had still a park-like appearance, in the old haw- | whatever either to the miniature which you thorns which were standing here and there, and have had engraved, or to the portrait in the in the inequalities, making it look as if there Sydney papers. I am inclined to suspect, thereought to have been deer there. It was the only fore, that it is not his portrait, especially as that part of the walk in which I habitually and invo- want of resemblance leads me very much to luntarily slackened my pace. doubt whether Sydney ever could have sat to Velasquez. The countenance in the miniature is feebler than I should have looked for,-more maidenly;-and that again in the Sydney papers has a character (quite as inappropriate) of middle age, and is not without a certain degree of coarseness. I have very recently added your edition of "Collins's Peerage" to my library, and it makes me regret the more that you should not have executed your intention of writing biography upon an extensive scale. It can never be well written except by one whose mind is at once comprehensive and scrutinizing, and who unites an antiquary's patience with a poet's feeling. The poem regarding your own life I trust you will finish, and entreat you so to do; but at the same time to bear in mind, that if you have not done all you dreamt of doing, and could have done, this is the common, and, perhaps, the inevitable lot of all who are conscious of their own powers; and you have done much which posterity will not willingly suffer to pass into oblivion. Lucien Buonaparte applied to me to translate his poem; the application was made in a circuitous way by Brougham; and I returned, as was fitting, a courteous answer to what was intended for a flattering proposal, not thinking it necessary to observe, that an original poem might be composed at less greater expense of time, and with the certainty of satisfying one person at least, whereas in the translation it was as likely to displease the author as myself. I read the original when it was printed, which few persons did. One part of it pleased me much. The whole was better conceived than a Frenchman could have conceived it; but I could not forgive him for writing it in French instead of Italian, nor for adapting it to the_meridian of the Vatican. Butler's translation I never saw. He has restored the character of the school of Shrewsbury, which was upon a par with the best in England, when Sydney and Fulk Grevill were placed there on the same day; and when the boys represented plays in an open amphitheatre, formed in an old quarry, between the town-walls and the Severn. Churchyard describes it. The stanzas in the "Gnomica," p. 163, might have passed with me for a fragment of Gondibert. They have just that tone of thoughtful feeling which distinguishes that poem above all others, and owing to which (faulty as in many respects it is) I never take it up without deriving fresh pleasure from it, and being always unwilling to lay it aside. A little, I think, he learnt from Sir J. Davies; more from Lord Brooke, who is the most thoughtful of all poets. Davenant had less strength of mind or morals, (as his conversion and popery prove,) but more feeling: with him the vein ended. You trace a little of it in Dryden's earlier poems, not later. You have admirably characterized the poets of Charles the Second's age. Do you recollect the portrait of Sydney prefixed to Dr. Zooch's life of him, from a picture by Velasquez, at Wentworth Castle. It is a good likeness of Professor Airey, the Cambridge mathematician, who was a youthful prodigy in his own science; but it bears no resemblance The Sydney papers have induced me to judge less unfavorably than I used to do of Leicester, and rather to agree with Sharon Turner in thinking his character doubtful, than decidedly bad. The strongest fact against him is what Strada states, that he engaged, through the Spanish ambassador, to bring about the restoration of the old religion, if Philip would favor him in his hopes of marrying the Queen. Strada affirms this upon the authority of the ambassador's letters; and I cannot explain his conduct as being only part of a scheme for obtaining the confidence of the Spanish court, and becoming thereby better acquainted with the schemes of its confederates in England. On the other hand, the character of Sir Henry Sydney seems to me in a certain degree a guarantee for Leicester's intentions. So is Sir Philip's too; and Leicester's friendship for his brother-in-law, and evidently sincere affection for his nephew, tell greatly in his favor. There are also expressions in his will, and touches of feeling, which may surely be considered as sincere indications, not merely of the state of mind in which the will was written, but of the habit of mind. What a most affecting thing is his mother's will! In the reverence which Sydney must have felt for her memory, and in his grateful affection for his uncle, you may, I think, account, and perhaps find an excuse for the manner in which he speaks of his Dudley descent. Even his father taught him to pride himself upon it.-Farewell, my dear sir, and believe me, &c. To Sir Egerton, Bridges, Bart., &c., Geneva. I was about to write to you, and apologize for a seeming neglect which began to weigh heavily upon my conscience, when your miscellaneous sheet arrived by this day's post. The characters which you have drawn in it of Romilly, Whitbread, and Lord Liverpool, I am very well able to appreciate, and admire them accordingly. They are beautifully and most discriminately delineated. I did not like Romilly. He was more an antique Roman, or a modern American, than an Englishman in his feelings. One of the best speeches which I remember was made by Frankland, in 1810, in answer to a motion of his do not suppose any thing in "Euphues" to be original, except the mannerism of its pedantry. I hope to be in London at the meeting of Parliament: since the Long Parliament no meeting has been looked for with so much expectation, nor has expectation ever before worn such a "cast of fear." Matters are to be considered-and must be considered-which would require all the strength of the strongest govern for altering some of the criminal laws; and Romilly was disingenuous enough to speak of it with contempt as something unintelligible. Whitbread I like still less. A hint was once thrown out in the Edinburgh Review that it would be proper to call me to account for the freedom with which I had commented on some of his speeches in defence of Buonaparte: his party took the hint, and it was proposed to bring me before the House of Commons. I was informed of this, and should have been in no want of sup-ment, and all the wisdom of the wisest; and porters there; but upon further consideration they deemed it better to let me alone, somewhat to my disappointment. Lord Liverpool wanted nothing but courage to have been the best and wisest minister of modern times; he was always well-informed, always considerate, and always judicious when he ventured to act upon his own sense of what was right. But in compromising a great principle he virtually (not intentionally) betrayed it; and more evils are likely to follow from that compromise than broke loose from Pandora's box. The transcript reached me safely; and I am very much obliged to you for it, and to Professor Horner. I would fain send you the "History of Brazil" (my best work), that you may judge by the labor already bestowed upon it how greatly I prize any information which may enable me to render it less imperfect; but three thick quartos are of unseemly bulk for travelling from London to Geneva. I will consign them, therefore, to Mr. Quillinan's care, that they may deposited for you at Lee Priory. be ours is at present weak, miserably weak, in every sense of the word. There is a likelihood that it may derive support from some of those persons who are beginning to see the danger which threatens all our institutions; but, on the other hand, fear is just as likely to make others fly, and that has usually been the policy of feeble and timid men, and of none more than those who now compose the British cabinet-that of yielding to one demand after another, though with the certainty that every concession will bring on a more unreasonable demand. It seems as if they cared for nothing more than how to smooth their way for the session. There is a talk of giving a representative to Manchester, and other large towns: and, indeed, there is so little chance of preserving the old system, that those who most regret the impossibility of maintaining it, will be contented and thankful if they can only avert the mischief which must ensue if the elections should everywhere be placed in the power of the populace. There are more than rumors that some measures are intended against the church property: I had noticed that paper in the Quarterly men who ought not to express such fears make Review, not having the slighest suspicion that no scruple of saying that they expect to see the it was yours, as containing an unusual portion clergy placed upon the same footing as other of knowledge, and being in a strain of thought sects, that is, left to be supported by the volunand feeling with which I could wholly accord; tary contributions of their respective flocks. This and I made a note of reference to it, respecting I have more than once heard from persons in Sir Robert Dudley. Sydney's Stella cannot influential stations; and the effect is, that people have been Lady Rich, because his poems plain- begin instinctively to reconcile themselves as ly relate to a successful passion; and because well as they can to an evil which they are thus the name was applied to his widow. Is he the led to expect: for in losing hope, we lose in first person who used it as a feminine name? such cases most of the strength for resistance, I incline to think so, because it is evidently used and almost all the motives for it. While the in relation to Astrophel, for which conceit I sup- Catholic question was afloat, there was a strong pose he fixed upon it, though he must have body of feeling and principle in the country, not known that it was a man's name among the only ready to have rallied round the GovernRomans. The better to estimate Sydney's de- ment, but eager to do so. That body the Emanserts, I have been reperusing "Euphues," and cipation has broken up. And by removing that such of Greene's works as you have printed in question the ministers, instead of obtaining "The Archaica." The latter I read when you the peace for which they paid so dear a price, published them; the former ten years ago, when find that they have only unmasked batteries the book first came into my hands. The most which could never have opened while that quesremarkable thing in "Euphues" is, that it con- tion occupied the ground in front. The cry of tains some specimens of what Swift calls Polite Parliamentary Reform is raised, with the examConversation, that sort of vulgarity had under-ple of the Parisians, to encourage the Radicals gone little or no change from the days of Elizabeth to those of Q. Anne. It is strange that this book should ever have been popular, and still more so that any one should have rendered it into modern English in 1716. This modernization I should like to see. It contains, also, something upon a miniature scale of those vapid and fine-drawn conversations which were carried to the farthest point of wearisomeness and absurdity in M. Scudery's romances; but of this there are earlier examples, but in French and Italian. I here: Brabant is held forth to the Irish as an example for dissolving the Union; and then will follow the demand for a Catholic Church establishment in Ireland; and the troubles which might have (been) averted by the imprisoning three or four agitators a few years ago, will not be settled a few years hence, without the most dangerous war that has ever shaken these kingdoms. Add to this, that infidelity and fanaticism are advancing pari passu among the middle and lower orders, and that agrarian principles are sensibly making a progress among those who | Three little steps may measure the low mound, have nothing to lose. And not a murmur from the grave resound; The warrior may be spurned by rival's feet, Insects may buz around that lofty brow; For his imperial shade hears only now The surge unceasing beat. Gladly would I abstract myself wholly from such subjects, were it possible, and live in the uninterrupted enjoyment of literary pursuits; but political considerations are now like the winds and waves in a tempest; there is no escape from them, no place where those who are at sea can be at rest, or cease to hear and to feel the storm. The paper upon Bunyan in the last Quarterly Review is by Sir Walter. He has not observed; and I, when I wrote the life, had forgotten, that the complete design of a Pilgrim's Progress is to be found in Lucian's Hermotimus. Not that Bunyan ever saw it there; but that the obvious allegory had presented itself to Lucian's mind, as to many others. My only article in the number is a short one upon the Negro New Testament: as a philological curiosity that Testament is the most remarkable that has fallen in my way. My life of Sydney lengthens before me, and I shall not be satisfied with it till I can get at the two other collections of Hubert Languet's letters, besides those which were addressed to Sydney himself. Then, too, I shall better be able to form an opinion whether Languet has been rightly supposed to be the Junius Brutus of that age; at present, what I have gathered of his character inclines me to think otherwise. I wish, and ought also, to read the letters of Mornay du Plessis, which not long ago were published. Montaigne and I differ in this respect, that he liked better to forge his mind than to furnish it; and I am much more disposed to lay in knowledge than to lay doubt. Mere inclination now would induce me always to read, and seldom-very seldom, to write. This upon me is the effect of time. I hope this may find you again restored. Yours sincerely, R. S. To Sir Egerton Bridges, Bart., &c., Geneva. (There are several clerical errors in the concluding part of this letter, which appears to have been ended in some haste.) THE DEATH OF BONAPARTE AT ST. HELENA. TRANSLATED FROM DE LAMARTINE. HIGH on a rock lashed by the plaintive wave, Time has not yet the narrow stone defaced; A broken sceptre's traced. Here lies-without a name his relics rest, On every conquered region of the world, Proudly disdaining what the world admired, All obstacles, all foes his might o'ercame, And reached its deadly aim. Streams of another purple pleased his eye; His joys were the clang of arms, the battle peal, His hand alone caressed his war-horse fleet, To be the thought and life of a whole age, To shake, and then establish tottering state; A troubled glance did up to heaven ascend. Complete the word!-pronounce the sacred Name, thought, Tyrants or slaves each to account are brought For sceptres, or for chains! CANAL ACROSS SUEZ.-A private letter from Alexandria announces the intention of the Pacha of Egypt to proceed with the execution of the long proposed work of joining the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, by means of a canal to be cut from Suez to Palusium.- Court Journal. EXCAVATIONS ON THE SITE OF NINEVEH.-By order of the French Consul at Mossoul, excavations are being made on the ground formerly covered by the city of Nineveh, which was situated on the Tigris, opposite the present town of Mossoul. The remains of a palace, the walls of which (are covered with bas-reliefs and inscriptions in cuneiform characters, have recently been brought to light, a discovery the more important, as no sculptured monument of the Assyrians was supposed to be in existence. The government have desired M. Botta to prosecute his undertaking.-Ibid. REMINISCENCES OF MEN AND THINGS. | those features where beauty had once loved BY ONE WHO HAS A GOOD MEMORY. THE first time I saw Chateaubriand was in that very garden at Lausanne of which Gibbon has written "Instead of a small house between a street and a stable-yard, I began to occupy a spacious and convenient mansion, connected on the north side with the city, and open on the south to a beautiful and boundless horizon. A garden of four acres had been laid out by the taste of M. Deiguerdun; from the garden a rich scenery of meadows and vineyards descends to the lake of Leman, and the prospect far beyond the Lake is crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy. My books and my acquaintances had been first united in London; but this happy position of my library in town and country was finally reserved for Lausanne." to dwell! And how now she described the person of her former enthusiastic admirer, who, having prostrated himself on one occasion at her feet, imploring her to accept his hand and heart, was unable to raise himself from the ground and gain his erect posture, until she rang for her servant, and directed him to assist the abject lover from the ground! What a host of historical and biographical remembrances rushed to my mind when I beheld the French poet and philosopher engaged in a cheerful "causerie" with one who had been the friend and companion of the writer of the most eloquent history the world hath yet seen in any language or in any clime! And there was the deep blue lake, on whose magical waters Gibbon had so often gazed! And there the same garden in which Lord Sheffield, Necker, Charles James Fox, and Prince Henry of Prussia, And who that has read his eloquent des- had so often wandered with this extraordicriptions of the commencement and terminary man! And there were those glorious nation of the history of the Decline and mountains on which their eyes had so often Fall of the Roman Empire, can forget that, feasted! And there was the dark grandeur whilst "It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capítol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing that work first started to his mind;" it was in the garden at Lausanne just referred to, that he terminated his labors: "It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of retreating rocks, but lighted on their tops with eternal snow! And there was that placid village of Ouchy lying quite meekly in the valley, with the slopes covered with roses and vines, flowers and luxuriance down to the water's edge! And we talked of other days, and beings long since consigned to the earth and the worm, but whose works, unimpaired by time, or unchanged by the lapse of years, were still the admiration of successive generations. So we talked of Tell, and of La Harpe, and of Madame de Genlis, and of the Swiss reformers, and of men of all sections of the Christian Church, and of a heaven where there should be no divisions, no sections, and no sectarians! of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summerhouse in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will Chateaubriand was full of Rome, of the not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the es-imperial city, of the infallible chief of an tablishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." Yes! there we were in the self-same garden. The acacias still waved their golden hair; the summerhouse yet existed; the "berceau" was not destroyed; and Chateaubriand was walking with the aged Madame the first love of the self-same Gibbon. infallible church, of the privileges and advantages he was about to enjoy as ambassador to his Holiness from Charles the Tenth, for he was on his way to the Papal States when I met him; and his conversation was most eloquent when he talked of the continuity of the Catholic faith, of the invariable essence of the Catholic religion, and of the repose of his own spirit when he thought and believed that he also was an engrafted member of that holy fellowship which was begun on earth to endure. for ever. Chateaubriand had undertaken the misAh! how time had rolled on! How its sion on which he was proceeding, more for effacing fingers had left scarcely a trace of the purpose of absenting himself during VOL. II. No. IV. 30 One of the senseless calumnies at that time heaped on Chateaubriand was, that "his tastes were English, that he had been one who had eulogized that mixed form of government which had been consecrated by the Charta; and that France owed all her modern calamities, and approaching woes, to the parliamentary system!" an approaching period of severe political tion and a restoration of the monarchy of conflict, in which his voice would have been 1788 was impossible. lost in the Babel of party hostility and clamor, than from any other motive, either moral, political, or religious. With his fine discriminating mind he beheld the coming storm. He perceived that the party of the "Counter-Revolution" had resolved on urging the king to a reaction; and that the opposition of such men as Roy, Perier, and Royer Collard, had become less dispassionate and more intense. He was accused of fear, of want of consistent energy, of nervousness, and tremulousness; and Martain. ville, with his satires and his venom, spoke of such men as the author of The Genius of Christianity as being infected with "the poison of liberalism." Whilst. Martignac and Chateaubriand defended the monarchy with the Charta, Martainville and the men of the old monarchy called for "coupsd'état," and asked, "What need have we of any other Charta than the will of the best of princes?" They sought to bring into disgrace or contempt the man who, in 1814, had written his celebrated brochure, De Buonaparte et des Bourbons, et de la nécessité de se rallier à nos princes Légitimes, pour le bonheur de la France, et celui de l'Europe. Fourteen years had passed away. The services of Chateaubriand, though not forgotten, were too remote to be kept steadily in view, and "he is infected with Constitutionalism!" was the cry with which it was attempted to degrade him. And yet it should have been remembered that with truth could he exclaim, The truth was, that Chateaubriand had not been an idle and an ignorant spectator of the events of the then past forty years. It could not be said of him "that he had forgotten nothing and learned nothing." His expansive and noble heart had certainly forgotten many acts of injustice and cruelty exercised towards him both by the Revolution, the Republic, and the Empire; but he had well observed what France had been and what she was, and he therefore sought to render her government popular without being democratic, and monarchical without being reactionary. When his friends denied that he was "too English," and adduced in proof of this the very pamphlet I have already mentioned, in the first edition of which he had even forgotten to acknowledge the immense debt of gratitude which the Bourbons, as a race, owed to the English nation, they were met by the cry, "Ah! but read the appendix to the second edition, in which England is glorified at the expense of all besides! This Chateaubriand is one of those to whom we owe the infliction of a parliamentary system." And as the noble and beautiful language "Since the epoch of the assassination of of Chateaubriand on this occasion has been the Duke d'Enghien, I have been accustom-so unjustly and unkindly produced against ed to run all the risks of fortune! Every him, in order to excite the prejudices and six months I have been threatened that I the hatred of the Anti-English party in should be shot, or put to the sword, or im- France, I am delighted to have the opporprisoned for the rest of my days. Still Itunity of recalling public attention to his did not the less follow the course which my glowing panegyric of the Prince Regent duty indicated, as one I ought to pur- and of the Duke of Wellington : sue. "Several persons," said Chateaubriand, But so it was. Peace and plenty had "have remarked, not without astonishment, that brought with them not satisfaction and in my last work when speaking of the generosity gratitude, happiness and repose, but a spirit of the great powers who have of late delivered of rebellion, and a determination, on the us, I should not have made mention of England! one hand, to demand more than the Charta I admit the justice of this reproach, and I am granted, and, on the other, to withdraw grieved to the heart at my omission; but my excuse must be the real one,-the grandeur of concessions which had been wisely made. the spectacle which I was contemplating, and Thus the monarchy was placed in peril, and the rapidity with which I wrote the pamphlet public liberties were rendered less secure. in question. * But, sir, no FrenchThe poet, the orator, the Christian philoso-man can ever forget, I trust, that which he owes pher, perceived all this; and, faithful to his to the Prince Regent of England, and to the past life, he did not hesitate to assure the buted to our emancipation. The flags of Spain noble people who have so powerfully contriprinces he had served with such devotion, also floated in the armies of Henry the Fourth; and to whose illustrious race he continued and they reappear in the battalions which reso warmly attached, that a counter-revolu- I store to us our Louis the Eighteenth. We are * |