"He now prepared That Time, unwrinkled grandsire, flings The Gleaner. (Suggested by a Picture.) XII. To speak: whereat their double ranks they bend "Man, proud man, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven awful scene of judgment and condemnation "The blind old Abbot rose giving at last that fearful exemplification of Sister, let thy sorrows cease, Sinful brother, part in peace!" "The Edinburgh Reviewer suggested that those awful words which were the sigMeasure for Measure, Act ií. sc. 2. nal for immuring the criminal," (see Scott's On which passage Theobald's annotation note), "is Vade in pacem,'—not 'part in is, that "the notion of angels weeping for peace,' but go into peace or into eternal the sins of men is rabbinical: Ob pecca- rest, a pretty intelligible mittimus to antum flentes angelos inducunt Hebræo- other world."* rum magistri.'-Grot. ad S. Lucam. But The Hebræorum magistri," alluded to Shakspeare probably knew and thought in the last article, had a curious superstiright little of the "masters of the He- tion connected with the formula, "Go in brews." Milton, who both knew and [or to] peace!" In Bartolocci's "Bibliothought far more of such matters, has not, theca Rabbinica," vol. i. p. 419, we find however, it should seem, represented the recorded this singular rabbinical distincangelic host as weeping over "man's first tion:disobedience:”— "Dim sadness did not spare That time celestial visages, yet mixed With pity violated not their bliss."t Paradise Lost, b. x. 2. "R. Levi, the son of Chitha, said, Let him who departs from a dead person say not, Go to peace!' And when (בשלום) ,but Go in peace (לשלוט) any one departs from a living person, let him say not Go in peace,' but 'Go to peace! This dis A description thus rendered by Words-tinction he supports by the texts, And thou shalt go worth : to thy fathers in peace,' Gen. xv. 15; David said to Absalom, Go in Peace,' 2 Sam. xv. 9; he went and perished: Jethro said to Moses, 'Go to peace ;' he went and prospered." The Edinburgh Reviewer would probably have been somewhat amused with this rabbinical illustration. XIII. "The party, consisting of the Antiquary, his nephew, and the old beggar, now took the sands towards Musselcrag,-the former in the very highest mood of communicating information, and the others, under a sense of former obligation, and some hope for future favors, decently attentive to receive it. The uncle and nephew walked together, the mendicant about a step and a half behind, just near enough for his patron to speak to him by a slight inclination of the neck, and without the trouble of * For the substance of this paragraph, I am indebted to an editoral note in an edition of Scott's poetical works, 1833. turning round. Petrie, in his Essay on Goodbreeding, dedicated to the magistrates of Edinburgh, recommends, upon his own experience, as tutor in a family of distinction, this attitude to all led captains, tutors, dependants, and bottle-holders of every description."-SCOTT. The Antiquary. Curiously enough, a most venerable antiquity may be found for the lesson of good breeding so judiciously delivered by Petrie Buxtorf, in his Talmudical Lexicon (p. 1887), has recorded some rabbinical directions bearing on this subject :— he who walks behind his rabbi is a blockhead :-be "He who walks right beside his rabbi is a clown: ought to walk partly beside, partly behind him.” From Frazer's Magazine. A CHARMING FRENCHWOMAN. Ar a period like the present, when the in- | read persons are sufficiently familiar; but ventive faculty seems as if its general ste- if any one wishes-and the point is not rility were only varied by monstrous abor- without interest-to see how incomparably tions, and when, with rare exceptions, the superior it is to ordinary romance, he need novelists and romance-writers of the day only compare it with the Chevalier d'Harhave lost their hold upon readers by los- mental of Alexandre Dumas. The charaoing their hold upon truth and reality, ters painted by Mademoiselle de Launay it may be well if the wearied reader turn are introduced by Dumas into his romance, his attention to some of the romances of which is founded on that celebrated piece real life contained in the French Memoirs of political buffoonery, the Conspiracy of of the Eighteenth Century, of which a Cellamare, cette Catilinade dont M. cheap, compact, handsomely-printed, well- d'Argenson fut le Ciceron," in which Maedited selection is now in course of publication by Messrs. Didot and Co.† demoiselle de Launay was involved. Now Dumas is not a bungling writer; his pen is We merely throw out the hint to readers not leaden; his power of pictorial presendesirous of amusement and instruction. tation, and of enchaining the interest, is They will find the Memoirs certainly as not by any means, contemptible; and one amusing, if not more so, than the volumes may, without exaggeration, look upon him sent them from the library; for they have as the facile princeps of contemporary rothe variety and incident of romances, with mance. Having Mademoiselle de Launay's qualities to which romances make very book before him, what has he done with it? slender pretensions. Where, for instance, With the characters, incidents, and bon mots are we to seek for better elements of a novel ready to hand, he has made use of the rothan in those pages, wherein Mademoiselle mancist's license to pervert facts and jumde Launay, otherwise called Madame de ble incidents together; but he has, neverStaäl, has unrolled before us the panorama theless, fallen miserably short of his original of her strange existence? It has all the We do not speak of literary or historical charm of a novel, the piquancy of a biogra- inferiority; we speak simply of the effecphy, and the utility of a picture of the tiveness, clearness, and interest of the narepoch. With its literary merits, all well-rative, and even in that respect we say that Dumas is greatly inferior to the charming In the memorable scene of the interview be- memoir-writer. tween Caroline and Jeanie Deans, in the "Heart of How should it be otherwise? Mademoi Mid-Lothian," Scott makes Lady Suffolk observe selle de Launay is describing her experi the same rule: "Jeanie saw persons approaching them. They were two ladies; one of whom walked a little behind the other, yet not so much as to prevent her from hearing and replying to whatever observation was addressed to her by the lady who walked foremost, and that without her having the trouble to turn her person." + Bibliothèque des Mémoires relatifs à l'Histoire de France pendant le 18eme Siècle; avec Avantpropos et Notices, par M. F. Barrière. London, 1846-48. Didot. VOL. XIV. No. III. 26 ance; Dumas is worrying his imagination to titillate that of his exhausted reader. The one gives us the truth; true, at least, as far as her impressions go, the other only seeks to excite our astonishment and suspense. must not be left out of sight, when we comThere is one distinction, however, which pare novels with memoirs; and it is, that in novels the writer's imagination supplies all the details for the reader, leaving him | figures twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirtythus a passive recipient-the mere instru-six, and fifty-two, we make sad havoc with ment upon which the writer tries his skill; the romance: all the grace and charm of in memoirs, on the contrary, much is left to youth-that loveliest of lovely things!the imagination to fill up for itself; the disappear; all the marvel of precocity outline is given, the situation indicated, vanishes. We have nothing but a very and the reader must actively co-operate, or clever woman before us, and we exclaim the effect will be comparatively meagre. with Voltaire :-This demand upon the exercise of the imagination will rebut the mere novelreader; we cannot help it; we are addressing another class, and hope that such a peculiarity will be properly appreciated by those who are not intellectual sloths. "On court, hélas, après la verité. Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur à son mérite!". Sturdy believers will look with suspicion on all such insolent application of dates. Truly, dates are desperate things! With what remorseless cruelty they scatter our pretty hypotheses and prettier romances; -So pedantic, too! This much of comfort remains ;-there is a certain obscurity about the birth of our charming heroine, which all readers will do well to wrest to their advantage. We have no satisfactory evidence respecting the right of M. Cordier to be considered her father. He was in England, for some unknown rea Bring only a willing imagination, and you will find the Memoirs of Madame de Staäl one of the most interesting books you can place your hand upon in a day's search. In the singular existence of that woman, whom, by a bizarre privilege, history designates by three names,-Mademoiselle Cordier, Mademoiselle de Launay, and Madame de Staäl,-the names of her father, mother, and husband, to whom she was almost equally a stranger,-in her ex-sons; his wife, obeying the advice of her istence we find all the incidents, characters, passions, and piquant contrasts which can be demanded in a novel. confessor, crossed the Channel to join him. "Mais," it is Mademoiselle de Launay who speaks, "s'étant bientôt déplue dans un climat étranger, elle revint en France grosse de moi, dont elle accoucha à Paris." There is a mythic air about this narrative. The affectionate wife crossing the Channel from a sense of duty, and driven back again by our climate, is not, perhaps, so very suspicious in itself; but when to it is added the fact that Madame Cordier did not give her child her husband's name, we confess to a little suspicion. It was not for a daughter to pry critically into such narratives, but does not the truth peer through her vague and rapid phrase? Among the many charming mots which are constantly cited from her Memoirs is this: "Je ne me peindrai qu'en buste." It would seem as if her mother's portrait needed still greater reserve. On the threshold we are met with one little bit of historical scepticism which may materially interfere with the romance of the memoir, and that is nothing less than the question of the writer's age. Was she born in 1693 or in 1684? A most ungallant question; but, like many other ungallantries, not without its utility. Evelina Burney, for instance, was suddenly shorn of the marvellous nimbus which surrounded her, when Mr. Croker, prying into parish registers, was ungallant enough to expose the fabrication which had for so long gulled the gullible world respecting the extreme youth of the authoress of that remarkable work. In some such over-curious spirit has ungallantry in the gallantest nation of Europe ventured to record a discrepancy of ten years between registers and narra- Her mother, seems to have availed herself tives, and to destroy the perfume which of the first opportunity to place the burden hovered around Mademoiselle de Launay's of the child's existence on other shoulders; love affairs. If Mademoiselle de Launay and our little orphan was received by Meswas born in 1693, she was only fourteen or dames de Grieu in the convent of St. Louis fifteen when she first saw and loved the at Rouen, as if she had been their own reMarquis de Silly, eighteen when she en-lation. They had, indeed, early taken a tered the service of the Duchess de Maine, great fancy to the sprightly child, and pettwenty-six when she was imprisoned in the ted her as women will pet children they Bastille and there loved the Chevalier de fancy. One trait of her humor will render Menil, forty-two when she married the this intelligible. When little more than complaisant Baron de Staal. If we throw two years old she lived with the old Abbess on an additional ten years, and make these of St. Savior's-Madame de la Rochefou cauld, the mad sister of the maxim-writer | encore plus qu'à leurs passions; celle que -who, among other eccentricities, had a j'avais pour la lecture ne put m'empêcher sort of hospital for sick and disabled dogs! de sentir vivement le regret de ce sacrifice. Misfortune in the canine shape always J'appris par la qu'on pouvait se repentir. touched her, and her rooms were filled with yelping, one-eyed, limping, mangy curs; the healthy and pretty found no hospitality in her house. The little child toddled about among her mangy companions, and one day happened to tread on the foot of one of these incurables, who set up a howl, which made the abbess look so angry that the child was advised, in an under tone, to "beg pardon." With the natural logic of childhood she supposed that as the dog was the offended party, to the dog she was to beg for pardon; accordingly, toddling into the middle of the room, she knelt before the injured animal, and made her excuses. This so charmed the abbess that it disarmed her. Cette connaissance ralentit mon ardeur pour être religieuse." Is it not curious? The young girl is willing to relinquish the world with all its pomps and vanities,-willing, nay, passionately desirous of doing so; the heart is yearning for the sacrifice; and, lo! the first blow to her self-love shatters all those dreams. She who could renounce the world, cannot look at herself in the mirror and behold her shorn head: all her religious ardor, all the mystic "vocation" has fled, and the disenchanted novice only frets because her hair grows again so slowly. Is there not a philosophical explanation of this paradox? Let us try our hands at one. To say that her religious ardor was a factitious thing, the enthusiasm of an igLiving among grown-up people, the child norant girl, the mere passion of a passionnaturally acquired a certain sedateness of ate nature not knowing how to expend itmanner and quickness of judgment which self; and that this uneasy enthusiasm, this precociously developed her; and, being ac- factitious sentiment, could not be of long companied by great vivacity, petulance, and duration: to say all this will not explain cleverness, these "old-fashioned manners" the matter. It lies deeper than that. It were inexpressibly charming. She was the lies, we believe, in the difference between the pet of the convent; and was spoiled by all way in which we are affected by an abstracthe nuns very much in the same way as the tion and by a reality. The world she was parrot in Gresset's delightful Ver- Vert. Of called upon to relinquish, what was it but course she was the tyrant of that little an abstraction to her? Its pomps and vanikingdom, and ruled over willing slaves. ties so easily despised when out of sight, But although despotic in her use of power, its temptations so easily avoided when afar, she did not, like other spoiled children, its passions and its enjoyments were all to shun the drudgery of education. On the her in a sort of shadowy, incomprehended contrary, her quick intelligence was fortified obscurity, which could not strike vividly by great study; somewhat miscellaneous, upon her mind. Besides, it was such a grand it is true, but, on the whole, vigorous thing to give up the world; so grand and enough. Before reaching her eighth year, so easy, so flattering to self-love, so slight so advanced was her religious instruction a deprivation to self! Her hair, on the that she was admitted "à la participation contrary, was no abstraction, but a reality des plus saints mystères." She devoured she could not avoid: the loss of it made the works contained in the convent library, her less agreeable in her own eyes, made and when not reading, passed the greater her self-love wince, and made her feel that part of her time in prayers and meditations. if she thus regretted one of the details of Ver-Vert himself was not more devout. Her passion for study alarmed her friends, and they endeavored to repress it; the consequence, of course, was, that restraint only increased her ardor. So absorbing had this religious fever become, that she grew im- The transition from "divine love" to patient at the moments wasted on other "profane love," from religious ardor to huthings, and actually cut off her beautiful man passion, is very slight and easy, as the hair that she might be sooner coiffée. The history of fanaticism plainly shows. It was sacrifice completed, repentance began; and so with Mademoiselle de Launay. From the remark with which she closes this anec- her books of piety she turned to those very dote is singularly suggestive and profound: mundane works which every one reads and -"Les femmes tiennent à leurs agréments almost every one abuses,-novels. life she might regret them all. From that moment the world began to be less of an abstraction to her; from that moment her desire to take the veil abated, till at length it was entirely subdued. Of course she carried the same enthusiasm into not likely to remain behind; and to a smather new study, and became, she says, tering of Latin she added a reasonable "more violently agitated by the fabulous mastery over geometry, a tincture of sciadventures of the personages, than she was ence, and no inconsiderable amount of ever afterwards by her own." Strong as metaphysics. While touching upon this her passion for novel-reading was, she had subject of her knowledge, let us not forget firmness enough to conquer it when her the propos naïf of the famous anatomist friends pointed out to her the danger of Duverney, who, after a conversation with such studies; and here she exhibited that her, declared she was "la fille de France strength of character which enabled her to qui connait le mieux le corps humain," battle with the difficulties of her subsequent a phrase which, accepted in its equivocal career. "I have seldom done anything sense by a giddy duchess, was circulated all which cost me more," she says. "Never- over Paris. theless, I began to conceive what the passions were; and the sentiments which form them insinuated themselves into my soul, though without any determinate object." But we are anticipating, and must return to the convent. The study of Descartes and Malebranche occupied her restless mind, but she had a restless heart also to occupy. In society, occupation of that kind is easily found; not so in a convent, where males are so scarce as to justify the remark of La Bruyère, that to a nun even a gardener is a man; and our heroine had, therefore, only a vague instinct without an object. After religion and novels came science; and our charming De Launay began her scientific studies with the same ardor she had formerly thrown into other subjects. Do not misunderstand her, however. She was no terrific Dacier, dirty and pedantic; she was no Madame du Chatelet, querulous Soon an object presented itself in the and mathematical; she was no modern person of the Chevalier de R—, who was strong-minded woman" attending Friday in love with the niece of Madame de Grieu. evenings at the Royal Institution, and seasoning a tête-à-tête with the "delightful new discoveries" she learned there. No, the De Launay of whom Chaulieu wrote, Launay, qui souverainement Could anything be more tempting to a young girl than to fall in love with her friend's lover? The mere spectacle of two lovers was a novelty to her, and a singularly interesting novelty. Of course she felt her own little heart beat emulously. How could it be otherwise? Was he not a young man, a lover, and an accomplished performer on the lute? It was enough to make any little heart beat. Fortunately, her great friend and companion, Mademoiselle de Silly, more experienced in such matters, detected the state of her feelings, and adroitly contrived to change their current. It was a factitious passion, more a besoin d'aimer than a veritable passion, and quickly subsided. It only left in her a singular taste for the lute. was neither a dissertator nor a twaddler: she was a charming woman, whose learning was only a grace the more. The reader may imagine something very unlike the reality, when he learns that Cartesianism was the philosophy to which she attached herself; but Descartes was then fashionable, and, ponderous as he may now appear, his formidable quartos were then turned over by very delicate fingers. Indeed, it is one Next came M. Brunel, who was not a of the characteristics of the eighteenth cen- musician, but, as a compensation, could tury that science and metaphysics were dis- turn a couplet with some skill. He first cussed as eagerly in the salon and boudoir, saw her in the convent parlor, and seems to as in the professor's chair or lonely study. have been greatly struck with her charms Philosophy was the rage, and rouged cheeks and accomplishments. His admiration, of grew somewhat paler in bending over the course, flowed into verses; an interchange august pages of some austere thinkers. No of couplets took place. There was an woman was pedantic then who discussed epistle to Doris; then a reply to that epistopics of political economy, of astronomy, tle; finally, a portrait of Doris;-all as chemistry, "fate, foreknowledge, free-will innocently as possible. It was a mere intelabsolute;" geometry was a feminine accom- lectual flirtation, and ended in a real friendplishment. Fontenelle had made science ship. graceful and attractive. Mademoiselle de Launay, with her thirst for knowledge, was M. Brunel presented to her the Abbé Vertot, known by his historical works, who |