Read Ebook: Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol. 1. No 1 June 1850 by Various

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"River and fountain, brook and rill, Bespangled o'er with livery gay Of silver droplets, wind their way. All in their new apparel vie, For Time hath laid his mantle by."

We have said little of Louis of Orleans, the unfaithful husband of Valentina. This young prince had many redeeming traits of character. He was generous, liberal, and gracious; adored by the French people; fondly loved, even by his neglected wife. His tragical death, assassinated in cold blood by his cousin, Jean-sans-peur of Burgundy, excited in his behalf universal pity. Let us review the causes which aroused the vindictive hostility of the Duke of Burgundy, only to be appeased by the death of his gay and unsuspicious kinsman.

Among the vain follies of Louis of Orleans, his picture-gallery may be reckoned the most offensive. Here were suspended the portraits of his various mistresses; among others he had the audacity to place there the likeness of the Bavarian princess, wife of Jean-sans-peur. The resentment of the injured husband may readily be conceived. In addition to this very natural cause of dislike, these dukes had been rivals for that political power which the imbecility of Charles the Sixth placed within their grasp.

The unamiable elements in the character of the Duke of Burgundy had been called into active exercise in very early life. While Duke de Nevers, he was defeated at Nicopolis, and made prisoner by Bajazet, surnamed "Ilderim," or the Thunderer. What rendered this defeat the more mortifying was, the boastful expectation of success proclaimed by the Christian army. "If the sky should fall, we could uphold it on our lances," they exclaimed, but a few hours before their host was scattered, and its leaders prisoners to the Moslem. Jean-sans-peur was detained in captivity until an enormous ransom was paid for his deliverance. Giovanni-Galeazzo was suspected of connivance with Bajazet, both in bringing the Christians to fight at a disadvantage, and in putting the Turks on the way of obtaining the heaviest ransoms. The splenetic irritation of this disaster seems to have clung long after to the Duke of Burgundy. His character was quite the reverse of that of his confiding kinsman of Orleans. He was subtle, ambitious, designing, crafty--dishonorably resorting to guile, where he dared not venture on overt acts of hostility. For the various reasons we have mentioned, he bore a secret but intense hatred to his cousin Louis.

In the early winter of 1407, the Duke of Orleans, finding his health impaired, bade a temporary adieu to the capital, and secluded himself in his favorite chateau of Beaut?. He seems to have been previously awakened to serious reflections. He had passed much of his time at the convent of the Celestines, who, among their most precious relics, still reckon the illuminated manuscript of the Holy Scriptures presented to them by Louis of Orleans, and bearing his autograph. To this order of monks he peculiarly attached himself, spending most of the time his approaching death accorded to him. A spectre, in the solitude of the cloisters, appeared to him, and bade him prepare to stand in the presence of his Maker. His friends in the convent, to whom he narrated the occurrence, contributed by their exhortations to deepen the serious convictions pressing on his mind. There now seemed a reasonable expectation that Louis of Orleans would return from his voluntary solitude at his chateau on the Marne, a wiser and a better man, cured, by timely reflection, of the only blemish which tarnished the lustre of his many virtues.

The aged Duke of Berri had long lamented the ill-feeling and hostility which had separated his nephews of Orleans and Burgundy. It was his earnest desire to see these discords, so injurious to their true interests and the well-being of the kingdom, ended by a cordial reconciliation. He addressed himself to Jean-sans-peur, and met with unhoped-for success. The Duke of Burgundy professed his willingness to be reconciled, and acceded with alacrity to his uncle's proposition of a visit to the invalided Louis. The latter, ever trusting and warm-hearted, cordially embraced his former enemy. They received the sacrament together, in token of peace and good-will: the Duke of Burgundy, accepting the proffered hospitality of his kinsman, promised to partake of a banquet to be given on this happy occasion by Louis of Orleans, a few days later.

The church of the Guillemins was soon crowded by the friends and relatives of the murdered prince. All concurred in execrating the author or authors of this horrid deed. Suspicion at first fell upon Sir Aubert de Canny, who had good reason for hating the deceased duke. Louis of Orleans, some years previously, had carried off his wife, Marietta D'Enghein, and kept her openly until she had borne him a son, afterward the celebrated Dunois. Immediate orders were issued by the king for the arrest of the Knight of Canny. Great sympathy was felt for the widowed Valentina, and her young and fatherless children. No one expressed himself more strongly than the Duke of Burgundy. He sent a kind message to Valentina, begging her to look on him as a friend and protector. While contemplating the body of his victim, he said, "Never has there been committed in the realm of France a fouler murder." His show of regret did not end here: with the other immediate relatives of the deceased prince, he bore the pall at the funeral procession. When the body was removed to the church of the Celestines, there to be interred in a beautiful chapel Louis of Orleans had himself founded and built, Burgundy was observed by the spectators to shed tears. But he was destined soon to assume quite another character, by an almost involuntary act. The provost of Paris, having traced the flight of the assassins, had ascertained beyond doubt that they had taken refuge at the hotel of this very Duke of Burgundy. He presented himself at the council, and undertook to produce the criminals, if permitted to search the residences of the princes. Seized with a sudden panic, the Duke of Burgundy, to the astonishment of all present, became his own accuser: Pale and trembling, he avowed his guilt: "It was I!" he faltered; "the devil tempted me!" The other members of the council shrunk back in undisguised horror. Jean-sans-peur, having made this astounding confession, left the council-chamber, and started, without a moment's delay, for the Flemish frontier. He was hotly pursued by the friends of the murdered Louis; but his measures had been taken with too much prompt resolution to permit of a successful issue to his Orleanist pursuers. Once among his subjects of the Low Countries, he might dare the utmost malice of his opponents.

In the mean time, the will of the deceased duke was made public. His character, like Caesar's, rose greatly in the estimation of the citizens, when the provisions of his last testament were made known. He desired that he should be buried without pomp in the church of the Celestines, arrayed in the garb of that order. He was not unmindful of the interests of literature and science; nor did he forget to make the poor and suffering the recipients of his bounty. Lastly, he confided his children to the guardianship of the Duke of Burgundy: thus evincing a spirit unmindful of injuries, generous, and confiding. This document also proved, that even in his wild career, Louis of Orleans was at times visited by better and holier aspirations.

Valentina mourned over her husband long and deeply; she did not long survive him; she sunk under her bereavement, and followed him to the grave ere her year of widowhood expired. At first the intelligence of his barbarous murder excited in her breast unwonted indignation. She exerted herself actively to have his death avenged. A few days after the murder, she entered Paris in "a litter covered with white cloth, and drawn by four white horses." All her retinue wore deep mourning. She had assumed for her device the despairing motto:

"Rien ne m'est plus, Plus ne m'est rien."

Proceeding to the H?tel St. P?l, accompanied by her children and the Princess Isabella, the affianced bride of Charles of Orleans, she threw herself at the king's knees, and, in a passion of tears, prayed for justice on the murderer of his brother, her lamented lord. Charles was deeply moved: he also wept aloud. He would gladly have granted her that justice which she demanded, had it been in his power to do so; but Burgundy was too powerful. The feeble monarch dared not offend his overgrown vassal. A process at law was all the remedy the king could offer.

Law was then, as now, a tedious and uncertain remedy, and a rich and powerful traverser could weary out his prosecutor with delays and quibbles equal to our own. Jean-sans-peur returned in defiance to Paris to conduct the proceedings in his own defense. He had erected a strong tower of solid masonry in his h?tel; here he was secure in the midst of his formidable guards and soldiery. For his defense, he procured the services of Jean Petit, a distinguished member of the University of Paris, and a popular orator. The oration of Petit , was rather a philippic against Louis of Orleans, than a defense of Jean-sans-peur. He labors to prove that the prince deserved to die, having conspired against the king and kingdom. One of the charges--that of having, by incantations, endeavored to destroy the monarch--gives us a singular idea of the credulity of the times, when we reflect that these absurd allegations were seriously made and believed by a learned doctor, himself a distinguished member of the most learned body in France, the University of Paris. The Duke of Orleans conspired "to cause the king, our lord, to die of a disorder, so languishing and so slow, that no one should divine the cause of it; he, by dint of money, bribed four persons, an apostate monk, a knight, an esquire, and a varlet, to whom he gave his own sword, his dagger, and a ring, for them to consecrate to, or more properly speaking, to make use of, in the name of the devil," &c. "The monk made several incantations.... And one grand invocation on a Sunday, very early, and before sunrise on a mountain near to the tower of Mont-joy.... The monk performed many superstitious acts near a bush, with invocations to the devil; and while so doing he stripped himself naked to his shirt and kneeled down: he then struck the points of the sword and dagger into the ground, and placed the ring near them. Having uttered many invocations to the devils, two of them appeared to him in the shape of two men, clothed in brownish-green, one of whom was called Hermias, and the other Estramain. He paid them such honors and reverence as were due to God our Saviour--after which he retired behind the bush. The devil who had come for the ring took it and vanished, but he who was come for the sword and dagger remained--but afterward, having seized them, he also vanished. The monk, shortly after, came to where the devils had been, and found the sword and dagger lying flat on the ground, the sword having the point broken--but he saw the point among some powder where the devil had laid it. Having waited half-an-hour, the other devil returned and gave him the ring; which to the sight was of the color of red, nearly scarlet, and said to him: 'Thou wilt put it into the mouth of a dead man in the manner thou knowest,' and then he vanished."

To this oration the advocate of the Duchess of Orleans replied at great length. Valentina's answer to the accusation we have quoted, was concise and simple. "The late duke, Louis of Orleans, was a prince of too great piety and virtue to tamper with sorceries and witchcraft." The legal proceedings against Jean-sans-peur seemed likely to last for an interminable period. Even should they be decided in favor of the family of Orleans, the feeble sovereign dared not carry the sentence of the law into execution against so powerful an offender as the Duke of Burgundy. Valentina knew this; she knew also that she could not find elsewhere one who could enforce her claims for justice--justice on the murderer of her husband--the slayer of the father of her defenseless children. Milan, the home of her girlhood, was a slaughter-house, reeking with the blood of her kindred. Five years previously her father, Giovanni-Galeazzo Visconti, had died of the plague which then desolated Italy. To avoid this terrible disorder he shut himself up in the town of Marignano, and amused himself during his seclusion by the study of judicial astrology, in which science he was an adept. A comet appeared in the sky. The haughty Visconti doubted not that this phenomenon was an announcement to him of his approaching death. "I thank God," he cried, "that this intimation of my dissolution will be evident to all men: my glorious life will be not ingloriously terminated." The event justified the omen.

All the ferocious characteristics of the Visconti seemed to be centred in the stepmother of Valentina. The Duchess of Milan delighted in executions; she beheaded, on the slightest suspicions, the highest nobles of Lombardy. At length she provoked reprisals, and died the victim of poison. Giovanni-Maria, nurtured in blood, was the worthy son of such a mother. His thirst for blood was unquenchable; his favorite pursuit was to witness the torments of criminals delivered over to bloodhounds, trained for the purpose, and fed only on human flesh. His huntsman and favorite, Squarcia Giramo, on one occasion, for the amusement of his master, threw to them a young boy only twelve years of age. The innocent child clung to the knees of the duke, and entreated that he might be preserved from so terrible a fate. The bloodhounds hung back. Squarcia Giramo seizing the child, with his hunting-knife cut his throat, and then flung him to the dogs. More merciful than these human monsters, they refused to touch the innocent victim.

Facino Cane, one of the ablest generals of the late duke, compelled the young princes to admit him to their council, and submit to his management of their affairs; as he was childless himself, he permitted them to live, stripped of power, and in great penury. To the sorrow and dismay of the Milanese, they saw this salutary check on the ferocious Visconti about to be removed by the death of Facino Cane. Determined to prevent the return to power of the young tyrant, they attacked and massacred Giovanni-Maria in the streets of Milan. While this tragedy was enacting, Facino Cane breathed his last.

Philippo-Maria lost not a moment in causing himself to be proclaimed duke. To secure the fidelity of the soldiery, he married, without delay, the widow of their loved commander. Beatrice di Tenda, wife of Facino Cane, was an old woman, while her young bridegroom was scarcely twenty years of age: so ill-assorted a union could scarcely be a happy one. Philippo-Maria, the moment his power was firmly secured, resolved to free himself from a wife whose many virtues could not compensate for her want of youth and beauty. The means to which he resorted were atrocious: he accused the poor old duchess of having violated her marriage vow, and compelled, by fear of the torture, a young courtier, Michel Orombelli, to become her accuser. The duke, therefore, doomed them both to be beheaded. Before the fatal blow of the executioner made her his victim, Beatrice di Tenda eloquently defended herself from the calumnies of her husband and the base and trembling Orombelli. "I do not repine," she said, "for I am justly punished for having violated, by my second marriage, the respect due to the memory of my deceased husband; I submit to the chastisement of heaven; I only pray that my innocence may be made evident to all; and that my name may be transmitted to posterity pure and spotless."

Such were the sons of Giovanni-Galeazzo Visconti, the half-brothers of the gentle Valentina of Orleans. When she sank broken-hearted into an early grave--her husband unavenged, her children unprotected--she felt how hopeless it would be to look for succor or sympathy to her father's house; yet her last moments were passed in peace. Her maternal solicitude for her defenseless orphans was soothed by the conviction that they would be guarded and protected by one true and faithful friend. Their magnanimous and high-minded mother had attached to them, by ties of affection and gratitude more strong, more enduring than those of blood, one well fitted by his chivalrous nature and heroic bravery to defend and shelter the children of his protectress. Dunois--"the young and brave Dunois"--the bastard of Orleans, as he is generally styled, was the illegitimate son of her husband. Valentina, far from slighting the neglected boy, brought him home to her, nurtured and educated him with her children, cherishing him as if he had indeed, been the son of her bosom. If the chronicles of the time are to be believed, she loved him more fondly than her own offspring. "My noble and gallant boy," she would say to him, "I have been robbed of thee; it is thou that art destined to be thy father's avenger; wilt thou not, for my sake, who have loved thee so well, protect and cherish these helpless little ones?"

Long years after the death of Valentina the vengeance of heaven did overtake Jean-sans-peur of Burgundy: he fell the victim of treachery such as he had inflicted on Louis of Orleans; but the cruel retaliation was not accomplished through the instrumentality or connivance of the Orleanists: Dunois was destined to play a far nobler part. The able seconder of Joan of Arc--the brave defender of Orleans against the besieging English host--he may rank next to his illustrious countrywoman, "La Pucelle," as the deliverer of his country from foreign foes. His bravery in war was not greater than his disinterested devotion to his half-brothers. Well and nobly did he repay to Valentina, by his unceasing devotion to her children, her tender care of his early years. Charles of Orleans, taken prisoner by the English at the fatal battle of Agincourt, was detained for the greater part of his life in captivity: his infant children were unable to maintain their rights. Dunois reconquered for them their hereditary rights, the extensive appanages of the house of Orleans. They owed every thing to his sincere and watchful affection.

Valentina's short life was one of suffering and trial; but she seems to have issued from the furnace of affliction "purified seven times." In the midst of a licentious court and age, she shines forth a "pale pure star." Her spotless fame has never been assailed. Piety, purity, and goodness, were her distinguishing characteristics. She was ever a self-sacrificing friend, a tender mother, a loving and faithful wife. Her gentle endurance of her domestic trials recalls to mind the character of one who may almost be styled her contemporary, the "patient Griselda," so immortalized by Chaucer and Boccacio. Valentina adds another example to the many which history presents for our contemplation, to show that suffering virtue, sooner or later, meets with its recompense, even in this life. The broken-hearted Duchess of Orleans became the ancestress of two lines of French sovereigns, and through her the kings of France founded their claims to the Duchy of Milan. Her grandson, Louis the Twelfth, the "father of his people," was the son of the poet Duke of Orleans. On the extinction of male heirs to this elder branch, the descendant of her younger son, the Duke of Angoul?me, ascended the throne as Francis the First. Her great-grand-daughter was the mother of Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara, the "magnanimo Alfonso" of the poet Tasso. His younger sister, Leonora, will ever be remembered as the beloved one of the great epic poet of Italy--the ill-starred Torquato Tasso.

The mortal remains of Valentina repose at Blois; her heart is buried with her husband, in the church of the Celestines at Paris. Over the tomb was placed the following inscription:

'Cy gist Loys Duc D'Orleans. Lequel sur tons duez terriens, Fut le plus noble en son vivant Mais ung qui voult aller devant, Par envye le feist mourir.' M.N.

THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS IN NEW ZEALAND.

The "Wellington Independent" gives the following account of a recent expedition made by the Lieutenant-Governor to the Middle Island: After leaving the Wairau, having traversed the Kaparatehau district, his Excellency and his attendants reached the snowy mountains to the southward, about four short days' journey from the Wairau, and encamped at the foot of the Tapuenuko mountain, which they ascended. Previously to starting into the pass which is supposed to exist between the Wairau and Port Cooper plains, his Excellency ascended the great snowy mountain which forms the principal peak of the Kaikoras, and which attains an elevation of at least 9000 feet, the upper part being heavily covered with snow to a great depth. He succeeded in reaching the top of the mountain, but so late as to be unable to push on to the southern edge of the summit, when an extensive view southwards would have been obtained. In returning, a steep face of the hill , down which hung a bed of frozen snow, had to be crossed for a considerable distance. Mr. Eyre, who had led the party up the dangerous ascent, was in advance with one native, the others being 200 feet before and behind him, on the same perpendicular of the snow. He heard a cry, and looking round, saw Wiremu Hoeta falling down the precipice, pitching from ledge to ledge, and rolling over and over in the intervals, till he fell dead, and no doubt smashed to pieces at a depth below of about 1500 feet, where his body could be seen in a sort of ravine, but where it was impossible to get at it. His Excellency narrowly escaped from similar destruction, having lost both feet from under him, and only saving himself by the use of an iron-shod pole which he carried. Another of the natives had a still narrower escape, having actually fallen about fifteen yards, when he succeeded in clutching a rock and saving himself. The gloom which this unfortunate event caused, and the uncertainty of crossing the rivers while the snows are melting, induced his Excellency to return.

GENIUS.

FRANCIS JEFFREY.

Jeffrey was a year younger than Scott, whom he outlived eighteen years, and with whose career his own had some points of resemblance. They came of the same middle-class stock, and had played together as lads in the High School "yard" before they met as advocates in the Court of Session. The fathers of both were connected with that court; and from childhood, both were devoted to the law. But Scott's boyish infirmity imprisoned him in Edinburgh, while Jeffrey was let loose to Glasgow University, and afterward passed up to Queen's College, Oxford. The boys, thus separated, had no remembrance of having previously met, when they saw each other at the Speculative Society in 1791.

The Oxford of that day suited Jeffrey ill. It suited few people well who cared for any thing but cards and claret. Southey, who came just after him, tells us that the Greek he took there he left there, nor ever passed such unprofitable months; and Lord Malmesbury, who had been there but a little time before him, wonders how it was that so many men should make their way in the world creditably, after leaving a place that taught nothing but idleness and drunkenness. But Jeffrey was not long exposed to its temptations. He left after the brief residence of a single term; and what in after life he remembered most vividly in connection with it, seems to have been the twelve days' hard traveling between Edinburgh and London, which preceded his entrance at Queen's. Some seventy years before, another Scotch lad, on his way to become yet more famous in literature and law, had taken nearly as many weeks to perform the same journey; but, between the schooldays of Mansfield and of Jeffrey, the world had not been resting.

It was enacting its greatest modern incident, the first French Revolution, when the young Scotch student returned to Edinburgh and changed his College gown for that of the advocate. Scott had the start of him in the Court of Session by two years, and had become rather active and distinguished in the Speculative Society before Jeffrey joined it. When the latter, then a lad of nineteen, was introduced , he observed a heavy-looking young man officiating as secretary, who sat solemnly at the bottom of the table in a huge woolen night-cap, and who, before the business of the night began, rose from his chair, and, with imperturbable gravity seated on as much of his face as was discernible from the wrappings of the "portentous machine" that enveloped it, apologized for having left home with a bad toothache. This was his quondam schoolfellow Scott. Perhaps Jeffrey was pleased with the mingled enthusiasm for the speculative, and regard for the practical, implied in the woolen nightcap; or perhaps he was interested by the Essay on Ballads which the hero of the nightcap read in the course of the evening: but before he left the meeting he sought an introduction to Mr. Walter Scott, and they were very intimate for many years afterward.

In short, nothing of the extravagance of the time, on either side, is associable with the outset of Jeffrey's career. As little does he seem to have been influenced, on the one hand, by the democratic foray of some two hundred convention delegates into Edinburgh in 1792, as, on the other, by the prominence of his father's name to a protest of frantic high-tory defiance; and he was justified, not many years since, in referring with pride to the fact that, at the opening of his public life, his view of the character of the first French revolution, and of its probable influence on other countries, had been such as to require little modification during the whole of his subsequent career. The precision and accuracy of his judgment had begun to show itself thus early. At the crude young Jacobins, so soon to ripen into Quarterly Reviewers, who were just now coquetting with Mary Woolstonecraft, or making love to the ghost of Madame Roland, or branding as worthy of the bowstring the tyrannical enormities of Mr. Pitt, he could afford to laugh from the first. From the very first he had the strongest liberal tendencies, but restrained them so wisely that he could cultivate them well.

He joined the band of youths who then sat at the feet of Dugald Stewart, and whose first incentive to distinction in the more difficult paths of knowledge, as well as their almost universal adoption of the liberal school of politics, are in some degree attributable to the teaching of that distinguished man. Among them were Brougham and Homer, who had played together from boyhood in Edinburgh streets, had joined the Speculative on the same evening six years after Jeffrey , and were still fast friends. Jeffrey's father, raised to a deputy clerk of session, now lived on a third or fourth flat in Buchanan's Court in the Lawn Market, where the worthy old gentleman kept two women servants and a man at livery; but where the furniture does not seem to have been of the soundest. This fact his son used to illustrate by an anecdote of the old gentleman eagerly setting to at a favorite dinner one day, with the two corners of the table cloth tied round his neck to protect his immense professional frills, when the leg of his chair gave way, and he tumbled back on the floor with all the dishes, sauces, and viands a-top of him. Father and son lived here together, till the latter took for his first wife the daughter of the Professor of Hebrew in the University of St. Andrew, and moved to an upper story in another part of town. He had been called to the bar in 1794, and was married eight years afterward. He had not meanwhile obtained much practice, and the elevation implied in removal to an upper flat is not of the kind that a young Benedict covets. But distinction of another kind was at length at hand.

One day early in 1802, "in the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buccleugh Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey," Mr. Jeffrey had received a visit from Horner and Sydney Smith, when Sydney, at this time a young English curate temporarily resident in Edinburgh, preaching, teaching, and joking with a flow of wit, humanity, and sense that fascinated every body, started the notion of the Edinburgh Review. The two Scotchmen at once voted the Englishman its editor, and the notion was communicated to John Archibald Murray , John Allen , and Alexander Hamilton . This was the first council; but it was extended, after a few days, till the two Thomsons , Thomas Brown , and Henry Brougham, were admitted to the deliberations. Horner's quondam playfellow was an ally too potent to be obtained without trouble; and, even thus early, had not a few characteristics in common with the Roman statesman and orator whom it was his greatest ambition in after life to resemble, and of whom Shakspeare has told us that he never followed any thing that other men began.

"You remember how cheerfully Brougham approved of our plan at first," wrote Jeffrey to Horner, in April, in the thick of anxious preparations for the start, "and agreed to give us an article or two without hesitation. Three or four days ago I proposed two or three books that I thought would suit him; when he answered with perfect good humor, that he had changed his view of our plan a little, and rather thought now that he should decline to have any connection with it." This little coquetry was nevertheless overcome; and before the next six months were over, Brougham had become an efficient and zealous member of the band.

It is curious to see how the project hung fire at first. Jeffrey had nearly finished four articles, Horner had partly written four, and more than half the number was printed; and yet well-nigh the other half had still to be written. The memorable fasciculus at last appeared in November, after a somewhat tedious gestation of nearly ten months; having been subject to what Jeffrey calls so "miserable a state of backwardness" and so many "symptoms of despondency," that Constable had to delay the publication some weeks beyond the day first fixed. Yet as early as April had Sydney Smith completed more than half of what he contributed, while nobody else had put pen to paper; and shortly after the number appeared, he was probably not sorry to be summoned, with his easy pen and his cheerful wit, to London, and to abandon the cares of editorship to Jeffrey.

No other choice could have been made. The first number settled the point. It is easy to discover that Jeffrey's estimation in Edinburgh had not, up to this time, been in any just proportion to his powers; and that, even with those who knew him best, his playful and sportive fancy sparkled too much to the surface of his talk to let them see the grave, deep currents that ran underneath. Every one now read with surprise the articles attributed to him. Sydney had yielded him the place of honor, and he had vindicated his right to it. He had thrown out a new and forcible style of criticism, with a fearless, unmisgiving, and unhesitating courage. Objectors might doubt or cavil at the opinions expressed; but the various and comprehensive knowledge, the subtle, argumentative genius the brilliant and definite expression, there was no disputing or denying. A fresh, and startling power was about to make itself felt in literature.

"Jeffrey," said his most generous fellow laborer, a few days after the Review appeared, "is the person who will derive most honor from this publication, as his articles in this number are generally known, and are incomparably the best; I have received the greater pleasure from this circumstance, because the genius of that little man has remained almost unknown to all but his most intimate acquaintances. His manner is not at first pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast which almost irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and superficial talents. Yet there is not any man, whose real character is so much the reverse; he has, indeed, a very sportive and playful fancy, but it is accompanied with an extensive and varied information, with a readiness of apprehension almost intuitive, with judicious and calm discernment, with a profound and penetrating understanding." This confident passage from a private journal of the 20th November, 1802 may stand as a remarkable monument of the prescience of Francis Horner.

Yet it was also the opinion of this candid and sagacious man that he and his fellows had not gained much character by that first number of the Review. As a set-off to the talents exhibited, he spoke of the severity--of what, in some of the papers, might be called the scurrility--as having given general dissatisfaction; and he predicted that they would have to soften their tone, and be more indulgent to folly and bad taste. Perhaps it is hardly thus that the objection should have been expressed. It is now, after the lapse of nearly half a century, admitted on all hands that the tone adopted by these young Edinburgh reviewers was in some respects extremely indiscreet; and that it was not simply folly and bad taste, but originality and genius, that had the right to more indulgence at their hands. When Lord Jeffrey lately collected Mr. Jeffrey's critical articles, he silently dropped those very specimens of his power which by their boldness of view, severity of remark, and vivacity of expression, would still as of old have attracted the greatest notice; and preferred to connect with his name, in the regard of such as might hereafter take interest in his writings, only those papers which, by enforcing what appeared to him just principles and useful opinions, he hoped might have a tendency to make men happier and better. Somebody said by way of compliment of the early days of the Scotch Review, that it made reviewing more respectable than authorship; and the remark, though essentially the reverse of a compliment, exhibits with tolerable accuracy the general design of the work at its outset. Its ardent young reviewers took a somewhat too ambitious stand above the literature they criticised. "To all of us," Horner ingenuously confessed, "it is only matter of temporary amusement and subordinate occupation."

His own idea of the more grave critical claims put forth by him in his early days, found expression in later life. He had constantly endeavored, he said, to combine ethical precepts with literary criticism. He had earnestly sought to impress his readers with a sense, both of the close connection between sound intellectual attainments, and the higher elements of duty and enjoyment; and of the just and ultimate subordination of the former to the latter. Nor without good reason did he take this praise to himself. The taste which Dugald Stewart had implanted in him, governed him more than any other at the outset of his career; and may often have contributed not a little, though quite unconsciously, to lift the aspiring young metaphysician somewhat too ambitiously above the level of the luckless author summoned to his judgment seat. Before the third year of the review had opened, he had broken a spear in the lists of metaphysical philosophy even with his old tutor, and with Jeremy Bentham, both in the maturity of their fame; he had assailed, with equal gallantry, the opposite errors of Priestley and Reid; and, not many years later, he invited his friend Alison to a friendly contest, from which the fancies of that amiable man came out dulled by a superior brightness, by more lively, varied, and animated conceptions of beauty, and by a style which recommended a more than Scotch soberness of doctrine with a more than French vivacity of expression.

Nor let it be forgotten that the system on which Jeffrey established relations between his writers and publishers has been of the highest value as a precedent in such matters, and has protected the independence and dignity of a later race of reviewers. He would never receive an unpaid-for contribution. He declined to make it the interest of the proprietors to prefer a certain class of contributors. The payment was ten guineas a sheet at first, and rose gradually to double that sum, with increase on special occasions; and even when rank or other circumstances made remuneration a matter of perfect indifference, Jeffrey insisted that it should nevertheless be received. The Czar Peter, when working in the trenches, he was wont to say, received pay as a common soldier. Another principle which he rigidly carried out, was that of a thorough independence of publishing interests. The Edinburgh Review was never made in any manner tributary to particular bookselling schemes. It assailed or supported with equal vehemence or heartiness the productions of Albemarle-street and Paternoster-row. "I never asked such a thing of him but once," said the late Mr. Constable, describing an attempt to obtain a favorable notice from his obdurate editor, "and I assure you the result was no encouragement to repeat such petitions." The book was Scott's edition of Swift; and the result one of the bitterest attacks on the popularity of Swift, in one of Jeffrey's most masterly criticisms.

The vigorous wisdom of the advice was amply proved by subsequent events, and its courage nobody will doubt who knows any thing of what Scotland was at the time. In office, if not in intellect, the Tories were supreme. A single one of the Dundases named the sixteen Scots peers, and forty-three of the Scots commoners; nor was it an impossible farce, that the sheriff of a county should be the only freeholder present at the election of a member to represent it in Parliament, should as freeholder vote himself chairman, should as chairman receive the oaths and the writ for himself as sheriff, should as chairman and sheriff sign them, should propose himself as candidate, declare himself elected, dictate and sign the minutes of election, make the necessary indenture between the various parties represented solely by himself, transmit it to the Crown-office, and take his seat by the same night's mail to vote with Mr. Addington! We must recollect such things, when we would really understand the services of such men as Jeffrey. We must remember the evil and injustice he so strenuously labored to remove, and the cost at which his labor was given. We must bear in mind that he had to face day by day, in the exercise of his profession, the very men most interested in the abuses actively assailed, and keenly resolved, as far as possible, to disturb and discredit their assailant. "Oh, Mr. Smith," said Lord Stowell to Sydney, "you would have been a much richer man if you had come over to us!" This was in effect the sort of thing said to Jeffrey daily in the Court of Session, and disregarded with generous scorn. What it is to an advocate to be on the deaf side of "the ear of the Court," none but an advocate can know; and this, with Jeffrey, was the twenty-five years' penalty imposed upon him for desiring to see the Catholics emancipated, the consciences of dissenters relieved, the barbarism of jurisprudence mitigated, and the trade in human souls abolished.

The Scotch Tories died hard. Worsted in fair fight they resorted to foul; and among the publications avowedly established for personal slander of their adversaries, a pre-eminence so infamous was obtained by the Beacon, that it disgraced the cause irretrievably. Against this malignant libeler Jeffrey rose in the Court of Session again and again, and the result of its last prosecution showed the power of the party represented by it thoroughly broken. The successful advocate, at length triumphant even in that Court over the memory of his talents and virtues elsewhere, had now forced himself into the front rank of his profession; and they who listened to his advocacy found it even more marvelous than his criticism, for power, versatility, and variety. Such rapidity yet precision of thought, such volubility yet clearness of utterance, left all competitors behind. Hardly any subject could be so indifferent or uninviting, that this teeming and fertile intellect did not surround it with a thousand graces of allusion, illustration, and fanciful expression. He might have suggested Butler's hero,

"--who could not ope His mouth but out there flew a trope,"

But the Glasgow baillie made little impression on his fellow citizens; and from Glasgow came the first public tribute to Jeffrey's now achieved position, and legal as well as literary fame. He was elected Lord Rector of the University in 1821 and 1822. Some seven or eight years previously he had married the accomplished lady who survives him, a grand-niece of the celebrated Wilkes; and had purchased the lease of the villa near Edinburgh which he occupied to the time of his death, and whose romantic woods and grounds will long be associated with his name. At each step of his career a new distinction now awaited him, and with every new occasion his unflagging energies seemed to rise and expand. He never wrote with such masterly success for his Review as when his whole time appeared to be occupied with criminal prosecutions, with contested elections, with journeyings from place to place, with examinings and cross-examinings, with speeches, addresses, exhortations, denunciations. In all conditions and on all occasions, a very atmosphere of activity was around him. Even as he sat, apparently still, waiting to address a jury or amaze a witness, it made a slow man nervous to look at him. Such a flush of energy vibrated through that delicate frame, such rapid and never ceasing thought played on those thin lips, such restless flashes of light broke from those kindling eyes. You continued to look at him, till his very silence acted as a spell; and it ceased to be difficult to associate with his small but well-knit figure even the giant-like labors and exertions of this part of his astonishing career.

At length, in 1829, he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates; and thinking it unbecoming that the official head of a great law corporation should continue the editing of a party organ, he surrendered the management of the Edinburgh Review. In the year following, he took office with the Whigs as Lord Advocate, and replaced Sir James Scarlett in Lord Fitzwilliam's borough of Malton. In the next memorable year he contested his native city against a Dundas; not succeeding in his election, but dealing the last heavy blow to his opponent's sinking dynasty. Subsequently he took his seat as Member for Perth, introduced and carried the Scotch Reform bill, and in the December of 1832 was declared member for Edinburgh. He had some great sorrows at this time to check and alloy his triumphs. Probably no man had gone through a life of eager conflict and active antagonism with a heart so sensitive to the gentler emotions, and the deaths of Mackintosh and Scott affected him deeply. He had had occasion, during the illness of the latter, to allude to him in the House of Commons; and he did this with so much beauty and delicacy, with such manly admiration of the genius and modest deference to the opinions of his great Tory friend, that Sir Robert Peel made a journey across the floor of the house to thank him cordially for it.

If such was the public estimation of this great and amiable man, to the very termination of his useful life, what language should describe the charm of his influence in his private and domestic circle? The affectionate pride with which every citizen of Edinburgh regarded him rose here to a kind of idolatry. For here the whole man was known--his kind heart, his open hand, his genial talk, his ready sympathy, his generous encouragement and assistance to all that needed it. The first passion of his life was its last, and never was the love of literature so bright within him as at the brink of the grave. What dims and deadens the impressibility of most men, had rendered his not only more acute and fresh, but more tributary to calm satisfaction, and pure enjoyment. He did not live merely in the past as age is wont to do, but drew delight from every present manifestation of worth, or genius, from whatever quarter it addressed him. His vivid pleasure where his interest was awakened, his alacrity and eagerness of appreciation, the fervor of his encouragement and praise, have animated the hopes and relieved the toil alike of the successful and the unsuccessful, who can not hope, through whatever checkered future may await them, to find a more, generous critic, a more profound adviser, a more indulgent friend.

The present year opened upon Francis Jeffrey with all hopeful promise. He had mastered a severe illness, and resumed his duties with his accustomed cheerfulness; private circumstances had more than ordinarily interested him in his old Review; and the memory of past friends, giving yet greater strength to the affection that surrounded him, was busy at his heart. "God bless you!" he wrote to Sydney Smith's widow on the night of the 18th of January; "I am very old, and have many infirmities; but I am tenacious of old friendships, and find much of my present enjoyments in the recollections of the past." He sat in Court the next day, and on the Monday and Tuesday of the following week, with his faculties and attention unimpaired. On the Wednesday he had a slight attack of bronchitis; on Friday, symptoms of danger appeared; and on Saturday he died, peacefully and without pain. Few men had completed with such consummate success the work appointed them in this world; few men had passed away to a better with more assured hopes of their reward. The recollection of his virtues sanctifies his fame; and his genius will never cease to awaken the gratitude, respect, and pride of his countrymen.

HAIL AND FAREWELL!

METAL IN SEA-WATER.

DR. JOHNSON: HIS RELIGIOUS LIFE, AND HIS DEATH.

The title is a captivating one, and will allure many, but it very feebly expresses the contents of the volume, which brings under our observation the religious opinions of scores upon scores of other men, and is enriched with numerous anecdotes of the contemporaries of the great lexicographer. The book, indeed, may be considered as a condensation of all that was known and recorded of Dr. Johnson's practice and experience of religion from his youth to his death; of its powerful influence over him through many years of his life--of the nature of his faith, and of its fruits in his works; but there is added to this so much that is excellent of other people--the life of the soul is seen in so many other characters--so many subjects are introduced that are more or less intimately connected with that to which the title refers, and all are so admirably blended together, and interwoven with the excellent remarks of the author, as to justify us in saying of the book, that it is one of the most edifying and really useful we have for years past met with.

It has often been our lot to see the sneers of beardless boys at the mention of religion, and to hear the titter of the empty-headed when piety was spoken of, and we always then thought of the profound awe with which the mighty mind of Dr. Johnson was impressed by such subjects--of his deep humiliation of soul when he reflected upon his duties and responsibilities--and of his solemn and reverential manner when religion became the topic of discourse, or the subject of his thoughts. His intellect, one of the grandest that was ever given to man, humbled itself to the very dust before the Giver; the very superiority of his mental powers over those of other men, made him but feel himself the less in his own sight, when he reflected from whom he had his being, and to whom he must render an account of the use he made of the vast intellectual powers he possessed.

But the religion of Dr. Johnson consisted not in deep feeling only, nor in much talking nor professing, but was especially distinguished by its practical benevolence; when he possessed but two-pence, one penny was always at the service of any one who had nothing at all; his poor house was an asylum for the poor, a home for the destitute; there, for months and years together, he sheltered and supported the needy and the blind, at a time when his utmost efforts could do no more than provide bare support for them and himself. Those whom he loved not he would serve--those whom he esteemed not he would give to, and labor for, and devote the best powers of his pen to help and to benefit.

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