is considered, even in Italy, very high up in the scale of the
cognoscenti, told me some very curious anecdotes concerning them. I
think it was his Eminence who pointed out to me the most interesting
frame extant. It enshrines a superb picture by Raphael, of a female
saint, (I believe St. Eleanora.) It is in white and gold, exquisitely
designed and carved by Benvenuto Cellini, who was sent by Pope Clement
the VIIth, with the picture and frame to the great personage on whom
the Pope bestowed it!—What a present!—and what persons!—Clement the
VIIth!—Raphael!—Cellini!—This Pope Clement was a true Medici, in his
passionate love for the arts. In passing to mass every morning, through
the beautiful Salon of the Belvidere, he always paused and made an
offering at the shrine of its divine Apollo. It was he who employed Fra
Giovagnolo Montorsoli, to restore the hand of that unrivalled statue;
and he was wont to converse with the sculptor while he worked. When his
ingenious task was finished, Clement made the artist a Canonico.
The oldest frames are I believe the _Cancelli_, so called, from the
skreen work which shuts out the choir from the body of the church,
and which they imitated. These frames are divided into compartments,
(generally into three,) and the pictures are set in each compartment.
They are frequently made with doors; and were used as altarpieces, in
private oratories.[21]
The great painters of Italy not only drew the designs for their own
frames, but occasionally worked at them. The goldsmith’s art was then in
great request: and many eminent painters of the sixteenth century, began
life as working goldsmiths. Among these was Francesco Salviati, who had
been also a velvet weaver. Some of the finest frames, embossed in silver,
and studded with gems, were executed by these artist goldsmiths, who
worked at them in the intervals of their more serious occupations: for at
that epoch of the triumph of the arts, even the recreations of the artist
were sought in the lighter branches of his divine profession. Vasari
describes himself, Salviati, and other young artists, as employing their
holiday hours in drawing from the best models in Florence; and again
re-united in the workshop of the immortal Bacio Bandinelli, where they
worked with renovated ambition, and exhaustless zeal; enduring miracles
of privation and self-denial, such as it is supposed that the zeal of
religion can alone support. At Rome, they continued the same laborious
pursuit, animated by the same enthusiasm.[22]
Not all the academic prizes, royal premiums and public exhibitions, could
effect thus much for the arts. Founded by power, these institutions
belong to mediocrity: the da Vincis, the Michel Angelos, the Raphaels,
were beyond them! There are designs for picture frames, by the artists
who preceded the epoch of academies, more beautiful in their drawing and
execution, than any member of the modern academy of Rome could produce. I
have the drawing of one now lying on my table, of the greatest possible
beauty in design and workmanship. It combines fruit, birds, and flowers,
the heads of animals, trophies, masks, and foliage, in the most perfect
drawing; and all so happily blended, as to present nothing incongruous:
the perfection of what is called the Arabesque. The art of picture frames
fell with all the other arts; wood and plaister of the rudest form,
badly gilt, succeeded to the exquisite carving, designs, and precious
materials, which were lavished on the frames of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Nothing so paltry, so mean, or tasteless, as the
modern frame.
ARISTOCRACY.
The notion of an hereditary aristocracy being serviceable to the people
by curbing the monarch, is opposed to all fact. The aristocracy is a
class constituted, as it were, expressly for servitude. The extravagance
of a single individual will lay a noble family for generations at the
feet of a minister; and, if this be wanting, the necessity of providing
for younger children, at the public expense, works the same consequence.
Tacitus tells us, that on the decline of the republic, the consular,
patrician, and equestrian orders, rushed headlong into servitude; and
he adds, “the more illustrious the family, the more corrupt and eager
were the individuals.” In Spain, the aristocracy is entirely gangrened
and worthless. In France, before and since the revolution, the highest
nobility grasped at personal servitude in the household of the monarch.
The indirect good this order has effected in England, may be explained
by the homely proverb, that declares the circumstance under which honest
men come by their own. Kings granted concessions to the people to oppose
them with more effect to the nobility; and the nobility made the people a
pretext for opposing the sovereign; but both fought for themselves,—that
is, for the power of ruling the state to their own exclusive advantage.
The brightest page in the history of aristocracies, is that which relates
the events of the revolution of 1688. Yet, what a tissue of heartless
intrigue, corruption, and tergiversation! what underhand correspondencies
with the excluded family! what promptitude to overturn the work of their
own hands, are displayed in the lives of the great men of that day! Since
the revolution, the aristocracy have been the remora of civilization,—a
feather-bed between the walls of despotism, and the battery of public
opinion. A surplus wheel in the machinery of the state, they would long
since have stopped the movements of government, if their subserviency did
not adapt them to every impulse from the crown; while, by means of their
representatives in the House of Commons, they modify the proceedings
of that body. At the moment in which I write, the influence of the
aristocracy, in defeating a liberal ministry, in making the corn laws an
affair of their peculiar “order,” in opposing a necessary retrenchment of
corrupt expenditure, prove to demonstration the futility of the received
theory. Should public opinion, however, triumph in the lower house, the
aristocracy must submit to reform, or be crushed. An enlightened people,
and an anti-national aristocracy, cannot long co-exist.[23]
TEMPER.
There is a sort of fitful gaiety very peculiar to the ill tempered. I
have known the most sullen and morose women light up with bursts of
brilliant vivacity, which to me, who was aware of the real state of the
atmosphere, loaded as it was with thunder and storm, appeared very awful.
It was like the precursive lightnings, which manifest to the eye the
density and blackness of the coming desolation.
The secret, the charm, the spell, that “makes to-morrow cheerful as
to-day,” is the even, spring-like sunshine of the mind, which, though
sometimes veiled by the vapour of a passing melancholy, is still seen,
pure and bright, through the shadowy medium. This is worth all the
explosions of hysterical gaiety in the world. Between the sadness of
sensibility and the gloom of morosity, what a difference! But the worst
of it is, that, in both instances, the _morale_ goes for so little, and
the _physique_ for so much, that the drop or the drachm more or less, in
the prescribed dose, makes the surly gay, and the gay sombre.
“There are individuals,” says the unrivalled Madame de Staël
(Mademoiselle de Launey,) “whose good and bad humour are equally
unbearable.” This was applied to her royal mistress and patroness, the
Duchesse de Maine; but it is applicable to half the fine ladies and
spoiled children of fashion and fortune, all the world over. There was
nothing I dreaded half so much as getting into high favour with Lady
——, when she got into high spirits. Her epilepsy of good humour was
insupportable; such tyranny of kindness, such vociferation of gaiety!
Running up the great stairs of —— one day, I came against a friend, who
was going down. “What are you flying from, in such haste?” he asked.
“From Lady ——’s good humour,” said I.
He told my _mot_, and I lost my friend. How often does indiscretion
pass for ingratitude! Yet the indiscreet are never ungrateful, for they
are uncalculating; and ingratitude, coming from insensibility, cannot
act upon impulse. Strong impulses come of strong feelings; and strong
feelings are the source of all that is great and good, not, alas! of all
that is wise: and so end my inferences.
IGNORANCE.
Pythagoras, we are told, invented the term philosopher, or “lover of
wisdom,” because he could not conscientiously assume the appellation of
“soph,” or wise man; and the greatest philosophers, and most knowing,
have had the strongest conviction of the uncertainty of science: so
that soph and sophism have become terms of contempt. Yet, how obstinate
and stiff-necked is the bridling importance of genuine ignorance. How
it looks conscious superiority over all! and gives out its oracular
nonsense, and trite dogmas, as if they were the dicta of divine
inspiration. “When I ope my lips, let no dog bark.”
“The conceit of knowledge,” says Montaigne, “is the plague of man.”
What, then, is it of women? A self-supposed infallible woman, with her
organic feebleness backing her ignorance, is to be feared and shunned a
thousand times more than the wit, and the blue-stocking. I tremble in
her presence; and, making my best courtesy, get out of her way as fast
as I can. Besides, such women have all (God bless the mark!) a natural
antipathy to me; and, without vanity, I may say, “_pour cause_.”
BEAUX OF OLD.
What funny fellows the dandies of the beginning of the last century were!
A fine man, then, was like Sir Harry Wildair—“the joy of the playhouse,
the life of the park!” Think of one of the fine men of the present day
being a joy any where, or the life of any place!
No gentleman, then, walked out (when he did walk, for we find even
Squire Western going to visit in a chair,) without a footman after him.
Dependence and ostentation are the characteristics of semi-civilization!
They are also infallible proofs of mediocrity in individuals, in all
times and ages.
METHODISM AND MOLIÈRE.
“It is good to be merry and wise.” It is difficult to be wise and not
to be merry. A few years back, when, in Dublin, it was a rage to be
“serious,” some very foolish things took place, which, as they belong to
the _Chronique Scandaleuse_, shall find no room here. It was then the
fashion to give tea and tract-parties, to the exclusion of gay faces and
pleasant conversation. I remember, on the same night Mrs. Fry preached
at a party at Mrs. ——’s in Merrion-square, La Porte read out a comedy of
Molière’s at my _soirée_ in Kildare-street. We both gave “_Les Précieuses
Ridicules_,” in our several ways; but my guests went away laughing,
and hers yawning. _L’un portant l’autre_, mine had the best of it; and
Molière _versus_ Methodism, won the cause.
THE FLYING-FISH.
Naturalists have said that the power of the flying-fish has been given to
it for the purpose of avoiding its powerful enemies of the deep. What,
then, have the poor herrings done, that they should not fly? for they,
too, have their enemies, no less intent upon “swallowing them quick,”
than Buonaparte was the bishops, who prayed so fervently against the
voracious propensities “of the great leviathan.” But this is not the
worst of it; for after all, the gift bestowed, (or said to be given)
as a special mark of good, on the flying-fish, was only a _mauvaise
plaisanterie_: for he no sooner pops his head above water, than he
encounters a new enemy, in certain sea-birds, equally Catholic in their
fish-eating devotion; which force the wretched victim back to his native
element, leaving it only the choice between becoming a constituent
portion of a shark or an albatross. This is a distressing image, and
the new-light doctrine is a relief to the fancy, which teaches that the
flying-fish launches into the air in pursuit of pleasure, and is led only
by an exuberance of temperament to sport in the sunshine, and sparkle in
the waters, in all the happy wantonness of a joyous existence.
Who has not felt this buoyancy of spirit, this disposition to fly,
when under the strong excitement of health and spirits? “_Portez-vous
bien_,” says that true philosopher, St. Evremont, “_voilà à quoi tout
doit aboutir_.” “Be well: that is the end to which all things should
be directed:” but to this _end_ how many of the elements of life must
mingle. It is curious to observe the rapid changes which take place in
our existence quite independently of external circumstance,—the light
boundings of the spirit, the high beatings of the heart, unassignable
to any foreign cause; and then the depressing laboured respiration, and
sinking of the soul, though unconscious of a real sorrow. Even our dreams
are under the influence of these inexplicable conditions. The aged and
the hypochondriac never dream of flying; and even the young and the happy
awaken sometimes under the influence of impressions, more painful to
feel than easy to account for.
The temperament of genius is peculiarly susceptible to these alterations
of organic elasticity and depression. It is a true flying-fish of moral
life, sporting in the sunshine, and shrinking under the cloud. Even
philosophy itself takes its colour from the constitution. Optimism is
the mere creation of a “pleased alacrity and cheer of mind;” and the
Epicurean is but another word for a man who digests well; while the
Cynic is only to be argued with by calomel. This may appear all very
fanciful; but it has a practical corollary of undoubted certainty; and
that is,—when you feel misanthropy and disgust creeping on you, instead
of penning a diatribe against the nature of things, take a long walk.
Air and exercise—a flying-fish excursion into the sunshine, are worth a
whole army of syllogisms for harmonizing the pulses of thought. Nature is
the poet’s true book of reference. It was Shakspeare’s. The _nature_ of
the French poets, even in their Augustine age, was _Versailles_, and the
coteries, literary and gallant, _de la cour et la ville_.
TOLERATION.
Du Clos has some admirable things in his excellent memoir of Louis XIV.
Here is one:— “_Nulle persécution, beaucoup d’indifférence, et d’oubli,
c’est la mort de toutes les sectes._”[24]
Madame D’Epinay, in her _Shew up Book_ of the Church and State society of
France, before the Revolution, draws a picture of this author, _peint en
charge_. Still he was an admirable writer, and appears to have been an
honest man.
OLD-FASHIONED FRIENDS.
What a horrible thing it is to be ashamed of one’s old friends, merely
because they are old-fashioned. The other day some “_English epicures_,”
top-sawyers of London ton, dined with us, when a dropper-in, from
Connaught, took a place (left vacant by a late apology). I had dined with
my provincial guest many years back, and thought it the greatest possible
honour to be asked to his Castle Rackrent. He then appeared to me a very
fine person, and his table a very fine table. But, horror of horrors!
what were my feelings when, uncovering the _entrée_ next him, before
the soup was removed, he asked one of the most noted Amphitryons of the
day, if he should help him to some of the savories; and when, after
calling _bouilli_, bully-beef! _petits-pâtés_, mutton-pies! soup, broth!
_crême-au-pistache_, “_raspberry crame!_” and _fondue_, “_podden!_” he
ended by sending back his glass of ale, not because he “never touched
malt,” but, because, as he told the servant, “he preferred his porther
out of a _pewther pot_, after the ould fashion.” French cookery has
made but slow progress among the “mere Irish,” in the remote provinces;
and “the _jug-day_” at Bogmore (far below the original from which it
was copied) is still to be found in nearly all its details among the
hospitable festivities of the genuine and unmixed descendants of Milesius.
The science of cookery is the science of civilization; and considering
the effect which the material, raw or cooked, has upon the digestion, and
the digestion on the brain, it is a science of quite as much importance,
as any other in the great scale of utility and consideration. When Lord
Byron took to vegetable diet, he used to say to one, from whom I had
the anecdote, “When you eat beef-steaks, a’n’t you afraid of committing
murder?”
IRISH BEGGARS.
“_Souhaiter les bonnes fêtes_” was thought provincial and old fashioned,
even in the time of Louis the Fourteenth: in Ireland the custom is as
fresh as ever. “Many happy Christmas’s, Easters, and Patrick’s days,”
is the wish of the lower orders, and particularly of the mendicity of
Dublin. The Irish beggars are perpetual calendars of days appointed by
the church to be kept holy. The resources of their eloquence are indeed
infinite, and their keen sense of the influence of pathos and humour on
the feelings, (beyond the power of words or even facts to express,) is
among the many proofs of the shrewdness and innate perceptions of the
people, even in the very lowest state of human degradation for what, on
the scale of human wretchedness and prostration, is so low as the Irish
beggar!
A book might be written on the mendicity of Dublin; which, like the
history of the country, would be at once tragical and farcical. The
prevalence of a religion which makes charity (uncalculated charity, the
most mistaken and frequently the most selfish virtue,) a leading dogma,
combines with the poverty of the people, to render beggary an _order_,
almost as much tolerated and respected in Ireland as in India. Every
quarter, and every street of the capital, had, some twenty years back,
its established and privileged female beggar; who, known to the great,
and maintained by their servants (for services given), was permitted to
exercise the immunity of the court fools of old, and to address their
superiors on the occasions of their ingress and egress, with a sort of
servile familiarity, often seasoned by humour or tinctured by sarcasm.
Generally half mad, and always more than half drunk, their folly or
their inebriety was deemed an excuse for their impertinence. Lady
M—n—rs, descending the steps of her house to get into her carriage, was
addressed by a well known beggar of her neighbourhood in the usual tone
of supplication.
“Go away,” said her ladyship, “I will give you nothing.”
“Och! then long life to your ladyship; and it’s often you gave us that,
God bless you!” was the reply, in the same tone of imploring misery, as
the charity was asked.
The beggar, who frequents Kildare-street, loitering about the portico of
its club house, at two or three in the morning, observed the Rev. Mr. ——
reel forth, and, before she could lend him her assistance, find his level
in the kennel. In that state herself, in which “ladies wish to be who
love their” glass, and unable to extricate the reverend gentleman, who—
“All inspired lay beside a sink,
And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink,”
she sat herself in the mud beside him, and began to “_keen_” over him
thus:
“Jemmy ——, Jemmy ——; there you lie, machrée, this blessed morning in the
gutter, an honour to your cloth and calling; and where are yez all, now,
that has’nt left the likes of yez behind, only the Reverend Jemmy in the
gutter here. God be wid yez, Denis Bowes! and Charley Ormesby! and rest
your souls! for it’s little the likes of you, now, we’ll see again!”
Thus sung the modern Bragela!
“The mighty are dispersed at Temora! there is none in Cormac’s hall.
Bragela will not hope for your return. She has the arms of him who is no
more.”
This sort of apostrophe to old friendships or connexions, is a very
common art in the eloquence of Irish mendicity: to awaken your feelings,
to seize on your imagination by a sudden reference to some friend, once
the daily visitant of your house, or known partizan of your opinions, is
a mode of influence frequently resorted to. It was so the other day in my
own instance, and by the very Bragela of the Rev. Jemmy.
“Ye have nothing for me the day, my lady? Well, sure you won’t be so,
plaze God; and God be with poor Counsellor B——.[25] He took the _could_
(cold) out of my heart and gave me charity on the steps of this very
door: and its little the likes of him will ever darken your threshold,
lady dear, again, anyhow—rest his sowl! Well, success to Hamilton Rowan,
and Counsellor Shiel. Shure there’s life in a muscle, and luck before us
yet.—Hurrah for ould Ireland!”
Old friends gone for ever! with Shiel and Hamilton Rowan and ould
Ireland! These were well worth the trifle they extorted: and, thus
invoked, patriotism “gave, ere charity began!”
OBSOLETISMS.
“Words that wise Raleigh and sage Bacon spake.”
The late Bishop of Ossory (Dr. Kearney), so distinguished by his
literary attainments, who, though a bishop, was not ashamed to express
his enthusiastic admiration of Shakspeare, frequently told me, that he
thought the best commentators on that immortal genius would be found in
the upper gallery of an Irish theatre. How many words, that have puzzled
the learned for the last century, could find a ready explanation among
the catholic gentry, and even lower orders in Connaught and Munster!
Language in Ireland stopped short, with every other improvement, at the
revolution; and the penal statutes had an equal effect on the liberties
and the philology of the people.
Speaking of Anthony (in Anthony and Cleopatra), Philo says,
“His captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fight hath burst
The bucklers on his breast, reneges all temper.”
The word “_renege_,” a _poser_ to the English reader, is used nightly
at every catholic card table in the Irish provinces; where at the old
fashioned Irish game of five and forty, an old lady “_reneges_” a card
(imprudently played) by the licence of the game. In Queen Elizabeth’s
time every one wrote _hir_ for _her_; in Ireland it is still pronounced
so. Not a phrase, not an idiom, is now in use among the common Irish down
to the lowest classes, that may not be found in the most classic authors
of Elizabeth’s and James the first’s day.
“Plaze your honour,” an address of courtesy now confined to the Irish
spalpeen or cottier, after having passed through the hands of the upper
servants and tradesmen of fifty years back, was once an address of
respect from lord keepers to lord chamberlains, and from noble to noble,
down to the time of Charles the First. The Earl of Middlesex begins all
his letters to the Duke of Buckingham (James the First’s favourite) with
“My most honoured Lord.” Lord Chancellor Bacon addresses with “If it may
please your lordship,” and even in colloquial familiarity, “your honour”
was a phrase of courtesy, addressed to both sexes. But obsoletisms are
constantly mistaken for vulgarisms. In as much, indeed, as they are
exploded forms, which have fallen to the exclusive use of the vulgar,
they are so: for the vulgar of all ages are those who stand still, and
make no progress either in language or in its source, ideas. The vulgar
tongue, is the tongue spoken by the people. Dante and Petrarch were said
to write in the vulgar tongue; it is now erudition to be able to read and
understand them.
To begin letters with a long, formal, and ceremonious address, was the
fashion in England up to the time of Charles the Second, whose court
introduced the more refined simplicity of French forms and manners.
“Right honourable!” “My singular good lord!” “My right worthy!” and “May
it please your grace,” “honour,” “worship,” or “lordship,” were all
swept away with stiff stays and cumbrous fardingales; and the letters
from “yours, faithfully, Charles Rex,” to Harry Bennet, on the serious
subject of Courants, Sarabands, and “small fiddlers that do not play
ill on the fiddle,” exhibit a very different formula, from the letters
of the discreet and well affected persons of quality of the preceding
reign. They, in fact, have all the ease, familiarity, and equality of the
charming letters of the Sévigné’s, Coulanges, and De Retz, if not their
wit, elegance, or good taste.