restored him, you see, to their eyes; and you can-
not conceive the joy it has given all the world, and
the splendor 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 honor.
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. Talk-
ing 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 de-
lighted with all this chatter: he sees through the
game-he draws his conclusions-he discovers
which is the person he wants; truly he is your
only man for holding the cards. At six, the car-
riages 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.
Queen occupies another with the Princess; and
The
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 an- over smoke and horror.
swers-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.'

brosial 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 Catho-
lic Church, and the Jesuits with their ac-
commodating 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 pa-
triarchal polygamies.

But, to say the truth, except when she chose to be in the humor 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 sensibili ty 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-foundry, where they made anchors. The scene is equally well felt with that at court. It is as good, in its way, as the where the sound was heard blacksmith's in Spencer's 'House of Care,'

"Of many iron hammers, beating rank,

And answering their weary turns around;" and where the visitor is so glad to get away from the giant and his 'strong grooms,' all

Extract of a Letter to Madame de Grignan. 'Friday, 1st October, (1677.)

We stood

*** 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 Not a word of the morale of the specta-ships. You never saw strokes redoubled so justcle! Madame de Sévigné, who had one of ly, nor with so admirable a cadence. the correctest reputations in France, wish-in the middle of four furnaces, and the demons came passing about us, all melting in sweat, es even it may last. Iniqua corte is a mere with pale faces, wild staring eyes, savage musjesting phrase, applied to any court. Mon- taches, and hair long and black; a sight enough tespan was a friend of the family, though to frighten less well-bred folks than ourselves. it knew Maintenon also, who was then preparing the downfall of the favorite. The latter, meantime, was a sort of vice-queen, reigning over the real one. When she journeyed, it was with a train of forty peo-cilitate our exit.' ple; 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 colors of France and Navarre. Louis was such a god at that time-he shook his 'am

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 fa

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

one coach.
our very whiskers; it is a mercy they were not

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 earrings, or a coach in a gallop.

faces a second time, that they must needs get and honesty. before us again, on a causeway made only for germ of the thought was suggested by the But even in this passage, the My dear, their coachman brushed melancholy of another person, not by her pitched into the river; we all cried out for own. Madame de la Fayette had written God's sake;' they, for their parts, were dying her a letter urging her to retrieve her afwith laughter; and they kept galloping on abore fairs, and secure her health, by accepting us and before us, in so tremendous and unac- some money from her friends, and quitting countable a manner, that we have not got rid of the Rocks for Paris ;-offers which, howthe fright to this moment.' ever 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 ir ritable with disease, and who did not write it in a style much calculated to prevent the uneasiness it caused, made abrupt use of the 'Paris, 29th November, (1679.) words, 'You are old.' The little hard sen* 'I have been to this wedding of Ma-tence came like a blow upon the lively, elddame de Louvois. How shall I describe it? erly lady. She did not like it at all; and Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses thus wrote of it to her daughter: all gold and brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of flowers, confusions of carriages, 'So you were struck with the expression of cries out of doors, flambeaus, pushings back, peo-Madame de la Fayette, blended with so much ple knocked up; in short, a whirlwind, a distrac-friendship. 'Twas a truth, I own, which I ought tion; questions without answers, compliments to have borne in mind; and yet I must confess it without knowing what is said, civilities without astonished me, for I do not yet perceive in myself knowing who is spoken to, feet entangled in any such decay. Nevertheless I cannot help trains. From the middle of all this, issue inqui-making many reflections and calculations, and 1 ries after your health; which, not being answer- find the conditions of life hard enough. It seems ed as quick as lightning, the inquirers pass on, contented to remain in the state of ignorance and indifference in which they were made. 0 vanity of vanities! Pretty little De Mouchy has had the small-pox. O vanity, et cetera!'

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 In Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' is a refer- ready to do me outrage; and I hear a voice ence by the great and gloomy moralist to a which says, You must go on in spite of yourself; passage in Madame de Sévigné, in which is another extremity, from which nature revolts. or, if you will not go on, you must die; and this she speaks of existence having been im- Such is the lot, however, of all who advance beposed upon her without her consent; but the yond middle life. What is their resource? To conclusion he draws from it as to her opin-think of the will of God and of the universal law; ion of life in general, is worthy of the crit-and so restore reason to its place, and be patient. ic who never read books through.' The Be you then patient, accordingly, my dear child, momentary effusion of spleen is contradictand let not your affections often into such tears as reason must condemn.' ed by the whole correspondence. She occasionally vents her dissatisfaction at a The whole heart and good sense of hurainy day, or the perplexity produced in manity seem to speak in passages like her mind by a sermon; and when her tears these, equally removed from the frights of begin flowing for a pain in her daughter's the supersittious, and the flimsiness or little finger, it is certainly no easy matter falsehood of levity. The ordinary comfort to stop them; but there was a luxury at and good prospects of Madame de Sévigné's the heart of this wo. Her ordinary no- existence, made her write with double force tions of life were no more like John- on these graver subjects, when they preson's, than rose-color is like black, or health sented themselves to her mind. So, in her like disease. She repeatedly proclaims, famous notice of the death of Louvois the and almost always shows, her delight in ex-minister-never, in a few words, were past istence; and has disputes with her daugh- ascendency and sudden nothingness more ter, in which she laments that she does not impressively contrasted. 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

death of M. de Louvois, that I am at a loss how 'I am so astonished at the news of the sudden to

speak of it. Dead, however, he is, this great minister, this potent being, who occupied so great a place, whose me, (le moi,) as, M. Nicole

says, had so wide a dominion; who was the centre of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage ! what designs, what projects, what secrets ! what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct! Ah! my God, give ne a little time: I want to give check to the Duke of Savoy-checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall not have a moment -not a single moment. Are events like these to be talked of? Not they. We must reflect upon them in our closets.'

vigné by her uncle, and much as it was in her day; a small saloon below for dinner, then an arcade, but the niches now closed, and painted in fresco with medallions of her, the Grignan, the Fayette, and the Rochefoucauld. Above, a handsome large room, with a chimneypiece in the best taste of Louis the Fourteenth's time; a Holy Family in good relief over it, and the cipher ofher uncle Coulanges; a neat little bedchamber within, and two or three clean little chambers over them. On one side of the garden, leading to the great road, is a little bridge of wood, on which the dear woman used to wait for the courier that brought her daughter's letFive | ters. Judge with what veneration and satisfaction I set my foot upon it! If you will come to France with me next year, we will go and sacrifice on that sacred spot together.'-Id. p. 142.

This is a part of a letter to her cousin Coulanges, written in the year 1691. years afterwards she died.

The two English writers who have shown the greatest admiration of Madame de Sé. vigné, are Horace Walpole and Sir James Mackintosh. The enthusiasm of Walpole, who was himself a distinguished letter writer and wit, is mixed up with a good deal of self-love. He bows to his own image in the mirror beside her. During one of his excursions to Paris, he visits the Hôtel de Carnavalet and the house at Livry; and has thus described his impressions, after his half-good half-affected fashion :

Sir James Mackintosh became intimate with the letters of Madame de Sévigné during his voyage from India, and has left some remarks upon them in the Diary published in his Life.

'The great charm,' he says, of her character seems to me a natural virtue. In what she does, as well as in what she says, she is unforced and unstudied; ; nobody, I think, had so much morality without constraint, and played so much with Madame de Chabot I called on last night. | ingenious, lively, social disposition, gave the dir amiable feelings without falling into vice. Her She was not at home, but the Hôtel de Carnava-rection to her mental power. She has so filled let was; and I stopped on purpose to say an Ave-Maria before it. (This pun is suggested by | living friend, that I can searcely bring mysell to my heart with affectionate interest in her as a one in Bussy-Rabutin.) 'It is a very singular building, not at all in the French style, and looks ! think of her as a writer, or as having a style; but she has become a celebrated, perhaps an imlike an ex roto, raised to her honor by some of her foreign votaries. I don't think her half-hon-mortal writer, without expecting it: she is the ored enough in her own country." only classical writer who never conceived the possibility of acquiring fame. Without a great

His visit to Livry is recorded in a letter force of style, she could not have communicated to his friend Montague:

'One must be just to all the world. Madame Roland, I find, has been in the country, and at Versailles, and was so obliging as to call on me this morning; but I was so disobliging as not to be awake. I was dreaming dreams ; in short, I had dined at Livry; yes, yes, at Livry, with a Langlade and De la Rochefoucauld. The abbey is now possessed by an Abbé de Malherbe, with whom I am acquainted, and who had given me a general invitation. I put it off to the last moment, that the bois and allées might set off the scene a little, and contribute to the vision;

those feelings. In what does that talent consist? It seems mainly to consist in the power of working bold metaphors, and unexpected turns of expression, out of the most familiar part of conversational language."

Sir James proceeds to give an interesting analysis of this kind of style, and the way in which it obtains ascendency in the most polished circles; and all that he says of it is very true. But it seems to us, that the main secret of the 'charm' of Madame de Sévigné is to be found neither in her natural virtue,' nor in the style in which it expressed itself,

but it did not want it. Livry is situate in the Forêt de Bondi, very agreeably on a flat, but but in something which interests us still with hills near it and in prospect. There is a more for our own sakes than the writer's, great air of simplicity and rural about it, more and which instinctively compelled her to regular than our taste, but with an old fashioned adopt that style as its natural language. tranquillity, and nothing of colifichet (lrippery). We doubt extremely, in the first place, wheNot a tree exists that remembers the charming ther any great charm' is ever felt in her woman, because in this country an old tree is a traitor, and forfeits his head to the crown; but virtue, natural or otherwise, however it may the plantations are not young, and might very that the correctness of her reputation enabe respected. Readers are glad, certainly, well be as they were in her time. The Abbé's house is decent and snug; a few paces from it bled her to write with so much gayety and is the sacred pavilion built for Madame de Sé

# Letters, ye. Vol. V., p. 74, Edit. 1840.

*Memoirs of the Life of the Right Hon. Sir James Mackintosh. Sec. Edit., Vol. II., p. 217.

for granted what Bussy-Rabutin intimates about secret lovers) it gives a zest to certain freedoms in her conversation, which are by no means rare; for she was any thing but a prude. We are not sure that her character for personal correctness does not sometimes produce even an awkward impression, in connexion with her relations to the court and the mistresses; though the manners of the day, and her superiority to sermonizing and hypocrisy, relieve it from one of a more painful nature. Certain we are, however, that we should have liked her still better, had she manifested a power to love somebody else besides her children; had she married again, for instance, instead of passing a long widowhood from her five-and-twentieth year, not, assuredly, out of devotion to her husband's memory. Such a marriage, we think, would have been quite as natural as any virtue she possessed. The only mention of her hus band that we recollect in all her correspondence, with the exception of the allusion to Ninon, is in the following date of a letter:

boldness; and perhaps (without at all taking it is a concealment. Friends must take care how they speak of the daughter as too well and happy. The mother then brings to our mind the Falkland of Sheridan, and expresses her disgust at these 'perfecthealth folks.' Even lovers tire under such surveillance; and as affections between mother and child, however beautiful, are not, in the nature of things, of a like measure of reciprocity, a similar result would have been looked for by the discerning eyes of Madame de Sévigné, had the case been any other than her own. But the tears of selflove mingle with those of love, and blind the kindest natures to the difference. It is too certain, or rather it is a fact which reduces the love to a good honest natural size, and therefore ought not, so far, to be lamented, that this fond mother and daughter, fond though they were, jangled sometimes, like their inferiors, both when absent and present, leaving nevertheless a large measure of affection to diffuse itself in joy and comfort over the rest of their intercourse. It is a common case, and we like neither of them a jot the less for it. We may only be allowed to repeat our wish (as Madame de Grignan must often have done) that the 'dear Marie de Rabutin,' as Sir James Mackintosh calls her, had had a second husband, to divert some of the responsibilities of affection from her daughter's head. Let us recollect, after all, that we should not have heard of the distress but for the affection; that millions who might think fit to throw stones at it, would in reality have no right to throw a pebble; and that the wit which has rendered it immortal, is beautiful for every species of truth, but this single deficiency in self-knowledge.

'Paris, Friday Feb. 5, 1672. This day thousand years I was married.'

That is the g eat charm of Madame de

We do not accuse her of heartlessness. We believe she had a very good heart. Probably, she liked to be her own mistress; but this does not quite explain the matter in so loving a person. There were people in her own time who doubted the love for her daughter surely with great want of justice. But natural as that virtue was, and delightful as it is to see it, was the excess of it quite so natural? or does a thorough intimacy with the letters confirm our belief in that excess? It does not. The love | Sévignétruth. Truth, wit, and animal was real and great; but the secret of what spirits compose the secret of her delightappears to be its extravagance is, perhaps, fulness; but truth above all, for it is that to be found in the love of power; or, not which shows all the rest to be true. If she to speak harshly, in the inability of a fond had not more natural virtues than most mother to leave off her habits of guidance other good people, she had more natural and dictation, and the sense of her impor- manners; and the universality of her taste, tance to her child. Hence a fidgetiness on and the vivacity of her spirits, giving her one side, which was too much allied to ex- the widest range of enjoyment, she exaction and self-will, and a proportionate pressed herself naturally on all subjects, tendency to ill-concealed, and at last open and did not disdain the simplest and most impatience on the other. The demand for familiar phraseology, when the truth reletters was not only incessant and avowed; quired it. Familiarities of style, taken by it was to be met with as zealous a desire, themselves, have been common more or on the daughter's part, to supply them. If less to all wits, from the days of Aristolittle is written, pray write more : if much, phanes to those of Byron; and, in general, don't write so much for fear of headaches. so have animal spirits. Rabelais was full of If the headaches are complained of, what both. The followers of Pulci and Berni, misery! if not complained of, something in Italy, abound in them. What distinworse and more cruel has taken place-guishes Madame de Sévigné is, first, that

vespers one evening out of pure opposition, which taught her to comprehend the 'sacred obstinacy of martyrdom;' that she did not keep a 'philosopher's shop;' that it is difficult for people in trouble to bear thunderclaps of bliss in others.' It is the same from the first letter we have quoted to the last; from the proud and merry boasting of the young mother with a boy, to the candid shudder about the approach of old age, and the refusal of death to grant a moment to the dying statesman-no, not a single moment. She loved nature and truth without misgiving; and nature and truth loved her in return, and have crowned her with glory and honor.

she was a woman so writing, which till her time had been a thing unknown, and has not been since witnessed in any such charming degree; and second, and above all, that she writes the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;' never giving us falsehood of any kind, not even a single false metaphor, or only half-true simile or description; nor writing for any purpose on earth, but to say what she felt, and please those who could feel with her. If we consider how few writers there are, even among the best, to whom this praise, in its integrity, can apply, we shall be struck, perhaps, with a little surprise and sorrow for the craft of authors in general; but certainly with double admiration for Madame de Sévigné. We do not mean to say that she is always right in opinion, or that she had no party or conventional feel- TRAVELLING ROMANCERS: DUMAS ON ings. She entertained, for many years, some strong prejudices. She was bred up in so exclusive an admiration for the poetry of Corneille, that she thought Racine would go out of fashion. Her loyalty made her

THE RHINE.

From the Foreign Quarterly Review.

Excursions sur les Bords du Rhin, par ALEX-
ANDRE DUMAS. (Excursions on the Shores
of the Rhine. By ALEXANDER DUMAS.)
Paris. 1842.

pastry, rotis, and all. This was an invaluable servant, and his dinners, especially in a time of siege and famine, must have been most welcome: but no doubt, when the campaign was over, the cook took care to supply his master's table with other meats besides disguised horseflesh, which, after all, sauce it and pepper it as you will, must always have had a villanous equine twang.

astonished to find that Louis was not invincible; and her connexion with the Count de Grignan, who was employed in the drago- ONE of Louis XIV.'s generals had a cook nades against the Huguenots, led her but who with a few pounds of horseflesh could negatively to disapprove those inhuman dress a sufficient dinner for the general's absurdities. But these were accidents of whole staff: soup, entrées, entremets, friendship or education: her understanding outlived them; nor did they hinder her, meantime, from describing truthfully what she felt, and from being right as well as true in nine-tenths of it all. Her sincerity made even her errors a part of her truth. She never pretended to be above what she felt; never assumed a profound knowledge; never disguised an ignorance. Her mirth, and her descriptions, may sometimes appear exaggerated; but the spirit of truth, not of contradiction, is in them; and excess in such cases is not falsehood, but enjoyment -not the wine adulterated, but the cup running over. All her wit is healthy; all its images entire and applicable throughoutnot palsy-stricken with irrelevance; not forced in, and then found wanting, like Walpole's conceit about the trees, in the passage above quoted. Madame de Sé. vigné never wrote such a passage in her life. All her lightest and most fanciful images, all her most daring expressions, have the strictest propriety, the most genuine feeling, a home in the heart of truth;as when, for example, she says, amidst continual feasting, that she is famished for want of hunger;' that there were no interlineations' in the conversation of a lady who spoke from the heart; that she went to

As with the race of cooks, so with literary men. If there were an absolute dearth of books in the world, and we lay beleaguered by an enemy who had cut off all our printing-presses, our circulating libraries and museums; had hanged our respected publishers; and had beaten off any convoy of newspapers that had attempted to relieve the garrison then, if a literary artiste stepped forward, and said, Friends, you are starving, and I can help you; you pine for your literary food, and I can supply it: and so, taking a pair of leather inexpressibles, boots (or any other "stock"), should make you forthwith a satisfactory dinner, dishing you up three hot volumes in a trice :-that literary man would deserve the thanks of the public, because out of so little he had managed to fill so many stomachs.

If ever such a time of war should come,