that was purest and best in the greatest revolution that had ever shaken
the empires of the earth, a simultaneous murmur burst forth from all
parties—proceeding, indeed, from various emotions, but all indicative
of the intense interest his striking and venerable appearance excited.
As he stood face to face with the king, and, stretching forth his hand,
pronounced his vow of fealty to the first constitutional monarch France
had ever seen upon the throne, what a sweep of recollections passed over
the minds of the spectators! It was at this moment, I perceived the fine
head, and pale, impassable countenance of Lord Castlereagh, bearing
forward from the diplomatic tribune, in deep observation of the scene. In
the scale of humanity, never was there a more striking contrast, than was
at this moment exhibited in the persons of the founders of the National
Army of France, and the perpetrator of the Union in Ireland.
MEDDLERS.
L’Abbe Gagliani says “that mankind are born with a disposition to meddle
with other people’s affairs; and that liberty consists in nothing else
but the power of indulging the propensity.” As a sneer against popular
governments, this may be an excellent joke, but it is directly the
contrary of truth. The propensity to which men are really predisposed, is
that of enjoying the fruits of other men’s industry, and of directing the
actions of the public towards their own private advantage. The utility
of liberty is, that it puts some restraint upon the indulgence of this
inclination. The affairs of the nation are the affairs of every one of
its members; and tyrants and oligarchs are the real interlopers in their
_gestion_, whose interference is impossible, when the guarantees of
liberty are perfect.
It is, however, quite true, that in free states the citizens are
disposed to resent any abridgment of another’s rights, and to interfere
in the concerns of the oppressed, so far as to procure him redress. But
every one, thus employed, is really acting for himself, and with the
perfect consciousness that he is fighting his own battle. Few of Wilkes’s
cotemporaries either loved or respected him, personally; but when his
rights were attacked by the government, he represented the people of
England; and the people had the sense and the spirit to force the
ministry to desist from their violence.
PHILOSOPHY OF GRAMMAR.
I asked the question, should I say “every body is gone out only _I_,”
or, “only _me_?” and was answered “only I,” because “only _I_” means “I
alone”—“remain,” being understood.
Had I used the conjunction “but” instead of “only,” the proper
construction would have been the same, because “but” means “be out,” or,
in more modern phrase, “I being out of the question.” The modern “but,”
said my informant, represents two distinct words, both imperatives. When
it stands for “be out,” it is the precise equivalent of “except,” derived
from the Latin. Sometimes it is used for the imperative of an obsolete
verb, signifying to add, which is now retained only in the infinitive—“to
boot.” Let us look for an instance:—here is one in Sir Charles Grandison,
which lies open before me. Harriet Byron writes, after some preliminary
reflections—“But, why should I torment myself? what must be, will.” The
interpretation of the passage is this;—to what I have already said,
_boot_ (or, in modern English, _add_,) this second thought, that what
must be, will; and, therefore, why should I torment myself? These two
are the only real meanings of that Proteus-like conjunction; and one
or other will explain all Johnson’s hundred instances, scarcely one of
which he understood properly. Johnson’s industry was unwearied, but his
research trifling. Authority, and not analysis, was its object. Authority
belonged to his day, inquiry to ours: so adieu to learning—and hey! for
knowledge:—_à bas les savans! et vive le savoir!_
Alas! it makes one’s head ache to look over this grammatical jargon—I
wrote my first twenty volumes without much troubling my head on the
subject. But now “the school-master is abroad,” that is, he is at
home—with _me_—and my march of intellect goes on without ever budging
from the fire-side. “_Mon voyage autour de ma cheminée_,” would not be
the least intellectual book I ever wrote. And yet, my dear Mr. Colburn
would not give me £20 for all the grammar that I may write for the rest
of my life; though I rivalled in etymological philosophy “_The Diversions
of Purley_.”
Before I drop grammar,—What a droll pun is that of the grammarian
presenting his book to the Académie, after the Duke de —— had advanced
his pretensions to be elected one of the _quarante_, on the score of his
illustrious ancestors. “_Je suis ici pour mon grand-père_,” said the
duke. “_Je suis ici pour ma GRAMMAIRE_,” said his ignoble philological
competitor.
By the by, grammar is the last thing that should be placed in the
hands of children, as containing the most abstract and metaphysical
propositions, utterly beyond their powers of comprehension; putting them
to unnecessary torture; giving them the habit of taking words for things,
and exercising their memory at the expense of their judgment. But this is
the original sin of education, in all its branches.
MY VISITING BOOK.
“Ce seroit une belle chose que je ne susse vivre qu’avec les
gens qui me sont agréables.”
MAD. DE SÉVIGNÉ.
To-day I looked over my visiting book, to clear out for the new year,
and to eliminate some of the false and the foolish, who creep into every
circle, however exclusive or small: for every body, from a duchess to a
dairy-maid, may be exclusive in her own way. Not that I meant to carry my
proscription to any great extent; for if I were to admit only the honest
and the clever, I might as well shut up shop altogether. There are,
however, degrees in all things; and there are some, so falsely false,
and so foolishly dull, that principle and patience alike revolt, and so,
out they go. But what is to be done with whole incursions from remote
provinces,—large families from Bally, courts and castles, when one has
a small house?—as, for example, Mrs. Botherum of Castle Botherum, Miss
Botherum, Miss Anna Maria Botherum, Miss Jemima Matilda Botherum, Miss
Honoria, and Miss Frances Botherum! Col. Botherum (of the yeomanry),
Mr. Walter York Botherum, Mr. Ernest Augustus, and the Rev. Mortimer
Botherum! Shem, Ham, and Japhet, “a terrible sight;”—and all this, when
one has only a reception room, of which the divine Pasta said, the last
time she did me the honour to sing in it, “_On pourra aussi bien chanter
dans un fiacre_,” and a boudoir which might be placed on the show-table
of a moderately sized London drawing-room: and this, too, with a passion
for light as great as the Duchess de C——,[30] and with lamps that would
light up Erebus, and shew the slightest blot in the escutcheon of the
toilette, where every body comes labelled for something.
No, this is beyond the acmé of human friendship! “_Ainsi cuit, on aurait
mangé son père_,” says La Reynière of his favourite dish; and there
are ridicules in dress, manner, and bearing, which might excuse one’s
_cutting_, if not “_eating_” one’s mother. The want of birth, rank,
or fortune, are such mere, such inevitable accidents, such universal
liabilities, that nothing above the lowest order of intellect, or the
most degrading toadyism to the great of all sorts, could stoop to exclude
from their society those who, with the exception of such accidental
distinctions, possessed every other. But dress and address are within the
attainment of every body; and the man who visits you in the morning in a
milk-white waistcoat,[31] or the woman, who, in the evening, when she is
announced, stops to make a curtesy at the door of your drawing-room, must
be wholly beyond the pale of social redemption.
Such anomalies are always indicative of _mauvais ton_; and _mauvais
ton_ is the want of good sense or good company. If, however, the white
waistcoat is held out as a flag of singularity by a marked man, why then
it becomes a _grade_ in itself, like Jerningham’s blue stockings, which
founded a sect in literature. But since curtesies went out with hoops
and all other grotesque things, the woman who curtesies is lost. She is
inaccessible to all improvements, and will bring up her children to hate
Catholic emancipation, gas, steam, and M’Adamised roads; her sons will
stick fast by 1688, and her daughters will propagate the family curtesy
to endless generations.
In this respect, we residents are better off than the country ladies
who come to their own mansions in the squares, and the “rows,” and the
“places,” for the season, and who have the whole country rising _en
masse_ to follow, and fill their drawing-rooms, just as they occupy the
castle in the country, on the strength of electioneering interests or
county politics and jobs. This reconciles one amazingly to the fee-simple
proprietorship of a few flower pots in the balcony—the only _terre_ I
could ever call my own.
What, however, particularly amused me to-day, was, not my “mere Irish,”
nor my “English of the Pale” visitors; but that, in looking over my list,
for the few last years, I found an absolute congress from all parts of
the known world; and that representatives of the four quarters of the
earth had passed through my little _taudis_ in Kildare-street. There
was Major St. J—— B——, from Madras; Mr. B——, from Boston; Captain I——,
from Calcutta; Col. T——, from Canada; Sir C. G——n, from the icebergs of
Greenland, and Col. D——y, from the Kiosks of Ispahan; with many more
droppers-in from the Ganges, and morning callers from the Ohio. There
were, too, the _Neri_ and _Bianchi_, from Florence; Imperialists and
Nationalists from Lombardy, and Guelphs, Ghibelines, and carbonari, with
romanticists and classicists, from all parts of Italy.
How prettily these historico-poetical names write down among the O’s and
the Macs of my “native troops!” the Strozzi, and Frangipani, and Pucci,
and Piasasco, and Ugoni and Pozzo, and Cimetelli, and Castiglione, and
Pepe—all connected with struggles for liberty, and with illustrations
in letters, both in modern and ancient times. Then comes my quota from
Spain, canonicos of cathedrals in Madrid, members of the Cortes, deputies
to the Pope, and ex-ministers of the constitutional régime; then follow
the charming French _voltigeurs_,—_voltigeurs_ of nature and the good
new times, with their revolutionary names and imperial titles, my Dukes
of D——a and M——llo, and the clever Du V——r and P——y, and Tha——rs; and my
German professors, “truants from Gottingen,” who come to geologize, and
to see Ireland and Dr. Macartney,[32] and talk of Werner, and Kant, and
Goëthe——.
Here, after all, lies the great compensation for the ills which
authorship is heir to. It is the delightful privilege of literary
notoriety to live in intelligence and communion with those whom, as
Humboldt once said to me, “make the fifth part of the world so well worth
the other four,” the feeling and the thinking. This order constitutes
the free-masonry of nature, which she has organized to explore her great
truths, and to feed the lamp, which, though veiled and shadowed by a
succession of errors, still burns, and will continue to burn, eternal as
the cause for which it was created. It is the consciousness of a remote
reciprocity and silent communion with such gifted individuals that gives
the moral courage, even to a female author, to tell those bold truths,
which the base, the sordid, and the corrupt, are interested to deny. The
tone of mind and talent of a woman especially fits her to enter into this
mystic communion with kindred thinkers spread over the whole world. It
belongs to her _finesse_ and spirituality, to the feeling and the fancy
that breathe over all she writes, thus to open a private intercourse,
through the medium of the public press, to waft a sentiment to the pole,
and speed a thought to the line—to revive a fading prepossession across
the steep Atlantic, and to waken a latent association beyond the Alps;
to direct a sally to Calcutta; to billet a _mot d’énigme_ on New York;
and with the air of writing for the world, or the ambition of composing
for posterity, to feel only the inspiration of an individual influence,
and to _clear out_ a cargo of odd and pleasant things by the good ship
Sympathy, certain of its reaching the destined port and of being deeply
prized by the correspondent to whom they are consigned. How many pilgrims
has “Julie” brought to Lausanne, and “Corinne” to Copet, who in this
marching age have directed their movements to our “_Ultima Irelande_,”
to visit its natural wonders; and who have made a _station_ on their
route, to drop a bead, and tell an _ave_, at the cell of one, whose
zeal (if not her works) has entitled her to some consideration from the
liberal and the free. When so many delightful spirits are _abroad_,
who would not be always “_at home_,” to receive them? Alas, for the
home!—the native home, that owes its charm, not to compatriot sympathy,
or liberality, or genius, but to those
“Posters by the sea and land,”
who bring the intellect of Europe along with them, to shame our insular
ignorance and bigotted prejudices.
If I had not taken this glance at my little visiting book, I should have
had a solace the less to console me for the privations and sacrifices,
which all who live in Ireland, from motives of private affection or
public principle, must endure. There, the peaceable enjoyments and
courtesies of life, its distinctions and its honours, are for a _caste_;
while, for all others, are reserved proscription or persecution!—the
calumnies of a ribald press; and the contemptuous neglect, or (what
is worse) the supercilious notice of that antinational class, which
is alike insensible to genius and suspicious of patriotism. Among the
great, the incalculable benefits to be conferred on Ireland by Catholic
Emancipation, that of bettering the condition of private society, will
not be the least valuable. Great rights and advantages come remotely
and at intervals, to brighten, benefit, and improve the land to which
they are granted; not so, the days, and hours, and minutes, that go to
make up that existence, upon which a “_long account of hate_” between
the oppressor and the oppressed has shed its bitter venom! What minute
details of persecution!—what petty guerilla warfare, carried on from
house to house, and street to street, in which no sex is spared—no
virtues are a defence!—no talent forms a claim to compatriot respect!
yet such has been the state of society in the most social of all
countries for more than half a century! Should that act of common justice
and common sense ever pass into a law—the act for removing Catholic
disabilities, Ireland may still become one of the most _liveable_ places
in the empire. For there are still to be found in the native land of
Swift, Goldsmith, Sterne, Sheridan, Burke, Grattan, Canning, and Moore,
all the elements which tend to brighten and illuminate the happiest
circles. The temperament of the nation is essentially mercurial, prone to
social enjoyment, affectionate, humorous, and pleasure-loving: and when
the removal of those atrocious distinctions, which have so long spread
dissension, and occupied the national mind with national grievances,
shall leave the genius of the people to its fair and rational play, it
may be prophecied that the capital of Ireland will become one of the most
agreeable, if not the most important, of European cities.
Under such auspices, how delightful to open a visiting book, in which
the names of all who are now divided into parties, sects, and factions,
shall be found, without recalling one unpleasant association—and when
(no longer indebted for all social, all intellectual enjoyments to the
foreign visitor from happier and more enlightened lands), we shall feel
and own,
“Our first, best country, ever is at home.”
FOREIGN VISITORS.
“Point de rose sans épine.”
Oh!—_par exemple_,—here comes a pretty commentary on the above text—a
paragraph from some of the ribald journals which it would be pollution
to name. It has just been sent me enclosed in an anonymous letter; for
I have always some “good-natured friend,” (as Sir Peter Teazle says)
who furnishes me with abuse of myself, from those news-papers which I
should deem it an act of the highest immorality to let into my house. I
never, by the bye, could understand the logic of those, who, professing
to detest calumny, and to abhor slander, still think it no delinquency to
read and to purchase the journals which exist but by their propagation.
To add to the revenue of such a speculation, is to become a participator
in its criminality; for if every one who disdains to be himself guilty
of falsehood, would refrain from buying it, ready-made to his hand,
such disgraces to the free press of the empire would be abolished more
effectually than by all the restrictive laws and prosecutions for libels
in the world.
Here is the paragraph alluded to:—
“LADY MORGAN AND THE AMERICANS.
“The following anecdote, in every way good, is quoted by the
Yankee from the Boston Literary Gazette:—
“It was about two o’clock, P. M. when I stopped at the door of
Sir Charles Morgan, Kildare Street, Dublin. I inquired for Lady
M., to whom I had a letter of introduction. I was shown by the
servant into a library, and while waiting for her ladyship,
had an opportunity to survey the apartment. The upper regions
displayed rich rows of books, in all the modern languages, and
among them several of Lady Morgan’s works, in French, Italian,
and German. The lower parts of the room exhibited a piano, a
harp, and a Spanish guitar, with a profusion of songs scattered
up and down. There were two writing-tables, a small cabinet of
minerals in a glass case, and a collection of beautiful shells,
also in a glass case. Several small pictures occupied the
spaces on the wall, and cameos, intaglios, medals, and other
curiosities, adorned the mantel-piece. There was an air of
negligence about the room, but it seemed to declare that the
inhabitant of it had made every department of nature and art
tributary to her pleasure.”
“But ’tis my design
To note the chamber—I will write all down—
Such, and such, pictures—there the window!” &c.
_Cymbeline._
Oh! that the inventory had stopped there!—For the furniture, pass!
(though I deny the glass case—I have a total antipathy to glass cases);
but the coming to personals, as in the following _catalogue raisonnée_
of beauties wanting, of charms “_absent without leave_”—this is really
“too bad.” But the Yankee goes on, and so here I am, (not in kit-kat) as
sketched “at 2 o’clock, P. M.” by my American visitor—who, after “noting
the chamber,” thus writes down—its mistress, unconscious as was Imogen of
her midnight visitor, and as little suspecting to what sort of a limner
she was sitting for her portrait, when she received this “Yankee from
Boston:”
“At length Lady Morgan entered. She was short, with a broad face, blue,
inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a thing may be named, about forty
years of age. Her personal appearance is far from handsome—it is not even
striking. There was an evident affectation of Parisian taste in her dress
and manner.”
I appeal!—I appeal from this _Caravaggio_ of Boston to the Titian of his
age and country—I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence!—would you have
painted a short, squat, broad-faced, inexpressive, affected, Frenchified,
_Greenland-seal-like_ lady of any age? Would any money have tempted you
to profane your immortal pencil, consecrated by nature to the Graces,
by devoting its magic to such a model as this described by the Yankee
artist of the “Boston Literary?” And yet you did paint the picture of
this Lapland Venus—this impersonation of a Dublin Bay cod-fish—this
_pendant_ to Hogarth’s _Poissarde_ at the gates of Calais, who bears so
striking a resemblance to the maiden ray she exhibits for sale. What
is more, you painted it of your own free will and choice—gratuitously,
and that too when rival Duchesses were contending for the honour of
reaching posterity, through your agency, with the beauties of Vandyke and
the belles of Lely, all ready and willing to remunerate, with princely
munificence, the talent, “whose price is beyond rubies.”
Well, I appeal from the portrait drawn by the Yankee to yours; “_et
je m’en trouverai bien_.” Gladly do I “sweeten my imagination” by the
recollection of those times of youth, and gaiety, and splendour, in
which, associated under the same roof, I sat for, and you sketched that
picture, thus by contrast recalled to my recollection! I remember a
minister of state cracking jokes on one side of the table on which you
were drawing, a royal princess[33] suggesting hints, on the other, the
Roscius of the age stalking up and down the room with the strides of
Macbeth, and the look of Coriolanus, and half the beauties of future
galleries and collections, fluttering round the exclusive patent-giver of
eternal loveliness. Alas! no one could have said that I was “forty” then;
and “this is the cruellest cut of all!”—Woman, the most enduring of
created beings, will bear any thing but that. Had it been thirty-nine, or
fifty!—thirty-nine is still under the mark, and fifty so far beyond it,
so hopeless, such a “_lasciar speranze voi che intrate_;”—but FORTY!—
“Take any form but that,
And my firm nerves will never tremble”—
the critical age—the Rubicon—I cannot, will not dwell on it. But oh!
America!—land of my devotion and my idolatry—is it from you the blow has
come? Let Quarterlys and Blackwoods libel—but the “Boston Literary!”—“_Et
tu Brute!_”
My visitor from Boston “2 o’clock, P. M.” proceeds to give an account
of my conversation, as accurately and minutely as he did the details of
my house, person, and age. Having made the general remark, that “it was
full of spirit and frankness,” he goes on to betray to the public the
confidential communications I made to him on the occasion of this his
first and last visit. These amounted simply to my abusing America and
Washington Irving without measure, and it appears without motive, except
to please my Boston visitor, who agreed with me in both instances. This
was being ‘frank and spirited’ with a vengeance!
Now, I here openly, frankly, and spiritedly publish my protocol to
the city of Boston, requiring of the Bostonians, that they give me up
this morning visitor, “at 2 o’clock, P. M.”—this Iachimo of literary
_salons_—this positive denunciator of the _certain age_ of ladies who
wish their age to remain uncertain—this portrait painter en large, who
calls little ‘short’ and round, ‘broad,’ and who
“Ne’er can any lustre see
In eyes that do not smile on _me_”—
—himself—this violator of confidences made on the occasion of a first
visit!—this Zoilus of the toilette and Yankee ‘_courier des dames_;’
I require the Bostonians, by their gallantry and their liberalism,
their love of liberty and of the ladies, that they first catch me this
backwoodsman, and then leave me to dress him!—But ’tis a threat thrown
away—I do not, I will not believe that an American could thus violate all
principle of courtesy, gallantry, hospitality, and truth. I have received
persons from all parts of the United States within the last eight years.
I find on my visiting list the names of two gentlemen from Boston, who
have frequented my house within the last two years, neither of whom could
have committed such an act. I have not been wanting in the rites of
hospitality to any one who has borne the name of an American. I honour
the great cause of liberty, in the persons of those to whose fathers the
world stands indebted for the greatest rally that ever was made round her
standard; and “I guess” that if there is one recreant American (American
by the accident of birth) capable of such conduct as my Bostonian visitor
“at 2 o’clock, P. M.” has exhibited, the “whole order of gentlemen in
America” would disown this Arnold of private society, as they did the
political traitor, who dishonoured the region of freedom, by claiming it
as his country.[34]
IRISH UNION.
Twenty thousand pounds defeated the opposition to the Scotch union—a sum
barely sufficient to stop the eloquent patriotism of a single voter, when
Lord Castlereagh sold Ireland, “wholesale, retail, and for exportation.”
Who will say that the Irish are not a civilized people?
HUMAN MACHINERY.