Again:--

"I happened one night at Gen. La Fayette's to say that I should

remain at home on the following morning, and the information

brought us a numerous circle of morning visitors; others

dropped in by chance, and some by appointment. From twelve till

four, my little salon was a congress composed of the

representatives of every vocation of arts, letters, science,

_bon ton_," (the Congress of Vienna was nothing to this,) "and

philosophy, in which, as in the Italian opera-boxes of Milan

and Naples, the comers and goers succeeded each other, as the

narrow limits of the space required that the earliest visitor

should make room for the last arrival."

We might fill pages with similar specimens of her modesty, but we must

proceed.

The notes and cards being all despatched, authentic intelligence is at

length diffused throughout Paris of her arrival, and such a commotion is

forthwith excited as had never been seen even in that city of

commotions, since the time the Giraffe made her entree into it, and said

to the gaping multitude, "_Mes amis, il n'y a qu'une bete de plus._"

Perhaps the sensation might be excepted which was created by "Messieurs

les Osages," the American deputation whose "France" has not yet, we

believe, appeared in either hemisphere. The Rue de Rivoli was instantly

crowded with "old friends" and "intimate acquaintances," _ne plus

ultras_ included, besides various others anxious for the honour of an

introduction, all striving who should get first into the "_Hotel de la

Terrasse_;" and such was the press of visits, dinner-parties, suppers,

balls, &c. &c. that for a period her Ladyship could not, as she says,

"find leisure to register a single impression for her own amusement, or

haply for that of a world, which, it must be allowed, is not very

difficult to amuse." In this sentiment we request leave, before going

further, to record our unqualified concurrence, and also to state, that

we know of no one from whom it could proceed with more propriety and

weight than from Miladi. It has been, doubtless, expressed before, by

various other book-makers, but never, we feel confident, by one whose

career affords fuller evidence of its correctness, or who could adduce

more forcible proofs in support of it, should they be required. In such

case, the simple fact need only be cited, that "France in 1830" is the

work of the same hand which indited "Ida of Athens," some twenty years

previous, and which, during that interval, has furnished the world

almost annually, with quartos, octavos, or duodecimos.

The accounts that her Ladyship gives of the various festive

entertainments of which she partook, constitute the matter of a large

number of her pages. If it be true, however, that in order to observe

well, one ought to screen one's self from observation, she could have

had little opportunity of obtaining acquaintance with the constitution

of French society; for, if we believe her own story, there was no social

assemblage of any kind to which she went, where she was not the observed

of every one, the centre of attraction, the nucleus of excellence. And

what information is to be derived from her relation of a ball here, or a

_soiree_ there, beyond the very interesting, highly important, and most

credible intelligence, that as soon as the announcement of Lady Morgan's

name falls upon the ears of the company, everything else is forgotten; a

dead silence instantaneously takes place of the conversational hum that

before prevailed; all eyes are directed towards the door; LADY MORGAN

ENTERS; a buzz of admiration succeeds; she advances with a dignified air

towards the hostess, or rather the hostess runs eagerly forward to meet

her; she drops a romantic curtesy; she sits down; and thenceforward

nothing is thought of by any of the guests but Miladi, and the pearls

that fall from her lips. As the French are fond of forming _queues_, or

files, for the purpose of avoiding confusion, when there is any great

earnestness among a large collection of persons with regard to any

object of curiosity, we can imagine the whole assemblage falling into

one as soon as she takes her seat, and thus enjoying, each in turn, the

coveted delight.--But we mistake; other information respecting French

society is communicated, unwittingly however, by her Ladyship. It is

this: that they are as fond of ridicule in 1830, as they were in 1816,

and as they have ever been. We have little difficulty in believing, that

her Ladyship received a vast deal of attention in Paris; still, we must

confess, that it appears to us impossible not to be convinced, from her

own story, that it was owing to a very different reason from the one to

which it is attributed by her self-love. If there is any feature in the

French character peculiarly salient or prominent, it is the love of

ridicule. "Take care," said a lady to her son, who was on the eve of

departure for his travels, "of the Inquisition at Madrid, of the mob at

London, and of ridicule at Paris." Nothing that is at all calculated to

excite an ironical smile or a sarcastic remark, escapes a "fasting

Monsieur's" observation, and even the greatest virtues and genius, if

combined with any quality which can afford matter for a joke, will

scarcely prevent their possessor from being made a laughing-stock.

Napoleon was so well aware of this propensity of his subjects, that he

was prevented by it from placing his own figure in the car which

surmounts the triumphal arch erected between the Court of the Tuileries

and the Place du Carousal, being apprehensive that the wags would avail

themselves of the opportunity thus afforded of punning at his

expense--_le char le tient_--_le charlatan_. What a delectable tit-bit,

consequently, for this appetite of the Parisians, must be a darling

little philosopher in petticoats, (not quite sexagenary,) who dabbles in

all sciences and arts, and is at the same time a pretender to the pretty

affectations and hoydenish manners of a youthful belle! Such a person,

especially if she possess that happy opinion of herself, which prevents

her from having the slightest suspicion that she can be the object of

anything but admiration with all, is regarded by them as a legitimate

subject for a _mystification,_ which, in our vernacular, means

_hoax_,--_elle se prete au ridicule_, as they say, she lends herself, as

it were, to ridicule; and to be convinced that they know how to take

consummate advantage of the loan, it is only necessary to glance over

"France in 1830." Every one who does so will, we feel confident,

understand in the same manner as ourselves, the meaning of that

"brilliant welcome," which Miladi, with so much complacency, informs us

she received "in the capital of European intellect." From beginning to

end, these volumes afford almost continued specimens of perfection in

the art of "quizzing," and may therefore be particularly indicated to

such as are anxious to acquire proficiency in that way. We are glad

that we have at length discovered a description of persons to whom we

can conscientiously recommend the work we are reviewing, as calculated

to afford desirable information.

There is another cause, besides this fondness for ridicule, to which the

_mystification_ of her Ladyship may be attributed. Whoever is at all

acquainted with her writings, must be aware that she pretends to be a

great republican, and to entertain a most orthodox horror of royalism

and the appendages thereof, and that she has called the royalist party

in France all the hard names she could find in the most approved

collection of opprobrious epithets. This circumstance, it is easy to

imagine, may have excited a slight desire of revenge in the breasts of

some of the younger members of that party.

In her very preface, we have an evidence of her having been the victim

of as well concerted and admirably conducted a hoax, as was ever played

off upon any one--it surpasses that which was put upon poor Malvolio in

"Twelfth Night." After making the remark upon which we have already

commented, that a second work on France from her pen could "alone be

justified by the novelty of its matter, or by the merit of its

execution," she says--

"It may serve, however, as an excuse, and an authentication of

the attempt, that I was called to the task by some of the most

influential organs of public opinion, in that great country.

They relied upon my impartiality (for I had proved it, at the

expense of proscription abroad, and persecution at home); and,

desiring only to be represented as they are, they deemed even

my humble talents not wholly inadequate to an enterprise whose

first requisite was the honesty that tells the truth, the whole

truth, and nothing but the truth."

Oh you wicked wags! If the abolition of capital punishment be effected

in France, we hope you will be specially excepted as unworthy of mercy

for this cruel plot to make Miladi Morgan expose herself thus to the

sneers of an ill-natured world. We think we see you in conclave,

laughing and joking over an epistle you have just concocted and signed

with the names of half a dozen of the leaders of the liberals, in which

her Ladyship is earnestly conjured to cross the Irish and the English

channels and hasten to Paris, in order to dispel by the effulgence of

her intellectual rays, the mists and darkness that the fiend of ultraism

had spread over the political horizon. Seriously speaking, we cannot

divine any other than this or a similar manner of accounting for her

Ladyship's assertion, that "she was called to the task by some of the

most influential organs of public opinion in France;"--she would not

certainly affirm what she knew to be false, and the idea that she did

receive a bona fide request of the above purport from such individuals,

is too absurd to command belief for a moment. Would any one in his

senses, who is "desirous of being represented as he is," put in

requisition the pencil of an artist by which he would be sure to be

caricatured?

The "persecution at home," that her Ladyship affects to have suffered,

refers, we suppose, to sundry articles in the Quarterly Review and other

Journals, in which she was rather roughly handled. We all know, however,

what a pleasant thing it is to deem ourselves the objects of

persecution, when it does not interfere with our profit--it is a

flattering unction we love to lay to the soul, as it seems to augment

our importance--and Miladi appears to have been highly delighted with

the persecutions she has encountered. She is continually alluding to the

attacks of the Quarterly, and whenever an opportunity occurs, favours us

with extracts from them, and now and then she slips in some satirical

observation concerning herself from the _Journal des Debats_. The

different manner in which she has been treated by the Edinburgh and

Quarterly Reviews, is an exemplification of the potent influence which

party spirit exercises over those journals. In the latter, one or two of

her works have been criticised with overwhelming power, and in a tone

and spirit superlatively bitter. In the former, on the contrary, she is

spoken of with studied lenity, although the Reviewer is obliged to

confess that he is not one of her particular admirers, and seems to be

perpetually restraining himself from indulging in the language of

raillery and sarcasm. We need hardly add that the political principles

which her Ladyship professes to entertain, are the main cause of this

discrepancy. For our own part, we conscientiously believe that the

English journal has not gone half so far beyond the truth as its Scotch

rival has fallen short of it, in their respective strictures. With

regard to the republican bursts of Lady Morgan, we cannot help

suspecting that there is more affectation and cant in them than

sincerity:--she is too anxious to let it be known that she is caressed

every where by the _ne plus ultras_ of aristocracy and rank, as well as

by those of intellect, and, at the same time, there is too much parade

and ostentatious vehemence in her explosions against the royalist party.

As to the other article which her Ladyship says she has received in

exchange for her _impartiality!_--"proscription abroad,"--we feel pretty

confident that it exists no where but in her own imagination. There it

has, doubtless, been engendered by the malice of some ultra in disguise,

who has made her Ladyship believe, that the Emperor of Austria, the

Grand Signior, the King of Owyhee, and the other despots of the earth,

have forbidden, on pain of racking, roasting, and every kind of torture,

the importation of her books into their dominions, lest these should be

revolutionized by them forthwith. Heaven defend us! we are very much

afraid that Lady Morgan will set this world of ours on fire, somewhere

about the time when it comes in contact with the comet. It is not mere

supposition on our part that her Ladyship deems herself an object of

dread to the Austrian government at least;--read what she says apropos

of the entree of its ambassador into a ball-room where she was making

all the lamps and candles hide their diminished heads. "When his

Austrian excellence was announced, how I started, with all the weight of

Aulic proscription on my head! The representative of the long-armed

monarch of Hapsburg so near me,--of him, who, could he only once get his

fidgetty fingers on my _little_ neck, would give it a twist, that would

save his custom-house officers all future trouble of breaking carriages

and harassing travellers, in search of the pestilent writings of 'Ladi

Morgan.' I did not breathe freely, till his excellency had passed on

with his glittering train, into the illumined conservatory, and was lost

in a wilderness of flowering shrubs and orange trees." Ought not this

ambassador to be recalled for his negligence, his want of loyalty, in

not attempting to get his fingers about Miladi's 'little neck,' in order

to restore his Imperial master to peace and tranquillity of mind? Poor

Francis! still are you doomed to be _fidgetty_ on your throne. We think

we see you receiving intelligence of the appearance of this last

emanation from Ladi Morgan's untiring pen--a mortal paleness overspreads

your face, as Metternich rushes into your presence with terror depicted

in his countenance, articulating only "Ladi Morgan, Ladi Morgan," having

just obtained himself a knowledge of the dreadful fact from an almost

breathless courier--in an agony of suspense you gaze wildly at your

faithful counsellor, until he has recovered composure sufficient to

unfold to you the whole tale of horror. It is told! The monarch in whose

hands are the lives of fifty millions of subjects, lies himself, to all

appearance, deprived of existence. But see! he revives--his lips

move--what are the words which fall faintly upon the ears of the

bewildered attendants who have been called into the apartment by the

cries of the prime minister? They are words of malediction, of the same

purport as those which Henry II. of England uttered against his

servants, for their want of zeal in allowing him to be so long tormented

by Thomas a Becket, and which caused that prelate's death. But alas! for

your repose, Imperial Caesar, it is not so easy at the present day, as in

former times, for de Luces and de Morevilles to gratify the vengeful

wishes of their masters, and Lady Morgan yet breathes the breath of life

(although it is true she did not do it "freely," according to her own

account, while in the vicinity of your ambassador in Paris,) to keep

your nervous system in disorder, and for the continued vexation of the

rational part of the reading world.

Multifarious are the other instances we might cite of the manner in

which her simple Ladyship was _mystified_ by the ironical propensities

of some, and the malicious ultraism of others, during her visit to Paris

in 1829-30. "There are certain characters," observes M. Jouy, "who may

be considered as the scourges of whatever is ridiculous (_les fleaux du

ridicule_;) they discover it under whatever form it may be hid, and

pitilessly immolate it with the weapon of irony," and into the hands of

persons of this merciless tribe she seems to have been perpetually

falling. We must content ourselves, however, with referring to but one

example more; a conversation between herself and a young Frenchman,

about Romanticism and Classicism, which she has detailed in her first

volume. This is a subject, which, as every one must know, has set all

Paris by the ears, and attracts almost as much attention there as the

overthrow of one dynasty and the creation of another. Lady Morgan, of

course, is a thorough-going _romantique_, and demonstrates the greater

excellence of the school of which she deems herself the chief support

and brightest ornament, in pretty much the same way as the superiority

of modern writers over the ancients used to be proved by the advocates

of the former, viz. by two methods, reason and example, the first of

which they derived from their own taste, and the second from their own

works. At the time she was delivered of her quarto about France in 1810,

Paris was still immersed in classical darkness, and it may therefore be

fairly inferred that the romantic light with which it has since been

illumined, radiated from that same tome. What can be more natural? When

she left France, "the word '_Romanticism_' was unknown (or nearly so) in

the circles of Paris; the writers _a la mode_, whether ultra or liberal,

were, or thought themselves to be, supporters and practisers of the old

school of literature;" in the interval of her absence she published a

work in which she told the Parisians that Racine was no poet, and gave

them other valuable information of the kind, calculated to dispel their

classical infatuation:--when she returned, every thing was changed;

poets and prosers were vieing with each other in gloriously offending

against all rules and canons; Romanticism, in short, was, as she

asserts, completely the order of the day. The classical wrath of one man

was the source of unnumbered woes to ancient Greece, and why may not the

romantic wrath of one woman--a woman too, who keeps autocrats and

sultans _fidgetty_ on their thrones, be the cause of a change in the

literature of a country? This change, at all events, however it may have

been operated, seems to have inspired her with additional courage in her

assaults, and additional fury in her anathemas upon the poor French

authors whom the ignorant world has hitherto been in the habit of

regarding as objects of admiration. She now asserts, in "France in

1829-30," that the whole classic literature of that country is "feeble

and unuseful," nay, even fitted to "enervate and degrade;" and in a

wonderfully luminous chapter about modern literature, she has shown as

clearly as Hudibras could have proved by "force of argument" that "a

man's no horse," that Classicism is the ally of despotism, and that it

was the policy of arbitrary power to encourage a fondness for the

ancient authors!

Fiercely romantic, however, as her Ladyship is, she is mild as a cooing

dove in comparison with the male interlocutor in the famous conversation

to which we have alluded. This personage completely out-herods Herod;

but that he was an ultra in disguise, endeavouring to make her Ladyship

write down absurdities, is a conviction which 'fire and water could not

drive out of' us;--even she, herself, at one period of the dialogue, can

not help doubting whether she "is or is not the subject of what in

England is called a hoax, and in France a _mystification_," and when

_she_ doubts upon such a point, it would be extremely difficult for any

one else not to deem it a matter of certainty. Had we space sufficient,

we should transcribe the whole of this colloquy, as it deserves

repetition; but we can only give a small specimen of it for the

amusement of our readers. The gentleman having informed Miladi, that

Racine, Corneille, and Voltaire, are "dethroned monarchs," and no longer

tolerated at the Theatre, she asks him what is to be seen or heard

there, to which he answers:--

"'Our great historic dramas, written not in pompous

Alexandrines, but in prose, the style of truth, the language of

life and nature, and composed boldly, in defiance of Aristotle

and Boileau. Their plot may run to any number of acts, and the

time to any number of nights, months, or years; or if the

author pleases, it may take in a century, or a millennium: and

then, for the place, the first scene may be laid in Paris, and

the last in Kamschatka. In short, France has recovered her

literary liberty, and makes free use of it.'

"'_Oui da!_' I rejoined, a little bothered, and not knowing

well what to say, but still looking very wise, 'In fact, then,

you take some of those liberties, that you used to laugh at, in

our poor Shakspeare?'

"'Your _poor_ Shakspeare! your divine, immortal Shakspeare, the

idol of new France!--you must see him played _textuellement_ at

the _Francais_, and not in the diffuse and feeble parodies of

Ducis.'

"'Shakspeare played _textuellement_ at the _Francais_!" I

exclaimed--'_O, par exemple!_'

"'Yes, certainly. Othello is now in preparation; and Hamlet and

Macbeth are stock pieces. But even your Shakspeare was far from

the truth, the great truth, that the drama should represent the

progress, development, and accomplishment of the natural and

moral world, without reference to time or locality. Unknown to

himself, his mighty genius was mastered by the fatal prejudices

and unnatural restrictions of the _perruques_ of antiquity.

Does nature unfold her plots in five acts? or confine her

operations to three hours by the parish clock?'

"'Certainly not, Monsieur; but still....'

"'_Mais, mais, un moment, chere Miladi._ The drama is one great

illusion of the senses, founded on facts admitted by the

understanding, and presented in real life, past or present.

When you give yourself up to believe that Talma was Nero, or

Lafont Britannicus, or that the Rue Richelieu is the palace of

the Caesars, you admit all that at first appears to outrage

possibility. Starting, then, from that point, I see no

absurdity in the tragedy, which my friend Albert de S---- says

he has written for the express purpose of trying how far the

neglect of the unities may be carried. The title and subject of

this piece is "the Creation," beginning from Chaos (and what

scenery and machinery it will admit!) and ending with the

French revolution; the scene, infinite space; and the time,

according to the Mosaic account, some 6000 years.'

"'And the protagonist, Monsieur? Surely you don't mean to

revive the allegorical personages in the mysteries of the

middle ages?'

"'_Ah ca! pour le protagoniste, c'est le diable._ He is the

only contemporaneous person in the universe that we know of,

whom in these days of _cagoterie_ we can venture to bring on

the stage, and who could be perpetually before the scene, as a

protagonist should be. He is particularly suited, by our

received ideas of his energy and restlessness, for the

principal character. The devil of the German patriarch's

_Faust_ is, after all, but a profligate casuist; and the high

poetical tone of sublimity of Milton's Satan is no less to be

avoided in a delineation that has truth and nature for its

inspiration. In short, the devil, the true romantic devil, must

speak, as the devil would naturally speak, under the various

circumstances in which his immortal ambition and ceaseless

malignity may place him. In the first act, he should assume the

tone of the fallen hero, which would by no means become him

when in corporal possession of a Jewish epileptic, and

bargaining for his _pis aller_ in a herd of swine. Then again,

as a leader of the army of St. Dominick, he should have a

fiercer tone of bigotry, and less political _finesse_, than as

a privy councillor in the cabinet of the Cardinal de Richelieu.

At the end of the fourth act, as a guest at the table of Baron

Holbach, he may even be witty; while as a minister of police,

he should be precisely the devil of the schoolmen, leading his

victim into temptation, and triumphing in all the petty

artifices and verbal sophistries of a bachelor of the Sorbonne.

But as the march of intellect advances, this would by no means

be appropriate; and before the play is over, he must by turns

imitate the _patelinage_ of a Jesuit _a robe courte_, the

pleading of a procureur general, the splendid bile of a deputy

of the _cote droit_, and should even talk political economy

like an article in the 'Globe.' But the author shall read you

his piece--'_La Creation! drame Historique et Romantique_, in

six acts, allowing a thousand years to each act. _C'est l'homme

marquant de son siecle._''

"'But,' said I, 'I shall remain in Paris only a few weeks, and

he will never get through it in so short a time.'

"'_Pardonnez moi, madame_, he will get through it in six

nights--the time to be actually occupied by the performance; an

act a night, to be distributed among the different theatres in

succession, beginning at the _Francais_ and ending at the

_Ambigu_.'"

It is here that her Ladyship begins to doubt whether this romantic

gentleman was not hoaxing her, and certes it was time; but 'melt and

disperse ye spectre doubts!' an attempt to hoax Lady Morgan, impossible!

They do quickly pass away, and the conversation is pursued in the same

strain, until "Monsieur de ---- one of the conscript fathers of

classicism" is announced. No sooner has his name passed the lips of the

servant, than the romantic gentleman snatches up his hat, and endeavours

to make an exit from the room, in as much consternation as if the

"protagonist" himself were about to appear. But Monsieur de ---- the

classicist, enters before he can escape; "he draws up." The two then

"glanced cold looks at each other, bowed formally, and the romanticist

retired, roughing his wild locks, and panting like a hero of a tragedy."

What a picture! We venture to affirm, however, that had an attentive

observer been present, he would have seen something like a wink or a

covert glance passing between the two worthies as they enacted the above

scene, which might have led him to suspect that they knew each other

better than Miladi supposed: it was only on the previous evening, be it

stated, on her own authority, that she had made the acquaintance of the

romanticist, whom she describes as having "something of an exalte in his

air, in his open shirt collar, black head, and wild and melancholy

look." The dialogue that ensues with the classicist after the

disappearance of the other, is quite as ridiculous as the foregoing one,

and quite as well calculated to give her Ladyship a fit of the "doubts,"

though it does not appear that she suffered by them a second time. We

may mention, before leaving this subject, that when the romanticist told

her, in the extract we have just made, that Othello was in preparation

for the _Theatre Francais_, he told her truth; but, if we are not very

much mistaken, the other piece of information he communicated--that

Hamlet and Macbeth are stock-tragedies at that theatre--could only have

been related by a gentleman of great fertility of imagination. Othello,

we know, was actually performed, and went off tolerably well until the

final scene, but then the nerves of the Frenchmen were put to a trial

they could not by any possibility endure. The sight of a Moor and an

Infidel, endeavouring to smother a lady and a Christian, so completely

aroused all the gallant and religious sensibilities of the audience,

that shouts of _terrible, abominable_, resounded from every part of the

house, and Monsieur Othello was (theatrically) damned for his

wickedness. As far as we know, he never showed his copper-coloured

visage again at the _Theatre Francais_, but contented himself

thenceforward with running after poor Desdemona, and stabbing her behind

the scene at the opera, where this minor exhibition of cruelty is

tolerated in consideration of the _roulades_, with which he smooths her

passage into the other world.

Speaking of theatres puts us in mind, as the story-tellers say, of a

remark made by her Ladyship in the chapter she has devoted to the

theatres of Paris, which we wish to notice. She says, "it is strange,

that among the many men of genius who have treated the subject of the

unities, none should have clearly laid it down, that the great object of

dramatic composition is the satisfaction of the audience, no matter by

what means." What a fine thing it is to be endowed with uncommon powers

of original thought! It is so delightful to be able to belie the

assertion, that it is too late now to think of propounding any new idea,

every thing having already been said that can be said about any thing!

Here, ye croakers about modern degeneracy, here is something that should

cover you with confusion and shame. Lady Morgan, after having read all,

aye, all, that has been written about a certain subject by all the

"many men of genius" who have treated it--which it would only require

the lifetime of a Methuselah to do--has discovered an idea relating to

it, which is to be found in none of the works of those "many men of

genius," and this she has revealed for the edification and astonishment

of the world, in the sentence we have quoted above. How every lover of

new ideas now living, should bless his stars for having cast his

existence in the same period as that of her Ladyship! It is, however,

our melancholy duty, to be obliged to deprive our generation of the

glory which would be shed upon it by such an intellectual invention as

the foregoing. Though it has undoubtedly never been adverted to in any

way, since she so asserts the fact, by any of the "many men of genius"

who have exercised their minds upon the topic of the unities, yet by a

singular chance we have fallen upon something very much like it in the

petty effusions of two or three subordinate scribblers, who have

presumed to hint at what was not excogitated by their betters. One of

those effusions is a paper called a "Preface to Shakspeare," written

about fifty years ago, as we have discovered, after long research and a

great deal of trouble, by a certain Samuel Johnson, who dubbed himself

Doctor, and published likewise, if our investigations have informed us

rightly, other works, under the titles of "The Rambler," "Rasselas,"

"Biographies of the British Poets," &c., and tradition even says that he

attempted a dictionary of the English language. Another of those

effusions is an "Essay upon the Drama," by a person called Walter Scott,

who, it is affirmed, is still in the land of the living, but where he

dwelleth, and what other productions he hath printed, we have been able

to obtain no clue for finding out. It must indeed be confessed, that

neither of those individuals has so "clearly laid it down" as her

Ladyship, that the audience should be pleased, "_no matter by what

means_," though they certainly have intimated that its gratification

ought to be one of the principal objects of a dramatic author. They were

foolish enough to think, that to pander to the tastes of an audience, if

corrupt and vitiated, is paltry, is despicable; that to consult its

inclinations when at war with sound taste or proper decorum, is to do

the work of those who are influenced only by a love of sordid gain,

reckless of every pure and elevated feeling--that "the end of all

writing is to instruct, the end of all poetry, _to instruct by

pleasing_." This is the difference between the sentiment of the authors

and that of the authoress; but were that same Samuel Johnson now alive,

sooner than maintain an opinion in any the slightest manner at variance

with one expressed by her Ladyship, he would,--as he was ready to do,

according to his own avowal, when asserting something that was denied by

persons scarcely more important than himself,--"sink down in

reverential silence, as AEneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he

saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno heading the besiegers."

We do not wish to insinuate that her Ladyship has derived any advantage

from consulting the pages of either the Preface or the Essay to which we

have alluded. By no means. Nothing would be more unjust; for how could

she be indebted for any thing to what may be contained in a couple of

insignificant pamphlets, whose scarcity is such, that we might almost

suppose our copies of them to be the only ones in existence? How they

came into our hands, is a point we leave for elucidation to those who

find pleasure or profit in unravelling mysteries. There is, to be sure,

a wonderful similitude throughout, between her reflections upon the

classical and romantic drama, and those which may be read in the Essay;

but this circumstance must unquestionably be considered one of those

"remarkable coincidences" that every now and then prompt the cry of "a

miracle!" It must, else, be accounted for, by supposing that the author

of the Essay is gifted with a power over future operations of mind,

similar to that which was possessed over future events, by the wizard

who warned Lochiel against the fatal day at Culloden, and that he is

thus enabled, by his "mystical lore," to make

"Coming _ideas_ cast their shadow before."

Seriously, however, the observations of her Ladyship on this head,

furnish as nice an instance of plagiarism as we recollect. The best of

the matter is, that after filling nearly a couple of pages with remarks,

amongst which not a single original idea is to be found, save perhaps

the rather novel one, that "in Macbeth the interest is suspended at the

death of Duncan, and does not revive until that of the tyrant is at

hand;" she winds up with saying, "obvious as this train of reasoning

appears, _it has been overlooked equally by the opponents and the

sticklers for the old canons of criticism_; a lamentable instance of the

influence of authority, and of the spirit of party, on the judgments of

the most cultivated minds." This is a sample of modest assurance in

perfection. There is another "remarkable coincidence" in these volumes,

between the biography they contain of General Lafayette, and an article

about "the Nation's Guest" in a number of the North American Review for

1825. But we leave it to our contemporary to take her Ladyship to task

for this appropriation of his property.

In our foregoing remarks we have confined ourselves, in great measure,

to some of those portions of the volumes before us, which are most

susceptible of ridicule, though we have adverted to only a few even of

those--there are others, however, that would require a graver tone. The

sickly sentimentalism about Ninon de l'Enclos, La Valliere, Madame

d'Houdetot, and other strumpets--such "free" conversations as those

which are detailed at page 138, in the first volume, and page 108, in

the second; especially as they were held in the presence of a young

girl, her Ladyship's niece, who was doubtless one of the chief causes

why so many gentlemen came "_pour faire leurs hommages_" to the

aunt--and various expressions upon matters appertaining to religion,

deserve reprehension in no measured terms. But we have not space enough

at our disposal to bestow any further notice upon these, or to glance at

other parts of "France in 1829-30," although we have reaped but a small

portion of the harvest which it contains.

And this is the writer who pretends to enlighten the world upon the

"state of society" in one of the greatest countries of the earth! This

is the work by means of which she flatters herself that such an object

is to be effected,--and this too, (_proh pudor!_) is the kind of work

that can be republished in our country with a certainty of success!

Should the fact come to the knowledge of posterity, what will be thought

of the literary taste of this generation? We have, however, a cause for

consolation--if that can be termed consolation which ministers only to

selfish vanity, and is a source of pain to every better feeling--in the

assurance that the literary history of future times, judging from the

experience of the past, will present similar instances of depravity of

intellectual appetite. We wonder now, how our ancestors could have

relished what we regard with indifference if not with disgust, in the

same way that our taste in some respects will be a matter of surprise

with our descendants, and as theirs will be with those by whom they may

be succeeded on the stage of life. Every age, since books have been

written and books have been read, has furnished, and we may therefore

assert, every age will furnish, reason upon reason for making the remark

of the philosophic author of the "Caracteres," that not to hazard

sometimes a great deal of nonsense, is to manifest ignorance of the

public taste--"_c'est ignorer le gout du peuple, que de ne pas hasarder

quelquefois de grandes fadaises_." We do not wish to deny that Lady

Morgan has been gifted with a modicum of talent; even in the work before

us, there is occasional evidence of natural ability, which, had it been

properly cultivated and modestly employed, might have earned for her

honourable fame. But what advantage--we speak, of course, with reference

to reputation; as to pecuniary profit we have no doubt that she has

found her account in her '_fadaises_,' or else they would not have been

multiplied to such an extent--what advantage, we ask, has she derived

from her faculty of scribbling, except that she has made herself pretty

widely known, and ridiculed wherever she is known? Presumptuous

ignorance, and overweening conceit, have, in her case, completely

_nullified_, nay worse, have converted into a curse, in some respects,

what was intended every way for a blessing. If Lady Morgan would forego

her mongrel idiom, and use the English language; if she would confine

herself to subjects with which she has some acquaintance; if she would

substitute a simple in the stead of her inflated style; and above all,

if she could forget herself, she might write tolerably well; but there

are too many _ifs_ to render it probable, or even possible, that the

defects to which they relate will ever be overcome. This being the case,

we take leave of you, Miladi, not with the _au revoir_ of which you are

so fond, but with the parting salutation of Louis the Fourteenth to

James the Second, when sending him with an army to recover his forfeited

crown, "Adieu, and may we never meet again."

ART. II.--_Physiologie des Passions, ou nouvelle Doctrine des Sentimens

Moraux_; par J. L. ALIBERT. Chapitre XI. de l'Ennui. _Physiology of the

Passions; or a New Theory of Moral Sentiments._ Chap. XI. of Ennui.

This book is neither exact nor eloquent. The thoughts are not precise;

the expressions are vague; and, of consequence, the reasonings of no

value. The attempts at rich displays of imaginative power are contrasted

with a want of invention; and illustrative stories, of feeble execution,

are lavished abundantly in lieu of physiological facts. The volumes are

too insipid to cheat an idle hour of its weariness; they rather engender

fatigue than relieve it. The author will never enter the true elysium of

glory; he has not substance enough to proceed straight up the ascent;

but will certainly be "blown transverse into the devious air." Like most

of the literature of the day, this new Theory of Moral Sentiments is

essentially transient. It will pass, like anti-masonry, without

producing an era.

Yet the chapter on Ennui is tolerably sensible. It is neither brilliant

nor acute; but gives a superficial sketch of that state of being with

considerable accuracy. To be sure, it is not from a Frenchman, that the

best account of ennui should be expected. Of all nations of Europe, the

French have the least of it, though they invented the word; while the

Turks, with their untiring gravity, their lethargic dignity, their blind

fatalism, their opium-eating, and midnight profligacies, have

undoubtedly the largest share. But the Turks are only philosophers in

practice; the theory they leave to others. Now next to the Turks, the

English suffer most from ennui. Do but hear the account which their

finest poetical genius of the present century gives of himself, when he

was hardly of age.

"With pleasure drugged he almost longed for wo,

And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below."

The complaints of a young man in the bloom of life and the vigour of

early hope, cannot excite much sympathy. But he interests all our

feelings, when in the fullest maturity to which Lord Byron was permitted

to attain, he still draws from his own bosom the appalling picture of

unalleviated feelings, and describes the horrors of permanent ennui, in

language that was doubtless but the mournful echo of an unhappy mind.

"'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it has ceased to move;

Yet, though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love.

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief,

Are mine alone.

The fire that in my bosom preys

Is like to some volcanic isle;

No torch is kindled at his blaze--

A funeral pile.

The hope, the fears, the jealous care,

The exalted portion of the pain

And power of love I cannot share,

But wear the chain."

Such was the harassed state of Lord Byron's mind, at the epoch of his

life which seemed to promise a crowded abundance of exciting sensations.

He had hastened to the consecrated haunts of classic associations; he

was struggling for honour on the parent soil of glory; he was surrounded

by the stir and tumult of barbarous warfare; he had the consciousness,

that the eyes of the civilized world were fixed upon his actions; he

professed to feel the impulse of enthusiasm in behalf of liberty; and

yet there was not irritation enough in the new and busy life of a

soldier, to overcome his apathy, and restore him to happy activity. He

only sought to give away his breath on the field, and to take his rest

in a soldier's grave.

The literature of the day is essentially transient. The rapid

circulation of intelligence enriches the public mind by imparting and

diffusing every discovery; and the active spirit of man, quickened by

the easy possession of practical knowledge, rightly claims the instant

distribution of useful truth. But with this is connected a feverish

excitement for novelty. The world, in the earliest days of which

accounts have reached us, followed after the newest strains; and now

the lessons of former ages, though they have a persuasive eloquence for

the tranquil listener, are as blank and as silent as the grave to the

general ear. The voice of the past, all musical as it is with the finest

harmonies of human intelligence, is lost in the jangling din of

temporary discussions. Philosophy steals from the crowd, and hides

herself in retirement, awaiting a better day; true learning is

undervalued, and almost disappears from among men. It would seem, as

though the wise men of old frowned in anger on the turbulence of the

petty passions, and withdrew from the noisy and contentious haunts,

where wisdom has no votaries, and tranquillity no followers. In the days

of ancient liberty, the public places rung with the nervous eloquence of

sublime philosophy; and the streets of Athens offered nothing more

attractive than the keen discussions, the piercing satire, and the calm

philanthropy of Socrates. But now it is politics which rules the city

and the country; the times of deep reflection, of slowly maturing

thought, are past; and now that erudition is a jest, ancient learning an

exploded chimera, and elaborated eloquence known chiefly by

recollection, the ample gazette runs its daily career, and heralds, in

ephemeral language, the deeds of the passing hours. The age of

accumulated learning is past, and every thing is carried along the

rushing current of public economy, or of private business.--Life is

divided between excited passions and morbid apathy.

And is this current so strong, that it cannot be resisted? Are we borne

without hope of rest upon the ebbing tide? Can we never separate

ourselves from the theory, and with the coolness of an observer, watch

the various emotions, motives, and passions by which the human world is

moulded and swayed? Can we not trace the influence of the changes and

chances of this mortal state on the character and minds of mortal men?

Life is a pursuit. The moralists, who utter their heathenish oracles in

the commonplace complaints of a heathenish discontent, tell us, that we

are born but to pursue, and pursue but to be deceived. They say, that

man in his career after earthly honours, is like the child that chases

the gaudy insect; the pursuit idle; the object worthless. They tell us,

that it is but a deceitful though a deceptive star, which beams from the

summit of the distant hill; advance, and its light recedes; ascend, and

a higher hill is seen beyond, and a wider space is yet to be traversed.

And they tell us, that this is vanity; this the worthlessness of human

desire; this the misery and desolation of the human heart. But how

little do they know of the throbbings of that heart! How poorly have

they studied the secrets of the human breast! How imperfectly do they

understand the feebleness and the strength of man's fortitude and will!

If the bright object still gleams in the horizon, if the brilliancy of

glory is still spread on the remotest hill, if the distant sky is still

invested with the delicate hues of promise, and the gentle radiance of

hope, pursuit remains a pleasure; and the pilgrim, ever light-hearted,

passes heedlessly over the barren wastes, and climbs with cheerful

ardour each rugged mountain. But suppose that brilliant star to be

blotted out of the sky; suppose the lustre of the horizon to have faded

into the dank and gloomy shades of a cloudy evening; suppose the pursuit

to be now without an object, and the blood which hope had sent merrily

through the veins, to gather and curdle round the desponding heart. Then

it is, that life is abandoned to persecuting fiends, and the springs of

joy are poisoned by the demons of listlessness.

The scholar and the Christian have theirs guarantied against despair.

The desire for intelligence is never satisfied but with the attainment

of that wisdom which passes all understanding; and the eye discerning

the bright lineaments of its perfect exemplar, can set no limits to the

sacred passion, which recognises the connexion of the human mind with

the divine, and places before itself a career of advancement, to which

time itself can never prescribe bounds. But it is not with these high

questions that we are at present engaged. We have thrown open the book

of human life; we are to read there of this world and its littleness, of

the springs of present action, of the relief of present restlessness.

We have said, that the pursuit of a noble object is in itself a

pleasure. It is to the mind which holds up no definite object to its

wishes, that the universe seems deficient in the means of happiness, and

joy becomes a prey to the fiend of ennui.

Let us develop this principle more accurately. Let us examine into the

nature of _ennui_, and fix with exactness its true signification. Let us

see if it be a principle of action widely diffused. Let us ascertain the

limits of its power; let us trace its influences on individual

character. Perhaps the investigation may lead us to a more intimate

acquaintance with our nature.

_Ennui_ is the desire of activity without the fit means of gratifying

the desire. It presupposes an acknowledgment of exertion as a duty, and

a consciousness of the possession of powers suited to making an

exertion. It is itself a state of idleness, yet of disquiet. It is

inert, yet discontented.

Such is ennui in itself. In its effects, it embraces a large class of

human actions, and its influences are widely spread throughout every

portion of mental or physical effort. To trace these effects, and to

prescribe their limits, will be a part of our object; at present we

would observe, that wherever a course of conduct is the result of

physical want, of a passion for intelligence, a zeal for glory, or to

sum up a great variety of theories in one, of a just and enlightened

self-love, there there is no trace of ennui. But when the primary

motives of human conduct have failed of their effect, and the mind has

become a prey to listlessness, the career, then pursued, let it be what

it may, is to be ascribed to the pain of ennui. When the mind gnaws upon

itself, we have ennui; the course which is pursued to call the mind from

this self-destructive process, is to be ascribed to the influence of

that passion.

Are our definitions indistinct? Let us attempt illustration. When the

several powers and affections of man are, in the usual course of

existence, called into healthy exercise, on objects sufficient to

interest and satisfy them; this is happiness. When those powers and

affections are exercised by objects sufficient to excite them in their

highest degree, but where, being thus excited, there exists no harmony

between the mind and its pursuits, where the affections are aroused

without being soothed, where the chime is rung, but rung discordantly,

there is misery. Where the powers of the mind are vigorous but

unoccupied; where there exist a restless craving, an inquiet mobility,

yet without any definite purpose or commensurate object, there is ennui.

The state of mind is strongly delineated in the language of the sacred

writer.--

"I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on

the labour that I had laboured to do; and behold all was vanity

and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly;

for what can the man do that cometh after the king? Even that

which hath already been done. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth

folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. The wise man's eyes

are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness; and I

perceived also, that one event happeneth to them all. Then I

said in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth

even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my

heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of

the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now

is, in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth

the wise man? As the fool. Therefore, I hated life; because the

work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; for all

is vanity and vexation of spirit."

Or, to take an example from the earliest monument of Grecian genius.

Achilles, in the pride of youth, engaged in his favourite profession of

arms, making his way to an immortality secured to him by the voice of

his goddess mother, sure to gain the victory in any contest, and

selecting for his reward the richest spoils and the fairest maid.

Achilles, the heroic heathen, was then fully and satisfactorily

employed, and according to his semi-barbarous notions of joy and right,

was happy within his own breast, and was happy in the world around him.

When the same youthful warrior was insulted by the leader under whose

banners he had rallied, when the private recesses of his tent were

invaded, and his domestic peace disturbed, his mind was strongly

agitated by love, anger, hatred, the passion for strife, and the intense

effort at forbearance; and though there was here room enough for

activity, there was nothing but pain and misery. But when the dispute

was over, and the pupil of the Centaur, trained for strife, and victory,

and glory, separated from the army, and gave himself up to an inactive

contemplation of the struggle against Troy, his mind was abandoned to

the sentiment of discontent, and his passions were absorbed in the

morbid feeling of ennui. Homer was an exact painter of the human

passions. The picture which he draws of Achilles,[1] receiving the

subsequent deputation from the Greeks, illustrates our subject exactly.

It was in vain for the hero to attempt to sooth his mind with the

melodies of the lyre; his blood kindled only at the music of war; it was

idle for him to seek sufficient pleasure in celebrating the renown of

heroes; this was but a vain effort to quell the burning passion for

surpassing them in glory. He listens to the deputation, not tranquilly,

but peevishly. He charges them with duplicity, and avows that he loathes

their king like the gates of hell.[2] He next reverts to himself: The

warrior has no thanks, he exclaims in the bitterness of

disappointment--"The coward and the brave man are held in equal honour."

Nay, he goes further, and quarrels with providence and fixed

destiny.--"After all, the idler, and the man of many achievements, each

must die."[3] To-morrow, he adds, his vessels shall float on the

Hellespont. The morning dawned; but the ships of Achilles still lingered

near the banks of the Scamander. The notes of battle sounded, and his

mind was still in suspense between the fiery impulse for war and the

haughty reserve of revenge.

When Bruce found himself approaching the sources of the Nile, a thousand

sentiments of pride rushed upon his mind; it seemed to him, that destiny

had marked out for him a more fortunate and more glorious career, than

for any European, kings or warriors, conquerors or travellers, that had

ever attempted to penetrate into the interior of Africa. This was a

moment of exultation and triumphant delight. But when that same

traveller had actually reached the ultimate object of his research, he

has himself recorded the emotions which were awakened within him. At the

fountain-head of the Nile, Bruce was almost a victim to sentimental

ennui.

In this anecdote of the Abyssinian traveller, we have an example of the

rapidity with which ennui treads on the heels of triumph, and banishes

the feelings of exulting joy. We will cite another, where misery was

followed and consummated by ennui. The most eloquent of the Girondists

was Vergniaud. It was he that in the spirit of prophecy compared the

French revolution to Saturn, since it was about to devour successively

all its children, and finally to establish despotism with its attendant

calamities. The rivalship of the Mountain in the Convention, the

unsuccessful attack on Robespierre, the trial and condemnation of Louis

XVI., the defection of Dumourier and its consequences, had doubtless

roused the mind of the fervent but unsuccessful orator to the highest

efforts which the decline of power, and the consciousness of wavering

fortunes, and the menace of utter ruin, patriotism, honour, and love of

life, could call forth. At last came the day, fraught with horrors, when

the clamours of a despotic and inexorable mob, claimed of the convention

Vergniaud and his associates, the little refuse of republican sincerity,

to be the victims of their fiendish avidity for blood. Who will doubt,

that during that fearful session the mind of Vergniaud was agitated in

the extreme, that the highest possible excitement called him into the

highest possible activity? Here there was no room for listlessness, and

quite as little for happiness. The guarantees of order were failing, and

the friends of order were to be buried under the same ruins with the

remains of regular legislative authority. Vergniaud retired from the

scenes where the foulest of the dogs of war were howling for their prey,

and when Gregoire found him out in his hiding-place, the republican

orator, though robbery and massacre were triumphant in the city, was

discovered reading Tacitus. Why? From affectation? Surely not;

Gregoire's visit was unexpected. From cool philosophy? still less, for

it was the season of peril for an irritable man. The studies of

Vergniaud on that day were the studies of one suffering from ennui.

Ennui was the necromancer which conjured up the ghost of Caesar on the

eve of the battle of Philippi. And when Brutus esteemed that battle

lost, which in truth had been won, he had yet to wrestle with that

unseen enemy, and enter on a new contest, where he was sure to be

overthrown. The execution of Madame Roland was a scene, as far as she

was concerned, of intense and unmitigated suffering; but when Brutus

dared to despair of virtue, the atrocious sentiment was dictated, not by

the spirit that had dared to plan the liberties of the world, but by the

demon of ennui, which in an evil hour had possessed himself of the

patriot's soul.

Finally, for we have surely made ourselves intelligible, if it is

possible for us to do so--the timid lover, whose affections are moved,

yet not tranquillized, who gazes with the eyes of fondness on an object

that seems to be of a higher world, and admires as the stars are

admired, which are acknowledged to be beautiful yet are never possessed;

the timid lover, neither wholly doubting, nor wholly hoping, the sport

alternately of joy and of sorrow, full of thought and full of longing,

feeling the sentiment of rapture yield to the faintness of uncertain

hope, is half his time a true personification of ennui.

That ennui is a principle of action widely diffused, will hardly be

denied by any careful observer of human nature. No individual can

conscientiously claim to have been always and wholly free from its

influences, except where there has been a life springing from the purest

sources, sanctified by the early influence of religious motives, and

protected from erroneous judgments by the constant exercise of a

healthful understanding. For the rest, though few are constantly

afflicted with it as an incurable evil, there are still fewer who are

not at times made to suffer from its influence. It stretches its heavy

hand on the man of business and the recluse; it makes its favourite

haunts in the city, but it chases the aspirant after rural felicity,

into the scenes of his rural listlessness; it makes the young

melancholy, and the aged garrulous; it haunts the sailor and the

merchant; it appears to the warrior and to the statesman; it takes its

place in the curule chair, and sits also at the frugal board of old

fashioned simplicity. You cannot flee from it; you cannot hide from it;

it is swifter than the birds of passage, and swifter than the breezes

that scatter clouds. It climbs the ship of the restless who long for the

suns of Europe; it jumps up behind the horseman who scours the woods of

Michigan; it throws its scowling glances on the attempt at present

enjoyment; it scares the epicurean from his voluptuousness, and when the

ascetic has finished his vow, it compels him once more to repeat the

tale of his beads.

To the influence of ennui must be traced the passion for strong

excitement. When life has become almost stagnant, when the ordinary

course of events has been unable to excite any strong interest, ennui

assumes a terrific power over the mind, and clamours for emotion, though

that emotion is to be purchased by scenes of horror and of crime. "What

a magnificent spectacle," said the Parisian mob, "how interesting a

spectacle to see a woman of the wit and courage of Madame Roland on the

scaffold!" And it is precisely the same power, which excites the

sensitive admirer of works of fiction to ransack the shelves of a

library for works of thrilling and "painful" interest.

To the same kind of restless curiosity we have to ascribe the passionate

declamations of the tragic actor, and the splendid music of the opera;

the cunning feats of the village conjuror, and the lascivious pantomime

of the city ballet-dancers; the disgusting varieties of bull-fights, and

the celebrated feats of pugilism; the locomotive zeal of the great

pedestrians, and the perfect quiescence of the "pillar saints."

The habits of ancient Rome illustrate most clearly the extent to which

this passion for strong sensations may hurry the public mind into

extravagances, and repress every sentiment of sympathy and generosity.

Ambition itself is not so reckless of human life as _ennui_; clemency is

the favourite attribute of the former; but ennui has the tastes of a

cannibal, and the sight of human blood, shed for its amusement, makes it

greedy after a renewal of the dreadful indulgence. No one need be

informed, that the shows of ancient gladiators were attended by an

infinitely more numerous throng than is ever gathered by any modern

spectacle. And let it not be supposed, that the life of one of these

combatants was the more safe, because it depended on the interposition

of the Roman fair. The fondness for murderous exhibitions finally raged

with such vehemence, that they were at length introduced as an

attraction at a banquet, and the guests, as they reclined at table in

the luxury of physical ease, have been wet by the life-blood from the

veins of the wounded gladiators.

Quinetiam exhilarare viris convivia caede

Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira

Certantum ferro, saepe et super ipsa cadentum

Pocula, _respersis non parco sanguine mensis_.

Time would fail us were we to illustrate the various horrors which

attended these amusements, designed to entertain the most refined

population of Rome. Time would fail us were we to enumerate the various

classifications in the art of murder on the stage, the signals which

were made by the multitude in token of relenting clemency, the more

usual signal, made by virgins and matrons, demanding the continuance of

the combat unto death. Do we not call Titus the delight of the human

race? Do we not praise his commonplace puerility, _perdidi diem_, the

exclamation of conceit, rather than of manliness? And yet it was this

philanthropist, this favourite of humanity, who caused the vast

amphitheatre to be erected, as it were a monument to all ages of the

barbarous civilization of the capital of his empire. And as to the

numbers who appeared on these occasions, do we suppose it was a pair? or

a score? We will not ask after the horrors commended and consummated by

a Tiberius or a Caligula. Was not Trajan a moderate prince? Was he not

disposed to introduce habits of a reasonable industry? Yet the active

Trajan kept up a succession of games to cheat the population of Rome of

ennui, during a hundred and twenty-three days, in which time ten

thousand gladiators were decked for sacrifice.

Thus the vehemence of this passion is evident from the atrocity of the

resources by which its cravings are satisfied. We may also remark, that

superstition itself, interwoven as it is with all the fears and

weaknesses of humanity, subjects the human mind to a bondage less severe

and less permanent than that of the terrific craving after something to

dissipate the weariness of the heart. At Rome the sacrifices to the

heathen deities were abolished before the games of the gladiators were

suppressed; it was less difficult to take from the priests their spoils,

from the altars their victims, from the prejudices of the people their

religious faith, than to rescue from ennui the miserable wretches whose

lives were to be the sport of the idle. The laws already forbade the

offering the bull to Jove, when the poet still had to pray that none

might perish in the city under the condemnation of pleasure,

Nullus in urbe cadat, cujus sit poena voluptas.

Philosophy itself offers no guarantee against the common infirmities of

listlessness. Many a stoic has resisted the attacks of external evils

with an exemplary fortitude; and has yet failed in his encounters with

time. Strange indeed that time should be an encumbrance to a sage!

Strange indeed, that, when life is so short, and philosophy boundless,

and time a gift of the most precious nature, dealt out to us in

successive moments, a possession which is most coveted, and can the

least be hoarded, which comes, but never returns, which departs as soon

as given, and is lost even in the receiving,--strange indeed that such a

gift, so precious, so transient, so fleeting, should ever press severely

upon a philosopher!

And yet wisdom is no security against ennui. The man who made Europe

ring with his eloquence, and largely contributed to the spirit of

republican enthusiasm, wasted away for months in a state of the most

foolish languor, under the idea that he was dying of a polypus at his

heart.[4] Nay, this philosopher, who presumed to believe himself skilled

in the ways of man, and an adept in the character of women, who dared to

expound religion and proposed to reform Christianity, who committed and

confessed the meanest actions,--and yet, as if in the presence of the

Supreme Arbiter of life and before the tribunal of Eternal Justice,

arrogated to himself an equality with the purest in the innumerable

crowd of immortal souls,--he, the proud one, would so far yield to

ennui, as to put the final and eternal welfare of his soul at issue on

the throw of a stone. La Harpe, no correct writer, nor sound critic,

affirms, that Rousseau undertook to decide the question of a

Superintending Providence by throwing stones at a tree. That would have

been not merely an imbecile but a blasphemous act. As the case stood,

Jean Jacques must be acquitted of any charge worse than that of

excessive and even ridiculous weakness. "_Je m'en vais_," he says to

himself, "_je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est

vis-a-vis de moi: si je le touche, signe de salut; si je le marque,

signe de damnation._"

But Jean Jacques passes for an inspired madman. What shall we say to the

temperate Spinoza, whose life was not variegated by the brightness of

domestic scenes, and who, being cut off from active life and from social

love, necessarily encountered a void within himself. It was his

favourite resource against the visits of ennui, to catch spiders and

teach them to fight; and when he had so far made himself master of the

nature of these animals, that he could get them as angry as game cocks,

he would, all thin and feeble as he was, break out into a roar of

laughter, and chuckle to see his champions engage, as if they, too, were

fighting for honour.

Poor Spinoza! It may indeed be questioned, whether his whole philosophy

was not a sort of pastime with him. It may be, that after all he was

ingenious because he could not be quiet, and wrote his attacks on

religion from a want of something to do. At any rate it has fared

strangely with his works. The world had well nigh become persuaded, that

Spinoza was but a name for a degraded atheism, and now we have him

zealously defended, and in fact we have seen him denominated a saint.[5]

So near are extremes: the ridiculous borders on the sublime; and the

same man is denounced as a parricide of society, and again extolled as a

model of sanctity.

But we have a stronger example than either of these. The very

philosopher, who first declared experience to be the basis of knowledge,

and found his way to truth through the safe places of observation, gives

in his own character some evidences of participation in the common

infirmity. He said very truly, that there is a foolish corner even in

the wise man's brain. Yet, if there has ever appeared on earth, a man

possessed of reason in its highest perfection, it was Aristotle. He had

the gift of seeing the forms of things, undisturbed by the confusing

splendour of colours; his mind, like the art of sculpture, represented

objects with the most precise outlines and exact images; but the world

in his mind was a colourless world. He understood and has explained the

secrets of the human heart, the workings of the human passions; but he

performs all these moral dissections with the coolness of an anatomist,

engaged in a delicate operation. The nicety of his distinctions, and his

deep insight into the nature of man, are displayed without passion,

while his constant effort after the discovery of new truth, never for

one moment betrays him into mysticism, or tempts him to substitute

shadows for realities. One would think, that such a philosopher was the

personification of self-possession; that his unruffled mind would always

dwell in the serene regions of intelligence; that his step would be on

the firm ground of experience; that his progress to the sublime temple

of truth and of fame, would have been ever secure and progressive; that

happiness itself would have blessed him for his tranquil and

dispassionate devotedness to exalted pursuits.

But perhaps the clear perception of the realities of life is not the

secret source of contentment. Many a scholar has shrunk from the contest

of transient interests, and sought happiness rather in the world of

contemplation; and perhaps the studies of antiquity derive a part of

their charm, from their affording us a place of refuge against the

clamours and persecutions which belong to present rivalries. If the view

of human nature, adopted by a large portion of our theologians, is a

just one, the heart must recoil with horror from the true consideration

of the human world in its natural unmitigated depravity, and throw

itself rather into the hopes that belong to the future, and the mercies

that attach to the Supreme Intelligence, for relief against the apathy

which so cold a contemplation of unmingled evil might naturally produce.

In the mouth of Pindar, life might be called a dream, and it would but

pass for the effusion of poetic melancholy. But when the sagacious

philosopher asserts it, that all hope is but the dream of waking man, a

latent discontent broken from the concealment of an unsatisfied

curiosity, a baffled pursuit; when his mind had arrived at that state,

nothing but its remarkable vigour could have preserved him from settled

gloom.

Again the venerable sage examined into the sources of happiness. It does

not consist, he affirms, in voluptuous pleasures, for they are

transient, brutalizing, and injurious to the mind; nor in public

honours, for they depend on those who bestow them, and it is not

felicity to be the recipient of an uncertain bounty; nor yet does

happiness consist in riches, for the care of them is but a toil; and if

they are expended, it is plainly a proof, that contentment is sought for

in the possession of other things. In the view of the Stagyrite,

happiness consists in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the practice of

virtue, under the auspices of mind, and nature, and fortune. He that is

intelligent, and young, and handsome, and vigorous, and rich, is alone

the happy man. Did the world need the sublime wisdom, the high mental

endowment of the Stagyrite, to learn, that neither the poor, nor the

dull, nor the aged, nor the sick, can share in the highest bounty of

the Universal Father? When it is remembered that Aristotle was favoured

above all his contemporaries in intellectual gifts, we ask the reader to

draw an inference as to the state of his mind, which still demanded the

beauties of personal attractions, and the lavish liberality of fortune.

When asked what is the most transient of fleeting things, the

philosopher made but a harsh answer, in naming "gratitude;" but his mind

must have been sadly a prey to ennui, when he could exclaim, "my

friends! there are no friends."

He could not be content to sit or stand, when he gave lessons in moral

science, but walked to and fro in constant restlessness; and, indeed, if

tradition reports rightly, he could not wait the will of Heaven for his

release from weariness, but in spite of all his sublime philosophy, and

all his expansive genius, he was content to die as the fool dieth.

But ennui kills others beside philosophers. It is not without example,

that men have committed suicide, because they have attained their utmost

wishes. The man of business, finding himself possessed of a sufficient

fortune, retires from active life; but the habit of action remains, and

becomes a power of terrific force. In such cases, the sufferer sits away

listless hours of intense suffering; the mind preys upon itself, and

sometimes madness ensues, sometimes suicide is committed.

Saul went out to find his father's asses. With the humble employment he

seems to have been reasonably pleased, and probably made search with a

light heart and an honest one. But, seeking asses, he found a kingdom;

and contentment fled when possession was full. In him, the reproofs of

conscience and discontent with the world produced a morbid melancholy,

and pain itself would have been to him a welcome refuge from ennui.

We detect the same subtle spirit at work, in the slanders in which

gossips find relief. Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on

the characters and lives of their neighbours for all their amusement;

and if a story is told of more than common interest, ennui is sure to

have its joy in adding a few embellishments. If time did not hang heavy,

what would become of scandal? Time, the common enemy, must be passed, as

the phrase is, and the phrase bears its own commentary; and since the

days of gladiators are passed, where can be the harm of blackening the

reputation of the living? To the pusillanimous and the idle, scandal is

the condiment of life; and while back-biting furnishes their

entertainment abroad, domestic quarrelling fills up the leisure hours at

home. It is a pretty general rule, that the _medisante_ is a termagant

in her household; and, as for our own sex, depend upon it, in nine cases

out of ten, the evil tongue belongs to a disappointed man. In the tenth

case, the man is an _imbecile_.

Fashion, also, in its excess, is but a relief against ennui; and it is

rather strong evidence of the universal prevalence of listlessness, that

a change in dress at Paris, can, within a few months, be imitated in St.

Louis. Yet, in the young and the fair, a milder sentiment influences

conduct. In them, the latent consciousness of beauty, the charm of an

existence that is opening in the fulness of its attractions, the

becoming loveliness of innocence and youth, the simple cheerfulness of

inexperience, lead to a modest and decorous display. Broadway, the

unrivalled Broadway, is not without its loungers; yet the young and the

gay are not discontented ones. They move in the strength of their own

beauty, like the patriot statesman, neither shunning, nor yet courting

admiration; and tripping along the brilliant street, half coveting half

refusing attention,

"They feel that they are happier than they know."

From Broadway we pass to the crowded haunts of business. Is there ennui

there? Do the money changers grow weary of profits? Is business so dull

that bankers have nothing to do? Are doubtful notes so uncommon, that

there is no latitude for shaving? Have the underwriters nothing at sea

to be anxious about? Do the insurers on life omit to look after those

who have taken out policies, and exhort them to temperance and exercise?

These are all busy enough; too much engaged, and too little romantic to

be much moved by sentimental regrets. But there are those, who plunge

headlong into affairs from the restlessness of their nature, and who

hurry into bold speculations, because they cannot endure to be idle.

Now, business, like poetry, requires a tranquil mind. But there are

those, who venture upon the career of business, under the impulse of

ennui. How shall the young and haughty heirs of large fortunes rid

themselves of their time, and acquit themselves in the eye of the public

of their imagined responsibilities? One writes a tale for the Souvenirs,

another speculates in the stocks. The former is laughed at, yet hoards

an estate; the latter is food for hungry sharks. Then comes bankruptcy;

sober thought repels the fiend that had been making a waste of life, or

the same passion drives its possessor to become a busy body and zealot

in the current excitement of the times; or absolute despair, ennui in

its intensity, leads to insanity.

For the mad house, too, as well as the debtor's gaol, is in part peopled

by the same blighting power, and nature recovers itself from a state of

languid apathy, only by the terrific excitement of frenzy. Or a passion

for suicide ensues; the mind revels in the contemplation of the grave,

and covets the aspect of the countenance of death as the face of a

familiar friend. The mind invests itself in the sombre shades of a

melancholy longing after eternal rest--a longing which is sometimes

connected with unqualified disbelief, and sometimes associates itself

with an undefined desire of a purely spiritual existence.

We might multiply examples of the very extensive prevalence of that

unhappy languor of which we are treating. Let us aim rather at observing

the limit of its power.

It was a foolish philosophy, which believed in ennui as an evidence and

a means of human perfectibility. The only exertions which it is capable

of producing, are of a subordinate character. It may give to passion a

fearful intensity, consequent on a state of moral disease; but human

virtue must be the result of far higher causes. The exercise of

principle, the generous force of purified emotions, cheerful desire, and

willing industry, are the parents of real greatness. If we look through

the various departments of public and of intellectual action, we shall

find the mark of inferiority upon every thing which has sprung from

ennui. In philosophy, it might produce the follies of Cynic oddity, but

not the sublime lessons of Pythagoras or Socrates. In poetry, it may

produce effusions from persons of quality, devoid of wit, but it never

could have pointed the satire of Pope. In the mechanic arts it may

contrive a balloon, but never could invent a steam-boat. In religion, it

stumbles at a thousand knotty points in metaphysical theology, but it

never led the soul to intercourse with heaven, or to the contemplation

of divine truth.

The celebrated son of Philip was a man of exalted genius; and political

wisdom had its share in his career. Ennui could never have produced

Macedonia's madman, but it may well put in its claim to the Swede. Or

let us look rather for a conqueror, who dreamed that he had genius to

rival Achilles, and yet never had a settled plan of action. The famous

king of Epirus has seemed to be an historical puzzle, so uncertain was

his purpose, so wavering his character. Will you know the whole truth

about him? Pyrrhus was an _ennuye_.

When a painter, in the pursuit of his vocation, is obliged to give a

likeness of a person that has neither beauty nor soul, he may perhaps

draw figures in the air, or spoil his picture by an inconsiderate

flourish of his pencil. He dislikes his task, and his work will show it.

When a poet writes a song for hire, or solely to be sung to some

favourite air, it is more than probable his verses will be languid, and

his meaning doubtful. Thus, for example,--

"The smiles of joy, the tears of wo

Deceitful shine, deceitful flow."

This is sheer nonsense. Joy smiles in good earnest, and many an aching

heart knows too well the deep truth of distress.

The fervent eloquence of true piety springs from conviction, and reaches

the heart; but we have sometimes listened to a dull sermon, which

proceeded from weariness more than from zeal, and belonged to ennui more

than to the stirring action of eloquent religion. The lawyer, too, is

sometimes overborne in his plea by disgust with his work, and in his

tiresome repetitions you may plainly see how he loathes--

"To drudge for the dregs of men,

And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen."

The life of Napoleon, in its busiest period, presents a remarkable

instance of ennui. While the allies were collecting around him in their

utmost strength, he was himself wavering in his purposes, and reluctant

to decide on the retreat to Leipsic. Strange, that at such a time he

should have given way to an overwhelming and almost childish languor.

Yet an eyewitness relates, "I have seen him at that time, seated on a

sofa, beside a table on which lay his charts, totally unemployed, unless

in scribbling mechanically large letters on a sheet of white paper."

Such was the power of ennui over Napoleon, at a time, when, in his own

language, nothing but a thunderbolt could save him.

It is dangerous for a man of superior ability to find himself thrown

upon the world without some regular employment. The restlessness

inherent in genius being thus left undirected by any permanent

influence, frames for itself occupations out of accidents. Moral

integrity sometimes falls a prey to this want of fixed pursuits; and the

man who receives his direction in active life from the fortuitous

impulse of circumstances, will be very apt to receive his principles

likewise from chance. Genius, under such guidance, attains no noble

ends; but resembles rather a copious spring, conveyed in a falling

aqueduct; where the waters continually escape through the frequent

crevices, and waste themselves ineffectually on their passage. The law

of nature is here, as elsewhere, binding; and no powerful results ever

ensue from the trivial exercise of high endowments. The finest mind,

when thus destitute of a fixed purpose, passes away without leaving

permanent traces of its existence; losing its energy by turning aside

from its course, it becomes as harmless and inefficient as the

lightning, which, of itself irresistible, may yet be rendered powerless

by a slight conductor.

These remarks apply perhaps in some measure even to Leibnitz, whose

sublime intelligence and mental activity were the wonder of his age. He

attained a celebrity of reputation, but hardly a contented spirit; at

times he descended to the consideration of magnitudes infinitely small,

and at times rose to the belief that he heard the universal harmony of

nature; for years he was devoted to illustrating the antiquities of the

family of a petty prince; and then again he assumed the sublime office

of defending the perfections of Providence. Yet with all this variety of

pursuit, the great philosopher was hardly to be called a happy man; and

it almost fills us with melancholy to find, that the very theologian who

would have proved this to be absolutely the best of all possible worlds,

died after all of chagrin.

Yet the name of Leibnitz is one which should rather excite unmingled

admiration; for the rich endowments of Heaven distinguished him as one

of the most favoured in that intellectual superiority which is the

choicest gift of God. Our subject is more fully illustrated in the case

of a less gifted, though a notorious man; one whose qualities have been

recently held up to admiration, yet for whom we find it impossible to

conceive sentiments of respect. We mean Lord Bolingbroke.

His talents as a writer have secured to him a very distinguished place

in the literature of England; and his political services, during the

reign of Queen Anne, have rendered him illustrious in English history.

But though he was possessed of wit, eloquence, family, wealth, and

opportunity, he never displayed true dignity of character, nor real

greatness of soul. He seemed to have no fixed principles of action; and

to have loved contest more than victory. Wherever there was strife,

there you might surely expect to meet St. John; and his public career

almost justifies the inference, that apostacy (if indeed a man who has

no principles can be called an apostate) would have seemed to him, after

his defeat, a moderate price for permission to appear again in the

lists. But as he had always coveted power with an insatiable avidity, he

never could rest long enough to acquire it. On the stormy sea of public

life, he was for ever struggling to be on the topmost wave; but the

waves receded as fast as he advanced; and fate seemed to have destined

him to waste his life in fruitless efforts and as fruitless changes.

In early life he sought distinction by his debaucheries; and from the

accounts of his biographer, it would seem, that he succeeded in becoming

the most daring profligate in London. Tired of the excess of

dissipation, he attempted the career of politics, and found his way into

Parliament under the auspices of the whigs. When politics failed, he put

on the mask of a metaphysician. Tired of that costume, he next attempted

to play the farmer. Dissatisfied with farming, he wrote political

pamphlets. Still discontented with his condition in the world, he strove

to undermine the basis of religion.

He began public life as a whig; but as the tories were in the ascendant,

he rapidly ripened into a tory; he ended his political career by

deserting the tories and avowing the doctrines of staunch and

uncompromising whigs. He tried libertinism, married life, politics,

power, exile, restoration, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the

city, the country, foreign travel, study, authorship, metaphysics,

infidelity, farming, treason, submission, dereliction,--but ennui held

him with a firm grasp all the while, and it was only in the grave that

he ceased from troubling.

To an observer who peruses his writings with this view of his character,

many of his expressions of wise indifference and calm resignation, have

even a ludicrous aspect. The truth breaks forth from all his attempts at

disguise. The philosopher's robes could not hide the stately wrecks of

his political passions. They say, that round Vesuvius, the lava of

former eruptions has so entirely resolved itself into soil, that

vineyards thrive on the black ruins of the volcano; and that the ancient

devastation could hardly be recognised, except for an occasional dark

mass, which, not yet decomposed, frowns here and there over the

surrounding fertility. Something like this was true of St. John; he

believed his ambition extinct, and attempted to gather round its ruins

all the beauties and splendour of contented wisdom; but his nature was

still ungovernably fierce; and to the last, his passions lowered angrily

on the quiet scenes of his literary retirement.

There is no clue to his character, except in supposing him to have been

under the influence of ennui, which was perpetually terrifying him into

the grossest contradictions. He could not be said to have had any

principles, or to have belonged to any party; and to whatever party he

rallied, he was sure to become utterly faithless. He was not less false

to the Pretender than to the King, to Ormond than to Walpole. He was

false to the tories and false to the whigs; he was false to his country,

for he attempted to involve her in civil war; and false to his God, for

he combated religion. He was not swayed by a passion for glory, for he

did not pursue it steadily,--nor by a passion for power, for he

quarrelled with the only man by whose aid he could have maintained it.

He was rather driven to and fro by a wild restlessness, which led him

into gross contradictions "for his sins." Nor was his falsehood without

its punishment. What could be more pitifully degrading, than for one who

had been a successful British minister of state, and had displayed in

the face of Europe his capacity for business and his powers of

eloquence, to have finally stooped to accept a seat in the Pretender's

cabinet, where pimps and prostitutes were the prime agents and

counsellors?

There exists a very pleasant letter from Pope, giving an account of

Bolingbroke's rural occupations, during his country life in England,

after the reversal of his attainder. He insisted on being a farmer; and

to prove himself so, hired a painter to fill the walls of his parlour

with rude pictures of the implements of husbandry. The poet describes

him between two haycocks, watching the clouds with all the apparent

anxiety of a husbandman; but to us it seems, that his mind was at that

time no more in the skies than when he quoted Anaxagoras, and declared

heaven to be the wise man's home. His heart clung to earth, and to

earthly strife; and his uneasiness must at last have become deplorably

wretched, since he could consent to pick up stale arguments against

Christianity, and leave a piece of patchwork, made up of the shreds of

other men's scepticism, as his especial legacy to posterity, in proof of

the masterly independence of his mind.

Thus we have endeavoured to explain the nature of that apathy which is

worse than positive pain, and which impels to greater madness than the

fiercest passions,--which kings and sages have not been able to resist,

nor wealth nor pleasures to subdue. We have described ennui as a power

for evil rather than for good; and we infer, that it was an absurd

philosophy which classed it among the causes of human superiority, and

the means of human improvement. It is the curse pronounced upon

voluptuous indolence and on excessive passion; on those who decline

active exertion, and thus throw away the privileges of existence; and on

those who live a feverish life, in the constant frenzy of stimulated

desires. There is but one cure for it: and that is found in moderation;

the exercise of the human faculties in their natural and healthful

state; the quiet performance of duty, in meek submission to the

controlling Providence, which has set bounds to our achievements in

setting limits to our power. Briefly: our ability is limited by

Heaven--our desires are unlimited, except by ourselves--ennui can be

avoided only by conforming the passions of the human breast to the

conditions of human existence.

In pursuing this investigation, which we now bring to a close, we have

not attempted to exhaust the subject; we refer it rather to the calm

meditations of others, who will find materials enough within themselves.

And lest the impatient should throw aside our essay with the disgust of

satiety, or the persevering should by our prolixity be vexed with the

very spirit which we would rather teach them to exorcise, we here take a

respectful leave, with our sincerest wishes, that life may be to the

reader a succession of pleasant emotions, and death a resting place

neither coveted nor feared.