AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.

"Πολλὰ αγειρα,Χρηματ' Αἰγυπτίους ἄνδρας, διδοσαν γαρ ἄπαντες."

We do not mean to lay any great stress upon this quotation, and but think at least that it shows a characteristic of the Egyptians as narrated by Moses; and never having met with any allusion to it, nor indeed to our parallel between Moses and Hermes, which it may seem to support, we have thought it worthy this brief notice.

We fancy we trace the history of the cause of the fall of man, in the eating of the pomegranate seed which doomed Proserpine to half an existence in the infernal regions. Can there be anything more striking than the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus? Whence could such a notion come, that a man-god would, for his love to mankind, (for bringing down fire from heaven,) suffer agonies, nailed not upon a cross indeed, but on a rock, and, in the description, crucified? "It is, after a manner," says Mr Swayne, who has with great power translated this strange play of Æschylus, "a Christian poem by a pagan author, foreshadowing the opposition and reconciliation of Divine justice and Divine love. Whence the sublime conception of the subject of this drama could have been obtained, it is useless to speculate. Some even suppose that its author must have been acquainted with the old Hebrew prophets."

Even the introduction of Io in the tale is suggestive—the virgin-mother who was so strangely to conceive (and this too given in a prophecy) miraculously.

"Jove at length shall give thee back thy mind,With one light touch of his unquailing hand,And, from that fertilising touch, a sonShall call thee mother."

Her whom Prometheus thus addresses,—

"In that the son shall overmatch the sire."—"Of thine own stem the strong one shall be born."

Then again Sampson passes into the Egyptian or Tyrian Hercules, to lose his life by another Delilah in Dejaneira. Whence the prophetic Sybils, whence and what the Eleusinian mysteries? and that strange glimpse of them inthe significant passage of the Alcestis, where the restored from the dead must abstain from speech till the third day—the duration of her consecration to Hades!

"Ὁύπω δέμις σοι τησδε προσφωνηματων,Κλύειν, πρίν ἄν θεωισι τοῖσι νερτέροιςΑφαγνῖσηται, καὶτρίτον μολῃ φαος."

We might enter largely into the mysteries of heathen mythology, and discover strange coincidences and resemblances, but it would take us too wide from our present subject. Our present purpose is to show that we are apt to attribute too much to the Grecian fable, when we ascribe to it all the beauty which Grecian art has elaborated from it. For, in fact, the origin of that fabulous poetry is beyond them in far-off time; and by them how corrupted, shorn of its real grandeur, and at once magnificent and lovely beauty! How much more, then, is it ours than theirs, as it is deducible from that high revelation which is part of the Christian religion. We overlook, in the excellence of Grecian art, the far better materials for all art, which we in our religion possess, and have ever possessed. With the Greeks it was an instinct to love the beautiful, sensual and intellectual: it was a part of their nature to discover it or to create it. They would have fabricated it out of any materials; and deteriorated, indeed, were those which came to their hands. And even this excess of their love, at least in their poets, made the sensuous to overcome the intellectual; but the far higher than intellectual—the celestial, the spiritual—they had not: their highest reach in the moral sense was a sublime pride: they had no conception of a sublime humility. Their highest divinity was how much lower than the lowest order of angels that wait around the heavenly throne and adore,—low as is their Olympus, where they placed their Zeus and all his band, to the Christian "heaven of heavens," which yet cannot contain the universal Maker. It is bad taste, indeed, in us, as some do, to give them the palm of the possession of a better field—poetic field for the exercise of art. "Christian and Legendary art" has a principle which no other art could have, and which theirs certainly had not; they were sensuous from a necessity of their nature, lacking this principle. We ought to ascribe all which they have left us to their skill, their genius: wonderful it was, and wonderful things did it perform; but, after all, we admire more than we love. Their divine was but a grand and stern repose; their loveliness, but the perfection of the human form. And so great were they in this their genius, that the monuments of heathen art are beyond the heathen creed; for in those the unsensuous prevailed.

Let us suppose the gift of their genius to have been delayed to the Christian era—as poetical subjects, their whole mythology would have been set aside for a far better adoption; and we should be now universally acknowledging how lovely and how great, how full and bountiful, for poetry and for art, are the ever-flowing fountains, gushing in life, giving exuberance from that high mount, to the sight of which Pindus cannot lift its head, nor show its poor Castalian rills. The "gods of Greece," the far-famed "gods of Greece," what are they to the hierarchy of heaven—angels and archangels, and all the host—powers, dominions, hailing the admission to the blissful regions of saints spiritualised, and after death to die no more—glorified? What loveliness is like that of throned chastity? Graces and Muses in their perfectness of marbled beauty—what are they to faith, hope, and charity, and the veiled virtues that like our angels shroud themselves? When these became subjects for our Christian art, then was true expression first invented in drapery. "Christian and legendary art" is not denied the nude; but no other has so made drapery a living, speaking poetry. There is a dignity, a grace, a sweetness, in the drapery of mediæval sculpture, that equally commands our admiration, and more our reverence and our love, than ancient statues, draped or nude. And this is the expression of Scripture poetry—the represented language, the "clothing with power," the "garment of righteousness." We often loiter about our old cathedrals, and look up with wonder at the mutilated remains as a new type of beauty, beaming through the obscurity of the so-called dark ages. Lovers of art, as we profess to be, in all its forms, we profess withouthesitation that we would not exchange these—that is, lose them as never to have existed—for all that Grecian art has left us. Even now, what power have we to restore these specimens of expressive workmanship, broken and mutilated as they have been by a low and misbegotten zeal? We maintain further, generally, that the works of "Christian and legendary art," in painting, sculpture, and architecture, are as infinitely superior to the works of all Grecian antiquity, as is the source of their inspiration higher and purer: we are, too, astonished at the perfect agreement of the one with the other, showing one mind, one spirit—devotion. We strongly insist upon this, that there has been a far higher character and equal power in Christian art compared with heathen. It ought to be so, and it is so. It has been too long set aside in the world's opinion (often temporary and ill-formed) to establish the inferior. This country, in particular, has yielded a cold neglect of these beautiful things, in shameful and indolent compliance with the mean, tasteless, degrading Puritanism, that mutilated and would have destroyed them utterly if it could, as it would have treated every and all the beautiful.

Even at the first rise of this Christian art, the superiority of the principle which moved the artists was visible through their defect of knowledge of art, as art. The devotional spirit is evident; a sense of purity, that spiritualised humanity with its heavenly brightness, dims the imperfections of style, casting out of observation minor and uncouth parts. Often, in the incongruous presence of things vulgar in detail of habit and manners, an angelic sentiment stands embodied, pure and untouched, as if the artist, when he came to that, felt holy ground, and took his shoes from off his feet. It was not long before the art was equal to the whole work. There are productions of even an early time that are yet unequalled, and, for power over the heart and the judgment, are much above comparison with any preceding works of boasted antiquity.

Take only the full embodying of all angelic nature: what is there like to it out of Christian art? How unlike the cold personifications of "Victories" winged,—though even these were borrowed,—are the ministering and adoring angels of our art—now bringing celestial paradise down to saints on earth, and now accompanying them, and worshipping with them, in their upward way, amid the receding and glorious clouds of heaven! Look at the sepulchral monuments of Grecian art—the frigid mysteries, the abhorrent ghost, yet too corporeal, shrinking from Lethé; and the dismal boat—the unpromising, unpitying aspect of Charon: then turn to some of the sublime Christian monuments of art, that speak so differently of that death—the Coronation of the Virgin, the Ascension of Saints. The dismal and the doleful earth has vanished—choirs of angels rush to welcome and to support the beatified, the released: death is no more, but life breathing no atmosphere of earth, but all freshness, and all joy, and all music; the now changed body glowing, like an increasing light, into its spirituality of form and beauty, and thrilling with

"That undisturbed song of pure consent,Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throneTo Him that sits thereon;With saintly shout and solemn jubilee,Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow;And the cherubic host, in thousand choirs,Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,Hymns devout and holy psalmsSinging everlastingly."

Then shall we doubt, and not dare to pronounce the superior capabilities of Christian art, arising out of its subject—poetry? We prefer, as a great poetic conception, Raffaelle's Archangel, Michael, with his victorious foot upon his prostrate adversary, to the far-famed Apollo Belvidere, who has slain his Python; and his St Margaret, in her sweet, her innocent, and clothed grace, to that perfect model of woman's form, the Venus de Medici. Not that we venture a careless or misgiving thought of the perfectness of those great antique works: their perfectness was according to their purpose. Higher purposes make a higher perfectness. Nor would we have them viewed irreverently; for even in them, and the genius that produced them, the Creator, as in "times past, left not Himself without witness." In showing forththe glory of the human form, they show forth the glory of Him who made it—who is thus glorified in the witnesses; and so we accept and love them. But to a certain degree they must stand dethroned—their influence faded. Lowly unassuming virtues—virtues of the soul, far greater in their humility, in the sacred poetry of our Christian faith, shine like stars, even in their smallness, on the dark night of our humanity; and they are to take their places in the celestial of art; and we feel that it is His will, who, as the hymn of the blessed Virgin—that type of all these united virtues—declares, "hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek."

We trust yet to see sacred art resumed; for the more we consider its poetry, the more inexhaustible appears the mine. Nor do we require to search and gather in the field of fabulous legends; though in a poetic view, and for their intention, and resumed merely as a fabulous allegory, they are not to be set aside. But sure we are that, whatever can move the heart, can excite to the greatest degree our pity, our love, or convey the greatest delight through scenes for which the term beautiful is but a poor describer, and personages for whose magnificence languages have no name—all is within the volume and the history of our suffering and triumphant religion.

Would that we could stir but one of our painters to this, which should be his great business! Genius is bestowed for no selfish gratification, but for service, and for a "witness," to bear which let the gifted offer only a willing heart, and his lamp will not be suffered to go out for lack of oil. Why is the tenderness of Mr Eastlake's pencil in abeyance? That portion of the sacred history which commences with his "Christ weeping over Jerusalem," might well be continued in a series. Even still more power has he shown in the creative and symbolic, as exemplified in his poetic conception of Virtue from Milton—

"She can teach you how to climbHigher than the sphery chime;Or if Virtue feeble were,Heaven itself would stoop to her."

If we believe genius to be an inspiring spirit, we may contemplate it hereafter as an accusing angel. With such a paradise of subjects before them, why do so many of our painters run to the kennel and the stable, or plunge their pencils into the gaudy hues of meretricious enticement? We do verily believe that the world is waiting for better things. It is taking a greater interest in higher subjects, and those of a pure sentiment. It is that our artists are behind the feeling, and not, as they should be, in the advance. It is a great fact that there is such a growing feeling. The resumption of sacred art in Germany is not without its effect, and is making its way here in prints. Most of these are from the Aller Heiligen Kapelle at Munich, the result of the taste of at least one crowned head in Europe, who, with more limited means and power, has set an example of a better patronage, which would have well become Courts of greater splendour, and more imperial influence. Must it be asked what our own artists—the Academy, with all its staff—are doing?

We must stay our hand; for we took up the pen to notice the two volumes just published of Mrs Jameson'sSacred and Legendary Art. They have excited, in the reading, an enthusiastic pleasure, and led the fancy wandering in the delightful fields sanctified by heavenly sunshine, and trod by sainted feet; and, like a traveller in a desert, having found an oasis, we feel loath to leave it, and would fain linger and drink again of its refreshing springs. These volumes have reached us most seasonably, at a period of the year when the mind is more especially directed to contemplate the main subjects of which they treat, and to anticipate only by days the vision of joy and glory which will be scripturally put before us—to see the Virgin Mother and the Holy Babe—

"And all about the courtly stable,Bright harness'd angels sit in order serviceable."

Mrs Jameson disclaims in this work any other object than the poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art; and to enable those who are, or wish to be, conversant with the innumerable productions of Italian and other schools, in an artistic view, likewiseat once to know the subjects upon which they treat. Even as a handbook, therefore, these volumes are valuable. Much of the early painting was symbolical. Ignorance of the symbols rejects the sentiment, or at least the intention, and at the same time makes what is only quaint appear absurd.

"The first volume contains the legends of the Scripture personages, and the primitive fathers. The second volume contains those sainted personages who lived, or are supposed to have lived, in the first ages of Christianity, and whose real history, founded on fact or tradition, has been so disguised by poetical embroidery, that they have in some sort the air of ideal beings." Possibly this poetical disguise is favourable upon the whole to art, but it renders a key necessary, and that Mrs Jameson has supplied—not pretending, however, to more than a selection of the most interesting; and, what is extremely valuable, there are marginal references to pictures, and in what places they are to be met with, and by whom painted, of the subjects given in the text, and of the view the artists had in so painting them. The emblems are amply noted with their meanings; and even the significance of colours, which has been so commonly overlooked, and is yet so important for the comprehension of the full subject of a picture, is clearly laid down. It is well said:

"All the productions of art, from the time it has been directed and developed by the Christian influences, may be regarded under three different aspects:—1st, The purely religious aspect, which belongs to one mode of faith; 2d, The poetical aspect, which belongs to all; 3d, The artistic, which is the individual point of view, and has reference only to the action of the intellect on the means and material employed. There is a pleasure, an intense pleasure, merely in the consideration of art, as art; in the faculties of comparison and nice discrimination brought to bear on objects of beauty; in the exercise of a cultivated and refined taste on the productions of mind in any form whatever. But a threefold, or rather a thousandfold, pleasure is theirs, who to a sense of the poetical unite a sympathy with the spiritual in art, and who combine with a delicacy of perception and technical knowledge, more elevated sources of pleasure, more variety of association, habits of more excursive thought. Let none imagine, however, that in placing before the uninitiated these unpretending volumes, I assume any such superiority as is here implied. Like a child that has sprang on a little way before its playmates, and caught a glimpse through an opening portal of some varied Eden within, all gay with flowers, and musical with birds, and haunted by divine shapes which beckon forward, and, after one rapturous survey, runs back and catches its companions by the hand, and hurries them forwards to share the new-found pleasure, the yet unexplored region of delight: even so it is with me: I am on the outside, not the inside, of the door I open."

This is a happy introduction to that which immediately follows of angels and archangels.

Mrs Jameson has so managed to open the door as to frame in her subject to the best advantage; and the reader is willing to stand for a moment with her to gaze upon the inward brightness of the garden, ere he ventures in to see what is around and what is above. It is on the first downward step that we stand breathless with Aladdin, and feel the influence of the first—the partial and framed-in picture—glowing in the unearthly illumination of its magical creation.

There is nothing more interesting than these few pages upon angels. The information we receive is very curious. It is beautiful poetry to see orders, and degrees, and ministrations various, types of an embodied, a ministering church here, and ordained, together with the saints of earth, to make one glorified triumphant church hereafter. Without entering upon the theological question, as to the extension and mystification of the ideas of angels after the Captivity, (yet we think it might be shown that there was originally no Chaldaic belief on the subject not taken, first or last, from the Jews themselves,) it may not be unworthy of remark, that the word "angel," signifying messenger, could scarcely with propriety have been at the first applied to Satan, the deceiving serpent, until, in the after-development of the history of the human race, the ministering offices gave the general title, which, when established, included all who had not "kept their first estate." Nor do we think, with Mrs Jameson, that Chaldeahad anything to do with the introduction of the worship of angels into the Christian church. The "gods many" of the heathen countries in which Christianity established itself, will sufficiently account for the readiness of the people to transfer the multifarious worship to which they had been accustomed to names more suitable to the new religion. It is with the poetical development we have here to do; and what ground is there for that full development in the New Testament, wherein they are represented as "countless—as superior to all human wants and weaknesses—as deputed messengers of God? They rejoice over the repentant sinner; they take deep interest in the mission of Christ; they are present with those who pray; they bear the souls of the just to heaven; they minister to Christ on earth, and will be present at his second coming." From such authority, from such a sacred theatre of scenes and celestial personages, arose the beautiful, the magnificent visions of the workers of sacred art. Heresy, however, reached it, as might have been expected; and the agency of angels, in the creation of the world and of man, has been represented, to the deterioration of its great poetry. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, a great change seems to have taken place in the representation of the angel with reference to the Virgin: the feeling is changed; "the veneration paid to the Virgin demanded another treatment. She becomes not merely the principal person, but the superior being; she is the 'regina angelorum,' and the angel bows to her, or kneels before her, as to a queen. Thus, in the famous altar-piece at Cologne, the angel kneels; he bears the sceptre, and also a sealed roll, as if he were a celestial ambassador delivering his credentials. About the same period we sometimes see the angel merely with his hands folded over his breast, and his head inclined, delivering his message as if to a superior being."

It is a great merit in this work of Mrs Jameson's, that we are not only referred to the most curious and to the best specimens of art, but have likewise beautiful woodcuts, and some etchings admirably executed by Mrs Jameson's own hand in illustration. There is a greatness in the simplicity of Blake's angels: "The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Poor Blake! Yet why say poor? he was happy in his visions—a little before his time, and one of whom the world (of art) in his day were not worthy: though, with a wild extravagance of fancy, his creations were his faith, often great, and always gentle. Exquisitely beautiful are the "angels of the planets" from Raffaelle, and copied by Mrs Jameson from Gruner's engravings of the frescoes of the Capella Chigiana. That great painter of mystery, Rembrandt, whom the mere lovers of form would have mistakenly thought it a profanation to commission with an angelic subject, is justly appreciated. A perfect master of light, and of darkness, and of colour, it mattered not what were the forms, so that they were unearthly, that plunged into or broke through his luminous or opaque. Of the picture in the Louvre it is thus remarked: "Miraculous for true and spirited expression, and for the action of the soaring angel, who parts the clouds and strikes through the air like a strong swimmer through the waves of the sea." Strange—but so it is—we cannot conceive an alteration of his pictures, all parts so agree. Attention to the more beautiful in form would have appeared to him a mistrust in his great gift of colour and chiaroscuro; and, stranger still, that without, and seemingly in a marked defiance of mere beauty, he is, we would almost say never, vulgar, never misses the intended sentiment, nor fails where it is of tenderness, even of feminine tenderness, for which, if he does not give beauty, he gives its equivalent in the fulness of the feeling. We instance his Salutation—Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary. There is something terrifically grand in the crouching angel in the Campo Santo,—not in the form, nor in the face, which is mostly hid, but in the conception of the attitude of horror with which he beholds the awful scene. It is from the Last Judgment of Orcagua in the Campo Santo. We must not speak of Rubens as a painter of angels; and, for real angelic expression, perhaps the earlier painters are the best. It is surprising that Mrs Jameson,from whose refined taste, and from whose sense of the beautiful and the graceful in their highest qualities, we should have expected another judgment, could have ventured to name together Raffaelle and Murillo as angel painters. It is true, in speaking of the Visit to Abraham, she admits that the painter has set aside the angelic and mystic character, and merely represented three young men travellers; but she generally, throughout these volumes, speaks of that favourite Spaniard in terms of the highest admiration,—terms, as we think, little merited. The angels in the Sutherland Collection are as vulgar figures as can well be, and quite antagonistic in feeling to a heavenly mission. We confess that we dislike almost all the pictures by this so much esteemed master: their artistic manner is to us uncertain and unpleasing,—disagreeable in colour, deficient in grace. We often wonder at the excess of present admiration. We look upon his vulgarity in scriptural subjects as quite profane. His highest power was in a peasant gentleness; he could not embody a sacred feeling: yet thus is he praised for a performance beyond his power:—"St Andrew is suspended on the high cross, formed not of planks, but of the trunks of trees laid transversely. He is bound with cords, undraped, except by a linen cloth, his silver hair and beard loosely streaming on the air, his aged countenance illuminated by a heavenly transport, as he looks up to the opening skies, whence two angels, of really celestial beauty, like almost all Murillo's angels, descend with the crown and palm." The angels of Correggio are certainly peculiar: they are not quite celestial, but perhaps are sympathetically more lovely from their touch of humanity; they are ever pure. Those in the Ascension of the the Virgin, in the Cupola at Parma, seem to be rather adopted angels than of the "first estate;" for they are of several ages, and, if we mistake not, many of them are feminine, and, we suspect, are meant really to represent the loveliest of earth beatified, adopted into the heavenly choir. Those who have seen Signor Toschi's fine drawings of the Parma frescoes, (now in progress of engraving), will readily give assent to this impression. We remember this feeling crossing our mind, and as it were lightly touching the heart with angelic wings—if we have lost a daughter of that sweet age, let us fondly see her there. We cannot forbear quoting the passage upon the angels of Titian:—"And Titian's angels impress me in a similar manner: I mean those in the glorious Assumption at Venice, with their childish forms and features, but an expression caught from beholding the face of 'our Father which is in heaven:' it is glorified infancy. I remember standing before this picture, contemplating those lovely spirits one after another, until a thrill came over me, like that which I felt when Mendelssohn played the organ: I became music while I listened. The face of one of those angels is to the face of a child, just what that of the Virgin, in the same picture, is, compared with the fairest daughter of earth. It is not here superiority of beauty, but mind, and music, and love, kneaded together, as it were, into form and colour." This is very eloquent, but it was notthe thoughtwhich supplied that ill word "kneaded."

It is remarked by Mrs Jameson, as a singular fact, that neither Leonardo da Vinci, nor Michael Angelo, nor Raffaelle, have given representations of the Four Evangelists. In very early art they are mostly symbolised, and sometimes oddly and uncouthly; and even so by Angelico da Fiesole. In Greek art, the Tetramorph, or union of the four attributes in one figure, is seen winged. "The Tetramorph, in Western art, in some instances became monstrous, instead of mystic and poetical." The animal symbols of the Evangelists, however familiarised in the eyes of the people, and therefore sanctioned to their feeling, required the greatest judgment to bring within the poetic of art. We must look also to the most mysterious subjects for the elucidation, such as Raffaelle's Vision of Ezekiel. There we view in the symbols a great prophetic, subservient to the creating and redeeming power, set forth and coming out of that blaze of the clouds of heaven that surround the sublime Majesty.

The earlier painters were fond of representing everything symbolically: hence the twelve apostles are sotreated. In the descending scale, to the naturalists, the mystic poetry was reduced to its lowest element. The set of the apostles by Agostino Caracci, though, as Mrs Jameson observes, famous as works of art, are condemned as absolutely vulgar. "St John is drinking out of a cup, an idea which might strike some people as picturesque, but it is in vile taste. It is about the eighth century that the keys first appear in the hand of St Peter. In the old churches at Ravenna, it is remarked, St Peter and St Paul do not often appear." Ravenna, in the fifth century, did not look to Rome for her saints.

After his martyrdom, St Paul was, it is said, buried in the spot where was erected the magnificent church known as St Paolo fuorè-le mura. "I saw the church a few months before it was consumed by fire in 1823. I saw it again in 1847, when the restoration was far advanced. Its cold magnificence, compared with the impressions left by the former structure, rich with inestimable remains of ancient art, and venerable from a thousand associations, saddened and chilled me." We well remember visiting this noble church in 1816. A singular coincidence of fact and prophecy has imprinted this visit on our memory. Those who have seen it before it was burnt down, must remember the series of portraits of popes, and that there was room but for one more. We looked to the vacant place, as directed by our cicerone, whilst he told us that there was a prophecy concerning it to this effect, that when that space was filled up there would be no more popes. The prophecy was fulfilled, at least with regard to that church, for it was burnt down after that vacant space had been occupied by the papal portrait.

The subject of the Last Supper is treated of in a separate chapter. There has been a fresco lately discovered at Florence, in the refectory of Saint Onofrio, said to have been painted by Raffaelle in his twenty-third year. Some have thought it to be the work of Neri de Bicci. Mrs Jameson, without hesitation, pronounces it to be by Raffaelle, "full of sentiment and grace, but deficient, it appears to me, in that depth and discrimination of character displayed in his later works. It is evident that he had studied Giotto's fresco in the neighbouring Santa Croce. The arrangement is nearly the same." All the apostles have glories, but that round the head of Judas is smaller than the others. Does the prejudice against thirteen at table arise from this betrayal by Judas, or from the legend of St Gregory, who, when a monk in the monastery of St Andrew, was so charitable, that at length, having nothing else to bestow, he gave to an old beggar a silver porringer which had belonged to his mother? When pope, it was his custom to entertain twelve poor men. On one occasion he observed thirteen, and remonstrated with his steward, who, counting the guests, could see no more than twelve. After removal from the table, St Gregory called the unbidden guest, thus visible, like the ghost of Banquo, to the master of the feast only. The old man, on being questioned, declared himself to be the old beggar to whom the silver porringer had been given, adding, "But my name is Wonderful, and through me thou shalt obtain whatever thou shalt ask of God." There is a famous fresco on this subject by Paul Veronese, in which the stranger is represented to be our Saviour. To entertain even angels unknowingly, and at convivial entertainments, and visible perhaps but to one, as a messenger of good or of evil, would be little congenial with the purport of such meetings.

Mrs Jameson objects to the introduction of dogs in such a subject as the Last Supper, but remarks that it is supposed to show that the supper is over, and the paschal lamb eaten. It is so common that we should rather refer it to a more evident and more important signification, to show that this institution was not for the Jews only, and alluding to the passage showing that "dogs eat of the crumbs which fell from their masters' table." The large dogs, however, of Paul Veronese, gnawing bones, do not with propriety represent the passage; for there is reason to believe that the word "crumbs" describes the small pet dogs, which its was the fashion for the rich to carry about with them. The early painters introduced Satan in person tempting Judas. When Baroccio, with littletaste, adopted the same treatment, the pope, Clement VIII., ordered the figure to be obliterated—"Che non gli piaceva il demonio si dimésticasse tanto con Gesu Christo." We know not where Mrs Jameson has found the anecdote which relates that Andrea del Castagno, called the Infamous, after he had assassinated Dominico his friend, who had intrusted him with Van Eyck's secret, painted his own portrait in the character of Judas, from remorse of conscience. We are not sure of the story at all respecting Andrea del Castagno: there may be other grounds for doubting it, but this anecdote, if true to the fact, would rather indicate insanity than guilt. The farther we advance in the history and practice of art, the more we find it suffering in sentiment from the infusion of the classical. In the Pitti Palace is a picture by Vasari of St Jerome as a penitent, in which he has introduced Venus and cupids, one of whom is taking aim at the saint. It is true that, as we proceed, legends crowd in upon us, and the painters find rather scope for fancy than subjects for faith and resting-places for devotion. Art, ever fond of female forms, readily seized upon the legends of Mary Magdalene. Her penitence has ever been a favourite subject, and has given opportunity for the introduction of grand landscape backgrounds in the lonely solitudes and wildernesses of a rocky desert. The individuality of the characters of Mary and Martha in Scripture history was too striking not to be taken advantage of by painters. There is a legend of an Egyptian penitent Mary, anterior to that of Mary Magdalene, which is curious. Whether this was another Mary or not, she is represented as a female anchoret; and we are reminded thereby of the double story of Helen of Troy, whom a real or fabulous history has deposited in Egypt, while the great poet of the Iliad has introduced her as so visible and palpable an agent in the Trojan war, and not without a touch of penitence, not quite characteristic of that age. Accounts say that it was her double, or eidolon, which figured at Troy.

Mrs Jameson makes a good conjecture with regard to the famous picture by Leonardo da Vinci, known as Modesty and Vanity, and that it is Mary Magdalene rebuked by her sister Martha for vanity and luxury, which exactly corresponds with the legend respecting her. We cannot forbear quoting the following eloquent passage:—

"On reviewing generally the infinite variety which has been given to these favourite subjects, the life and penance of the Magdalene, I must end where I began. In how few instances has the result been satisfactory to mind, or heart, or soul, or sense! Many have well represented the particular situation, the appropriate sentiment, the sorrow, the hope, the devotion; but who has given us thecharacter? A noble creature, with strong sympathies and a strong will, with powerful faculties of every kind, working for good or evil. Such a woman Mary Magdalene must have been, even in her humiliation; and the feeble, girlish, commonplace, and even vulgar women, who appear to have been usually selected as models by the artists, turned into Magdalenes by throwing up their eyes and letting down their hair, ill represent the enthusiastic convert, or the majestic patroness!"

The second volume commences with the patron saints of Christendom. These were delightful fables in the credulous age of first youth, when feeling was a greater truth than fact; and we confess that we read these legends now with some regret at our abated faith, which we would not even "now have shaken in the chivalric characters of the seven champions of Christendom."

The Romish Church (we say not the Catholic, as Mrs Jameson so frequently improperly termsher) readily acted that part, to the people at large, which nurses assume for the amusement of their children; and in both cases, the more improbable the story the greater the fascination; and the people, like children, are more credulous than critical. Had we not known in our own times, and nearly at the present day, stories as absurd as any in these legends, gravely asserted, circulated, and credited, and maintained by men of responsible station and education—to instance only the garment of Treves—we should have pronounced theaurea legendato have been a creation of the fancy, arising, not without their illumination, from the fogs and fens of the Middle Ages, adapted solely forminds of that period. But the sanction of them by the Church of Rome leads us to view them asignes fatuiof another character, meant to amuse and to bewilder. We must even think it possible now for people to be brought to believe such a story as this:—"It is related that a certain man, who was afflicted with a cancer in his leg, went to perform his devotions in the church of St Cosmo and St Damian at Rome, and he prayed most earnestly that these beneficent saints would be pleased to aid him. When he had prayed, a deep sleep fell upon him. Then he beheld St Cosmo and St Damian, who stood beside him; and one carried a box of ointment, the other a sharp knife. And one said, 'What shall we do to replace this diseased leg, when we have cut it off?' And the other replied, 'There is a Moor who has been buried just now in San Pietro in Vincolo; let us take his leg for the purpose!' Then they brought the leg of the dead man, and with it they replaced the leg of the sick man—anointing it with celestial ointment, so that he remained whole. When he awoke, he almost doubted whether it could be himself; but his neighbours, seeing that he was healed, looked into the tomb of the Moor, and found that there had been an exchange of legs; and thus the truth of this great miracle was proved to all beholders." It is, however, rather a hazardous demand upon credulity to serve up again the feast of Thyestes, cooked in a caldron of even more miraculous efficacy than Medea's. Such is the stupendous power of St Nicholas:—"As he was travelling through his diocese, to visit and comfort his people, he lodged in the house of a certain host, who was a son of Satan. This man, in the scarcity of provisions, was accustomed to steal little children, whom he murdered, and served up their limbs as meat to his guests. On the arrival of the Bishop and his retinue, he had the audacity to serve up the dismembered limbs of these unhappy children before the man of God, who had no sooner cast his eyes on them than he was aware of the fraud. He reproached the host with his abominable crime; and, going to the tub where their remains were salted down, he made over them the sign of the cross, and they rose up whole and well. The people who witnessed this great wonder were struck with astonishment; and the three children, who were the sons of a poor widow, were restored to their weeping mother."

But what shall we say to an entire new saint of a modern day, who has already found his way to Venice, Bologna, and Lombardy,—even to Tuscany and Paris, not only in pictures and statues, but even in chapels dedicated to her? The reader may be curious to know something of a saint of this century. In the year 1802 the skeleton of a young female was discovered in some excavations in the catacomb of Priscilla at Rome; the remains of an inscription were, "Lumena Pax Te Cum Tri." A priest in the train of a Neapolitan prelate, who was sent to congratulate Pius VII. on his return from France, begged some relics. The newly-discovered treasure was given to him, and the inscription thus translated—"Filomena, rest in peace." "Another priest, whose name is suppressedbecause of his great humility, was favoured by a vision in the broad noonday, in which he beheld the glorious virgin Filomena, who was pleased to reveal to him that she had suffered death for preferring the Christian faith, and her vow of chastity, to the addresses of the emperor, who wished to make her his wife. This vision leaving much of her history obscure, a certain young artist, whose name is also suppressed—perhaps because of his great humility—was informed in a vision that the emperor alluded to was Diocletian; and at the same time the torments and persecutions suffered by the Christian virgin Filomena, as well as her wonderful constancy, were also revealed to him. There were some difficulties in the way of the Emperor Diocletian, which inclines the writer of thehistoricalaccount to adopt the opinion that the young artist in his visionmayhave made a mistake, and that the emperor may have been his colleague, Maximian. The facts, however, now admitted of no doubt; and the relics were carried by the priest Francesco da Lucia to Naples; they were inclosed in a case of wood, resembling in form the human body.This figure was habited in a petticoat of white satin, and over it a crimson tunic, after the Greek fashion; the face was painted to represent nature; a garland of flowers was placed on the head, and in the hands a lily and a javelin—with the point reversed, to express her purity and her martyrdom; then she was laid in a half sitting posture in a sarcophagus, of which the sides were glass; and after lying for some time in state, in the chapel of the Torres family in the Church of Saint Angiolo, she was carried in procession to Magnano, a little town about twenty miles from Naples, amid the acclamations of the people, working many and surprising miracles by the way. Such is the legend of St Filomena, and such the authority on which she has become, within the last twenty years, one of the most fashionable saints in Italy. Jewels to the value of many thousand crowns have been offered at her shrine, and solemnly placed round the neck of her image, or suspended to her girdle."

We dare not in candour charge the Romanists with being the only fabricators or receivers of such goods, remembering our own Saint Joanna, and Huntingdon's Autobiography. There areaurea legendain a certain class of our sectarian literature, presenting a large list of claimants of very high pretensions to saintship, only waiting for power and an established authority to be canonised.

It is not surprising, as the world is—working often in the dark places of ignorance—if a few glossy threads of a coarser material, and deteriorating quality, be taken up by no wilful mistake, and be interwoven into the true golden tissue. Nevertheless the mantle may be still beautiful, and fit a Christian to wear and walk in not unbecomingly. There are worse things than religious superstition, whose badness is of degrees. In the minds of all nations and people there is a vacuum for the craving appetite of credulity to fill. The great interests of life lie in politics and religion. There are bigots in both: but we look upon a little superstition on the one point as far safer than upon the other, especially in modern times; whereas political bigotry, however often duped, is credulous still, and becomes hating and ferocious. We fear even the legends are losing their authority in the Roman States, whose history may yet have to be filled with far worse tales. A generous, though we deem it a mistaken feeling, has induced Mrs Jameson to make what we would almost venture to call the only mistake in her volumes: the following passage is certainly not in good taste, quite out of the intention of her book, and very unfortunately timed—"But Peter is certainly the democratical apostlepar excellence, and his representative in our time seems to have awakened to a consciousness of this truth, and to have thrown himself—as St Peter would most certainly have done, were he living—on the side of the people and of freedom." A democratical successor to St Peter! He is, then, the first of that character. With him the "side of freedom" seems to have been the inside of his prison, and his "side of the people" a precipitate flight from contact with them in their liberty—and for his tiara the disguise of a valet. We more than pardon Mrs Jameson—we love the virtue that gives rise to her error; for it is peculiarly the nature of woman to be credulous, and to be deceived. We admire, and more than admire, women equally well, whether they are right or wrong in politics: these are the business of men, for they have to do with the sword, and are out of the tenderer impulses of woman. But we are amused when we find grave strong men in the same predicament of ill conjectures. We smile as we remember a certain dedication "To Pio Nono," which by its simple grandeur and magnificent beauty will livesplendide mendaxto excuse its prophetic inaccuracy. It is not wise to foretell events to happen whilst we live. Take a "long range," or a studied ambiguity that will fit either way. The example of Dr Primrose may be followed with advantage, who in every case of domestic doubt and difficulty concluded the matter thus—"I wish it may turn out well this day six months;" by which, in his simple family, he attained the character of a true prophet.

We fear we are losing sight of the "Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art," and gladly turn from the thoughtof what is to be, to those beautiful personified ideas of the past, whether fabulous or historical, in which we are ready to take Mrs Jameson as our willing and sure guide. The four virgin patronesses and the female martyrs are favourite subjects, which she enters into with more than her usual spirit and feeling. These two have chiefly engaged and fascinated the genius of the painters of the best period, and will ever interest the world of taste by their sentiment, as well as by their grace of form and beauty, and why not say improved them too? The really beautiful is always true. It is not amiss that we should be continually reminded, or, as Mrs Jameson better expresses it—"It is not a thing to be set aside or forgotten, that generous men and meek women, strong in the strength, and elevated by the sacrifice of a Redeemer, did suffer, did endure, did triumph for the truth's sake; did leave us an example which ought to make our hearts glow within us." The memory of Christian heroism should never be lost sight of in a Christian country, and we earnestly recommend this part of Mrs Jameson's volumes to the attention of our painters: they will find not unfrequent instances of fine subjects yet untouched, which may sanctify art, and dignify the profession by making it the teacher of a purer taste—not that true genius will ever lack materials, for materials are but suggestive to an innate inventive power. It is curious that the authoress should not yet have satisfied our expectation with regard to the legends of the Virgin. Whatever the motive of her forbearance, we hope this subject will take the lead in the promised third volume, which is to treat of the legends of the monastic orders, considered, as she cautiously observes, "merely in their connexion with the development of the fine arts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries."

The numerous pictures in Italy which represent parts of the legends of the Virgin render this work incomplete without a full development of the subject. If her forbearance arises from a fear that at this particular time, when mariolatry is dreaded by a large portion of the religious world, we would remind her that the Virgin Mother is still "the blessed" of our own church.

It is a question if the list of sainted martyrs in repute has not been left to the arbitrament of the painters; for we find many deposed, and the adopted favourites of art not found in the early list, as represented in their processions. We find a Saint Reparata, after having been the patroness saint of Florence for six hundred years, deposed, and the city placed under the tutelage of the Virgin and St John the Baptist.

Yet these were early times for the influence of art; but, at a period when pictures were thought to have a kind of miraculous power, it is not improbable that some potent work of art representing the Virgin and St John may have caused the new devotional dedication—as was the case in modern times, when the imaged Madonna de los Dolores was appointed general-in-chief of the Carlist army. Painters were what the poets had been—Vates sacri. Events and the memory of saints may have perished,Carent quia vate sacro. We wish our own painters were more fully sensible of the power of art to perpetuate, and that it is its province to teach. With us it has been too long disconnected with our religion. It will be a glorious day for art, and for the people that shall witness the reunion.

In taking leave of these two fascinating volumes, we do so with the less regret, knowing that they will be often in our hands, as most valuable for instant reference. No one who wishes to know the subjects and feel the sentiment of the finest works in the world, will think of going abroad without Mrs Jameson's book. We must again thank her for the beautiful woodcuts and etchings; the latter, in particular, are lightly and gracefully executed, we presume mostly (to speak technically) in dry point. Mrs Jameson writes as an enthusiast, her feeling flows from her pen. Her style is fascinating to a degree, forcible and graceful; but there is no mistaking its character—feminine. We know no other hand that could so happily have set forth thePoetry of Sacred and Legendary Art.

Boston,December 1848.

The Year of Constitutionsis drawing to its end, to be succeeded, I doubt not, by the Year of Substitutions. I am sorry, my Basil, that you do not quite agree with me as to the issue of all this in France; but I am sure you will not dispute my opinion that this year's work is good for nothing, so far as it has attempted construction, instead of fulfilling its mission by overthrow. Its great folly has been the constitution-fever, which has amounted to a pestilence. When mushrooms grow to be oaks, then shall such constitutions as this year has bred, stand a chance of outliving their authors. Will men learn nothing from the past? How can they act over such rotten farces,—make themselves such fools!

You admit the difference, which I endeavoured to show you, between the American constitution and that of any conceivable constitution which may be cooked up for an old European state. I am glad if I have directed your attention, accordingly, to the great mistake of France. She supposes that a feeble, and debauched old gentleman can boil himself in the revolutionary kettle, and emerge in all the tender and enviable freshness of the babe just severed from the maternal mould. Politicians have committed a blunder in not allowing the natural, and hence legitimate, origin of the American constitution in that of its British parent. They have thus favoured the theory that a tolerably permanent constitution can be drafteda priori, and imposed upon a state. This is the absurdity that makes revolutions. If the silly French, instead of reading De Tocqueville, would study each for himself the history of our constitution, and see how gradually it grew to be our constitution, before pen was put to paper to draft it, they might perhaps stop their abortive nonsense in time, to save what they can of their national character from the eternal contempt of mankind.

But you cannot think the French will find so fair a destiny as a Restoration! Tell me, in what French party, at present existing, there is any inherent strength, save in that of the legitimists? Other parties are mere factions; but the legitimists have got a seminal principle among them, which dies very hard, and of which the nature is to sprout and make roots, and then show itself. I am no admirer of the Bourbons: their intrigues with Jesuitism have been their curse, and are the worst obstacle to their regaining a hold on the sympathies of freemen. The reactionary party have in vain endeavoured to overcome it for fifty years. Yet there is such tenacity of life in legitimacy, that it seems to me destined to outlive all opposition, and to succeed by necessity. The rapid developments of this memorable year strengthen the probability of my prediction. Revolutionism is spasmodic, but not so long in dying as it used to be. I cannot but think this year has done more for a permanent restoration of the Bourbons than any year since Louis XVI. ascended the scaffold. In this respect the Barricades of 1848 may tell more impressively on history than the Allies of 1814, or even the carnage of Waterloo.

Why should I be ashamed of my theory, when everything, so far, has gone as I supposed it would, only a hundred times more rapidly than any body could have thought possible? What must be the residue of a series which thus far has tended but one way?—what say you of the Bartholomew-butchery in June?—what of Lamartine's fall?—what of the dictatorship of Cavaignac? If things have gone as seems probable, Louis Napoleon is president of the republic. If so, what is the instinct which has thus called him into power? The hereditary principle is abolished on paper, and instantly recognised by the first popular act done under the new constitution! But, for all we can tell in America, things may have taken another turn. Is Cavaignac elected? Then a military master is put over the republic, who canCromwellisetheAssembly, andMonkthe state, as soon as he chooses. The republic has given itself the form of a dictatorship, and demonstrated that it does not exist, except on paper. Has there been an insurrection? Then the republic is dead already. But I shall assume that Louis has succeeded: then it is virtually an hereditary empire. To be sure, instinct has for once failed to know "the true prince,"—has accorded, to the mere shadow of a usurper, what, in a more substantial form, is due to the heir of France; but long-suspended animation must make a mistake or two in coming to life again. The events of the year have been all favourable to a restoration, because they have crushed a thousand other plans and plottings for the sovereignty, and because they must have forced upon at least as many theorists the grand practical conclusion, that there is to be no rational liberty in France until she returns to first principles, and finds the repose which old nations can only know under their legitimate kings.

I am ashamed of you for more than hinting that legitimacy must be given up, as far as kings are concerned. Alas! Diogenes must light his lantern, and hunt through England for a Tory! You are bewhigged, indeed, if you give it up that George III. was a legitimate king, and that his grand-daughter is to you what no other person alive can possibly be,—your true and hereditary sovereign lady! Must I, a republican, say this to an English monarchist, who votes himself a conservative, and who is the son of a sturdy old English Tory? Is there no virtue extant, that even you allow yourself to be flippant about "the divinity that hedges kings," and to trifle with suggestions which your immortal ancestor, who fell at Prestonpans, would have drummed out of doors with poker and tongs? Why, even I, who have a right to be whatever I choose, by way of amateur allegiance, and who have always found myself a Jacobite whenever the talk has been against the White Rose—even I, in sober earnest, yield the point, that George I. was a legitimate sovereign, and that Charlie was a bit of a rebel. Those stupid Dutchmen! it makes me mad to say as much for them; but I love Old England too well to own that she bore with such sovereigns on any lower grounds than that of their right to reign.

I am sorry you give in to the silly cant of revolutionists, and confess yourself posed with their challenge. What if they do insist upon a definition? Are you bound to keep your heart from beating till you can tell why it throbs over a page of Shakspeare's Richard II., and bounces, in precisely an opposite manner, over Carlyle's Cromwell? Am I going to let a Whig choke me with a dictionary, because it contains no explanation of my good old-fashioned word? Let him, with his "Useful Knowledge Society" information, give me an explanation of the magnetic needle, or tell me why it turns to the pole, and not to the antipodes? The fellow will recollect some twopenny picture of the compass, and retail me half a column of the Penny Magazine about the mysteries of nature. And what if I talk as sensibly from nature in my own heart, and tell the stereotype philosopher that I am conscious of an ennobling affection, which honest men never lack, and which God Almighty has made a faculty of the human soul to dignify subordination; and that loyalty has no lode-star but legitimacy? At least, my dear Whigo-Tory, you must allow, I should succeed in answering a fool according to his folly. But I claim more: I have defined legitimacy when I say it is the home of loyalty.

I have amused myself during the summer with some study of the history of reaction in France, and flatter myself that I have discovered the secret of its failure, and the great distinction between its spirit and that of English Conservatism. But this by the way; for I was going to say that I have found, in the writings of one of the chief of the reactionary party, some very sensible hints upon the subject I am discussing with you. Though in many respects a dangerous teacher, and, I fear, a little jesuitical in practice as well as in theory, I have been surprised to find the Count de Maistre willing "to be ashis master" on this point, and torest legitimacy very nearly on the sober principles of Burke. He is far from the extravagances of Sir Robert Filmer, though he often expresses, in a startling form, the temperate views of English Anti-Jacobins. Thus he says, with evident relish of its smart severity,the people will always accept their masters, and will never choose them. Strongly and unpalatably put, but most coincident with history, and not to be disputed by any admirer of the glorious Revolution of 1688! I suspect the Frenchman made his aphorism without stopping to ask whether it suited any other case. But Burke has virtually said the same thing in his reply to the Old Jewry doctrine of 1789, in which he so forcibly urges the fact, that the settlement of the crown upon William and the Georges "was not properlya choice, ... but an act of necessity, in the strictest moral sense in which necessity can be taken." Mary and the Hanoverians, then, were acknowledged by the nation, in spite of itself, as legitimate sovereigns; and even William was smuggled into the acknowledgment asquasi-legitimate. It is the clear, reasonable, and truly English doctrine of Burke, thatthe constitution of a country makes its legitimate kings; and that the princes of the House of Brunswick, coming to the crown according to constitutional law, at the date of their respective accessions, were as legitimate as King James before he broke his coronation oaths, and abdicated,ipso facto, his crown and hereditary rights. But De Maistre talks more like the schoolmen, though he comes to the same practical results. Constitutions, the native growth of their respective countries, he would argue, are the ordinance ofGod; and kings, though not the subjects of their people, are bound to do homage to them, as, in a sense, divine. Legitimacy, therefore, is the resultant of hereditary majesty and constitutional designation; it being always understood that constitutional laws are never written till after they become such by national necessities, which are divine providences. Apply this to 1688. The Bill of Rights was an unwritten part of the constitution even when James was crowned; and so was the principle, that the king must not be a Papist, at least in the government of his realms. Such, if I may so speak, was the Salic law of England, by which his public and political Popery stripped him of his right to the throne. It was the same principle that invested the House of Brunswick with a legitimacy which the heart of the nation did not hesitate to recognise, in spite of unfeigned disgust with the prince in whom the succession was established. To throw the proposition into the abstract—there can be no legitimacy without hereditary majesty, but that member of a royal line is the legitimate king in whom concur all the elements ofconstitutional designation. If the phrase be new, the idea is as old as empire. I mean that constitutional power which, without reference to national choice or personal popularity, selects the true heir of the throne, among the descendants of its ancient possessors, on fixed principles of national law. Thus, in Portugal, the constitution sets aside an idiot heir-apparent for a cadet of the same family, or, if need be, for a collateral relative; while, in France, it proclaims the line of a king extinct in his female heir, and ascends, perhaps, to a remote ancestor for a trace of his rightful successor. It is a principle essentially the same which, in England, pronounces a Popish prince as devoid of hereditary right to the crown, as a bastard, or the child of a private marriage; and by which the hereditary blood, shut off from its natural course, immediately opens some auxiliary channel, and widens it into the main artery of succession, with all the precision of similar resources in physical nature. With such an argument, if I understand him, the Count de Maistre would put you to the blush for sneeringsub rosâat the legitimacy of your Sovereign. I wish his principles were always as capable of being put to the proof, without any absurdity in the reduction. Hereditary majesty is the only material of which constitutions make sovereigns; and that, too, deserves a word in the light which this sage Piedmontese Mentor of France has endeavoured to throw on the subject. It is interesting in the present dilemma of France, which stands like the ass between two haystacks—rejectingone dynasty, but not yet choosing another. I am a republican, you know, holding that my loyalty is due to the constitution of my own country; and yet I subscribe to the doctrine that this idea ofmajestyis a reality, and that, confess it or not, even republicans feel its reality.The king's name is a tower of strength; and inspiration has said to sovereign princes, with a pregnant and monitory meaning—ye are gods. This is not the fawning of courts, but the admonition of Him who invests them with His sword of avenging justice, and gives them, age after age, the natural homage of their fellow-men. Not that I would flatter monarchs: I see that theydie like men, and, what is worse, live, very often, like fools, if not like beasts. Yet I am sure that they have something about them which is personally theirs, and cannot be given to others, and which is as real a thing as any other possession.Godhas endowed them with history, and they are the living links which connect nations with their origin, and the men of the passing age with bygone generations. Reason about it as we may, it is impossible not to look with natural reverence on the breathing monuments of venerable antiquity. For a Guelph, indeed, I cannot get up any false or romantic enthusiasm; and yet I find it quite as impossible not to feel that the house of Guelph entitles its royal members to a degree of consideration which is the ordinance of Heaven. For how many ages has that house been a great reality, casting its shadow over Europe, and stretching it over the world, and as absolutely affecting the destinies of men as the geographical barriers and highways of nations! The Alps and the Oceans are morally, as well as naturally, majestic; and a moral majesty like theirs attaches to a line of princes which has stood the storms of centuries like them, and like them has been always a bulwark or a bond between races and generations. Like the solemnity of mountains is the hereditary majesty of a family, of which the origin is veiled in the twilight of history, but which is always seen above the surface of cotemporary events, a crowned and sceptred thing that never dies, but perpetuates, from generation to generation, a still increasing emotion of sublimity and awe, which all men feel, and none can fully understand. There are many women in England who, for personal qualities and graces, would as well become the throne as she whom you so loyally entitle "Our Sovereign Lady." Why is it that no election, nor any imaginable possession of her place, could commend the proudest or the best of them to the homage of the nation's heart? Such a one might wear the robes, and glitter like a star, outshining the regalia, and might walk like Juno; but not a voice would cryGod save her!—while there is a glory, not to be mistaken, which invests the daughter of ancient sovereigns, even when she is recognised, against her will, in the costume of travel, or when she shows herself among her people, and treads the heather in a trim little bonnet and a Highland plaid. Why is it that ten thousand feel a thrill when her figure is seen descending from the wooden walls of her empire, and alighting upon some long unvisited portion of its soil? It is not the same emotion which would be inspired by the landing of Wellington. Then the roaring of cannon and the waving of ensigns would appear to be a tribute rendered to the hero by a grateful country; but when her Majesty touches the shore, she seems herself to wake the thunders and to bow the banners which announce her coming. The pomp is all her own, and differs from the tributary pageant, as the nod of Jove is different from the acclamation of Stentor. Even I, who "owe her no subscription," can well conceive what a true Briton cannot help but feel, when, with an ennobling loyalty, he beholds in her the concentrated blood of famous kings, and the propagated soul of mighty monarchs; and when he calls to mind, at the same moment, the thousand strange events and glorious histories which have their august and venerable issue in Victoria, his queen.

But you will bring me back to my main business, by asking—who, then, was the legitimate king of France at the beginning of this year? The King of the Barricades was not lacking in hereditary majesty, and you will makeout a case ofconstitutional designation, by a parallel between England in 1688, and France in 1830. If you do so, you will greatly wrong your country. The loyalty of England settled in the house of Brunswick, and would have been even less tried if there had been a continuance of the house of Orange; but no French loyalist could ever be reconciled to the dynasty of Orleans. And why? It was not the natural constitution of France, but the mere blunder of a mob, that selected Louis Philippe as the king of the French. It was an election, as the accession of William and Mary was not: it was a choice, and not a necessity—the mere caprice of the hour, and in no sense the rational designation of law. Did ever his Barricade Majesty himself, in all his dreams of a dynasty, pretend that any unalterable principle, or fundamental law of France, had turned the tide of succession from the heir-presumptive of Charles X., and forced heralds upon the backward trail of genealogy, till they could again descend, and so find the hereditary king of the French in the son of Egalité? Louis Philippe was not legitimate, in any reasonable sense of the word; and, could he have made such men as Chateaubriand regard him as other than a usurper, he would not be at Claremont now. That splendid Frenchman uttered the voice of a smothered, but not extinguished, constitution, when he closed his political life in 1830, by saying to the Duchess de Berry—"Madame, votre fils est mon roi." He lived to see the secret heart of thousands of his countrymen repeating his memorable words, and died not till Providence itself had overturned the rival throne, and directed every eye in hope, or in alarm, to the only prince in Europe who could claim to be their king.

I care very little what may be the personal qualifications of Henry of Bordeaux; it seems to me that he is destined to reign upon the throne of his ancestors—and God grant he may do it in such wise as shall make amends for all that France has suffered, by reason of his ancestors, since France had a Henry for her king before! The prestige of sovereignty is his; and while he lives, no republic can be lasting; no government, save his, can insure the peace which the state of Europe so imperatively demands. If "experience has taught England that in no other course or method than that of an hereditary crown her liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred,"[12]—why should not an experience, a thousandfold severer, teach France the same lesson? It has already been taught them by a genius which France cannot despise, and to whose oracular voice she is now forced to listen, because it issues from his fresh grave! "Legitimacy is the very life of France. Invent, calculate, combine all sorts of illegitimate governments, you will find nothing else possible as the result, nothing which gives any promise of duration, of tolerable existence during a course of years, or even through several months. Legitimacy is, in Europe, the sanctuary in which alone reposes that sovereignty by which states subsist." So I endeavour to render the eloquent sentence of Chateaubriand;[13]and though, since he wrote it, a score of years have passed, it is stronger now than ever—for what was then his prophecy is already the deplorable history of his country. Had ever a country such a history, without learning more in a year than France has gained from a miserable half-century?

Just so long as France has been busy with experiments, in the insane effort to separate her future from her past, just so long have all her labours to lay a new foundation been miserable failures, covering her, in the eyes of the world, with shame and infamy. What has been wanting all the time? I grant that the first want has been a national conscience—a sense of religion and of duty. But I mean, what has been wanting to the successive administrations and governments? Certainly not splendour and personal dignity, for the Imperial government had both; and the King of the Barricades made himself to be acknowledged and feared as one who bore not the sword in vain. But the prestige of legitimacy was wanting; and that want has been the downfall of everything that has been tried. You will ask, what was the downfall of CharlesX? The answer is, that it was not a downfall further than concerned himself; for everybody feels that the Bourbon claim survives, while every other has been forced to yield to destiny and retribution. How is it that legitimacy makes itself felt after years of exile and obscurity? Is it not that instinct of loyalty which cannot be duped or diverted, and which detects and detests all shams? Is it not the instinct which constitution-makers have endeavoured to appease by pageants and by names, but which has continually revolted against the emptiness of both? The existence of that instinct has been perpetually exposed by miserable attempts to satisfy its demands with outside show and splendid impositions. The French cannot even go to work, under their present republic, as we do in America. The common-sense of our people teaches them that a republican government is a mere matter of business, which must make no pretences to splendour; and hence, the constitution once settled, the president is elected and sworn-in with no nonsense or parade; and Mr Cincinnatus Polk sits down in the White House, and sends every man about his business. A young country has as yet but the instincts of infancy; there is as yet nothing to satisfy but the craving for nourishment, and the demand for large room. But it is not so where nations are full-grown.Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?Can France forget that she had once a court and a throne that dazzled the world? No! says every craftsman of the revolution; and therefore our republic, too, must be splendid and imperial! So, instead of going to work as if their new constitution were a reality, there must be a fète of inauguration. In the same conviction, Napoleon is nominated for the presidency, because he has a name; and he immediately withdraws from vulgar eyes, to keep his "presence like a robe pontifical," against the investiture. Oh, for some Yankee farmer to look on and laugh! It would not take him long tocalculatethe end of such a republic. Jonathan can understand a queen, and would stare at a coronation in sober earnest, convinced that it had a meaning—at least, in England! But a republic of kettle-drums and trumpets will never do with him; and if he were favoured with an interview with the pompous aspirant to the French presidency, it would probably end in his telling Louis Napoleon the homely truth—that he has nothing to be proud of, and had better eat and drink like other folk, and "define his position" as a candidate, if he don't want to find himselfused-up, and sent on a long voyage up Salt River; which, you may not know, my Basil, is a Stygian stream, and the ancients called it Lethe. So much, then, for theultima ratioof illegitimate governments—the attempt to satisfy the demand for national dignity by pageants and by names, and to drown the outcries of natural discontent by the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbals.

In vain did the sage Piedmontese foretell it all, like a Cassandra. "Man is prohibited," said that admirable Mentor, "from giving great names to things of which he is the author, and which he thinks great; but if he has proceeded legitimately, the vulgar names of things will be rendered illustrious, and become grand." How specially does England answer to the latter half of this maxim! and who can read the former without seeing France, in her fool's-cap, before his mental eye? De Maistre himself has instanced the revolutionary follies of Paris, and lashed them with unsparing severity. Whatever is national in England seems to have grown up, like her oaks, from deep and strong roots, and to stand, like them, immovable, They make their own associations, and dignify their own names. Everything is home-born, natural, and real. The Garter, the Wool-sack, Hyde Park, Epsom and Ascot—these things in France would be theLegion of Honour, theCurule-chair, theElysian fields, theOlympic games! The veritable attempt was made to reinstitute, in the Champ-de-Mars, the sports of antiquity; and they received the pompous name ofLes jeux Olympiques. De Maistre ridicules their nothingness, and adds that, when he saw a building erected and called theOdéon, he was sure that music was in its decline, and that the place would shortly be to let. In like manner, he says of the motto of Rousseau, with intensenaïvete, "Does any man dare to writeunder his own portrait,vitam impendere vero? You may wager, without further information, fearlessly, that it is the likeness of a liar." How quick the human heart perceives what is thus put into words by a philosopher! It is in vain for France to think of covering her nakedness with a showy veil. The Empire was a glittering gauze, but how transparent! They saw one called Emperor and a second Charlemagne; and the Pope himself was there to give him a crown. But it was a meagre cheat. Poor Josephine never looked ridiculous before, but then she acted nonsense. The imperial robes were gorgeous, but they meant nothing on the Citizen Buonaparte. Everybody saw behind the scenes. They detected Talma in the strut of Napoleon; they pointed at the wires that moved the hands and eyes of the Pope. All stage-effect, machinery, and pasteboard. The imperial court was all what children callmake-believe: it vanished like the sport of children.

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