the foliage of the ancient "Avenue de Maintenon," now closed against the people, and not bring back to memory, amongst the many other wise and efficient public and private actions of the frank, generous, and enlightened Henri Quatre, that noble scene, in that same green spot, where the courtiers and the people in the distance, waited with intense anxiety (arising from their diverse sentiments) to witness his majesty's reconciliation with his honest prime minister, the immortal Tully, the boast and pillar of the state, as well as his sovereign's confidential private friend. Later the foliage of those trees shaded the same king of France, while of fering pardon to a noble of a different cast of mind and heart, to the too proud and treacherous Biron.

armorial blazons of the French nation! ! ! in the palaces erected by the monarchs des grands siècles."

On the morrow-the courtiers said, " the prince was enamoured of his fair fiancée yesterday-" aujourd'hui il en est fou."

The wedded dame, the new-made duchesse by the rights of lineage of her princely partner, by the grace of the late King Charles X., "Royal Highness Duchesse de Chartres," attended mass the following morning in the Catholic chapel, and demanded a bréviaire to enable her to follow the sacred service. Her royal highness, at the conclusion of it, remarked to an attendant, "There is a nearer approximation betwixt the Roman Catholics and the modern Lutherans than there is betwixt the ancient and the modern Lutherans."

The trumpet of fame has proclaimed this fair German princess to be a lettered lady, which signifies the deepest shade of bas bleu-ism. Her royal highness is said to have marched with the times in liberal philosophy, and also to possess as much in struction of divers kinds, as much erudi tion and wit, as might increase the reputa tion of the university of Göttingen.

The bridal pair were conducted on the nuptial night into the chamber called the "Pope's chamber," where had repined in lonely captivity, during several successive weeks, the sovereign pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, who, by his genuine enlightened piety, his earthly sufferings, his meek patience, has been honoured with the appellation of" Saint Martyr." This pontiff, Pius VII., was dragged from the sacred When princesses are thus endowed, by city of the Cæsars, from the heritage of St. the rolling tide of courtiers' adulations, Peter, by the gripe of a military tyrant. with the laurel wreath of a Corinne, it beNapoleon, either by a satirical design or comes their imperative duty to talk much, by a strange chance, assigned this cham- and to seek occasion to declaim on the litber to his papal prisoner, decorated as it erary works of the day. May this young then was with a tapestry from the old Ar- personage not declaim too much! A very ras looms, representing the heathen deities few days after her entry into Paris, she dewith their loves, and rich damask drape-manded that Victor Hugo might be immeries of imperial purple hue hung over the diately presented to her. sculptured canopy, that concealed them partially from the view of the " Saint Père" in his hours of repose. This apartment had been carefully preserved from all changes during the restoration, as a stern historical, although fantastic, tradition of the imperial reign. It was also a hallowed memento, to many persons, of the sorrows of a beautiful victim of the Roman Catholic Church. Few travellers arrived at Fontainbleau who did not eagerly demand to be shown "the pope's apartment;" but Louis Philippe, a man of another mind and tastes, of other passions and reasonings, issued, on this great family festival, his fiat to convert it into a bridal chamber for his heir presumptive, and to replace the Arras tapestry, the ecclesiastical colour draperies, by satin hangings of flaming crimson dyes.

Victor Hugo is the most immoral French author of the day, consequently he is the most popular with his compatriots-the author of a romance, entitled "Notre Dame de Paris," and a pile of other unprincipled novels and dramas, pernicious to the souls of youth, to those domestic delights that can only ensure tranquillity and true affection in the home-scene of life. Victor Hugo, half reluctant, (it is said,) appeared in her royal presence. Her royal highness complimented him on his work of "Notre Dame," and assured him that HIS church of Notre Dame was the first she had visited after her arrival in Paris! The venerable cathedral of Notre Dame, the metropolitan church of Paris, her royal_highness denominated the church of Victor Hugo; but it was a figurative speech, 'tis true! Then you have read these immoral, irreligious works, young unreflecting princess! and, by your public protection of their author, you give a tacit recommendation of them to your new youthful compatriots, to your future subjects, and to your royal spouse!

The emblazons of the hymeneal couch he ordered to be sculptured with trophies of the poultry yard, intermingled with those of war. Two gilded cocks, in their ruffled feathers, ably chiselled by a superior artist, face each other most fiercely, apparently in the action of basse cour combat, surround- A visit to the camp was in the proed by swords, spears, and banners. The gramme for the amusements of the followsame elegantly imagined devices decorate ing afternoon, for the royalty of July pay the head of the couch, where these glorious much court to the military. Louis Phibirds look in ominous hostility on the sur- lippe played the usual farce of tasting the rounding scene. They are the new chosen soldiers' soup, then presented the wooden 20

VOL. VIII.

spoon to his queen. The princesses smil- grouping of plebeian rivals, grotesque ed graciously. King Leopold of Belgi. counts, and barons, and peers; these froth um made an effort to extend his stiff fea- and scum would-be patriots of ignoble astures, that resemble a sheet of iron, into a pects, gesticulating, disputing together, similar gracious expression. This excel presided by that modern French Socrates, lent son-in-law had been pressed into the Monsieur Le Baron Vatout-a mountebank morning pastimes, enticed from his cabi. ministry in chaos, resembling the Tower net, where he had sat secluded every of Babel-a confusion of opinions and inmorning of the hymeneal-week, closely terests-" ce sont des corps sans têtes, et occupied in writing despatches to a certain l'état est un corps sans âme." This inconnew-made German baroness, and to the ceivable cavalcade had a grotesque, risible duchess, his sister, in England, in calculat- effect-the appearance of the carnival proing and calm foresight, to further the politi- cessions removed from the Paris Boulecal views of the existing French and Belgian vards, to deface the coup d'ail, and interupt governments, and their own family inter- the august tranquillity of our forest soliests, to extend his personal influence over tudes. One might be at present Democrithe counsels of the mother of the then em- tus and Heraclitus at the same time,' 'tant bryo queen of Albion's isles-being well il y a souvent à rire et à pleurer" upon the informed that William the Fourth lay at follies and frailties of human nature; and that time stretched on the sick couch, really the destiny of those persons who awaiting in pious resignation the threaten- have gained, in this cadette revolution, and ing immediate termination of earthly the destiny of those who have lost, merit sovereignty. equal compassion.

Contrary to the previous economical intentions of Louis Philippe, every evening there came from Paris a set of comedians, who acted in the private theatre in the palace, where degrading scenes took place,

or sold, or given indiscriminately by the Secretary of Athalin to his low comrades. Grisettes, cooks, and other inferior domestics, were mingled with the higher class in the boxes-in the parterre a queer set of half-clothed spectators by the side of officers and gentlemen strangers.

The new duchess plucked a faded flower from one of the sentimental flowery trophies with which the soldiers had decorated the greensward around their tents, first pressing the flower to her lips, and then placing it on her breast; on which the enthusiastic for many of the tickets had been purloined colonel of the huzzars waved his plumed casque in the air, crying "Viva" eventually looking fiercely aghast that the responses were so few and faint. The royal cavalcade proceeded to Mont Calvaire, an elevated spot in the forest, where, amidst the ancient revolutions of nature, rest the vestiges of a cross and statue of our Redeemer, broken, dispersed over the mossy rocks, under the lofty foliage of the forest, a solemn memento to the Lutheran stranger bride, a terrific legend of the ravages of that last political revolution which gained to her father-in-law the throne of his royal kin.

My friend Le Comte de , écuyer, came the last evening to reproach my absence, and offer me a ticket for the spectacle, so well regulated as to secure me a box free from indiscreet intrusions; therefore I yielded to his remonstrances, and the secret wish to renew my inspection of this singularly composed court. Passing the Seven fleeting years had passed away, Cour de la Fontaine through a motley crew and now the military band of the hussar of ill-omened visages that were waiting for regiment was concealed behind this once admittance, scrambling and struggling with sacred little temple, playing German airs, females, I arrived in my box, escorted by with horn, and trumpet, and cymbal, in my écuyer, with only the trifling loss of compliment to the young German bride; an embroidered pocket handkerchief, which it was harmonious cadences, succeeding I had vainly requested the person to reto the miscreant cries of the maddened store, who I simply imagined had picked throng of Fontainbleau of that fearful it up from old-fashioned politeness, rather epoch. A little later emerged suddenly than from the modern system of equality from a mass of rocks Youssoff Bey, the African, with turbaned brow, astride on his Arabian panting steed, prancing, neighing, snorting in the air. The rider and his courser burst through the entangled thickets-now the Algerine cavalier Ere I had been long seated, I perceived, curbed in his fiery steed-now abandoned conducted with extreme difficulty into the the rein, leaving him to his own boundless upper range of boxes L'homme à Treize will. The ladies gave their unanimous Serments-as conversant with the mysteries suffrages that Youssoff Bey" a l'exterieur d'un joli homme de bon ton."

of rights, and I had not the resolution to cry out "Thief!" even at the entrance to the palace of a citizen king-too contented to escape from a citizen crowd with so trifling a loss.

of the green-room of a theatre as with those of the secret behind-scenes of the The subsequent afternoons were devoted diplomacy. He was finally, after much to scenic promenades, in the royal party's exertion, safely deposited in the box apopen vehicles of varied fashions-the propriated, during the splendours of the guests, more closely packed, in ponderous empire, to the brilliant pages of Napoleon uncovered omnibuses, a miscellaneous and his empress. Then he turned himself

From that instant the old walls of this palace reverberated with the-Monseigneur!

towards the stage, seemingly entirely en-d'Orleans; Monseigneur, I repeat; je le grossed by the representation of the ficti- veux, c'est mon ordre." tious comedy, turning his back (perhaps by habit) on the real life, (the comedy spec!acle personated in the royal box by his present favoured sovereign.) In the front row of the tier arranged themselves the tissue-turbaned portly dames of Marshal Soult and of the Préfet of the Seine. The aristocratic amiable Madame Dolomieu was there, in the contrasting dignity of the old Palais Royal Court, an admirer of court etiquettes, who would fain restore them in the full plenitude of antiquity at the Tuileries.

In the same imperious tone, the royal mother of Monseigneur issued forth her command, that in future mass should be daily celebrated in the small chapel of St. Saturnine, as it formerly was. The attendants opened wide their eyes, as well as their ears, standing before citizen-majesty in a state of mental stupefaction, at this unexpected announcement. Do the citizen king and queen of a nation of unbounded liberal consciences permit the doors of the chapel of St. Saturnine to be re-opened for public worship, where silence had reigned during seven long years?

Her majesty, impatient at the stricken attitude of her audience, repeated her mandate in a raised tone-" Mass every day of the week in the royal chapel-it is my will!"

The new created baroness of the Belgian Court, the electic beauty of female diplo. macy, and the heiress of a late noble British admiral, entered-the frowns of the latter setting off to advantage the handsome smiling face of her younger daughter. In the back ground, to display to more advantage the female figures in the picture, stood General Lobau in all his glorious national guard importance. And now fervently rejoice the old superHis citizen-majesty entered the royal intendents and servitors that they are box, and ceded his place to his bridal permitted openly to pray, and for better daughter; she would have declined the times, in the old palace of their exiled royal perilous honour, but the monarch persisted masters. Alas, most august religion! thou in displacing himself, entering immediate- art, in France, the play and sport of ambily into a spirited conversation. A facetious tious men, rejected or courted as suits their and pleasing smile irradiated his counte- ardent thirst after worldly dignities, or nance, while chatting with his angel from their baser avaricious passions. the north, who seems to reanimate and dif Sunday morn saw the departure of the fuse some rays of cheerfulness over the phalanx of fictitious royalty. The town of family circle, and to dissipate their fears Fontainbleau then resumed its dullness, the of assassination. Marie Amelie appeared streets their solitariness. The iron gates of the least changed from her habitual inani- this ponderous pile of palaces were immedimate fatigued state, her chin tucked in- ately closed aad locked. Silence regained wards, as if oppressed by the weight of its empire there-silent and solitary are its her turban, and in fearful anxiety of losing courts. No longer is permitted (as under its a jewel from the mass that usually bedecks hereditary sovereigns) a free circulation to it. Although of royal race and education, the inhabitants of the town to strangers-no come from the most brilliant court of the longer free ingress and egress on summer south, she has not the very noble bearing evenings to the gardens and avenues, to of ancient royalty, she might pass in private contemplate their natural and artificial beau-life for a plain, good looking, honest kind ties. Additional palisades and gates have of woman; but I must recount that rumour been erected at the entrance of each avenue, tells, and indeed it is a certainty, that the and in the interior courts, which give to this hardier qualities of ambition attributed to rendezvous of palaces the appearance of an her royal highness previous to her eleva-old convent, abandoned by its community, tion to the throne, have been more clearly or of a state prison. When Louis Philippe demonstrated within these few days in the comes there alone to view the judicious reinterior arrangements of her court. Majesty storations, and the modern embellishments, and command have resumed their expres-in bad taste, he has ordered to be executed, sion over her person; the interesting humil- he has the appearance of a wild animal ity of a citoyenne reine has vanished there; walking in his grilled cage. This deprivashe has raised her lofty crest in the peremp-tion is one of the advantages derived by this tory tone of command; assembled the fanciful nation from their last darling revoancient and new-made servitors and super-lution. intendents of the palace, in the presence of The curate preached that Sabbath-day in her court circle, to announce to them her will that the elder-born of her race should in future be addressed by the title of Monseigneur.

Monseigneur le Duc d'Orleans!" vociferated the anxious dependants.

"You are still wrong," exclaimed the queen, "Monseigneur alone, point de Duc

the parish church, on the advantages of education, exhorting mothers to superintend the morals of their offspring with more minute attention, and to select the most moral books for their perusal, as the only probable means to regenerate France. I walked, after divine service and this edifying discourse, into the apartment of my handsome, flexible

Lutheran religion-what are those of the Calvinist-what are the differences betwixt them and the Episcopalian Church of England?" "Where can we see, where can we hear these Dissenters ?" Therefore, on the several following Sundays, the Parisians, in their love of novelty and dramatic scenes in church or state, hurried, some to the chapel of Monsieur Cuvier, to l'Eglise l'Oratoire, others to hear the English Bishop Luscombe, in the English church, Rue d'Aguesseau.

minded friend, whose military spouse had so prudently decided to serve under every flag. I found her pretty daughter reading a translation into English of Gil Blas. The translation of any work is unfavourable to the language you wish to cultivate. But Gil Blas to a girl of fifteen, who had, during these hymeneal scenes, been confirmed by the bishop in the chapel of St. Saturnine! I shuddered, I remonstrated, I argued and reargued the subject. The inconsistent mother opened wider her fine blue eyes, Poor l'Abbé Chatel l'Evêque de l'Eglise and heard with apathetic indifference. Française! his evequeship had to perform a offered Miss Mitford's beautiful "Village solo. What inglorious confusion on the Walks" to the blooming, the yet innocent-holy Sabbath day! What hopes of regeneminded girl, and succeeded in persuading her to prefer it to the further perusal of the Adventures of the licentious Gil Blas; but the mother comprehended not, or would not comprehend, my reasonings.

Curiosity was again awake on a subject resulting from this royal wedding. All were inquiring, "What are the ceremonies of the

rating France! "La pauvre France!' thou art like a young person of good family, whose education has failed, and who has delivered herself up to wild fearful wanderings.

What were my subsequent movements and feelings may be perused in my pil grimage to Scotland.

THE WARRIOR'S BETROTHED.

THEY bore her away to the house of prayer,
Ere the last lingering smile from her lip had gone,
Slowly, and sadly, they lowered her there,

To the home of her fathers beneath the stone.

And mutely they turned from that lonely tomb,”
Where the loveliest and loved in the cold vault lay;
They felt that a shadow o'er earth had come,
A glory had passed from each spirit away.

Yet time wore on in its weariless track,

Till the hue returned to each cheek again,
And the full glad tone to each voice came back,
As though sorrows were hushed into silence then.

A young knight hath come in his glory and pride,
To his childhood's home from a far-off shore,
And seeketh he fondly his destined bride

In the once glad halls where he sought her of yore.

They led him then forth, 'midst the wild flowers' blooms,
They showed him the grave where the loved one slept,
Nor dreamed, as they turned from the churchyard's glooms,
How fearful a blight o'er his spirit had crept.

All quenched was the fire of that young knight's eye;
Ay, colder than stone was that lofty brow,
And the hand that had wielded the axe on high,
Fell powerless and still as an infant's now.

That dauntless frame to the earth was bowed low,
As the lily might bend 'neath the raging blast,
And low suppressed sobs on the soft breeze flow,
As the warm tears gush from his soul full fast.

A warrior rode forth from the tented field,
Begirt with the trophies of victories won,
His armour of steel, and his blazoned shield,
Flashed dazzlingly bright in the noon-day sun.

And his foaming steed pranced gaily on,

As the shouts of a multitude sounded afar,
And proudly he passed from that countless throng,
The victor of battles-the glory of war.

A withered man came to his ancient halls,
His spirit was bowed 'neath its weight of pain,
His once-proud banners were hung on the walls,
Never to flutter in triumph again.

Lonely he traversed his native vales,

The flowers seemed faded, the moon shone dim,—
Did the birds then warble the same glad tales ?
Alas! all their music had passed from him.

Yet time had not altered that glowing scene-
Time had not robbed it of beauty or tone,
But shadows had swept o'er the soul within,

And the treasures of earth seemed shrouded and gone.

S. C.

SHAKSPEARE FANCIES.*
No. VIII.

CLEOPATRA AND MME. DE STAEL.

labours of the actual author; the first to the frisking morn, glowing into noon: the second to the grey twilight of evening, subsiding into the purple darkness of summer's night. The first is encouraged, because it draws How different is the love of maturity from me out of wearisome self; the second, bethat of youth! If there be more fervour, ex- cause love is necessary to wearied self. If uberance of spirit, self-abandonment in the the first had been Cleopatra's, regardless of latter, there is more of perpetual, calm medi- Cæsar, and of all the world, she would have tation on the reality in the former. It is not descended to the dying Antony; not like vivid imagination which feeds it, but sober Juliet is she, at first regardless of self; her truth; not in delirium is the affection yield- first consideration is for her personal safety, ed, but with a slow pulse, a cool blood, a as it could not have been with one of our reasoning brain; it is not the wild hastening previous heroines, who were too spiritual for of a child to a pleasure inexperienced, but that. But she had superior fascinations to the deliberate action of an understanding render her love all-conquering, so that what and duly estimating mind; one is the access was lacking in one way was more than of fever when we, as it were, restlessly long atoned for, to such as Antony, in another; it for something unattainable, when we wildly is true, she was a queen, and therefore, by expect something, we know not what; we station, authorised to remember self first: it have no fear (though we know our friends is a bad system which thus inculcates more have) about ourselves; our new and tumult- generous conduct to be derogatory-a sysuous emotions we give rein to, with ardent tem which, as the world progresses, even as and headlong curiosity; we are, while really it does now, bids fair, in part at least, to be in a state of madness, to ourselves apparent-done away with, like the superfluous cerely composed; we neither hasten forwards, mony and expenditure of a coronation. Dignor linger behind, though enjoying this nity of mind, not pomp of circumstance, do strange development of things with pressing we now demand. eagerness: the other, instead of to the access of fever, may be likened to the sedate enjoyment of moderate illness and approaching convalescence so spiritually described by Charles Lamb, when the patient has such pleasure in the attention paid, the tenderness shown, the intellectual contemplations, encouraged by opportunity, on past feelings, and those in future to be fostered; in the delicious absorption from the coldhearted world and tormenting cares: the first may be likened to the dreams of the embryo writer; the second to the enjoyable

* Continued from vol. vii. p. 310.

Cleopatra's grief was counterpoised by her pleasure that Antony had escaped for aye from the toils of Cæsar, as she, too, buoyantly anticipated doing. And why weep, when the separation was to be so transient, the meeting to occur so speedily? How maliciously pleasant is the application of degrading epithets to one of whom we are so jealous, because our lord has loved her, or to whom we suspect him of affection, even though he deny it-epithets which will not be answered or found fault with, as he is now engrossed by us, and deems it useful to fret us, to whom he ought to be grateful, and who have him somewhat in our power. Antony's life has not