afforded me, though I did not write them odes to tell them so.

On my arrival in Paris in 1816, I found that I also had my _petit bout de réputation_, such as it was; that my letters of recommendation were letters of supererogation, and that I had nothing to do, but sit quiet (no very easy task by the by for me), and to see and receive all that was best worth seeing and receiving in France. On looking over a list of visitors, one day, presented by Pierre, the porter of the Hôtel d’Orléans, I read the immortal name of Humboldt, and under it, Helen Maria Williams, Rue de Bondi. A visit from Humboldt was always an epoch; and a visit from Helen Maria, the amiable and elegant, the subject of my first ode, was no vulgar event. I made my inquiries as to the present position of the admired of Dr. Johnson, and the adored of Bozzy; and learned that for the last quarter of a century she had lived in literary retirement, in the neighbourhood of the Sévignés, and the Ninons; that she was much beloved and esteemed, surrounded by a circle of sober, sedate, literary friends, and much _liée_ with the enlightened Protestant party in France, and their excellent chief, who (with the name of the protestant Pope, given him by Napoleon) was respectable and influential with all parties. I immediately returned her visit, wrote my name at her door, and shortly after received an invitation to a _soirée_, which I accepted.

I happened to be asked, for this very same evening, to a ball at Lord H——k’s; and was accordingly obliged to go to Miss Williams’s sober and learned party in all the _tulle_ and tiffany of a _robe purée_. We were ushered into just such a room as that, in which one might suppose Mad. du Deffand received her coterie. A few wax lights dimly discovered its gloomy vastness; and “in the haze of distance,” a row of large, dark bonnets, was visible, which, on a nearer approach, obviously gave shelter to as many intelligent, but not very blooming countenances. Small groups of men recalling the _hommes de lettres_ of old France, were scattered, in earnest conversation; and tea and refreshments were serving round by a servant, who looked as wise, and literary as the rest of the party.

My celebrated hostess rose to receive me from her ponderous chair, which formed the centre of her circle, with as much graciousness and cordiality as can well be conceived. Every look was a welcome, every word an eulogium, and every tone as musical and as modulated as the most fastidious ear could desire. But oh! Sylphs, nymphs, and Muses, and you, bright image of my youthful dreams, young, elegant, and amiable, Helen Maria Williams, did I at last find you in the bulky, formless, and faded old lady, who now stood before me! Although I ought to have expected this, I was not prepared for it. In spite of Mrs. Le Fanu’s letters, written years before, I had not got a step farther than Bozzy’s description: and when the high bred Miss Williams handed me, with true French ceremony, to the _bergère_ at her right, and thus incorporated me with the learned ladies of her society, it required some minutes to recover from the shock of my disappointment. My frippery appearance, too, was such an anomaly in this demure and sober circle. What I would have given for a _douillette bien ouattée_, or a coal-box bonnet to cover my bare head; (the identical head with which I had appeared at Lady Cork’s a few years before, and which I have worn, for divers reasons of convenience and economy, down to this very winter, 1828, when I find it more decent, though not quite so economical, to shelter it under the shade of a hat or a _beret_, _afin de prendre mon parti_). Let me add, that it is easier to take arms against twenty Popes, and Emperors of Austria, and stand the attacks of fifty Quarterlies, with the new reinforcement of Mr. L—— to boot, than to stare the first symptom of a furrow in the face, and announce such an epoch without shrinking: thus then I fairly announce myself to be no longer what the _Journal des Débats_ once so pleasantly called me, “_Cette jeune dame, qui a été jeune si long-tems_.”[29]

As neither wit, learning, nor age, exempts a French woman from the interests of the toilette, (and Madame Dacier herself was, I have no doubt, a _petite maîtresse_,) we had scarcely warmed into intimacy over the subject of Madame de Staël’s new work on the Revolution (which, by the by, drew forth some very entertaining and characteristic anecdotes of that lady’s recent residence in Paris, and her admiration for the Emperor of Russia, and the Duke of Wellington), when one of the ladies complimented me on my dress; it was said to be _à la rigueur_, for the season, and supposed to be from the fabrique of Le Roi. When I said that I made all my own dresses myself, exclamations from all sides poured in! Did ever any body make a dress, that did not serve her time to the mysteries of the craft; but, above all, a literary lady—an authoress—a _femme savante_, working at the needle! I soon set them right as to my learning, by the assurance, that, except a very little bog Latin picked up from a hedge schoolmaster in the wilds of Ireland, I knew nothing of any learning whatever; that my authorship had originated in dire necessity; that being obliged to read and write books for many hours per day, I never talked of them; and that above all, “_Mon métier à moi, c’êtait d’étre femme_;” and so the conversation took a very _enjouée_ turn.

The amiable protestant Pope, and others of the gentlemen, enlarged our circle; and the hours passed away so lightly, that it was late when I left the dim rooms and clever circle of Helen Maria Williams, for the splendid and brilliant salon of our ex-Irish lady lieutenant, in the Faubourg St. Honoré, (by the by, one of the few vice-queens who have left behind them an indelible remembrance of virtues, that threw a lustre upon her high position, and of accomplishments that render it the fashion to be gifted, even in that land, where talent is but another word for proscription!) I cannot better close these recollections of my acquaintance with Miss Williams, than by giving one, or two, of the many notes with which she honoured me, as being extremely illustrative of a certain pretty tone of _cajolerie_, which always flattered its object, without degrading the writer. “_Vous me flattez, coquin, mais n’importe; flattez toujours._”[30]

“What poetical fictions did I indulge myself in, when I
believed all Lady Morgan’s kind promises, repeated with all
her graces and enchantments, of returning soon to the _Rue
de Bondi_. I feel quite disposed to _bouder_; and yet Lady
Morgan can instantly make her peace with me, by consenting to
come with Sir Charles on Sunday next. I shall be extremely
flattered, if I am not refused. _Milles tendres complimens._

“H. M. WILLIAMS.”

“_Thursday, Rue de Bondi._”

“Miss H. M. Williams, lest she should not be so fortunate as
to find Lady Morgan at home, writes this note to express her
regret, and almost even to _complain_ that her ladyship has
only found time to bestow upon her one transient visit, since
her arrival at Paris. Lady Morgan is not one of those passing
travellers, whom having seen once, one can easily be resigned
to see no more. H. M. W. is therefore extremely flattered to
hear from her friend Mr. Warden, that Lady Morgan had expressed
something like a kind purpose of returning. Will she do H. M.
W. the honour of passing an hour with her on Sunday evening
next, with Sir Charles, to whom she begs her particular
compliments. H. M. W. wishes it the more, as she expects a
friend on Sunday, who has the greatest desire to be presented
to Lady Morgan, whom he has long admired at a distance.”

“_Friday, July 5th, Rue de Bondi._”

Oh! dear! I am ready to _pamer_ over this allusion to my “graces and enchantments,” after being called an Irish she wolf, in Blackwood’s, and indexed in the Quarterly for “my unwomanly brutality.” Since I wrote the above, in great _gaieté de cœur_, I received a letter from a mutual friend of Miss Williams and myself, inclosing the following paragraph from a French paper.

“DEATH OF HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.

“We ought to devote a few lines to the memory of a literary
lady, whose name is dear to the friends of public liberty. Mrs.
Helen Maria Williams, the author of a vast number of political
and poetical works, lately died at Paris, after a long illness.
This lady left England for France, to assist in the important
events of the Revolution. Since 1790, she has constantly
resided at Paris. She contracted an intimate acquaintance with
the most ardent and most disinterested patriots. She was the
friend of Madame Roland, and the Girondins. Since that period,
she has related the different events of our Revolution in a
series of works published at London, and which have served to
direct the opinion of England and the United States to the
facts of the French Revolution. To these literary claims, she
joined qualities of mind equally affectionate and intelligent.
She was always the patron of the poor; and frequently, in the
class of unfortunate literary men, her kindness was extended
to that independent merit, which is ashamed to solicit. She
published her ‘_Souvenirs de la Révolution_,’ the analysis of
which was suppressed by the Censorship. The last wishes of this
distinguished woman were in favour of the heroes who overcame
barbarity at Navarin. Her death has plunged her family and
numerous friends in the bitterest grief.”—_Constitutionnel._

NO POPERY.

The Duchess of Marlborough, when ill of an ague, refused to take the cinchona, because it was called at that time, Jesuit’s bark. The clergy at the reformation were wiser, inasmuch as they did not refuse to take the papistical tithes: for all the rest, our no-popery legislators are pretty much on an intellectual par with poor Sarah.

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS.

The comparison of logic to matrimony, one of the most diverting passages in Martinus Scriblerus, is copied from the Nuptiæ Peripateticæ of Caspar Burlæus.

EXERCISE.

“When I consider the physical structure of man,” said Frederick the Great, “it appears to me, as if nature had formed us rather to be postilions, than sedentary men of letters.” There is some exaggeration in this. We hear a good deal of the diseases of literary men, because literary men are most interested in their own afflictions; and they hold the pen in their own hands; but the diseases peculiar to excessive exertion are not less numerous, nor severe, than those of excessive repose. Besides, half the so called desk diseases arise from the combination of excessive nourishment, with sedentary habits. Like all other machines, the human frame wears out the most rapidly, in those parts, where there is the greatest friction and strain. Continued exercise of the brain is very exhausting, and occasions a demand for nourishment and for stimulation, greater than is consonant with health. Most literary men are _tant soit peu gourmands_; and they pay the penalty of their indulgence the more, because they neglect a regular and gentle exercise. That nature did not intend us for postilions, is evident in the abridged lives, and diseased, deformed, and premature old age of the working population.

BOMBAZEEN.

This article of dress should be written bombycine. It is a texture of worsted and of silk, the latter substance being the produce of the animal termed bombyx.

LAW.

Truth is the last object of legal research. Under most arbitrary governments, the law seems calculated to condemn the innocent: so anxious are the lawgivers to prevent the escape of the guilty. The English criminal procedure appears as directly aimed at screening offenders, under a false notion of protecting the innocent. Which is the most mischievous, it would be difficult to determine. The great object of investigating the truth, at once protects the public, and the lawful interests of individuals; while the business of the advocate is professedly to serve his client to the uttermost, and to lay aside all considerations of justice in his favour. In this he far exceeds the egotism of the parties themselves, who, if they pleaded their own cause, would be checked in their misrepresentations and quibbles, by some sense of shame, by some fear of the prejudice which detected falsehood would excite against them. Whereas the lawyer glories in his sophistical ingenuity; and if baffled in his effort, bears the whole blame for the bad spirit in which he has acted. Thus it happens most frequently that we do not try the accused, but the indictment; the overt act is lost in the accidents; the innocent are acquitted without the re-establishment of character, and the guilty are let loose, to renew their aggressions on society. Yet the law is the perfection of human reason!!

RICHES.

La Bruyère observes, “_Il se croit des talens et de l’esprit; il est riche._” This is the counter error to that of men of merit who complain that they have not attained wealth. The acquisition of large fortunes, in as far as it is not altogether a matter of accident, requires the exercise of far other faculties than wit and intellect: and it would be as reasonable to complain that this species of merit will not ensure health, as that it will not procure money.

TRUTH.

The love which most men have for truth, arises from the desire to make their own falsehood available. If falsehood were general in society, no man would be believed, and deceit would be impossible. It was a keen remark, that Fielding has, I believe, placed in the mouth of Jonathan Wild, that a lie is too precious a thing to be wasted. Truth is the first interest of society; more harm is done by falsehood in an hour, than by violence in a year: yet have all nations paid dearly for establishments, calculated for the express purpose of confining inquiry in one exclusive direction, and shutting out all other avenues of light but their own.

WOMAN’S LOVE.

What a gift, or rather what a fatal necessity is the temperament which leads to the living out of one’s self, and becoming bound up in the existence of another, over whose will, passions, and conduct, one has no controul! This faculty of devotedness is, I suspect, peculiar to females. It is quite possible that a woman, to whom honour and reputation are dearer than life, should risk them a thousand times for the man she loves (particularly if he be her husband), to save his life and honour. The attachment of a man, however strong and tender, would not reach this. We women love the person beyond all abstract principle; and the error (for it is an error in morals) is seated in the organization which makes us wives and mothers. Men love principles, and even prejudices, more than the persons they love best; that is, they love themselves best of all, and love themselves in that point of honour on which the world’s opinion depends.

“I could not love thee, dear, so well,
Loved I not honour more.”

Ah! this “_honour more_!”

Every woman has not the “_cœur aimant_” of Julie: women of gallantry never,—coquettes and prudes rarely. Still, woman may be defined a loving animal, and _tant pis pour elle_.

MALTHUS.

Cobbett and the Irish reformers look with detestation on Malthus and his doctrines: and many “right thinking” persons, as they call themselves, fancy that they have discovered a valuable ally in him. The same error is common to both. If Malthus’s position be true, (and no naturalist can doubt it,) it follows as a matter of demonstration, that there is a greater necessity for political freedom. The greater the obstacles nature opposes to man’s comfortable existence, the greater efforts are required to overcome them, and the greater is the necessity that all his powers should be developed to the uttermost. Hitherto the animal has been fully equal to the task of self-subsistence, wherever bad governments have not interfered with the natural distribution of the products of industry, and quartered noble indigence upon plebeian activity. Civilization confers an increased power over the elements, and a corresponding facility in manufacturing food; but unjust governments weigh down the labourer, and avail themselves of every improvement to increase the lion’s share of the product. Malthus, properly understood, is a powerful radical reformer.

PATERNAL BENEDICTIONS.

Madame de Genlis regrets the abandonment of the nightly ceremony of paternal benedictions (Dict. des Etiquettes). The mere repetition, however, must destroy any efficacy it might be supposed to possess, in forcing good conduct. A benediction is at first valued as a reward of virtue, or a symbol of pardon for repented error: but it inevitably becomes a thing of course; and is desired for its own sake alone, or as a pledge of the favourable prepossession of a doating old man who has something to leave.

If a benediction be supposed to possess efficacy in procuring good to its object, so also must a curse be potent in evil; and by the prevalence of this notion, the delirious ravings of disappointed ambition may become the cause of misery to the innocent. Thus considered, the benediction enters into the category of spells and enchantments; and the formulary once recited, the omnipotence of heaven is enchained to the performance of its conditions. This is a most degrading superstition; and, like all similar errors, it cannot in the long run be serviceable to the species. Its obvious ill effect is to make the will of others, and not the morality of things, the standard of action.

SENTIMENT.

Sentiment is at best an invention of vanity to mask the infirmities of mind and body: no wonder that it so easily lapses into affectation. Joseph Surface is but a cynical display of what passes in the mind of the great majority of the species; and of what the hypocrite is as anxious to hide from himself as from the rest of the world. Marriage is the grave of sentimentality; because the parties are like Cicero’s Augurs; they cannot carry on the farce, and keep their countenance.

PRESENTS.

The great are fond of presents; but they are superlatively ungrateful. Little people, in their need of protection, instinctively apply to the great, with a bribe in their hand: and they do so wisely. Flattered self-love yields what justice or benevolence alone might deny. It is, however, by a succession of trifling gifts that the experienced toad-eater makes way with a patron. Women (_par parenthèse_) enter into the details of toad-eating much better than men.

An ignoramus offers something valuable, something above his means to afford; and he “takes nothing by the motion;” for neither money, nor money’s worth is valued by those whose wants are supplied as soon as they arise. Such persons receive without compunction or consideration; and are neither obliged, nor disposed to return in kind. It is courtesy, and not pecuniary value they want; and it enters not into their conception that the value, which is nothing to them, may be an inconvenient sacrifice to the donor. Valuable presents must be rare; while it is unceasing homage that wins. The spooneys alone are taken in, and strive to astonish by the splendour of their gifts. The “able-bodied” toadies “win with honest trifles to betray to deepest consequences.”

Kings, however, like substantial presents; but they will take anything, even from the poorest of their subjects. When George the Third went to return thanksgivings at St. Paul’s, on the recovery of his health, a picture was made by Dayes of the ceremony in the interior of the church. This picture was bought by an engraver, and a print executed from it; and an application was made for the king’s permission to dedicate the work to him. The permission was graciously granted by that patron of the arts; with a stipulation that the original picture should be consigned to himself: a proposition with which the spirited engraver refused to comply.

Courtiers laud the liberality of kings; and, in the eyes of poets laureate, regal munificence is the first of virtues: but a present-taking king is less mischievous than he, whom a silly vanity and ignorance of the value of money, betrays into wasting the treasure which is not his own. Besides, a greedy monarch is further excusable, inasmuch as the cupidity of those who surround him, may be supposed to give an intelligible lesson: he has only to profit by the example.

PER CONTRA.

If the great are fond of presents, the little make their gifts in the same spirit, in which the farmer commits the seed to the earth. M——, in reading Lucian this morning at breakfast, hit upon this curious question: whether, on occasion of some general assembly of the gods, the divinities should take precedence according to the respective value of their materials, as images, or according to the merit of their sculpture. The more weighty consideration very properly carried the day; for the gods, both of this world and the other, are honoured only as they have something to bestow. The reverence for mere wealth, which is the besetting sin of the English character, is a sad mark of moral degradation; but it is at least wiser than a stupid admiration of the oppressors and destroyers of mankind, or an adoration of titles, ribbons, and the accident of noble birth. It is a mistake to suppose that the homage paid to riches is an homage to the folly or roguery of the possessor: it is to his merit and utility as a conduit pipe, for distributing that, of which every one is desirous, that the worship is offered. The honors paid to mere aristocracy are like a pompous inscription over a dry pump; compared with which, Rothschildolatry is a return to simple nature.

EDUCATION.

The great error of all systems of education is, that they are systems;—schemes built upon moral theories, instead of developments of physiological facts; they are the result of a neglect of elements which are indestructible, in the attempt to establish doctrines which are hypothetical. Even Pestalozzi’s system has this radical defect. His doctrine of “_la foi et l’amour_,” which he has taken for its basis, or “that which children feel for their parents,” is to me unintelligible; for schoolmasters are not, and cannot be, parents; and his rejection of emulation, as a germ of dangerous passions,[31] is utterly unphilosophical. Until Nature ceases to give passions, man must use them. The lever of all action is motive.

TEMPERAMENT.

All character, and much of conduct, is a mere affair of temperament. Early association will do something in forming opinions; precepts may modify, and example influence; but nothing will give sensibility, where nature has denied it. Something may be effected by the friend or the physician; and caution and calomel may tell, in the long run. Nero, perhaps, might have been bled down to a maudlin methodist; but returning health would have raised him to the zeal of a St. Dominick; and on a perfect convalescence, he would have ceased to cant, and began to burn. In General Count P. de Ségur’s beautiful work, in which the story of a campaign is given, with all the charm of a romance, and all the dignity of an epic, the author accounts for the Russian war, and the headlong precipitation with which it was conducted, on the simple principle of a latent malady “in the world’s great master,” which sharpened his passions, and urged him to his ruin; “an acrid humour which reigned in his blood, which he considered as the cause of his irascibility, but without which,” said Napoleon himself, “there is no gaining battles.” “Which of us,” adds the author, “has penetrated sufficiently into the human organization to affirm, that this hidden vice was not one of the causes of that restless activity, which hurried on events, and occasioned at once his grandeur and his fall?”

How these French soldiers write! Bred in the “tented field,” where have they acquired the style so finely fitted to their subject, and the philosophy that belongs to their age? Who are the historians of the last thirty years, of the greatest events that ever shook the governments of the earth to their centre?—not the “_hommes de lettres_” of France,—not her _académiciens_,—nor her ex-ministers and statesmen, “_rompus et corrompus_,”—nor her professed authors;—they are the gallant soldiers who witnessed the events they so eloquently describe, and who call on cotemporary testimony to corroborate their statements. Ségur, Rovigo, Foi, Rapp, Dumas, Montholon, De Rocca, &c. &c.—these are the historiographers of modern France, and well worth Racine, and all the other bland and laudatory chroniclers of church and state, who wrote under the _surveillance_ of the Maintenons, the Montespans, and their complaisant ministers, or influential valets and _femmes de chambre_.

INFANT BAPTISM.

Many suppose that the practice of infant baptism is derived from a Hebrew rite; but the oriental Christians, by whom baptism was first adopted, confined that ceremony to adults. It seems probable that the modern usage was introduced into the western church, in imitation of the lustration of the Romans; a ceremony performed, according to Macrobius, on the ninth day after birth with males, and on the eighth with females.[32]

LOGIC OF FINE WRITERS.

“Chateaubriand, speaking of the variety and extent of modern
discoveries, observes ‘Le Génie de l’homme est véritablement
trop grand pour sa petite habitation; il faut en conclure qu’il
est destiné à une plus haute demeure.’”[33]

_Voyage en Italie et en Amérique_.

This is a good specimen of the logic of “fine writing,” “plenty of eloquence, and little wisdom.” What a sweeping conclusion from one little word (_trop_)! Man is _too_ great for this world, and therefore he belongs to another! Never was an oratorical exaggeration worse applied. Amidst all the magnificent results of human ingenuity, which have thus powerfully excited the susceptible imagination of the French academician, want, and disease, and ignorance, are still the especial characteristics of the species. No where are the essentials of good government generally understood; still less so the art of maintaining public liberty, when once acquired. No where is morality independent of the executioner,—no where is life maintained by the great bulk of the community at a less expence, than that of constant unremitting labour. Look at that half-starved moving mass of rags, by courtesy called an Irish peasant; reflect upon his helpless incapacity, his physical destitution, his moral annihilation! Yet is he the subject of an empire, in which all the powers of the species are carried to the highest point of development, to which man has ever reached. Might we not equally conclude, from this spectacle, that the human animal is so ill adapted to his mundane existence, that he must be intended for another? Stripped of all exaggeration, the adaptation of our intellectual powers to our necessities, though exceedingly imperfect, is still abundantly sufficient to carry conviction, that the earth is the sojourn of man’s especial destiny: whether, with Chateaubriand, we are to jump to a conclusion, and say, “_therefore_ he is destined to no other,” I leave to the consideration of those who have no better argument for determining their faith.

PHILOSOPHY.

“Donner à l’oubli le passé,
Le présent à l’indifférence,
Et, pour vivre débarrassé,
L’avenir à la Providence.”[34]

What excellent advice, if it were in every one’s power to adopt it: but the colour of a man’s philosophy is, after all, no more at his own disposal, than the colour of his eyebrows. Both depend upon the same cause, the temperament of the subject. The stoics and the epicureans have been thought to differ only in words; and, as far as mere reason is concerned, an accurate definition would force agreement between them. But till the stoic can be cured of his bile, and his habitually uneasy sensations, or the constitutional indolence of the epicurean can be broken down by disease and misfortunes, a real unity of sentiment is impossible. There is nothing, concerning which a man is more positive than his own sensations: and these determine the point of view from which every one regards the nature of things. The same landscape is before us all: but we see it through Claude Lorraine glasses—one man _couleur de rose_, another _du plus beau noir_: and then we fall to quarrel, like the knights, concerning the gold and silver shield! It is nearly the same thing with religion.

CORREGIO AND JOHANNA OF PLACENTIA.

When I was at Parma (1820) the cognoscenti of the place were still talking of the wonderful discovery of the “_piu insigne pitture_” of the great Antonio Allegri detto il Corregio, which, after the lapse of nearly three centuries, had been found to exist in the monastery of St. Paul, belonging to the Benedictine sisters. The authenticity of the paintings, and the certainty of their immortal author, were questions long set at rest. But nothing grows old in Italy, and every thing in which the arts are concerned serves as a thesis of disputation, to those ardent but suppressed minds, to which all subjects of discussion are forbidden, save such as have no intimate connexion with human interests and human happiness. While the empty shops and silent streets of Parma exhibit the hopeless and torpid uncertainty of its pauper inhabitants (a city once the mart of bustling commerce), it is not unusual to see learned disputants holding forth, with great zeal and energy, on the merits of some rival “_maestro_,” or disputing the date or authenticity of some picture of Mazzuolo, or Corregio, as if the emancipation of wretched Italy, from the Austrian tyranny, depended upon the settling of the question.

I was one morning whiling away a listless half-hour, previous to our departure, in the noble church of San Giovanni Evangelista, from whose aisles the fume of the morning service was not yet dispersed, when I was attracted by the loud voices (loud for such a place) of two persons, who were arguing with violent gesticulations before the splendid picture of St. Paul destroying the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The one was in a laical dress, but covered with the dust of the closet; there was no mistaking him; he was evidently a professor of _virtù_. The other was in the monkish habit of St. Benedict. The virtuoso seemed anxious to prove that Diana of Ephesus was a certain Giovanna di Piacenza, abbess of the neighbouring convent of Benedictines, two centuries back, and the patroness of Corregio’s early efforts. The other (the monk) was denying the allegory insinuated by the lay virtuoso—that Jane of Placentia had been persecuted for her too liberal spirit, or that the mysterious fresco, discovered in the long closed chamber of the neighbouring convent, could have been painted as a fit subject for the chaste nuns of St. Paul, and their holy mother to gaze on. The apartment so painted, he insisted, had originally made a part of the palace of a Parmesan noble,—and, with other neighbouring houses, had been gradually annexed to the monastery, during the last century, when the community had become too numerous for the original building.

I could not stop to hear the argument out, as we were on the point of starting for Bologna, and our carriage was literally in waiting. But I left the porch of San Giovanni Evangelista with my imagination so full of Giovanna of Piacenza, abbess of the monastery of St. Paul, of whom the lay virtuoso had let drop some curious anecdotes, that long before we had reached Modena, I had made her character and patronage of the arts, the subject of an Italian romance; giving it all the colouring of the scenery through which I was passing—and taking down particulars, features, and sites between Parma and Reggio (the birthplace of her immortal protégé), which, in my veteran knowledge of novel writing, I knew would _work up_ well.

At Bologna, where we remained much longer than we intended, and where we lived much with the learned and the ingenious, I could only learn of my interesting abbess, that she was a “_grande dame de par l’église_;” but the forty languages of Mezzofanti, and the profound erudition of the excellent Costa, could tell me nothing more. Santa Caterina, too, was just then beginning to roll her eyes in the church of “Our Ladies of St. Catherine,” at Bologna; and she so occupied public attention, that it was impossible to extort a word on the subject of any other saint in the calendar. Still, as often as I sat listening to Crescentini singing his delicious cavatina, in the frescoed _salone_ of the beautiful Martinetti, the idea of my Jane of Placentia came upon my mind; for whatever I have best conceived (and even mediocrity has its degree of excellence); whatever I have written most successfully, has all been done under the influence of music; the whole of Salvator Rosa was composed (and composed _à trait de plume_) in my drawing-room, in Dublin, while listening to the master-compositions of Rossini.

It was at Florence I first obtained more precise information concerning my charming abbess; for charming I was determined she should be. During our delightful residence in that pleasantest of all Italian cities, I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Signior Giuseppe Michali, whose very erudite work, “_L’Italia avanti il dominio dei Romani_,” is a monument of learned industry. The true Italian feeling of this gentleman had led him to devote his time and attention not only to the subjects connected with the ancient glories of the country, but to whatever illustrates those divine arts of which it is the mother. At the very time of my making his acquaintance, he was occupied with the subject that had got hold of my imagination; and his account of the long-concealed and celebrated abbess is as follows:—

A vague tradition that there existed, in the monastery of the Benedictine sisters, at Parma, a chamber painted in fresco, by the immortal Corregio, had got gradually into public circulation. At first it was deemed to be nothing more than the malicious gossip of some neighbouring convents, which represented the fresco as a most unholy exhibition, reflecting on the memory of a certain abbess, who flourished in the sixteenth century, and whose history had been traditionally preserved in the district over which she had exercised considerable sway. The fresco chamber had remained shut up for nearly two hundred and eighty years: or, if open to the nuns, its splendid pictures were but ill appreciated by the victims of bigotry, whose suppressed sensibility left them incapable or unwilling to receive those fine impressions which the works of genius are sure to impart to the cultivated and tasteful.

By degrees, however, this painted chamber began to excite the attention of the curious; and, at an epoch when the works of Corregio had reached their highest estimation, the celebrated Mengs, with some difficulty, obtained permission to visit the interior of the convent, a sanctuary usually closed against “unblessed soles.” In 1780, he published a letter on the subject, declaring the frescoes to be amongst those _capi d’opera_ of Corregio which had secured his immortality. To this opinion Antonio Bresciani, professor in the academy of Parma, and Batti, of Geneva, who had obtained a similar permission, bore ample testimony. But when the posthumous works of Mengs appeared, all reference to the frescoes was omitted in the pages devoted to an analysis of the works of the painter of the Graces.

The world of _virtù_ was again thrown into a vortex of doubt; and one must have lived in Italy, and seen how bad institutions can confine the mind to trivial subjects, to understand the commotion into which a whole community can be thrown by such a doubt.

Tiraboschi came forward on behalf of Corregio, to claim those splendid works, (of which the Italian public heard so much and had seen so little) as new triumphs of his genius. He endeavoured to reconcile the silence of Mengs with the declarations of Bresciani and Batti, by supposing that the former had not spoken of the frescoes, because he had found them in a state of decay and partial obliteration. Signior Michali, with more probability, supposes that the silence of Mengs arose from the melancholy event of his death, which occurred immediately on his return from Parma to Rome, and which might have prevented those additions to his simple notices of the frescoes of St. Paul, which would have set the question at rest. But the question, so important to half the academicians and all the virtuosi of Italy, was not set at rest until the summer of 1795, when a commission of four artists of eminence was formed to visit the convent, with permission of the order, and to examine the frescoes, and pronounce a judgment by which the world of taste was resolved to abide.

From the judgment of the commission of artists there was no appeal—the frescoes were assigned to Corregio. But their subjects—the most profane though eminently classical subjects,—who had chosen them? Vasari declared that Corregio had never studied at Rome—that he was ignorant of the sublime models furnished by the genius of antiquity! and that the humble and unfortunate disciple of the dry school of the rude Mantegna, drew his first and only inspiration from the sight of that work of Raphael, which extorted the celebrated exclamation of “_E sono pittore anche io_!” Still the works of Albano are not more classical, more poetically ideal, and more purely modelled on the antique, than those frescoes painted by Corregio in his early youth, which were doomed to the oblivion of two hundred and eighty years. There is one of the subjects, more particularly, which appeared to have been more freshly drawn, from the pages of Homer. It represents a female suspended by a cord, her arms tied above her head, and two anvils of gold hung from her feet. This was the punishment inflicted by Jupiter on Juno in the presence of all the gods.

It was thought that some _arrière pensée_ lurked in this representation of the summary punishment inflicted by the old church of the antique world upon its refractory daughters, and that it was meant to hit on the severity with which the rebellious mothers of the Christian church, the powerful abbesses of the fifteenth century, were occasionally treated by the Jupiter of the Vatican. All the subjects of these pictures, indeed, were so at variance with those usually selected by Corregio, or deemed admissible into such holy retreats as the convent of St. Paul’s, that the whole appeared an inexplicable mystery. The laborious efforts of Italian _virtù_, however, at last discovered that the inspirer of the young and ardent Corregio was Giovanna of Piacenza, whose early encouragement and direction of a genius vainly struggling against penury, identified her name with the history of the arts, and probably gave to Italy the most brilliant of her artists.

At the period alluded to, the abbesses of the great and highly endowed Italian monasteries were powerful princesses of the church, commensurate in wealth and influence with the great lords of the conclave themselves. Chosen for life, they not only administered the immense revenues of their convent uncontrolled, but lived with a splendour and luxury, which occasionally degenerated into absolute licentiousness and boundless extravagance. The spiritual authority with which they were endowed, the jurisdiction they possessed over the persons submitted to their rule, extending even to life and death, the many privileges they received during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, enabled them to take part in all the political factions and civil feuds of the day, and to decide the most important contests; though, like true women, they often attached themselves to the least powerful party, and abandoned the magnificence of their convent to share the exile of their friends and partizans. Enjoying the greatest credit, by the talents, graces, and high birth which led to their monastic elevation, making head against their bishops, in the struggle for jurisdiction, resisting all attempts to subject them _à la clôture_, availing themselves of the sanction of the convent, yet participating in all the pleasures and passions of society, courting fame, and alive to glory, they sought to illustrate their conventual reign by such enterprises as were calculated to give their names to posterity.

Among these priestesses of Catholicism, Giovanna di Piacenza was conspicuous for taste, talent, and magnificence. Elected in the flower of her youth and beauty to the abbess’s chair at Parma, she began her reign by erecting a sanctuary, worthy of Cnidus, among the rude cloisters of her monastic seclusion. For the purpose of decorating an apartment dedicated to her own exclusive use, and intended as a monument of her refined taste and patronage of the arts, she invited some of the most distinguished artists of Parma and Modena, but she chose the young and obscure Antonio Allegri of Reggio, called Il Corregio; and she herself selected those subjects which he so beautifully executed, and which were copied or imitated from the antique.

Here were no fearful exhibitions of human suffering, “for the love of God,”—no martyrs broiled,—no saints agonized. Sacrifices indeed there were; but they were innoxious sacrifices offered by young and beautiful priestesses on the altars of Jupiter and Vesta.

Had the accomplished abbess confined the gratification of her tastes to such representations of classical imagery, she might have been pardoned. But she had borrowed more from the ancients than their tastes or their arts;—she had drawn from their pages their love of liberty and noble independence; and she had long resisted the attempts of the bishops and pope to interfere with her jurisdiction.

After a long and noble struggle against the encroachment of the church tyranny, she fell a victim to its resistless power. Her convent was cloistered, and cut off from all human intercourse; and she survived her living entombment but a short time. Her favourite apartment, the monument of her taste, her learning, and her liberality, closed hermetically, even against the sisters of the order, was at last forgotten. The oblivion of near three centuries, concealed from the study and admiration of successive generations those _chefs-d’œuvre_ which the enterprize of modern _virtù_ finally discovered, for the benefit of a declining art, that had long ceased to produce a Corregio.

While I resided at Rome, my head was still running on “Giovanna of Piacenza,”—when two other subjects fell in my way, (for my work on Italy wrote itself); one of these was Salvator Rosa, not as I have since given it to the public, but as an Italian romance. The idea came into my head as I was sauntering with Cardinal Fesch through the sumptuous rooms of his superb palace, just after we had been looking at one of Salvator’s pictures. On my return home I sketched out the first chapter of my romance; but the genius, character, and literary works of Salvator grew into such importance in my mind, “his times” appeared so full of interest, that I threw aside my romance, and produced his life, one of the most successful of all my trifling works.