The following letter contains a most graphic description of the French court, in all its voluptuous gaiety; and the glimpses which it furnishes of the actors on the brilliant scene, from the king and the favourite to Dangeau, the skilful gamester-cool, collected, and calculating-amidst the gallant prattle around him, give to its details a degree of life and animation not to be surpassed:

To Madame de Grignan.

'Paris, Wednesday, 29th July, (1676.)

We have a change of the scene here, which will gratify you as much as it does all the world. I was at Versailles last Saturday with the Villarses. You know the Queen's toilet, the mass, and the dinner? Well, there is no need any longer of suffocating ourselves in the crowd to get a glimpse of their majesties at table. At three the King, the Queen, Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle, and every thing else which is royal, together with Madame de Montespan and train, and all the courtiers, and all the ladies-all, in short, which constitutes the court of France-is assembled in that beautiful apartment of the king's, which you remember. All is furnished divinely, all is magnificent. Such a thing as heat is unknown; you pass from one place to another without the slightest pressure. A game at reversis gives the company a form and a settlement. The King and Madame de Montespan keep a bank together: different tables are occupied by Monsieur, the Queen, and Madame de Soubise, Dangeau and party, Langlée and party :-every where you see heaps of louis d'ors; they have no other counters. I saw Dangeau play, and thought what fools we all were beside him. He dreams of nothing but what concerns the game; he wins where others lose; he neglects nothing, profits by every thing, never has his attention diverted; in short, his science bids defiance to chance. Two hundred thousand francs in ten days, a hundred thousand crowns in a month-these are the pretty

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hands,' some passages exhibiting an ignorance of the commonest terms hardly possible to be reconciled with a knowledge of the rest. three special words above quoted are admirable, and convey a truer sense of the original than would have been attained by one more literal. The passage in Madame de Sévigné is tout étendu, tout chaud, tout sanglant, tout habillé, tout mort. We take the opportunity of observing that some of the directly comic as well as tragic relations in this version are rendered with great gusto; though it could not save us the necessity of attempting a new one-owing to the want of a certain life in the ge neral tone, as well as an occasional obsoleteness of phraseology, somewhat startling to observe in so short a lapse of time as seventy-seven years. There is another version of a later date, and containing more letters; but though not destitute of pretensions of its own, it is up›n the whole much inferior to the older one, of which it mainly appears to be a copy.

The writer of the well-known Court-Diary.

memorandums he puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind enough to say that I was partners with him, so that I got an excellent seat. I made my obeisance to the King, as you told me; and he returned it, as if I had been young and handsome. The Queen talked as long to me about my illness, as if it had been a lying-in. The Duke said a thousand kind things without minding a word he uttered. Marshal de Lorges attacked me in the name of the Chevalier de Grignan; in short, tutti quanti (the whole company). You know what it is to get a word from every body you meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of Bourbon, and asked me how I liked Vichi, and whether the place did me good. She said that Bourbon, instead of curing a pain in one of her knees, did mischief to both. Her size is reduced by a good half, and yet her complexion, her eyes, and her lips, are as fine as ever. She was dressed all in French point, her hair in a thousand ringlets, the two side ones hanging low on her cheeks, black ribbons on her head, pearls (the same that belonged to Madame de l'Hôpital), the loveliest diamond earrings, three or four bodkins-nothing else on the head; in short, a triumphant beauty, worthy the admiration of all the foreign ambassadors. She was accused of preventing the whole' French nation from seeing the King; she has restored him, you see, to their eyes; and you cannot conceive the joy it has given all the world, and the splendour it has thrown upon the court. This charming confusion, without confusion, of all which is the most select, continues from three till six. If couriers arrive, the King retires a moment to read the despatches, and returns. There is always some music going on to which he listens, and which has an excellent effect. He talks with such of the ladies as are accustomed

to enjoy that honour. In short, they leave play at six; there is no trouble of counting, for there is no sort of counters; the pools consist of at least five, perhaps six or seven hundred louis; the bigger ones of a thousand or twelve hundred. At first each person pools twenty, which is a hundred; and the dealer afterwards pools ten. The person who holds the knave is entitled to four louis; they pass; and when they play before the pool is taken, they forfeit sixteen, which teaches them not to play out of turn. Talking is incessantly going on, and there is no end of hearts. How many hearts have you? I have two, I have three, I have one, I have four; he has only three then, he has only four ;-and Dangeau is delighted with all this chatter: he sees through the gamehe draws his conclusions-he discovers which is the person he wants; truly he is your only man for holding the cards. At six, the carriages are at the door. The King is in one of them with Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de Thianges, and honest d'Heudicourt in a fool's paradise on the stool. You know how these open carriages are made; they do not sit face to face, but all looking the same way. The Queen occupies another with the Princess; and the rest come flocking after as it may happen. There are then gondolas on the canal, and music; and at ten they come back, and then there is a play; and twelve strikes, and they go to supper; and thus rolls round the Saturday. If I were to tell you how often you were asked after-how many questions were put to me without waiting for answers-how often I neglected to answer-how little they cared, and how much less I did-you would

see the iniqua corte (wicked court) before you in all its perfection. However, it never was so pleasant before, and every body wishes it may last.'

Not a word of the morale of the spectacle! Madame de Sévigné, who had one of the correctest reputations in France, wishes even it may last. Iniqua corte is a mere jesting phrase, applied to any court. Montespan was a friend of the family, though it knew Maintenon also, who was then preparing the downfall of the favourite. The latter, meantime, was a sort of vice-queen, reigning over the real one. When she journeyed, it was with a train of forty people; governors of provinces offered to meet her with addresses; and intendants presented her with boats like those of Cleopatra, painted and gilt, luxurious with crimson damask, and streaming with the colours of France and Navarre. Louis was such a god at that time he shook his ambrosial curls' over so veritable an Olympus, where his praises were hymned by loving goddesses, consenting heroes, and incense-bearing priests-that if marriage had been a less consecrated institution in the Catholic Church, and the Jesuits with their accommodating philosophy would have stood by him, one is almost tempted to believe he might have crowned half-a-dozen queens at a time, and made the French pulpits hold forth with Milton on the merits of the patriarchal polygamies.

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But, to say the truth, except when she chose to be in the humour for it, great part of Madame de Sévigné's enjoyment, wherever she was, looked as little to the morale of the thing as need be. It arose from her powers of discernment and description. No matter what kind of scene she beheld, whether exalted or humble, brilliant or gloomy, crowded or solitary, her sensibility turned all to account. She saw well for herself; and she knew, that what she saw she should enjoy over again, in telling it to her daughter. In the autumn of next year she is in the country, and pays a visit to an iron-foundery, where they made anchors. The scene is equally well felt with that at court. is as good, in its way, as the blacksmith's in Spenser's House of 'Care,' where the sound was heard

"Of many iron hammers, beating rank,

And answering their weary turns around;"

It

and where the visiter is so glad to get away from the giant and his strong grooms,' all over smoke and horror.

Extract of a Letter to Madame de Grignan.

Friday, 1st October, (1677.)

Yesterday evening at Cone, we descended into a veritable hell,

the true forges of Vulcan. Eight or ten cyclops were at work, forging,

not arms for Æneas, but anchors for ships. You never saw strokes redoubled so justly, nor with so admirable a cadence. We stood in the middle of four furnaces, and the demons came passing about us, all melting in sweat, with pale faces, wild-staring eyes, savage mustaches, and hair long and black; a sight enough to frighten less well-bred folks than ourselves. As to me, I could not comprehend the possibility of refusing any thing which these gentlemen, in their hell, might have chosen to exact. We got out at last, by the help of a shower of silver, with which we took care to refresh their souls and facilitate our exit.'

This description is immediately followed by one as lively, of another sort.

We had a taste, the evening before, at Nevers, of the most daring race you ever beheld. Four fair ladies, in a carriage, having seen us pass them in ours, had such a desire to behold our faces a second time, that they must needs get before us again, on a causeway made only for one coach. My dear, their coachman brushed our very whiskers; it is a mercy they were not pitched into the river; we all cried out for God's sake; they, for their parts, were dying with laughter; and they kept galloping on above us and before us, in so tremendous and unaccountable a manner, that we have not got rid of the fright to this moment.'

There is a little repetition in the following, because truth required it; otherwise it is all as good as new, fresh from the same mint that throws forth every thing at a heat-whether anchors, or diamond ear-rings, or a coach in a gallop.

Paris, 29th November, (1679.)

How

I have been to this wedding of Madame de Louvois. shall I describe it? Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses all gold and brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of flowers, confusions of carriages, cries out of doors, flambeaus, pushings back, people knocked up;-in short, a whirlwind, a distraction; questions without answers, compliments without knowing what is said, civilities without knowing who is spoken to, feet entangled in trains. From the middle of all this, issue enquiries after your health; which, not being answered as quick as lightning, the enquirers pass on, contented to remain in the state of ignorance and indifference in which they were made. O vanity of vanities! Pretty little De Mouchy has had the small-pox. O vanity, et cetera!'

In Boswell's Life of Johnson' is a reference by the great and gloomy moralist to a passage in Madame de Sévigné, in which she speaks of existence having been imposed upon her without her consent; but the conclusion he draws from it as to her opinion of life in general, is worthy of the critic who never read books through. The momentary effusion of spleen is contradicted by the whole correspondence. She occasionally vents her dissatisfaction at a rainy day, or the perplexity produced in her

mind by a sermon; and when her tears begin flowing for a pain in her daughter's little finger, it is certainly no easy matter to stop them; but there was a luxury at the heart of this woe. Her ordinary notions of life were no more like Johnson's, than rose-colour is like black, or health like disease. She repeatedly proclaims, and almost always shows, her delight in existence; and has disputes with her daughter, in which she laments that she does not possess the same turn of mind. There is a passage, we grant, on the subject of old age, which contains a reflection similar to the one alluded to by Johnson, and which has been deservedly admired for its force and honesty. But even in this passage, the germ of the thought was suggested by the melancholy of another person, not by her own. Madame de la Fayette had written her a letter urging her to retrieve her affairs, and secure her health, by accepting some money from her friends, and quitting the Rocks for Paris ;-offers which, however handsomely meant, she declined with many thanks, and not a little secret indignation; for she was very jealous of her independence. In the course of this letter, Madame de la Fayette, who herself was irritable with disease, and who did not write it in a style. much calculated to prevent the uneasiness it caused, made abrupt use of the words, You are old.' The little hard sentence came like a blow upon the lively, elderly lady. She did not like it at all; and thus wrote of it to her daughter :

So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la Fayette, blended with so much friendship. 'Twas a truth, I own, which I ought to have borne in mind; and yet I must confess it astonished me, for I do not yet perceive in myself any such decay. Nevertheless I cannot help making many reflections and calculations, and I find the conditions of life hard enough. It seems to me that I have been dragged, against my will, to the fatal period when old age must be endured; I see it; I have come to it; and I would fain, if I could help it, not go any further; not advance a step more in the road of infirmities, of pains, of losses of memory, of disfigurements ready to do me outrage; and I hear a voice which says, You must go on in spite of yourself; or, if you will not go on, you must die;-and this is another extremity, from which nature revolts. Such is the lot, however, of all who advance beyond middle life. What is their resource? To think of the will of God and of the universal law; and so restore reason to its place, and be patient. Be you then patient, accordingly, my dear child, and let not your affections often into such tears as reason must condemn.'

The whole heart and good sense of humanity seem to speak in passages like these, equally removed from the frights of the superstitious, and the flimsiness or falsehood of levity. The ordinary comfort and good prospects of Madame de Sévigné's existence, made her write with double force on these graver sub