tales, which occur in the literature of all nations, is “almost tempted
to suppose, that human invention is limited, like a barrel organ, to
a specific number of tunes.”[35] The number of our wants and desires,
and consequently of the modes of social relation, being fixed, the
combinations of thought to which they give rise, must be fixed also. The
number of these elements being small, the primary combinations of idea
to which they give rise, must be nearly alike in all nations. The fact
is indisputable; and it leads to very serious consequences against the
doctrine of free-will.
SUICIDE.
The love of life is the strongest of all human passions. To what end
then, do we question the lawfulness of suicide? Where a law has no
penal sanction, it is a dead letter: and he who dares to die, is beyond
the reach of all penal influence. Suicide may be matter for religious
discussion, but it is no subject for jurisprudence.
EXTERNAL EXISTENCE.
There never was so egregious a piece of pedantic nonsense, as the dispute
against the reality of the external world. We cannot, it is said, prove
the fact; but to prove a proposition means, to render it evident to the
senses—nothing more. The last appeal in all disputes is to sensation.
Even the abstract truths of numbers depend on simple facts, cognizable
by the eye and the touch. It is, therefore, a gross misapplication
of language to attempt the further proof of what is already felt. No
sophism, however difficult of detection, can supersede the sensible
conviction of external reality; and Berkeley himself did not run his head
against a post.
The theory of this divine, adopted for the purposes of religious theory,
leads at once to atheism. We believe in God, as the necessary creator
of the world; but the idealist has no ground for believing any other
existence than his own mind. Such metaphysics are the boast of the
class, who while they refuse education to the people, have the hardihood
to deny the capability of the poor man to understand his own affairs.
When did the most barbarous ignorance ever fall into such mistakes, as
this product of misapplied learning?
ECLECTICS.
Eclectics, in philosophy, are for the most part _les demi-esprits_, who
are incapable of viewing facts in their wholeness; just as the eclectics
in politics are they who want the honesty to be quite pure, and the
courage to be quite rogues. Such persons make systems from inconsistent
scraps, taken from discordant philosophy, with the same taste as the
architects of the middle ages erected barbarous edifices with the
beautiful fragments of antiquity.
ATTITUDES OF GRIEF.
Mr. Shandy’s observation, that grief always seeks a horizontal position,
passes for a good joke; it happens, however, to be good philosophy.
Grief, by exhausting the vital powers, renders an upright position
irksome and painful. Who that has left or lost the object he loves, but
has felt the necessity of a drooping head upon folded arms; or the solace
of a total prostration of form?
Under the terrible inflictions of all master griefs, the physical and
moral forces go together. For who can dissolve that mysterious union, of
which so much is said, so little known, and on which for saying anything,
so many have been ridiculed as spiritualists, or burnt as materialists?
Man is not to be led to inquiry, with impunity. Those who so liberally
reward the impostor, never fail to persecute the teacher; and while
they swallow every falsehood and fable, most injurious to their true
interests and well being, with undoubting confidence, they oppose and
impede every noble enterprise, and every beneficial discovery in the
range of moral and physical science.
It probably arises from the acute, though not very durable sensibility
of southern countries, that on the occasions of heavy suffering, the
afflicted sink at once into the utter helplessness of a prostrate
attitude. That which nature inspired as a relief, pride soon converted
into a ceremony. As soon as the death of a near friend occurred, in any
of the royal, noble, or even gentle-blooded families of the continent,
the nearest relative, in former times, went to bed. There he remained,
or was supposed to remain, a certain number of weeks, days, or hours,
according to the rank of the person lamented, until the visits of
condolence were over, and grief, regulated by etiquette, was permitted
to pause, or throw off “its weight of woe.” From the fifteenth to the
seventeenth century, every item in the chambers and _toilette_ of
royal affliction, was prescribed by authority. One of the most curious
pictures extant of this red-book sensibility of our ancestors, which
seems upon a par with their “wisdom,” is to be found in a very old and
amusing French work, “_Les Honneurs de la Cour_,” written by Alienor
de Poitiers, Viscountesse de Furnes, a lady of the Court of the Duc de
Bourgogne, in 1469. In her chapter upon royal mourning, or (in her own
charming old French,) “_Sur le deuil que touttes les princesses et autres
devoient porter pour leurs maris, pères, mères, et parens_,” observes,
that a queen of France must remain one year in the chamber, where she
first receives the news of her husband’s death; and every body knows,
“_chaquin doibt scavoir_,” that the chambers, halls, &c., of the widowed
queen must be hung and covered with a black cloth. A picture is always
well worth a dozen descriptions, and the picture of the mourning of the
Princess de Charolois, for her father, the Duke de Bourbon, is well worth
transcribing.
“Son père éstoit trépassé: incontinent qu’elle sceut la mort, elle
demeura en sa chambre six semaines, est éstoit toujours couchée sur un
lict couvert de drap blancq de toille, et appuyée d’oreillers: mais elle
avait mit _sa barbette_, son manteau, et chapperon lesquels estoient
fourrez de _menuvair_, et avait le dit manteau une longue queue, aux
bords devant le chapperon une paulme de large, le menuvair (c’est à
scavoir le gris) estoit crespé dehors. La chambre éstoit toutte tendue
de drap noir, et en bas, un grand drap noir, en lieu de tapis velu, et
devant la dicte chambre où Madame se tenoit y avoit une autre grand
chambre ou salle pareillement tendue de drap noir. Quand Madame estoit
en son particulier, elle n’estoit point toujours couchée, ni en une
chambre.”[36]
While, however, princesses were obliged to weep for six weeks in black
rooms, on state beds, the banneresses (or peeresses) were only required
to shed their obedient tears and lie in bed for nine days—a very fair
proportion of sensibility, between the ranks of the parties. But though
it was not required that they should lie on their bed of sorrow as long
as royal mourners, it was ordained that they should sit in front of their
beds, for the remnant of their six weeks, “upon a piece of black cloth.”
“Les banneresses ne doibvent estre que nœuf jours sur le lict, pour père
ou mère; et le surplus des six semaines, assises devant leur lict, sur un
grand drap noir, mais, pour maris, elle doibvent coucher six semaines.”
A strict observance of pompous ceremonies, in nations as in individuals,
is a proof of stagnant intellect. None but the vain, the idle, and
the useless, can afford the leisure necessary to enact such pageants.
The great, therefore, have always been the grand conservators of such
abuses of time, taste, and good sense. In England, the old Duchess of
Northumberland,—in Ireland, the grandmother of the present Marquis of
Ormond,—were the last ladies of quality who appeared with a running
footman.
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, the French people,
energized by the civil dissensions of the League and the Fronde, had made
a considerable progress in intellect and literature. It was the middle
class which produced nearly all the genius that has given to the gorgeous
reign of Louis XIV. the character of an Augustan age. Corneille, Racine,
Molière, La Bruyère, La Fontaine, Boileau, &c. &c., were all men of the
people.
But while the middle class, unimpeded by forms, and unoccupied by
ceremonies, were directing the national intellect towards science,
literature, and the arts, the court and the aristocracy, stopping short
with the past age, remained devoted to the observances of all the idle
forms indissolubly mixed up with their exclusive privileges; and,
ignorant of books, they were still deeply “studied in sad ostent,” in
court calendars of ancient ceremonies “authorized by their grandams.”
The barbarous forms, ceremonies, and observances of the fifteenth century
were in full operation in the court of Louis XIV, and are recorded with
the same unction by Dangeau, as by the Dame Alienor of Poictiers.
In a work, which says more for the necessity of the French Revolution,
and its inevitability, than all that Jacobinism ever preached from the
tribune, or fulminated from the press,—he relates circumstantially all
the ceremonies observed on the death of the Dauphin, and the prescribed
forms of grief strictly adhered to by the royal widow. Even the
Princesses of the blood, it appears, were still obliged to grieve in bed.
“_Madame la Duchesse_ (says Dangeau) _reçut les complimens sur la mort de
M. le Duc; elle était sur son lit et en chaperon, qui est un habillement
des princesses du sang, quand elle recevoient en cérémonie les complimens
sur la mort de leurs maris_.”[37]
What a charming picture Madame de Sévigné has left on record of the
manner in which the Duchesse de Longueville received “_les visites de
doléances_,” on the death of her gallant son the Count de St. Pol.—One
is absolutely seated within the _Ruelle_, and gazing on those beautiful
eyes, steeped in tears of maternal despondency, which once nearly brought
the Duc de la Rochefoucauld to the scaffold. Even that anti-sentimental
Princess, _La grande Mademoiselle_, takes her despair to heart on the
loss of her lord, and receives the visits of condolence paid her by her
friends, on the king’s breaking off her marriage with De Lauzun, as she
must have received them had she become his widow.
The origin of the form lies in nature—its absurdities are peculiar to
despotic governments, where all is form, and where kings themselves,
as the Spanish ambassador said, “are but ceremonies.” The governments
that belong to constitutional institutions are not thrown upon the
conservation of such barbarous etiquettes; and if English queens and
princesses are not obliged to weep for their near relations in bed for
six weeks, for the amusement of a crowded and idle court, they probably
owe to _Magna Charta_ the liberty of mourning how they please, as long as
they please—or of not weeping at all, if they please not to weep.
At the epoch of the French Revolution, the forms of the court of France
were virtually as barbarous as those of the court of the Duc de Bourgogne
in the fifteenth century; and the description left on record by Madame
Campan of the queen’s receiving the “_chemise_,” is infinitely more
indecent, and quite as barbarous, as any thing recited by Dame Alienor
de Poictiers, of her “_princesses, comtesses, et autres grandes dames_,”
or by Dangeau in his punctilious record of the ceremonious absurdities of
Versailles and the Tuileries in the time of Louis the XIVth, and the Père
de la Chaise.
By the bye, I have a whole chapter to write upon beds, sofas, _canapés_,
_ruelles_, _tabourets_, _lits de répos_, &c. &c. &c. &c.—and a most
philosophical chapter it will be.
RELIGIOUS DIABOLISM.
Le Comte de Ségur observes, “_Si Dieu a fait l’homme à son image, l’homme
le lui a bien rendu_.” Reason leads to the discovery of the divine
attributes as pure abstractions; but as no man can rise to the conception
of higher principles of action, than those of which he is himself
conscious, when fools or impostors throw the divinity into action, they
necessarily impart to their idea something of their own weakness and
infirmities. Let the creed of any sect be as pure and as elevated as it
may, the mass of bigots, hypocrites, and mal-organized beings among its
professors, inevitably end in worshipping a demon. They may continue
to call the idol of this fabrication, the reflection of their own vices
and follies, “most wise, or most merciful,” &c., &c. but they attribute
to their fearful phantom, their own hateful passions and narrow views:
and the result is a being, just so much worse than themselves, as he is
more powerful and more uncontrolled. Such is the origin of religious
diabolism—for an illustration of which see the self-tormenting sects
of India, who preach a doctrine of perpetual suffering and bodily
anguish, as being most pleasing to the God of all good. See, too, the
gloomy Calvinists, and long-faced sectarians, and the dark preachers of
sacrifice all over the world. Between the religion of love and fear,
what a difference! It is that beautiful traditional picture of the human
divinity, the _Ecce Homo_ of Carlo Dolce, opposed to the grim and gaunt
idol of the pagodas of the unhappy Hindoos.
FÊTES, PARTIES, AND SOIRÉES.
What a terrible thing it is to give a party in Dublin!
“Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
It is no joke even in London, where every thing is to be hired, from the
chairs to the company; where “society to let,” has been a sign set up
by more than one leader of _ton_, ready to fill the house of any Mrs.
Thompson, or Mrs. Johnson, upon the understood terms of no meddling on
the part of the hostess, and no obligation to make a due return on the
part of the guests. What is strange in all this toil of pleasure is, that
not only the good sort of people have a great deal to do, in getting up
a party, but that the great themselves, (such of the great as do not
live in the “houses,” modelled on a French hotel,) have nearly as much
trouble to make “ample room and verge enough” to suffocate their friends
commodiously, as the twaddles in Bloomsbury, the tabbies of Finsbury, or
the dwellers in any other _terra-incognita_ of Mr. Croker’s topographical
map of fashion.
I once caught a certain “bonnie duchess,” up to her eyes in lamps and
loungers, garlands and wax lights, and the rest of the _matériel_ for a
party, an hour before the throwing open of her rooms to that “world,”
which her talent and pleasantry so long governed and cheered. As I was
a _Missy_, her good-natured grace had bid me come very early, that she
might see how I was dressed: for she took a kind interest in me, for no
other reason, that I know of, except that I stood in need of it. Early,
therefore, I went, but so early, that all the behind-the-scenes bustle
was still in its fullest activity.
The Duchess of —— then resided in Lord A—st’s house, which afforded
quarters much too circumscribed to hold her legions of fashion; and
all her ingenuity was applied, in order to make crushing room for five
hundred particular friends. What a hurry-scurry! footmen, still in
their jackets, running about with lights to place and replace, like
the clerical scene shifters in _Santa Maria Maggiore_ at Rome, on a
Christmas-eve,—the porter, half-liveried, the page half bedizened, and
the French _femme-de-chambre_, with her hands in the pocket of her silk
apron, chattering to every body, and helping nobody!
All this was very striking, but very comfortless; so I sauntered out of
one room into another, and had just drawn near to the only fire I met
with in the _suite_, when a loud hammering behind me induced me to look
back; and there, mounted on a step-ladder, stood a bulky, elderly lady,
in a dimity wrapper, and a round-eared cap, knocking up a garland of
laurel over the picture of some great captain of that day, military or
political, (I forget which,) while an argand lamp burned brightly before
it,—a votive offering to the idol of the moment!
As I took the elderly lady for a housekeeper, I asked her if the duchess
was still in her dressing-room? “No, child,” said the elderly lady, “the
duchess is here, _telle que vous la voyez_, doing that which she can get
none of her awkward squad to do for her:” and down sprang the active lady
of seventy, with a deep inspiration of fatigue, ejaculating, “Gude God,
but this pleasure is a toilsome thing.”
So saying, she bustled off, and in less time than could be imagined,
re-appeared in the brightest spirits and the brightest diamonds,—I had
almost said the brightest looks that illumined her own brilliant circle.
Hers was what Horace Walpole calls “the true huckaback of human nature;”
and to the last it showed the strength and beauty of the web.
This party turned out one of the most agreeable I ever was at in my life.
I spent the evening, seated on the second flight of stairs, between Lady
C—— L—— and Monk Lewis. The beautiful Lady Oxford sat a few steps above
us, the Aspasia of the Pericles who lay at her feet, wooing in Greek, in
spite of Johnson’s denunciation against learning in love; while Payne
Knight looked on, with “eyes malign, askance.” On the landing-place
beneath, squeezed, sauntered, or halted, many a (_now_ dowager) dandy
and top-sawyer of fashion, who received our grape-shot, or gave us a
_batterie d’enfilade_ in return, as they crushed on. At two in the
morning, Lady C—— L—— proposed that we should go and sup snugly at M——
house, and return to waltz, when her grace’s rooms should thin;—and so we
did,—for
“Such were the joys of my dancing days.”
But to return to those who “to a party give up what was meant for
mankind.” A most interesting book might be made on the philosophy of
parties, which would include a brief abstract of the times in which
they were given, and throw a glaring light on the manners, habits, and
tastes of nations, in all parts of the world, and at all epochs; from the
_soirées_ of Aspasia, to my own little _soirée_ last night in Kildare
Street. What were the Duchess of G——on’s or Lady C——k’s party-giving
talents, great as they were, to those of Cleopatra, to her aquatic party
down the Cydnus?—What to this, were the white-bait excursions, or even
the Marquis of Hertford’s festivities, on the Thames?
The most splendid fête of modern times was that given by the grand Condé
to his cousin Louis the Fourteenth, at Chantilly—memorable for the heroic
death of that _preux_ and martyr of the kitchen, Vatel, which forms so
amusing a page in that breviary of all that is pleasant, the letters
of Madame de Sévigné. The story is told in a hundred other accounts of
the _fasti_ of those gorgeous days; but who can relate like her?—No
man that ever wrote, not even Horace Walpole, the first of all English
_raconteurs_—nor, except Madame de Staël,[38] any woman either.
The most sumptuous private party of our days was the Boyle Farm
entertainment. The relays of shoes were, at least, a novel idea: but
pleasure is the end of all social assemblies, (as, under a variety of
pompous names, it is of life itself,) and I doubt whether all the shoes
in Borsley’s shop would excite one pleasurable sensation except in the
possessor of some _joli petit pied de Cendrillon_. However meritorious,
therefore, for its originality, it was, for the rest, altogether English.
It encouraged trade, and provided comfort. But the great, the true merit
of this _partie des notables_, was, that to qualify for an invitation,
neither genealogical trees, though deeper rooted than that of the
Croys,[39] nor all the wealth of all the Rothschilds, sufficed singly
and alone, if nature refused to counter-sign the passport of admission.
Countesses rejected—Duchesses passed over—and the sovereigns of Almack’s,
the absolute queens themselves forgotten, or forbidden, made way for the
_bel air_ of nature. Youth, beauty, talent, wit, grace, and agreeability
(provided they dressed well) found no exclusion from the extreme
exclusionists of all besides. This trait of fashion forms a good augury
of times, in which the intrinsic is in all things about to take the lead
of the extrinsic. The last touch of perfection in civilization, is a just
appreciation of the value of nature.
Parties, as the term is applied throughout Great Britain, to private
assemblies, were unknown on the continent, till the late swarming of the
English abroad, who carry their own habits with them every where. In
France, before the revolution, there was nothing that resembled a London
rout. No _bals parés_, nor fêtes of any kind, were given in Louis the
Fourteenth’s time, except to the royal family, by the _haute noblesse_,
or the ministers. Next to the fête at Chantilly, the most sumptuous on
record, was the entertainment given at Vaux by the unfortunate intendant,
Fouquet, to the King, Queen Dowager, and Madame de la Vallière.
It was a redeeming point in all such festivities, that talent and
intellect entered for something. Plays, masques, and interludes were
written for the occasion; and it was for Fouquet’s fête, that Molière
wrote his delightful comedy of “_Les Fâcheux_,” an admirable subject
for a royal auditory, exposed as all princes are to the tiresomeness of
eternal sycophancy.
This fête is also remarkable as an illustration of the falseness, vanity,
and feebleness of him for whom it was given, and of the vice of the whole
system which prevailed in France, up to the time of the revolution. The
king, who had forgiven his minister his exactions from the famishing
people, his depredations on the provinces, and his wasteful prodigality
of the public money, could not brook the superiority of Vaux over St.
Germain, the splendour of a party exceeding anything given at the
Louvre or Fontainbleau, and the impression it might make on the heart
of his mistress. The ruin of Fouquet, long remotely meditated, was now
determined on; and the good taste of his courtiers alone prevented the
royal guest from arresting his host, in the very midst of the gaieties
got up for his own pleasure and amusement. This party was given on the
twentieth of August, and the _bienséance_ of the court put off the arrest
of the party giver till the seventh of September.
Opposed to such royal fêtes, a delightful contrast is presented in
the private society of Paris, always distinguished as _la ville_, in
opposition to _la cour_. What charming pictures remain to us of the
little _côteries_ of the Hôtel Carnavalet, the suppers at Ninon’s,
the _soirées_ of the Hôtels de la Rochefoucauld and Coulange, and the
_Mercuriali_, or Wednesday evenings, of Menage. The circle seldom
included more than eight or ten persons, who met to laugh with Molière
and Boileau, at the vices of the court, or the absurdities of the Hôtel
Rambouillet (the blue-stocking rendez-vous of that day). “Monsieur de
Rochefoucauld,” says Madame de Sévigné, “wished me to go to him this
evening to hear the reading of a comedy by Molière, ‘_Les Précieuses_.’
After a joyous supper on a pigeon pie, at Madame de Coulange’s,” (whose
own wit was said to be _une dignité_) “we amused ourselves by going
at midnight to fetch Madame de Scarron _du fin-fond du Fauxbourg St.
Germain_, beyond Madame La Fayette’s, and almost at Vaugirard, in the
country.” This topographical sketch is worth something, independently of
the frolic of the gay grandmother, taken, at midnight, to Vaugirard, from
the Marais, where her own hotel stood, and still stands.
Towards the conclusion of Louis the Fourteenth’s reign, from the time
when Madame de Maintenon, (no longer the Madame de Scarron of Vaugirard,)
brought religious hypocrisy into fashion, the private society of France
degenerated, and intellect lost ground. “I hate people that reason,” said
the king, sharply, in answer to some clever observation of the son of the
Duc de la Rochefoucauld.