HER HEROISM, THROUGH LOVE.

473

as we have spoken rather too disparagingly of the fair writer's endowment of those qualities. In point of courage and love to her husband it is quite on a level, perhaps, with any of the darings of Mrs. Hutchinson,though we cannot say that the occasion called so clearly for their display. During their voyage to Portugal,

and

"When we had just passed the Straits, we saw coming towards us, with full sails, a Turkish galley, well manned, and we believed we should be all carried away slaves, for this man had so laden his ship with goods for Spain, that his guns were useless, though the ship carried sixty guns. He called for brandy, and after he had well drunken, and all his men, which were near two hundred, he called for arms, and cleared the deck as well as he could, resolving to fight rather than lose his ship, which was worth 30,000l. This was sad for us passengers; but my husband bid us be sure to keep in the cabin, and not appear, the women, which would make the Turks think that we were a man-of-war, but if they saw women, they would take us for merchants, and board us. He went upon the deck and took a gun and bandoliers, and sword, and, with the rest of the ship's company, stood upon deck expecting the arrival of the Turkish man-of-war. This beast, the captain, had locked me up in the cabin; I knocked and called long to no purpose, until at length the cabin-boy came and opened the door. I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as to give me his blue thrum cap he wore, and his tarred coat, which he did, and I gave him half-a-crown, and putting them on, and flinging away my night-clothes, I crept up softly, and stood upon the deck by my husband's side, as free from sickness and fear as, I confess, from discretion; but it was the effect of that passion which I could never

master.

"By this time the two vessels were engaged in parley, and so well satisfied with speech and sight of each other's forces, that the Turks' man-of-war tacked about, and we continued our course. But when your father saw it convenient to retreat, looking upon me, he blessed himself, and snatched me up in his arms, saying, 'Good God, that love can make this change!' and though he seemingly chid me, he would laugh at it as often as he remembered that voyage."

What follows is almost as strong a proof of that "love which casteth out fear;" while it is more unexceptionable on the score of prudence. Sir Richard, being in arms for the King at the fatal battle of Worcester, was afterwards taken prisoner, and brought to London; to which place his faithful consort immediately repaired, where, in the midst of her anxieties,

"I met a messenger from him with a letter, which advised me of his condition, and told me he was very civilly used, and said little

474

LADY FANSHAWE A DEVOTED WIFE.

more, but that I should be in some room at Charing Cross, where he had promise from his keeper that he should rest there in my company at dinner-time; this was meant to him as a great favour. I expected him with impatience, and on the day appointed provided a dinner and room, as ordered, in which I was with my father and some more of our friends, where, about eleven of the clock, we saw hundreds of poor soldiers, both English and Scotch, march all naked on foot, and many with your father, who was very cheerful in appearance; who, after he had spoken and saluted me and his friends there, said, 'Pray let us not lose time, for I know not how little I have to spare; this is the chance of war; nothing venture, nothing have; so let us sit down and be merry whilst we may;' then taking my hand in his, and kissing me, 'Cease weeping, no other thing upon earth can move me; remember we are all at God's disposal.'

"During the time of his imprisonment, I failed not constantly to go, when the clock struck four in the morning, with a dark lantern in my hand all alone and on foot, from my lodging in Chancery Lane, at my cousin Young's, to Whitehall, in at the entry that went out of King Street into the bowling-green. There I would go under his window and softly call him; he, after the first time excepted, never failed to put out his head at the first call; thus we talked together, and sometimes I was so wet with the rain, that it went in at my neck and out at my heels. He directed how I should make my addresses, which I did ever to their general, Cromwell, who had a great respect for your father, and would have bought him off to his service, upon any terms.

Being one day to solicit for my husband's liberty for a time, he bid me bring, the next day, a certificate from a physician, that he was really ill. Immediately I went to Dr. Batters, that was by chance both physician to Cromwell and to our family, who gave me one very favourable in my husband's behalf. I delivered it at the Council Chamber, at three of the clock that afternoon, as he commanded me, and he himself moved, that seeing they could make no use of his imprisonment, whereby to lighten them in their business, that he might have his liberty upon 40007. bail, to take a course of physic, he being dangerously ill. Many spake against it; but most Sir Henry Vane, who said he would be as instrumental, for aught he knew, to hang them all that sat there, if ever he had opportunity; but if he had liberty for a time, that he might take the engagement before he went out; upon which Cromwell said, 'I never knew that the engagement was a medicine for the scorbutic!' They, hearing their general say so, thought it obliged him, and so ordered him his liberty upon bail."

These are specimens of what we think best in the work; but, as there may be readers who would take an interest in her description of court ceremonies, or, at least, like to see how she manages them, we shall conclude with a little fragment of such a description. "This afternoon I went to pay my visit to the Duchess of Albuquerque.

When I came to take coach, the soldiers stood to their

HER BOOK OF CEREMONIES.

475

arms, and the lieutenant that held the colours displaying them, which is never done to any one but to kings, or such as represent their persons: I stood still all the while, then at the lowering of the colours to the ground, they received for them a low courtesy from me, and for himself a bow; then taking coach, with very many persons both in coaches and on foot, I went to the duke's palace, where I was again received by a guard of his excellency's, with the same ceremony of the king's colours as before. Then I was received by the duke's brother and near a hundred persons of quality. I laid my hand upon the wrist of his excellency's right hand; he putting his cloak thereupon, as the Spanish fashion is, went up the stairs, upon the top of which stood the duchess and her daughter, who received me with great civility, putting me into every door, and all my children, till we came to sit down in her excellency's chamber, where she placed me on her right hand, upon cushions, as the fashion of this court is, being very rich, and laid upon Persia carpets.

"The two dukes embraced my husband with great kindness, welcoming him to the place, and the duke of Medina Celi led me to my coach, an honour that he had never done any but once, when he waited on your queen to help her on the like occasion. The Duke d'Alcala led my eldest daughter, and the younger led my second, and the Governor of Cadiz, Don Antonio de Pimentel, led the third. Mrs. Kestian carried Betty in her arms."

There is great choice of this sort for those who like it; and not a little of the more solemn and still duller discussion of diplomatic etiquette and precedence. But, independent of these, and of the genealogies and obituaries, which are not altogether without interest, there is enough both of heart, and sense, and observation, in these memoirs, at once to repay gentle and intelligent readers for the trouble of perusing them, and to stamp a character of amiableness and respectability on the memory of their author.

1

476

PEPYS'S MEMOIRS.

(NOVEMBER, 1825.)

Memoirs of SAMUEL PEPYS, Esq. F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II., comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. John Smith, A.B., of St. John's College, Cambridge, from the original Shorthand MS. in the Pepysian Library, and a Selection from his Private Correspondence. Edited by RICHARD LORD BRAYBROOKE. 2 vols. 4to. London: 1825.

WE have a great indulgence, we confess, for the taste, or curiosity, or whatever it may be called, that gives its value to such publications as this, and are inclined to think the desire of knowing, pretty minutely, the manners and habits of former times, of understanding, in all their details, the character and ordinary way of life and conversation of our forefathers a very liberal and laudable desire; and by no means to be confounded with that hankering after contemporary slander, with which this age is so miserably infested, and so justly reproached. It is not only curious to see from what beginnings, and by what steps, we have come to be what we are: But it is most important, for the future and for the present, to ascertain what practices, and tastes, and principles, have been commonly found associated or disunited: And as, in uncultivated lands, we can often judge of their inherent fertility by the quality of the weeds they spontaneously produce so we may learn, by such an inspection of the moral growths of a country, compared with its subsequent history, what prevailing manners are indicative of vice or of virtue what existing follies foretell approaching wisdom - what forms of licentiousness give promise of coming purity, and what of deeper degradation. -what uncertain lights, in short, announce the rising, and what the setting sun! While, in like manner, we may trace in the same records the connection of public and private morality,

BEST SUPPLEMENT TO HISTORY.

477

and the mutual action and reaction of government and manners; and discover what individual corruptions spring from political dishonour-what domestic profligacy leads to the sacrifice of freedom-and what national virtues are most likely to resist the oppressions, or yield to the seductions of courts.

Of all these things History tells us little and yet they are the most important that she could have been employed in recording. She has been contented, however, for the most part, with detailing merely the broad and apparent results- the great public events and transactions, in which the true working principles of its destiny have their end and consummation; and points only to the wrecks or the triumphs that float down the tide of human affairs, without giving us any light as to those ground currents by which its central masses are governed, and of which those superficial appearances are, in most cases, the necessary, though unsuspected effects.

Every one feels, we think, how necessary this information is, if we wish to understand what antiquity really was, and what manner of men existed in former generations. How vague and unsatisfactory, without it, are all public annals and records of dynasties and battles— of how little interest to private individuals of how little use even to philosophers and statesmen! Before we can apply any example in history, or even comprehend its actual import, we must know something of the character, both of the age and of the persons to which it belongs and understand a good deal of the temper, tastes, and occupations, both of the actors and the sufferers. Good and evil, in truth, change natures, with a change of those circumstances; and we may be lamenting as the most intolerable of calamities, what was scarcely felt as an infliction by those on whom it fell. Without this knowledge, therefore, the most striking and important events are mere wonders, to be stared at altogether barren of instruction and probably leading us astray, even as occasions of sympathy or moral emotion. Those minute details, in short, which History has so often rejected as below her dignity, are indispensable to give life, cer